Perspective from monastery hilltop overlooking prairie, Lake Mendota and Madison in the distance.

Gaining perspective in contentious times

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community 6 Comments

I was talking with a leader of a class being held at the monastery last week. While he was on break, he spoke about the reasons he likes coming to the monastery. He said coming to the monastery helps him gain perspective on his work. The view from the top of the hill of the capital and downtown Madison represents this change of perspective. He teaches at the university and finds it helpful to come across the lake periodically to step back and look at his life and work from another viewpoint. The sisters have been reading Joan Chittister’s commentary …

Five sisters gather as a community

“What do you do in the monastery?”

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community 3 Comments

When guests or retreatants eat with the sisters for the first time they often ask what our day is like. They are curious about what goes on in a monastery and who these people are who live “separate from the world” as some would say. Some people who have never been to a monastery can’t imagine any earthly use for monasteries. They think monks and nuns are wasting their lives and trying to escape from a world that is desperately in need of their help. They suspect we are just “burying our talents” so to speak. In answer to the …

Sister Lynne, hoe in hand, working in garden, caring for the earth

Why care for the earth?

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community 1 Comment

Why care for the earth? Monday morning, while I am working in the garden, a turkey hen appears from behind the compost pile, shepherding two very young chicks across the grass toward the garden. The hen stops and turns back when she sees me, but the chicks continue ahead and take cover under the rhubarb plants. As I walk away trying not to scare them, the mother clucks softly to her chicks and they come running out of the grass and into the woods with her. Tuesday morning I see them again from my office window as they enter the …

Sisters and guests seated around the dinner table

Being Christ to each other

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community 6 Comments

Since Rosy’s homily on June 12, 2016, I’ve been pondering the meaning of the incarnation. The Rule of Benedict teaches us to see Christ in one another and to receive one another as Christ. It takes a lifetime to explore what it means to us that God came to us in the flesh. This past month I have had occasions to notice the significance of the incarnation in everyday life. Missionary Benedictine Sister Marie Songmun from the Daegu priory in South Korea visited us for a week in June. I feel a special kinship with her because she arrived here …

Lector with out-stretched arms leading the worshiping community at Holy Wisdom Monastery.

A passion for wisdom

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community Leave a Comment

“Wisdom has built her house and spread her table.” —Proverbs 9 This is a phrase we sing frequently as an antiphon in our Liturgy of the Hours. It was also the text chosen for an address, which we re-discovered recently, by Sister Donald Corcoran, OSB, CAM. As a member of our Ecumenical Board in the 1990’s, Sister Donald spoke at the blessing of the renovated monastery building (now our Retreat & Guest House) on May 21, 1995. I found wonderful connections between Sister Donald’s comments and the ways we continue to embody a passion for wisdom here at Holy Wisdom Monastery. Benedict …

Sisters walking together outdoors

Passionate about building community

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community Leave a Comment

Sister Joanne often says, “Building community is one of the things we do around here.” Indeed it is. You could say we are passionate about building community at Holy Wisdom Monastery. In the sisters’ community and the oblate community, in Sunday Assembly, among coworkers, Benedictine Sojourners and Friends of Wisdom Prairie—we seek to foster personal connections where people can find a welcome acceptance for who they are and a vibrant place to give and receive personal gifts and experience the divine. Many people today express a desire for community in a society where they experience so much divisiveness and isolation. …

Bee resting on a pink clover head

Lectio divina on the “book of creation”

Joanne Kollasch, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community, Spirituality Articles 4 Comments

This post is transcribed from an oral presentation made by Sister Joanne Kollasch to the Benedictine Women of Madison Board of Directors on March 29, 2016, part of the sisters’ continuing mission to build community and share Benedictine values. A Spirituality for the Easter Season by Joanne Kollasch, OSB In morning prayer today we recited these words: Let all creation bend to you: For you spoke, and they took shape; you breathed: they came alive. Nothing can resist your voice. Or, in words recently shared by Margaret Mandernach, OSB:  “There is only one life, one love, one energy…namely, God. All of creation …

Sister Joanne speaking to an oblate gathering

A call to justice: Benedictine perspectives on listening, right relationships and public witness

Joanne Kollasch, OSBBenedictine Bridge, Building Community, Living in Community, Spirituality Articles Leave a Comment

The Oblate retreat, February 19-21, 2016, brought together 66 Oblates of Holy Wisdom, women and men from near and far, to learn from the sisters about the ways justice is expressed in Benedictine life through listening, right relationships and public witness. The following reflections come from a presentation given by Joanne Kollasch, OSB, on February 19, 2016 (pictured above). Today if you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart. —Prologue, Rule of Benedict There are many ways to hear God’s voice if we are silent and listening, if we are able to “welcome one another with the courtesy of love.” …

children gathered in front of the worshiping community at Sunday Assembly

Filling the pot—strengthening community life 

Lynne Smith, OSBBenedictine Bridge, Building Community, Living in Community, Sunday Assembly Leave a Comment

Colleen Hartung (second from right in the foreground), gives back to the worshiping community through her work with the children of Sunday Assembly.   In January, Coleen Hartung and I were talking about her dissertation on the liturgy at Sunday Assembly. In the course of the conversation she told me how much it meant to her and to her family to participate in Sunday Assembly these past 10-plus years and to be involved with the people at Holy Wisdom. Coleen, her husband Kent, and the children were welcomed warmly from the first day they arrived. They appreciated the inclusive language used …

Sister Joanne and retreatant looking together at prayer books used for daily prayer

Building community through shared Benedictine values

Lynne Smith, OSBBuilding Community, Living in Community 1 Comment

Sister Joanne will be quick to tell you that Benedictine spirituality does not exist in the abstract. It only comes alive as people embody it. It is learned and passed on person to person through relationships. Having lived this life for over sixty years, Joanne embodies the Benedictine values of the monastery in her unique way. Joanne is passionate about passing on the Benedictine way of life to everyone with whom she comes into contact. You have probably experienced the values of hospitality, respect, simplicity and beauty through Joanne. She embodies Benedictine values in the way she greets guests, in …