Category Archive

Our days at the Monastery lasted from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening, Monday through Friday. Technically we had free time to do whatever and to come and go as we pleased from 6:30 onwards until bedtime. Frequently, after a day filled with meditation, praying, working, and studying there was little we felt inclined to do except recline. After the last dishes were put away from the dinner service, I would often retire to the computer room to write my blog while the other girls went walking on the trails or spent time in the library. The …

I love books. They are my friends. So, it was lovely to see so many of my old crowd in the monastery library here at Holy Wisdom. “Oh hi, Dorothy Day! I didn’t know you’d be here?”, “Karen Armstrong! Its’ been too long.” and “Why Thomas Merton, you old dog…where have you been hiding yourself?” There they all are, hanging out on the shelves, identified by their catalog numbers, spines ramrod straight.  I walk through the aisles, brushing my right hand over their wonderful selves in a gesture of camaraderie, recalling all the good times we’ve shared together. The library …

The next session with Claudia, centered on forgiveness. … I wanted to be able to forgive my ex-husband … I wanted to see him as a hurting soul, as a person in need of something that I could never give. I wanted to be able to, as the Dalai Lama says, “Imagine him as a 5 year old child” in my attempt to see him as a person who was very wounded and who might never find peace, and to send him light and love and to only think good thoughts when I thought of him. I wanted to forgive …

…  Claudia asked me if my mother’s view towards the faith had changed any since I had hit my thirties and my mother had grown older. I thought about that for a moment. And it was so. … Having raised all her children to adulthood and finding herself more alone after they had all left home, Claudia posited that my mother had suddenly perhaps had time for the first time in many years to examine her faith on a different level. I supposed that could be true. Perhaps the softening I was witnessing was the beginning of her entering a …

Claudia is my spiritual guide. … She looks more like an early 70′s guitar player than a gifted psychoanalyst, yoga practitioner, mother, and spiritual guide.  … Claudia specializes in eco-conscious Christianity and the role of the Feminist in Christianity. … Claudia and I have been working together these past three weeks in one-on-one sessions, 1 day a week, 1 hour at a time. In our sessions we discuss my relationship with God, my views on my experience here, and what the future holds for me in terms of my spirituality.  … I like Claudia. She is funny and fun, she …

When I told people I was coming to Benedictine Women of Madison the first question I got after “What’s that?” was, “Why would you want to go to a monastery?”  Why indeed? . . . Basically, I was searching for God…or more specifically, an understanding of what I believe is God. God and I had been fighting and I missed God. I wanted it to be like old times. So when the opportunity came for me to go live with some nuns I thought the monastery was as good a place as any to try and reestablish that connection. The …

. . . Here at Holy Wisdom, I’ve been offered a different perspective on “labor”, on work in general. A different view on what it is and where its value lies. In the past two weeks, I have cleaned Swiss chard and washed the dirt off it. I have separated the purpley-pink and white stems from the green leafy parts and parboiled them. I have plunged them into icy water to stop the cooking process and then frozen it for use in the colder months. I have placed frozen roma tomatoes in hot water, slipped their skins from them and …

Getting to know a new place is a lot like getting to know a new person. You can start out hesitant and shy. You can do a lot of observing and surreptitiously figuring of how that person thinks or what their sense of humor is like before you approach them. Or maybe, like a kid on the first day of school, you just jump right in. “Hi, my name is Sarah, Wanna be friends?” I have jumped right into Holy Wisdom monastery the way I jump into most of my relationships, with both feet. I want to live the fullness …

Then there is more singing. Up and down the notes go whizzing between Soprano, Second Soprano, Contralto. It is too high for my range and I find it hard to get enough breath in my lungs between lines. I keep trying. One of the volunteers has a gorgeous soprano and I think she must be careful to keep within the rhythm of the group so as not to break the unity of expression, which in some ways, is the goal. Then there is the Litany of Prayers, which I think is my favorite part. One of the Sisters calls for God …

. . . This is fascinating, this whole process-the chanting, the back and forth singing. The reactions it’s producing are almost physical in sensation. I feel rested after Centering Prayer, as if I’d just napped. The Singing of the Psalms and the Chanting (we alternate sitting and standing) puts me into a half-awake state and when I leave at the end I feel energetic and just…Good. After the chanting, there is a secular reading-this week the focus has been Hope. What is Hope? Can Hope be bad? How does one maintain Hope in a Cynical world? Is Hope foolish in the face of …