Reprinted from Oblate News, March 2024

What are the roles you have played in life?

I’ve been a daughter, a student, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and now an octogenarian who is thankful to be doing as well as I am. I’m an almost lifelong Methodist with every intention of staying in the United Methodist Church as my denomination is breaking apart. My first job was stringing tags in a dress factory in St. Louis. I moved on from there. After college at Illinois Wesleyan, I worked for several years for what was formerly the U.S. Civil Service Commission in Washington, D.C. My husband, Larry, and I moved back to Illinois after our daughter was born; so she, and eventually our son, could grow up closer to their grandparents. After some wonderful years as a church and community volunteer and stay-at-home mom, I worked in senior housing and in assisted living for over 25 years. I joke that I was preparing myself to be old. I think it helped.

What drew you to be an oblate?

I first learned of what was then St. Benedict Center in 2001. I had just lost a job and I was devastated. I had seen information about St. Benedict Center in Sojourners magazine. Google existed by then, so I looked it up. I had read a bit about Benedictine monasteries in books by Kathleen Norris, so the puzzle pieces fit. It looked like a place for a healing retreat, and it was. I did personal retreats virtually every year thereafter. Not too many years after my mom died, I felt a nudge to learn more about the oblates whom I had heard about in my visits to what had become Holy Wisdom Monastery. My visits there were always so meaningful and important that it now made sense to try to formalize a relationship. I asked Larry what he thought about my looking into becoming an oblate. I still remember his answering, “I wondered when you’d get around to it.” I made a call one wintry day to ask questions; Sister Lynne answered the phone; and my new journey began.

How do you live a Benedictine life in the world?

When I wrote my Rule, I focused on nine of the Benedictine values we had studied during Formation. I have tried to be mindful of them and have somewhat lived successfully by at least five of them, i.e., listening, prayer, hospitality, community, stability. I’ve only been partially successful with the other four. Enough said about those. Nonetheless, I keep them in my Rule, so those goals stay in front of me. I want to add an observation about community that gives me joy and illustrates how the positive often comes out of the negative. As terrible as the pandemic was, it increased my sense of belonging with my oblate community and with Holy Wisdom. Zoom was a mighty enabler as I was able to be a part of groups and get better acquainted with individuals that distance didn’t allow before. My Reflection Circle, the monthly oblate Zoom gatherings, a year on Leadership Circle, retreats that were held online before we were all able to gather again in person – these allowed me to get to know people and even form some relationships that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. I have been back to the monastery in person twice since the pandemic wound down, and I hope to attend the late May/early June oblate retreat. Being there in person seems even better now, but often it is difficult because of the distance.

The virtual connection has reinforced my Benedictine identity. Whether in person or on a screen, I’m grateful for this Benedictine identity I’ve been able to try to embrace.

Click here to learn more about becoming an Oblate.

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Middleton, WI, May 8, 2020 – The Benedictine Women of Madison Board of Directors at Holy Wisdom Monastery is pleased to announce the appointment of Charles P. McLimans as the organizations next Chief Executive Officer. He will join Holy Wisdom Monastery on July 1, 2020.

Charles McLimans currently serves as president and CEO of The River Food Pantry where he oversees all organizational strategies, while facilitating collaborative opportunities to achieve a fully nourished community. Prior to The River, McLimans served as the president and CEO of anti-hunger organizations including Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin—Wisconsin’s largest food bank—and Loaves and Fishes Community Services—a leading hunger relief and anti-poverty organization in the Chicago area recognized for its innovative food and collective impact programs. McLimans began his quest to solve hunger in 2006 as a volunteer with Loaves and Fishes, whose board of directors ultimately asked him to lead the organization. For the past 14 years, McLimans has successfully guided and inspired aggressive, innovative and visionary solutions to food insecurity and poverty issues. McLimans attended the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With decades of both corporate and nonprofit experience, McLimans credits his success as a nonprofit leader to having worked on both sides of the philanthropic coin and to the work ethic he learned from his parents growing up on a dairy farm in Southwest Wisconsin.

McLimans explains leaving The River Food Pantry, “For many years I have been yearning and searching for a way to integrate my faith and professional lives. Now I am overjoyed to commit all I have to this place I call home.”

McLimans has served on the Benedictine Women of Madison Board of Directors for the past year and considers Holy Wisdom Monastery his spiritual home, where he is a member of the Sunday Assembly worshipping community, the Oblate community, a group that incorporates Benedictine spirituality into their daily lives and the Friends of Wisdom Prairie. As a Board member, McLimans played a significant role in Holy Wisdom Monastery’s strategic planning process, introducing Appreciative Inquiry and the SOAR process to the board.

“My short term goals are to help Holy Wisdom navigate the effects of the COVDI-19 crisis on our finances and to find innovative ways to engage all of the communities that make up Holy Wisdom Monastery, while focusing on our strengths. I look forward to developing the Aspirations portion of our planning process when we are able to imagine what the future of the Monastery will look like, and then to collaboratively co-create it along with the coworkers and community members,” outlines McLimans.

Sister Mary David Walgenbach, OSB, president of the Benedictine Women of Madison Board, is pleased to welcome McLimans to lead Holy Wisdom Monastery into the future. “We are thrilled that Charles is our next CEO. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in nonprofit leadership as well as a strong spiritual background. We are excited for Charles to help us with our mission of weaving prayer, hospitality, justice and care of the earth into a shared way of life.”

* * * * *

Holy Wisdom Monastery is a retreat and meeting center and Benedictine monastery in Middleton, WI and is open to all. The monastery, established in 1953, is located on 130 acres of restored prairie and woodland overlooking Lake Mendota. The monastery building was awarded the highest rating in the US for environmental and energy conservation design in 2010. Holy Wisdom Monastery also offers environmental education and spirituality programs throughout the year, prairie restoration volunteer opportunities and Christian church services every Sunday. More information on Holy Wisdom Monastery is available at HolyWisdomMonastery.org.

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Preface

Concerning the word “haibun”…

The writing and study of haiku is one of the pillars of my life. So, I have chosen to express my Rule in the form of a haibun:  a Japanese literary form which consists of prose interspersed with haiku. The relationship of the haiku to the prose is often mysterious. They make sense to me, and I hope they make some sense to you.

Though I am giving what follows the title of “Rule,” it is essentially a series of reflections on the spiritual dimensions of my life and how they are interwoven with the Benedictine principles that have been most resonant for me in the formation process.

Concerning the word “oblate”…

waning gibbous moon

so much left

to pour out

To be an oblate means to make an oblation:  a pouring out, a sacrifice. This has a deep resonance for me: a life of pouring out, of emptying oneself and, thereby, open to being filled with God.  As someone on the contemplative journey, this paradoxical image of emptying-and-filling is the central guide for my Rule.

Concerning “practices”…

cottonwood fluff

                        trying so hard

                        to give up trying

If a personal Benedictine rule is a trellis to guide the growth of my life, the rungs of my trellis are practices:  the regular, repeated routines and relationships of my everyday life that exemplify key Benedictine values. These practices are skillful means to the end of purity of heart: to live focused on Mary of Bethany’s “one thing necessary”–the abiding presence of God–letting go of attachment to my unavoidable cravings and aversions.

Prayer

prayer at dawn

                        the chambered nautilus

                        unwinds

My practice of prayer is both private and communal, and it takes a few different forms:

• daily practice of contemplative prayer or zazen
• daily practice of studying and writing poetry, primarily haiku; this is my lectio divina, with the oratio aspect of the process being my own writing.
• regular attendance at the Midwest Soto Zen Community for zazen and chanting
• regular participation in a centering prayer group at Holy Wisdom Monastery
• participation in Zen sesshin (retreats) and Benedictine retreats
• attending the Sunday Assembly of Holy Wisdom Monastery for the prayer of the eucharist

words of consecration

billions of neutrinos passing through

our one body

A final prayer practice is my work as a psychotherapist.  At its most effective, this work is the practice of presence, without judgement or preconceptions; putting myself in the position that offers the least resistance to the inner reality of the client; to accept, hold, and even love that reality. It is the extension to the other of the same attitude toward oneself that is cultivated in interior prayer.

Prayer is at the heart of my daily life. Through prayer, I work at achieving purity of heart, which is the contemplative foundation for the Benedictine principles that have been key for me during my formation year:  humility, obedience, and community. The regular routines of prayer are the means by which I open to the ongoing conversion of my life.

Humility

oak leaves becoming soil

                        before any steps

                        of humility

To practice humility is to accept what is; to accept the reality of myself and others. It means embracing and, ultimately, loving what is real. It means living in accordance with that truth, rather than living according to ideas about how I want or don’t want myself and the world to be. Humility is living in accordance with how I am being created moment to moment.

My relationships with significant others are my school of humility:

• marriage
• family
• friendships
• my Zen teacher
• fellow seekers
• clients
• work colleagues

It is through the challenge and support of all these others that I continually learn who and what I am, and learn to accept, embrace, and love that truth. This is an unending conversion.

Obedience

wind chimes moving

                        just enough

                        to be silent

Though she did not know she was talking about obedience, a wise woman once said to me that the key to any successful relationship is in saying three words: “Maybe you’re right.” This is a very simple but very difficult practice. It requires deepening my capacity for silence, inside and out. It means listening to the other and all that he or she is saying. It means resisting the familiar impulse to launch into formulating my own response. To be under obedience to others means accepting the possibility that they are right; that maybe their voice is the voice of God.

wrensong unraveling an old argument

My relationships with significant others are my school of obedience. Through them I learn to listen and be open to their possible influence. This is an unending conversion.

Community

lake stones

smoothing each other

she invites me in

Community has been a challenging Benedictine principle for me. At the beginning of this formation year, I was resistant to the format of the retreats.  I wanted more solitude and silence.  But, as the year unfolded, I began to see that becoming an oblate was about belonging to a community. I was witness to and impressed by the intimacy among the more seasoned oblates.  Eventually, I made the choice to surrender to the community formation process, seeking connection instead of  solitude. It has been a significant transformation. In practical terms, my wife and I decided to gather with other candidates for meetings between the retreats, to share our experiences. This has been very helpful to our formation process. This group will continue on as a reflection circle after we are fully fledged as oblates.  It is an unending conversion.

home from retreat

fallen leaves

cling to our shoes

Epilogue:  Obedience to the Earth

There is an implicit goal in these reflections: to deepen my fidelity to the guiding Benedictine principles of humility, obedience, and community. The way to that goal is the daily practice of prayer and right relationship. There is one principle, however, that began to emerge in my last few months of formation. I call it Obedience to the Earth. For me, this means recapturing an intimacy with the land that had been a central part of my life in recent years. My devotion to haiku poetry grew from this relationship with the land. In the last two or three years, this relationship has faded a bit. I used to take a slow, meditative walk in the conservancy park near my home almost every day, no matter what the weather. I feel the need to be more attentive to the natural world, and want to reinstitute my walking practice on a more regular basis.

lectio divina . . .

slowly reading

the burr oak

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In these fractious times when many are leading lives of not-so-quiet desperation, we need to heed those who remind us that All Life is One Sacred Wholeness: We are All Connected.

The Oblates of Holy Wisdom Monastery are delighted to welcome Sisters Helen Prejean and Marya Grathwohl, who will be conducting this retreat. They will explore the twin themes of care for the earth and people, especially our most vulnerable brothers and sisters. This event is also open to the public.

Sister Helen Prejean (left) and Sister Marya Grathwohl lead the Benedictine Retreat at Holy Wisdom Monastery, September 16-18, 2016.

Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, will highlight her work with prisoners on death row, with victims’ families and advocacy work to end the death penalty in America.

Sister Helen is a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph and spent her first years with the sisters teaching religion to high school students. In the early 1980s, she lived in the St. Thomas Housing Project of New Orleans working at Hope House. During this time, she was asked to correspond with a death row inmate, Patrick Sonnier, at Angola and became his spiritual adviser. After witnessing his execution, she chronicled her experience in the bestseller, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (1993). Her book was the inspiration for a major motion picture released in 1996, directed by Tim Robbins, who also did the screenplay adaptation. It starred Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen (who won a best actress Oscar) and Sean Penn as Sonnier. Her book also was the basis for an opera presented by the San Francisco Opera in 2000.

Her broadcast appearances include CBS’s 60 Minutes, NBC’s Today Show, ABC World News Tonight, BBC World Service Radio, National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and Fresh Air, an NBC Special on the Death Penalty, the Canadian Broadcast Company’s Man Alive, the BBC’s Everyman, ABC’s Prime Time Live and PBS’s Frontline.

Sister Helen continues to campaign against the death penalty, counsel individual death row prisoners and work with murder victims’ family members.  She has accompanied others to their deaths and has written about two of them in her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (2004).

She has received honorary degrees from universities around the world and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times. She is working on her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

For more information on Sister Helen’s Ministry Against the Death Penalty, visit www.sisterhelen.org.

Sister Marya Grathwohl, OSF, will reflect with us on the profound connections of faith, spiritual practice and commitment to God’s creation. She has been an Oldenburg Franciscan Sister since 1963 and has lived for many years in African-American, Crow and northern Cheyenne communities. During this time, she initiated the revitalization of her community’s farm in Indiana, integrating natural farming methods with vegetable gardens, chickens and heritage breed cattle.

As founding director of Earth Hope, Sister Marya has served as a consultant for a women’s center in Montana’s northern Cheyenne country, developing wind and solar energy, ground-source heating and cooling, a greenhouse and native prairie restoration. Earth Hope provides a popular Cosmology class for use in jails and prisons in California, New York and Missouri where participants study the story of the universe. Through narrative, science, art and guided imagery, inmates discover their profound connection with all creation and other people.

Sister Marya offers retreats, workshops and lectures that enliven people’s heartfelt connection with the whole Earth community and nourishes their commitment to care for our common home. For more information, you can email her at earthhope@vcn.com.

Retreat participants will have ample time for prayer, private reflection, scripture, and to be with nature, as well as time to share and pray with each other. It is our hope that participants will return to their families and communities refreshed and re-energized in their commitments to care for creation and people in need.

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Brad Lutz receives a warm welcome from Mary David Walgenbach

In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy performs a simple magic spell: she clicks the heels of her magic slippers and repeats, “There’s no place like home….” Walking through the doors of Holy Wisdom Monastery does not require magic but it is an enchanting homecoming. The familiar sounds of bells and psalms, the warm embrace of the monastery’s communities gladden my heart—it’s like I’ve never been away and nothing has changed.

Truth is, however, I live a long way from this amazing place and it is increasingly expensive to travel. Truth is, connections through social media are not as fulfilling and distance dulls the senses of the heart to the wonder of community. Truth is, when I am away there are other relationships and demands to distract me. Truth is, at every homecoming, plenty has changed—I have changed!

No wonder Benedict devotes two chapters of the Rule (50, 51) to travel. Precisely because there are so many distractions, Benedict encourages us to be faithful to the rhythms of prayer, work, rest, and study—especially when we are away. These practices keep us rooted in the still-speaking God, who is the heart of community and whose presence knows no boundaries (see Psalm 139:7-12). Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove reminds us: “it is God who holds this body together, not strength of effort or will” (The Rule of Saint Benedict: A Contemporary Paraphrase, Paraclete Press, 2012). He further reflects: “a community that is centered around [God] is always poised to greet the God who shows up…looking every bit like a beggar and just wanting a place to stay.”

So, the open doors of the monastery usher me into an astonishingly safe space to step aside from the angst, to reconnect to the Center and renew my commitments. I cherish—indeed need—times to pray psalms in the oratory, share conversations at table and savor the beauty of the prairie. Sue Monk Kidd suggests that “unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.” Unraveling and coming home are images that express the meaning of being an oblate for me.

I need this soul work—we all do! I need the daily rhythms of Benedictine spirituality to keep me authentic, expressly in Florida when the monastery is far away. I need these practices to awaken my heart both to God and to the “cloud of witnesses” surrounding me. It’s not magic but it is the path to finding my true self anew—changed, yes, but hopefully for the better and ready to begin again to “climb on to the higher summits of teaching and virtue…and under God’s protection…reach them” (RB73, Hartgrove).

I love coming home to Holy Wisdom and the oblate community. The rhythms of daily practice along with the encouragement of my companion oblates unravels the trifles, transfigures the ordinary into a mystical experience, and transforms the journey itself into my home.

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Nancy Breitsprecher, Oblate class of 2002

Despite the pressure to live in the “now,” my gratitude is to Holy Wisdom Monastery and the oblate program that have led me along through my later years. Back in the 1980s I visited Saint Benedict Center—attending a few retreats, browsing the library as a new preacher.Becoming an oblate is to take a particular path through the “changes and chances of this mortal life,” as noted in many older books of common prayer.

In 2001 my husband Paul and I came to a retreat and learned about Holy Wisdom Oblates. I was 70 at the time and Paul, 76—feeling already elderly and retired, we were not sure about joining the program. Sister Joanne was very encouraging, and so in 2002 Paul and I made our first commitment to the program.

We found the oblates to be lovely people and it was encouraging to experience a new sense of community. The years rolled on with their changes and chances. Paul developed long term problems and had to drop out. I was able to attend fewer and fewer retreats.

What difference has being an oblate meant to those of us who are no longer in closer touch? There are now many oblates whom I do not know personally, but I have found there is a bond that similar actions and dedication create.

Now that I am in my 85th year; Paul has died and I have found I have slowed down. I wake slower in the mornings but a set of morning prayers give my day a positive sense, now that there is no one waiting for breakfast! The day still starts in a familiar way with morning prayers which bring me into alignment with gratitude for God’s grace and presence.

The books that line the shelves in several rooms remind me of earlier retreats: Meg Funk, James Finley, Macrina Wiederkehr, Joan Chittister, a shelf of Merton—all remind me of special times of inspiration.

At night, as at morning there are prayer books which connect me to a wide Benedictine world: Work of God, edited by Judith Sutera OSB, St. Benedict’s Prayerbook from Ampleforth Abbey, York, England, The People’s Companion to the Breviary by The Carmelites of Indianapolis, Merton’s A Book of Hours, and for travel a paperback, Celtic Daily Prayer, from Morehouse Publishing. I alternate use of these books, sometimes by seasons, to keep the words fresh.

The Holy Wisdom Monastery connection was appreciated when Paul died in 2015 and the sisters came to the visitation and an oblate spoke at the service-a sense of a spiritual tie despite distance.

There are many oblates whom I have never met. I rarely see the ones I did know, although thankfully there is a local oblate here in Fort Atkinson. Yet the sense persists that there is a connection beyond time and space that has the mystery of God at the heart. There is a light that covers sorrow, a joy that springs—and re-springs—within us. We are not on the path alone.

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Sherri Hansen gardens with her niece Cadia Rose in their main farm garden in Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin.

As ice melts and the world becomes green, I never cease to be amazed at the promise of spring and rebirth. Like many gardeners, I am eager to get out in my beds and prepare for the new season. Gardening, for me, is a spiritual and contemplative practice in being in the present moment. Each day brings the ritual watering, weeding and reveling in fleeting floral beauty. One of the most important parts of my garden is my compost pile. In the spring, as I rake and turn it, I see fragments of flowers and vegetable material caught betwixt and between the many stages of decomposition. I pause to consider the legacy it provides.

The compost pile seems full of dead foliage and long faded blooms, but it is a reservoir of memories of joy and happiness. It contains roses given to me on Valentine’s Day, irises given to me for my birthday, Christmas poinsettias and Easter lilies. In it are bouquets of flowers that graced my piano concert. Vegetable trimmings are souvenirs from home-cooked meals shared with friends. Peelings from bushels of apples, cucumbers and tomatoes testify to the work needed to create pickles and sauces for the long winter ahead.

Yet there is sadness and regret, too. The pile contains flowers from relationships also dead and gone. In it are petals which bloomed “more brilliantly than Solomon in all his glory,” but were noticed only after faded from beauty. Brown, withered leaves abound from fleeting crimson autumn glory. Produce that was shoved to the back of the refrigerator and forgotten until spoiled remind me to be more mindful of the amount I select to consume. The most painful reminder of death, however, were the flowers that once graced my mother’s casket, and like we will one day, have returned to dust.

Yet numerous plants have sprouted from seeds laid to rest, often serendipitously. I discovered muskmelons in a flower bed one year. I once noticed several unidentified squash plants and was delighted when several varieties of winter squash appeared as well as giant pumpkins. For several seasons, plum tomato vines grew directly out of the bin and supplied all of my tomatoes for dehydrating.

In the Gospel of John, Christ says that one must die in order to gain new life. But death is not absolute. A seed dies and its outer coat decays to reveal new life within. In order for that life to sprout and blossom, it must be nourished by the compost that once also began as seeds and now is recycled back to the earth. Joy and sadness mingle together to create life anew.

What is in my compost pile? Resurrection.

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by Sue Ellen Zagrabelny, oblate class of 2010

About this time six years ago I was beginning the process of writing my personal rule. The task seemed daunting. I received guidance from the Formation Circle leaders, but then it was time to step off on my own.

I reviewed the Rule of Benedict and fairly quickly decided that Grace, Stability and Radical Hospitality would make up the three arms of my personal rule. I hoped it would enfold me and guide me as I embarked on the adventure of being Benedictine.

Surprisingly, the decision to make my rule a musical rule came quickly as well. I was acquainted with Bob Bennett a singer-songwriter who happens to be a Christian and I found his songs spoke to me. One was “Lord of the Past.” The refrain goes like this:

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by Mary Ann Erdtmann, oblate class of 2008

Mary Ann Erdtmann

My journey as a Benedictine Oblate began in December, 1997, when my late husband, Ralph and I made a 6‐day TIME (Together in Monastic Experience) retreat at Holy Wisdom Monastery. I fell in love with the rhythm of Centering Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours, work, meals with the sisters and guests, and study of the Rule of Benedict. We took long walks, holding hands and basking in the beauty of God’s nature. After the third day, I said to Ralph, “I am so happy that it’s not ending yet, and we have three more days to go.” We continued to come for retreats.

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When I applied to be an oblate of Holy Wisdom earlier this year, I thought my year of formation would be like this: I would get to read good books, chit chat over a meal, but could basically keep to myself and enjoy the peace and quiet of the Holy Wisdom grounds. I hadn’t yet learned the priceless value of community.

Although I had never experienced being part of a close-­knit community, I now know it is something I have wanted and have found as an oblate candidate. I feel like this is a place where I can belong. People are accepted and nudged to become a part of the world to share their talents and gifts. Being around oblates makes me feel that there is a place in the world for people who are gentle and thoughtful.

As an oblate candidate I am learning that serving is essential. We serve others as Christ serves us. Reading Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, by Joan Chittister, OSB, has helped me realize that I have gifts and that I am compelled to be a part of the world. Thank God that I have found the Rule of Benedict and the oblate community to guide me in becoming a part of the world without being destroyed by it and to help make reality better. I love how the Rule blends the outer world with inner contemplation and says that our work does make a difference.

Coming to Holy Wisdom and realizing that I have an entire year to process the Rule, learn more about myself and bond with other candidates has been such a relief. Becoming an oblate isn’t something that happens overnight. Learning and living the Rule is not about checking things off a list. There is no rush to become more spiritual or become a better version of myself. The year of formation works the way sand in an oyster shell works; through time and persistence something beautiful is produced. I do not have to meet a deadline or feel “less than” because I am not at a certain level. The Rule lets me dive in, contemplate and experience life with other oblates. It is a refreshing relief to be in such an open and comfortable environment.

In addition to learning about community, this year of formation has taught me to treat the present as holy. I see every new experience as something worthwhile and amazing; whether it’s getting on plane and flying across the country, or walking down the street and admiring the sun shining through the trees. I am hopeful and excited about the rest of my journey.

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