A Monk’s Chronicle: 19 August MMXIX — Bogged Down in Service to the Lord

Bogged Down in Service to the Lord

Say the name Jeremiah and chances are the monks in our community will think Holy Week.  That’s when one of our monks will chant from The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet at morning prayer.  It’s a haunting melody whose notes underscore the desolation that Jeremiah feels in his soul.  There, stretched out before him, is a ruined Jerusalem.  For most of his career he had warned of just such a day.  Alas, few took his message to heart, and what he had anticipated finally came to pass.

Given that context, a reading from the Book of Jeremiah on a Sunday in mid-August seems a bit out of place.  That would be true, save for the fact that Jeremiah 38 serves as the before to Lamentations’ after.  In Jeremiah 38 we read of a prophet who’s not just been ignored but punished for the warnings he’s issued.  There we find him, cast into an empty well, waiting for death as he wallows knee-deep in mud.

Despite it all, Jeremiah didn’t succumb to despair.  A sympathetic court official intervened, and that friend was the unexpected answer to Jeremiah’s prayer.  That rescue allowed him to continue to preach on the Lord’s behalf.

From Jeremiah I’ve learned three things.  First, Jeremiah reminds us that being God’s servant isn’t necessarily easy business.  It’s not all sweetness and light;  and while God always answers our prayers, God doesn’t always give us what we are expecting.  We should never be shocked when surprises come our way.

Second, service in the name of the Lord sometimes requires grit and lots and lots of faith.  Faith is what allows us to go on, even when we have no idea where we’re going.

Finally, Jeremiah reminds us to be alert.  There are times when we all feel like we are stuck in the mud and going nowhere.  It’s in those moments that the Lord steps in and urges us to get a second opinion.  From the moment of our creation God has had something in mind for us, and no matter our age we are indeed going somewhere.  We need to be alert to those reminders, no matter who the messenger might be.

A friend of mine is fond of saying that he will give his customers exactly what they ask for and more than they ever imagine.  God does the same for us.  So whenever my life seems bogged down in the mire, it’s good to recall that God still has plans for me.  My life has purpose.  My life has meaning.  And if by chance there are mud-puddles and detours along the way, then maybe those too have meaning.  All help to shape my life on the road from here to eternity.

NOTES

+On August 16th we gathered to celebrate the Mass of Christian burial for our confrere Fr. Hilary Thimmesch, who died unexpectedly on the previous Sunday.  For most of his life Fr. Hilary taught English at Saint John’s University, and he served for several years as president of the University.  Until last May he also served as a faculty resident for a floor of freshmen in a University residence hall.  At 91 he decided it was finally time to retire!  Always a consummate gentleman, Fr. Hilary slipped away quietly, shortly after returning to his room in the evening.

+On August 17th I celebrated Mass for a gathering of some forty alumni and friends of Saint John’s University, who had gathered at the home of my friends Len and Kay in Edina, MN.

+On Sunday August 18th the Saint John’s Boys Choir sang at the Abbey Mass.  It was their first performance of the new season.

+While rococo interiors are not everyone’s cup of tea, for sheer exuberance and joy they are hard to beat.  In honor of the feast of the Assumption, August 15th, I have illustrated today’s post with photos from the pilgrimage church of Maria Steinbach, located in Bavaria.  I took them six years ago in the course of a tour of baroque churches and abbeys in Bavaria, guided by my friends Johannes and Adriana.  The abundance of baroque and rococo interiors in Bavaria almost takes your breath away.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 12 August MMXIX — For Whom Should We Pray?

For Whom Should We pray?

A few weeks ago a photo gripped the world’s attention.  In it a man and a child floated, faces down, in the shallow waters of the Rio Grande.  It was shocking, and it starkly illustrated just one of the many social ills that beset our times.

There was one thing that made the photo particularly poignant, however.  For whatever reason most of the media outlets chose not to give any names.  These two were almost objects rather than people.  Floating anonymously in the water, they seemed unblessed and lacking in even the basics of humanity.  Having achieved not even ten minutes of fame in life, they became nobodies in death.

Then I considered who they might have been.  One had been a son to his parents, a husband to his wife, and a father to the person floating next to him.  Eventually I discovered that he had a name after all.  He was Oscár Alberto Martínez Ramírez.

As for the 23-month-old next to him, her accomplishments were fewer.  She was daughter to Oscár and her mother, and perhaps she was a sister to some siblings still at home.  Still, like her father, she had been created in the image of God.  She too had human dignity, and perhaps she was the future hope for her family.  And she too had a name:  Valeria.

Once I knew their names, Oscár and Valeria were no longer anonymous victims of circumstance.  Now I could imagine chatting with them.  I could picture them laughing and crying and sitting around a table eating with family and friends.  They were no longer poster children of some social or political problem.  They were individuals who needed both my respect and my prayers.

In a recent homily Pope Francis urged us to give names to the people who suffer from the vast litany of ills that beset our times.  It’s nice enough to pray for world peace and an end to persecution and an end to hunger;  but those remain abstractions until we can attach the names of real live people to our prayers.

When a congregation is small enough, the priest has the luxury of inviting others to add their own petitions to the prayers of the faithful.  “For whom shall we pray?” is the invitation for which many people thirst.  It’s the chance to be very specific, because it’s suddenly okay to pray — out loud and in front of other people —  “for Aunt Edna who has surgery today,” or “for my son who is going through a difficult time.”

This is when prayer becomes intensely personal.  It’s when we pray for flesh-and-blood neighbors, even if we scarcely know them.  But when we say their names out loud or deep within our hearts something profound comes over us.  We admit our kinship with them.  We confess that they and we were created in the image of God.  And through our prayers we no longer walk alone.  Instead, we walk the paths of the Lord alongside them as fellow pilgrims.

So what lessons might we take away from this?  First, it’s certainly okay to pray for big-ticket items like “peace in the Middle East.”  But it’s even better to pray by name for a person or a village or a parish community in that region.  That builds communion between them and us.

Second, pray for someone by name, at least once a day.  It gets us out of the mindset that we alone carry the burdens of the world.  It reminds us that we have kindred spirits out there who also share in our search for meaning and purpose in life.

Third, don’t wait for someone to issue a gilded invitation to pray.  It’s nice to hear that formal invitation “For whom should we pray?”  But it’s no sin to pray unbidden.  If truth be told, there are lots of people whom we know who need our prayers, and Oscár and Valeria are just two of them.  Why wait to be invited to do the decent thing?

Finally, for whom else should we pray?  As long as we’re at it we may as well save some breath to pray for ourselves.  It never hurts, and frankly the Lord may be wondering why we’ve not called on him for a while.

NOTES

+On August 8th I was in Minneapolis for two meetings, and one of them happened to be at the American Swedish Institute.  It’s housed in a great old mansion built by Swan Turnblad, a very successful Swedish newspaper publisher in Minneapolis.  From personal experience I can say that it’s especially nice to visit there during the Christmas season.  Currently it has on display an exhibit of Viking artifacts from the 6th-9th centuries.  So after the meeting I had a choice between the “Swedish language happy hour” or the exhibit.  I chose the exhibit, mainly because I’m not sure what goes on at a Swedish language happy hour.

+On August 9th I made my semi-annual pilgrimage to the help desk at IT Services, which is now housed in Alcuin Library at Saint John’s.  Everyone is required to change the computer password to their account every six months, and I had one day left before I would be frozen out completely.  Like most people over the age of twenty I find this to be an ordeal, and years ago I vowed never to do this alone again.  The occasion of that solemn oath (and many others at the time, I might add), was when I was out of town.  Without any help at all I successfully locked myself out of my computer for four days.  Anyway, once again I packed phone and computer and iPad up and toted them over to the help desk.  This time the computer doctor happened to be a brilliant student from the Bahamas, and he performed wizardry before my eyes.  I left with devices that still talked with one another and secure in the knowledge that only college students and hackers know how to get into my account.  Heaven knows I don’t.

+Today the first of our students return for the fall term.  Meanwhile, all summer long the showy flower beds have garnered all the attention.  However, as the photos in today’s post attest, there are nooks and crannies that may be ignored but can hold their own.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 5 August MMXIX — Staring Down the Darkness

Staring Down the Darkness

If you want to know what tranquility looks and feels and sounds like, then a good place to start is a ruined English abbey.  Set in remote corners in parklike settings, many of them ooze peace and quiet, and they are reminders of what life was like before the industrial revolution.

There aren’t many places in the first world where people can escape the grip of industrial noise.  But there are those few moments when technology loosens its grip and we are left to our own devices to cope.  Just such an experience happened to me last Friday.  That afternoon I had flown to Irvine, CA, and the next day I was scheduled to give a retreat conference to members of the Orders of Malta and the Holy Sepulchre.  As I sat down to dinner in the hotel cafe, it happened.  The lights flickered and for a moment civilization hung in the balance.  Then the Middle Ages returned.  There were no lights, no whirring machines, and no power to open the doors.  Then I and my fellow diners began to discover just how gently electrical power coddles us.  The elevator would not take me back to my room on the tenth floor.  There was no air-conditioning.  And those who dined after us were treated to cold cuts and snacks.

What surprised me was my reaction to the absence of light.  At 6 pm, when all of this started, it didn’t seem like such a big deal.  At that point the sun still shone brightly, but its gradual setting stirred me into a panic.  I had reserved most of the evening for some work, but then it dawned on me that when the sun went down the work would have to stop.  There would only be the primordial darkness.

Like monks had done for hundreds of years, I went to bed when the sun set.  There was nothing else to do.  Then I remembered that I am an early riser, and I prayed that the power would return by 3 am.  It didn’t.

When I woke up at 3 am my worst workaholic fears came true.  There was no point in getting up.  Short of a miracle it would be pitch dark until the sun rose just before 6 am.  So for three hours I stayed in bed, eyes wide open, staring at the darkness, waiting for something to happen.

For most of monastic history — and human history for that matter — monks lived in sync with the cycle of the days and the changing of the seasons.  They got by partially because they never saw electricity coming, so they didn’t know what they were missing anyway.  But still they coped, and one way to thumb their noses at the darkness was to recite the psalms of the night office by memory.  For the most part, however, they simply adapted because they could not control their environment.  It controlled them.

Of course electricity changed all that.  Still, twelve hours without it made me wonder whether we even realize what we’ve lost.  For one night I had to measure my steps because in my own room I couldn’t see where I was going.  There was neither radio nor television to keep me entertained, no light for reading, and my iPad could offer no solace because it was running low on juice.  The dimly-lit lobby could have been a haven, but the thought of having to climb ten flights of stairs to get back up was a real disincentive.  So I was left to settle in with my thoughts for company and with senses that were suddenly alert to even the faintest of sounds.

What surprises me most is that I’m grateful for the experience.  I discovered that I could live without access to light at the flick of a switch.  I could get around without an elevator, and I could make do with my thoughts as my only companion.  Life was possible, even without an iPad or a cell phone.  Who would have thought?!  In retrospect it almost seems like a revelation straight from the Almighty.

NOTES

+As the final weeks of summer rush on us, we’ve hosted a variety of groups at Saint John’s, and this week our featured guests were the members of the Rosemount High School Marching Band.  Every August they come for a one-week camp, and it’s always fun to listen as their music wafts across campus.  Also at Saint John’s this summer have been members of three seminars at the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library.  Hosted in partnership with Dumbarton Oaks, the Byzantine research institute sponsored by Harvard University, we’ve marveled at scholars who would spend a chunk of their summer studying Armenian, Syriac and Coptic paleography.

+On 2 August I flew to John Wayne Airport in Orange County, CA.  Four hours after I landed an electrical fire in a transformer closed the airport and cut the power to the hotel where I happened to be staying.  I later heard that we were the lucky ones.  Our power was out for twelve hours.  Other neighbors lost it for two days.

+On 3 August I gave a conference at a retreat for Orange County members of the Orders of Malta and the Holy Sepulchre.  The event took place at Saint Thomas More Parish in Irvine.

+The photo at top is the view of sunset from my hotel window in Irvine CA, shortly before everything went dark.  The other photos in today’s post show the ruins of Saint Mary’s Abbey, at the edge of York in the UK.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 29 July MMXIX — Martha, Mary and Lazarus: Friends of Jesus

Martha, Mary and Lazarus:  Friends of Jesus

Lazarus, Martha and Mary.  Brother and sisters.  Friends of Jesus.  Disciples of the Lord.  Within the monastic tradition our default buttons have generally been set toward Mary.  She’s the one who had chosen the better part, as Jesus said.  And so we single her out for her dedication to prayer and meditation on the words of Jesus.  We also think of her as a parallel to Mary the mother of Jesus.  She too had much to ponder in her heart.

All the same, beyond the fact that their neighbors knew that they were close to Jesus, there’s really not a lot we know about these three.  In the gospel Lazarus makes a cameo appearance as a dead man who must have been surprised when Jesus called him from the tomb.  As for Mary, we scarcely hear a peep from her, and of the three she best embodies the advice Saint Benedict gave to his disciples.  She was good at listening.

It’s Martha who comes across as the strong and by no means silent personality here.  She was forceful and not at all bashful about saying what was on her mind.  She was not afraid to complain to Jesus when her sister slacked off in the duties of hospitality.  She even delivered a slight rebuke to Jesus, who in her modest opinion could have done something to prevent Lazarus’ death.

I’m going to hazard the opinion that Jesus liked each of these siblings precisely because each brought different gifts to the table.  Mary listened;  Lazarus could meet Jesus halfway when called;  and Martha was one of the few people who could tell Jesus what she thought and get results.  Perhaps even Jesus needed a friendly nudge and a bit of advice every now and then.

The fact is, Jesus chose three very different people to be his friends;  and that matters a great deal to us.  And so whether we’ve preferred the path of Lazarus or Martha or Mary matters less than the fact that the Lord loves us for who we are rather than who we are not.  In short, perhaps the Lord is telling us that it takes all kinds to make a family, a monastic community and even a Church.  There’s room for us all among the friends of Jesus, and for that lesson we owe a debt of gratitude to Martha, Mary and Lazarus.

NOTES

+I didn’t have a lot on my calendar this past week, but there was still plenty to keep me busy.  Among other things I hosted a member of the Federal Association of the Order of Malta, who made a five-day retreat to initiate her year of probation as a Dame in Obedience.  I also hosted Don and his brother, John, both from the Bay Area.  They were our guests for two days.

+On July 25th two returning members of the Benedictine Volunteer Corps spoke to members of the community about their year of service at the Benedictine priory of Tabgha in Israel and at a community in Uganda.  Meanwhile one of our last remaining volunteers for next year left for the abbey of Sant Anselmo in Rome.

+The week’s big lesson came from a trip to the emergency room of the Saint Cloud Hospital.  I was not the patient, but I had volunteered to drive in one of my confreres for what should have been a short and simple visit.  It turned out to be a seven-hour ordeal, and I learned a lot.  Up to now I had been spared a trip to the emergency room, and I was surprised at what I have been missing.  For one thing, it was interesting to survey the variety of people who frequent emergency rooms.  Among those who helped to pass the time was a young mother who let her three-year-old son run free-range for over an hour.  Finally a couple of mothers took charge and kept him entertained.  May God bless them forever.  My award for the most irritating behavior went to the irksome lady who spent an hour and a half going through her contacts list, calling everyone whom she’d ever met to tell them that she was in the hospital.  No doubt it was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a long time — if not in her entire life.

+On 27 July our confrere Fr. Corwin Collins passed away.  Born in Port Jefferson, NY, he served most of his years as a pastor and chaplain.  This marks the fourth death of a confrere in five weeks, and while each of these four was more than ready to go, we wonder why they have chosen mid-summer to make their departure.  We will miss them all.

+Today is the feast of Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and this post is a transcription of the sermon that I will deliver at the abbey mass later today.

+The campus at Saint John’s is particularly lovely right now, but the prize this week goes to the flower beds in the cloister walks of the abbey church, which the photos in today’s post illustrate.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 22 July MMXIX — Mid-Summer’s Advice

Mid-Summer’s Advice

Like most people, I’m delighted to give advice, even when it’s unsolicited.  Also like most people, I don’t particularly enjoy getting advice, especially when it’s unsolicited.  Who does?

For months now Marie, the manager in the office where I work, has badgered me about not using my vacation days.  “Use ‘em or lose ‘em,” has been her recurring mantra.  But of course I enjoy my work, so why would I want to deny myself of something that inspires me so much?

Finally it dawned on me that her advice dovetailed neatly with advice I’ve doled out in retreat conferences for years.  I’ve always been a firm believer in the need to live a balanced life, and so I’ve preached that we ought not drown ourselves in work, to the neglect of everything else.  All of us need to live balanced lives, and that balance includes music and reading and good food and visits with friends and family.  All of those things have the potential to energize us, and they can revive us when work has at long last dragged us into the pits.

Last week I took a break from work, mainly so I could begin to chip away at those vacation days and make Marie happy.  I thought perhaps it might even do me some good to have a change of pace, for a day or two at least.  As it turned out, however, it was an inspired decision.  I’m glad I did it.

Among other things I read two books.  Fatal Discord happened to be a heavy tome in which Michael Massing constructs parallel lives of Martin Luther and his contemporary and sometime nemesis, Erasmus.  A former student of mine had recommended it, and I was impressed that he was still reading such weighty material, even without getting college credit for it.  The second was a book by the English wit Peter Mayle.  Entitled A Year in Provence, it appeared in shops decades ago and got an honorable mention recently in an article on travel to Provence.  Lest I be the only civilized person of my generation not to have read it, I downloaded it and savored every page.

So what else did I do on my summer vacation?  I walked, for miles.  One day I even did ten miles.  I also darkened the doors of one museum, an historic home and several churches.  All were great experiences.  I also visited with friends and family and listened to lots of music.  And I took a train ride.  All in all I did the sort of stuff that I’ve been telling others to do but never do myself.  It was great, and I concluded that I should listen to my own advice a little more often.

That brings me to a couple of other conclusions.  First, if I don’t bother to listen to my own advice, I can’t complain when others pay no need to the advice I give them.  Second, there really is something to all that palaver about living a balanced life.  It’s actually a great idea, and that was a big takeaway from this year’s summer vacation.  In fact I plan to try it again, and maybe even this winter.

NOTES

+As noted above, I did not do anything of import last week save for an attempt to restore some balance to my life.  Since I celebrated fifty years in the monastery on July 11th, I thought it might be time to try.

+On July 19-21 95 oblates of Sant John’s Abbey gathered for their annual retreat.  Abbot John delivered the conferences to them.

+On July 21st we hosted at Mass and a luncheon many of the eighty volunteers who give so generously of their time and energy by helping in various activities around the abbey.

+I returned from summer vacation to see and hear an electronic organ parked in the sanctuary of the church.  Thankfully its presence is temporary, since the console of the pipe organ is being rebuilt in anticipation of the installation of the new pipes.  The latter begins in August.  But for now it came as a bit of a shock.  However, in the interests of variety it might be fun for someone to play some hockey arena music for us.

+On 20 July our confrere Fr. Knute Anderson passed away.  Fr. Knute was truly one of the monastery characters, and at 90 years he had lived a full life.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 15 July MMXIX — Vengeance is no Way to Live

Vengeance is no Way to Live

It’s a classic story.  The obnoxious brother irritates his siblings for years.  Finally their chance comes, but at the last minute they back off from killing him and instead sell him into slavery.  Years later, desperate for food, they meet their brother, who has risen to power in a foreign land and graciously saves them.  With the entire family now dependent on him, he waits for his father to die, and then in revenge he tortures and executes his wicked brothers.

That’s the story of Joseph — except for that last bit about biding his time to take revenge on his brothers.  Had he done that no one would have begrudged him.  After all, what they did to him was terrible.

For the last few days in the liturgy we’ve read the story of Joseph and his brothers, and it’s one that’s larger than life.  No wonder it’s provided fodder for movies and a musical, but tucked within the drama is a story of character.  Joseph grew up a narcissist and found redemption through his own suffering.  It was an extraordinary turn of events, and the Joseph that his brothers met in Egypt was scarcely the same person whom they had sold into slavery.

The desire for revenge is unique neither to Joseph’s nor to our own times.  It’s tinged with a sense of justice, which can make it particularly attractive.  It can even provide a moment of satisfaction.  But it’s no way to live a life.  Vengeance may be the Lord’s, but when we dabble in it ourselves it has a way of eating away at us from within.

Joseph grew to forgive his brothers because he had grown into nobility of character.  This same character is what Jesus urges on us when he encourages us to forgive others as we would have them forgive us.  In that prayer is the recognition that we may at times be the injured party, but seldom are we entirely faultless.

So it is that the Lord invites us to join with Joseph to rise above our hurts and grievances and become people who are blessings to all whom we encounter.  At the very least it is a better way to live, and the return on the investment can be truly extraordinary.

NOTES

+This was a busy week for me and many of my confreres.  On July 11th we celebrated the feast of Saint Benedict.  At that Mass our confrere Novice Jeremy professed his first vows, and I and five of my confreres renewed our vows on the anniversary of our profession.  It was a grand day, and I was happy to host as guests my two sisters, who had flown in from Oklahoma City, as well as several friends who attended the celebration.  After it was all over I could have slept for two days solid, but could only indulge myself for a day and a half.

+On July 14th the National Catholic Youth Choir completed its two-week residence at Saint John’s with a concert that preceded the abbey Mass.  Our confrere Fr. Anthony Ruff founded the choir twenty years ago, and the choristers always add a nice touch to our liturgies in the middle of the summer.

+The photo at top shows the chapter house in the foreground with the abbey church behind it.  Below that is the lower wing of the guesthouse, located to the east of the chapter house.  Next is a statue of Saint Benedict that is in the east cloister walk.  At bottom is a walk at the south end of the monastic garden.

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A Monk’s Chronicle: 8 July MMXIX — God Slips in through the Trap Door

God Slips in through the Trap Door

In the back of a church which I once attended there was a ladder that reached from the choir loft to a trap door in the ceiling.  It wasn’t quite a real ladder, because the rungs were embedded in the wall, and it was pretty utilitarian.  One day somebody got the bright idea of turning it into Jacob’s ladder, and an artist embellished the rungs with ivy and angels ascending and descending.

For me that made visual and vivid the words of Genesis 28.  The mural reminded me first of all that that Jacob’s dream depends on the stereotype of God as someone “up there” somewhere, roaming around in the attic.  But at the same time the ladder stitches together heaven and earth.  God may be in the heavens, but it is the angels who signal that the earth is good and that it belongs to God.

If Genesis 28 describes a vertical relationship with God, it also reminds us of a horizontal relationship, and it does so through angels who are sent to touch our lives.  It’s the horizontal that Jesus stressed again and again, and it’s the concept around which Saint Benedict structures monastic life.  Theologically God may be “totally other,” but both Genesis and Jesus remind us that the Lord walks beside us and nudges us and even carries us if need be.

Finally, it is true that once in a great while the Lord does walk right up and stares us in the face; but all the the same the Lord prefers to sidle up to us rather quietly.  It’s on those occasions when the Lord slips through the trap door of our minds to remind us that we belong to him.  That’s when he claims us for his own.

NOTES

+The highlight of this week in the monastery was our celebration of the 4th of July, with a picnic in the monastic garden.  Heavy rain earlier in the day gave way to a glorious afternoon.

+On July 6th we celebrated the Mass of Christian burial for our confrere Fr. Meinrad Dindorf.  We do funeral liturgies especially well at Saint John’s, and this one was no exception.  With all the rain we’ve had, the cemetery and our landscape in general are a verdant green.  As we gathered around Fr. Meinrad’s grave the loons sang and the squirrels scolded us, and it was a moving few minutes.

+At any given moment I juggle several books, reading each for a different purpose.  For example, I imagine myself to be one of the few people in North America not to have read J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  A friend of mine recently loaned me the book, and it was a quick read on the plane because of Rowling’s wonderful prose.  Ron Chernow’s biography of U. S. Grant falls into a different category.  I have always enjoyed Chernow’s writing, and like his other books this one is thick and weighty and not the sort for toting through the airport and onto the plane.  All the same, I am enjoying it, and not just because U. S. Grant is quite different from Harry Potter.  After all, how could you not appreciate someone “so reticent that someone quipped ‘he could be silent in several languages.’”

+Today’s post is a sermon which I will deliver at the monastery Mass today.  The mural of Jacob’s Ladder to which I refer was in the chapel of Saint Thomas More, the Catholic chapel at Yale.  I had the opportunity to live and work there for three years while in graduate school, and from the altar I could glimpse the mural high on the back wall of the church.  Alas, the mural did not pass muster when the church underwent renovation, and so it exists only in the memories of the few people who ever looked up there to notice it.

+By its nature a chronicle narrates the past rather than speaks of the future.  However, on July 11th, the feast of Saint Benedict, I will celebrate fifty years of monastic vows.  On the day that Novice Jeremy will pronounce his first vows, I and five other jubiliarians will renew our vows.  I don’t know where the years have gone, but but there’s very little I would want to change.  It’s been a great experience, though I remain convinced that some of the best years are yet to come.

+The top photo in today’s post shows the link between the Quadrangle, where nearly half of the monks live, and the Breuer wing, where the other half lives.  For the moment the flower beds in the monastic garden are particularly nice, and the overlook of Lake Sagatagan is especially serene.

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