What is PeerSpirit? Essentially, PeerSpirit is a way to share responsibility within a group. The sojourners chose this method to help us plan the Advent retreat. Using PeerSpirit Circle Guidelines, the group comes together as a “Circle” and has three components: a check-in, a conversation council and a check-out. A chime is used to signal a passage from one component to the other. The check-in allows for all to share how they come to the circle and is usually a question framed in reference to a song, a poem or some aspect of the planning task. There is no “cross-talk” …
Can You Help Me?
The young man’s question hung uncomfortably between us. It was my first Saturday away from the monastery. I and another Benedictine Sojourner had decided to go into downtown Madison to check out the famed Dane County Farmer’s Market that sprawls around the Capitol building. We had spent hours exploring streets thronged with shoppers, lined with fresh produce and flowers. Lingering in one of the many coffee shops along State Street to celebrate the end of our day, we rationed our time carefully, calculating the number of minutes to reach our parking spot and make it back to the monastery for …
Finding One’s Center
A lot is going on. Apple picking, to start. We’re harvesting about 200 bushels compared to 27 last year. Then there is prairie seed collection for a new restoration project next year. As with the apples, sojourners are helping to coordinate volunteers in this small fall window of seed harvest. We are also putting the garden to bed – gathering the last crops of butternut squash and greens, removing and straightening tomato cages for storage, pulling out the woody stalks of spent plants and making ready for a winter cover of rye. In addition, the monastery is hosting a number …
Contemplating Seeds
There’s a well-worn trail through the prairie that leads from the house to the monastery. It’s a path I take each morning as I make my way to join the community for prayer. Each day I witness the progress of autumn as familiar trees along the trail change color, and birds overhead take to flying in formation in the early light. Lately on my walks, I’ve begun to notice seeds. It’s autumn, and everything, everywhere is yielding seed. I don’t know how I missed it before. Years of living in the concrete jungles of New York City have numbed me …
Tales from the Monastery: Mother Gertrude McDermott
Born in 1864 in Pennsylvania, Mary Ellen McDermott became Sister Gertrude McDermott as a Benedictine sister in Conception, MO and later Maryville, MO. In 1881 Sister Gertrude traveled with three other sisters from Maryville to the Dakota Territory and Standing Rock Indian Reservation. They had been asked to begin a school for Native American children. Serving under challenging conditions in an unfamiliar culture and with no language in common, their first job was to gain the confidence of the children and parents, while praying for their own resolve. Slowly, working side by side and exchanging words in each of their …
Welcome back, again!
“Welcome back, again!” These words were spoken in greeting to me as I arrived in the Oratory for Morning Prayer my first day back at Holy Wisdom as a Benedictine Sojourner. I had visited the monastery twice in the spring, and have been anticipating my transition to life in community as a Sojourner since April. Now I am finally here—at least, my body is finally here. I think my spirit has been here in since last spring. So it was wonderful to be welcomed into the daily rhythm of the community with these words. There is the beauty of the …
Benedictine Hospitality in the Sisters’ Community
The sisters share their lives with Sojourners and Volunteers in Community who are exploring what it is like to live in community. Benedict tells us that guests bring blessings to the community. The sisters have been blessed by providing hospitality to a great variety of people over the years. Since the 1970s, in addition to our retreat and conference work, we have extended hospitality to women, men and families as guests within the sisters’ community. Refugee families from Guatemala, Vietnam, India and China lived in the monastery with us. This meant providing more than just a place to stay, but …
Seeing with Delight
It’s July, full heat bearing down. I am dizzied by the lightness of being, buzzing and blossoming in the prairie. If you haven’t read it already do enjoy Greg Armstrong’s marvelously descriptive ode to the flora on the monastery grounds this time of year (Nature Notes Summer 2013). It seems a day does not pass that I am not exclaiming to whoever is in earshot, Wow – unbelievable! How can such lush beauty be so conspicuous where just three short months ago dead stalks covered acres of barren field? My way to Morning Prayer through the prairie now is quite …
Welcome Home
Now that I have been here for almost three months, the question most often posed to me has changed from, What is your day like? (see All in Time, Part II) to, How are you doing (i.e., now that the initial flush of newness is fading)? I hear myself say, “I am still finding my way, but I feel very much at home.” At home… I recently watched The Hobbit on DVD. In J. R .R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic, hobbit Bilbo Baggins leaves his beloved shire, gently nudged by his friend the wizard Gandalf, and finds himself on an “unexpected journey” …
Welcoming Volunteers in Community
Four of the five Volunteers in Community work in the vegetable garden. Much of the produce from this garden ends up being served to guests at Holy Wisdom Monastery. This month the sisters welcome five women as Volunteers in Community between June 10 and July 6, 2013. Noreen and Mary will be with us the entire month. Noreen comes from Princeton, New Jersey where she works in the area of media and marketing. She has participated in domestic and international missionary trips for her church. Noreen grew up on a farm in Michigan and has gardening experience to bring to her participation …