An owl family gets some help

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie 3 Comments

By Julie Melton, Friends of Wisdom Prairie Council On March 13, 2021, during one of our monthly bird surveys, Friends of Wisdom Prairie volunteers spotted a Great Horned Owl (GHO). A few minutes after the initial sighting, we spotted a nest close by with another GHO sitting on it. We knew we had seen a mated pair. We weren’t surprised because we had seen owls on the grounds before. Since December, they could be heard calling.  A few days later, one of the birders in our group, Triet Tran, sent out a picture of two nestlings in the nest. Triet …

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“Restoration and Care for the Earth,” The Holy Wisdom Podcast

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Podcast Leave a Comment

Want to be the first to hear every new episode? Click here to sign up for email notifications! What does it truly mean to “care for the earth“?  In this episode, take a deeper look at what “care for the earth” means from two leaders of our natural restoration efforts – retired Land Manager, Greg Armstrong and his successor, Amy Alstad, PhD. Both our guests share their knowledge of the restoration work that the sisters have done over the years.  You’ll also hear about Friends of Wisdom Prairie, one of our volunteer communities, and their amazing contributions to the land at …

Spirituality on the prairie

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Living in Community Leave a Comment

“When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language. In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.” – …

Meeting new members of the prairie community

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie, Living in Community Leave a Comment

On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, I went for a walk in Wisdom Prairie. Friend of Wisdom Prairie member Ron Endres was harvesting prairie seeds along the path, so I stopped to find out what he was picking. He was gathering seed from anise hyssop and placed a seed head in my hand with the instructions to rub my hands together and then smell them. Sure enough, it smelled like anise or licorice. Anise hyssop isn’t very plentiful and Ron was glad to have come across a small patch of it. It is one of only a few prairie plants …

Prayer and work

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Living in Community 2 Comments

It was 73 degrees in Middleton on Monday, April 8, 2019. Since Monday is a day of leisure for the sisters, I spent a large part of the day outside. I raked up the sticks dropped by the oaks during the winter in the front yard at Bingen House and listened to the birds. This will be the last week of free meals for the birds. The squirrels have learned how to climb down onto the feeder from the roof of the house, hang from the upper perches by their back feet and eat their fill from the lower seed …

Restoration and hope

Lynne Smith, OSBCare for the Earth, Living in Community Leave a Comment

Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual.  –Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer (p. 328)   I made a quick trip to Illinois to visit my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband last week. It was fun to see them and get caught up even if for just a few days. It rained the three days I visited my brother and his wife in Naperville, Illinois. Since we couldn’t go …

Pathways to wisdom

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Living in Community, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

“Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily $1000 loan today discerned by those who love her, and is found by those who seek her. She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her. One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate. To fix one’s thought on her is perfect understanding, and one who is vigilant on her account will soon be free from care, because she goes about seeking those worthy of her, and she graciously appears to them in their paths, and meets …

Practicing kinship at the monastery

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Living in Community 1 Comment

As a student of theology and ministry studies, I’m often busy reading and writing theological propositions, exercising my critical eye as a reader, and learning the arts of ministry like preaching and spiritual care. I find myself thoroughly convinced of the veracity of many theological arguments and of the necessity to rethink traditional models and modes of religious community. I know many things to be true and spend an exorbitantly large amount of time demonstrating it. Such is the life of a graduate student. Since coming to Holy Wisdom Monastery, I’m wondering if I feel any of those well-reasoned propositions …

Rodent wrangling and ambiguity

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This week, on Tuesday morning, a group of us headed over to the garden. We hoped to beat the day’s heat and get some weeding and other work done before it became unbearably hot and humid. Sister Paz Vital and I were working in a fenced-in garden plot that contained rows of okra, cabbage, radishes, kale and a huge grouping of tomato plants. Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the corner of the garden near where we were working. The many, many weeds in that corner shook. A rabbit emerged, bounding through the garden. “BUNNY!” I yelled to Sister Paz. …

Holy Wisdom Monastery to Restore Lost Landscape

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  This November Holy Wisdom Monastery will begin restoring 30 acres of its land to oak savanna, considered by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to be Wisconsin’s rarest plant community. Oak savanna is characterized by widely spaced oak trees (between 10-50% tree canopy) with primarily grasses covering the ground. Before European settlement it was one of the most common plant communities in Wisconsin but now only a fraction remains. “Before Europeans arrived, oak savanna was more common than forest or prairie in southern Wisconsin,” explained Holy Wisdom Monastery’s Director of Land Management and Environmental Education, Greg Armstrong. After European …