Hello Dear Community, I hope you all are enjoying watching spring unfold upon the prairie as much as I am. The coworkers, retreatants, and other community members share gratitude that we have this sacred place of Holy Wisdom Monastery in our lives. Holy Wisdom, the Sisters, the coworkers, the communities, the prairie and all that is held here is so full of hope, life, and love. I am inspired daily by the steadfast spirit of the place, how it saunters on in the face of despair, how it has for seven decades, and will continue to do so long after …
Steve Zwettler’s Homily for Feb. 23, 2025
7th Sunday of Ordinary TimeGenesis 45:3-11I Cor. 15:35-38, 42-50Lk. 6:27-38 “ABSORBING THE HATRED” As always, it is very good to be together this morning to support each other in our faith and to share in this Eucharist. When I was coming through the front entrance this morning, Diana, one of our greeters, told me that she had been listening to a podcast this week from someone commenting on today’s gospel about loving your enemies. The podcaster stated jokingly: “We should love our enemies, but do everything we can do make them feel terribly guilty about their actions.” Clever….Great to laugh …
April phenology
By Sylvia Marek Phenology is a science focused on observing and recording biological events from year to year and their relationships to the change of seasons and climate. These are the “normal” phenology events we expect to see here and in the Madison area this month. We would love to hear about what you are seeing on the grounds of Holy Wisdom Monastery. Please comment on this post with what you are observing, where at Holy Wisdom and the date you observed the event. No month ends or begins overnight. Events can be a few weeks early or late. “Gaze …
Patti LaCross’s Homily from March 23, 2025
3rd Sunday of Lent, March 23,2025 Isaiah 55:1-5; 1 Corinth 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9 Anyone else have whiplash? First Isaiah’s lovely invitation to feast and rest in safety, and our assurance of the Holy One’s nearness… then the jolt of Corinthians. Paul bluntly recounts how ourancestors in faith, despite having been protected on their journey to freedom; and having kept the spiritual practices taught to them; were found unpleasing to God… with many of them struck down in the desert. Then we heard Jesus, responding to an incendiary – if uncorroborated- rumor, of Galileans slaughtered by Pilate’s men. Word was, their bodies …
A Confessing Church?
Recalling the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and action of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people,” a number of members of Sunday Assembly (Sally Bowers, David Couper, Jerry Folk, and I) have asked ourselves whether other members of our Holy Wisdom community feel, as we do, that it is time to “speak up” about what is happening these days in our country. We believe that the contradictions between policies and actions of …
Formation of the ecumenical community of Holy Wisdom Monastery
In 1953, the Sisters of St. Benedict from Sioux City, Iowa, were invited by Bishop William P. O’Connor, the first bishop of Madison, Wisconsin, to come and start a high school for girls in Madison. Three sisters arrived in Madison and purchased a parcel of open pastureland overlooking Lake Mendota and the city of Madison, Wisconsin. The property included a 10,000-year-old glacial lake. On this land, the sisters built a priory to serve as their new home. Then, in the fall of 1959, they opened the Academy of St. Benedict, a girls’ high school. The Vatican Council II, held from …
Experiments with biochar – carbon sequestration and soil enrichment with biochar
By Emma Kloes Oftentimes within restoration projects and routine land care we have significant amounts of brush and wood on our hands. Some wood will decompose in the field and provide habitat for a plethora of insects. Some is burned in brush piles to make room for native species growth and to prepare a unit for a prescribed burn. The traditional brush pile burn undergoes wood combustion. Wood is exposed to heat and oxygen, gases are released then combust, and what remains is a pile of ash. This ash can be great for soils with its high mineral composition, rich …
David McKee’s Homily for Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Joel 2:1-2, 12-17 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 “…rend your hearts and not your clothing.” “…whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to God who is in secret.” This year, when I read these familiar injunctions from Joel and Matthew, I flashed back to a 5-day silent retreat that I attended some years ago. At the beginning of the retreat, the leader reminded us to maintain silence at all times and also to practice “custody of the eyes;” that is, not to make eye contact with other retreatants and to try as much as possible …
Leora Weitzman’s Homily, Mar. 2, 2025
Transfiguration • Exodus 34:29–35 • 2 Corinthians 3:12–4:2 • Luke 9:28–36 • 3/2/25 Today is a turning point in the liturgical calendar, a hinge between Ordinary Time and Lent. And so our Gospel looks back to Jesus’ baptism as the Beloved and forward to his final journey through Jerusalem to the Cross. Where our translation has Moses and Elijah speaking of his departure, the Greek calls it his exodus, invoking the Israelites’ forty-year journey through the wilderness. In turn, that journey evokes Jesus’ forty-day sojourn in the desert and the temptations he faced there after his baptism. The divine Voice …
Manato Jansen’s Homily from Jan. 19, 2025
Co-Creators of Abundance Wedding feasts in ancient Israel were often week-long events. I have never come close to hosting an event of that scale – but many of you know that I work at the Pres House campus ministry and apartment community at UW, and a couple times during our monthly apartment dinners, as 100 students rush down to consume our home-cooked meals, we’ve had moments of frantic lemonade shortage, and our pitchers of Arnold Palmer ran dry. It’s nothing close to running out of a week’s worth of wine at a wedding celebration, but I’m sure we’ve all had …