Thank you for 65 years of remarkable work and witness

Mary David Walgenbach, OSB65th Anniversary, Benedictine Bridge Leave a Comment

Welcome and thank you for being here. You and all who have gone before us are gems and miners of this place beginning in 1953 when three of our sisters from Sioux City, Iowa, walked to the top of the hill overlooking Lake Mendota and the City of Madison, said a prayer, buried a medal of St. Benedict and whispered to one another, this is the place. Sixty-five years later, we are celebrating the remarkable work and witness of women and men, like you, who prayed with us, spoke and acted with holy boldness on our behalf and collaborated with …

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 …

Living our intention

Lynne Smith, OSBLiving in Community, Sunday Assembly 1 Comment

“Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 249. On July 15, 2018, we celebrated the first profession of Denise West as a sister at Holy Wisdom Monastery during the Eucharist on Sunday morning. Denise has been with us about three years, and this is the next step in making a commitment to community life with the sisters at Holy Wisdom. Benedictines are good at ceremony; we call it liturgy or ritual. In the profession ritual, Denise stood before …

Rodent wrangling and ambiguity

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

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. …

Guests bring a blessing

Lynne Smith, OSBHospitality, Living in Community Leave a Comment

  The sisters at Holy Wisdom have received a lot of guests recently. We greet the groups who come to use our space for their meetings and retreats. We get to know personal retreatants over meals in the community dining room. When I first came to the monastery, as an introvert, I found it taxing to have new people with us at every meal. Now I look forward to meeting them. Saint Benedict says that a monastery is never without guests. Indeed, we wouldn’t really be a Benedictine monastery without guests. We are called to provide hospitality and serve others. …

We are the Body of Christ

Lynne Smith, OSB65th Anniversary, Living in Community, Sunday Assembly 6 Comments

One of the experiences that profoundly shaped my life as a sister at Holy Wisdom Monastery was the listening sessions we held in October of 2005 with members of Sunday Assembly to hear your input and concerns about the future of Sunday Assembly. The issue we were grappling with was how we would conduct Sunday worship as an ecumenical community. The sisters had discussed this matter for several years with our Ecumenical board. We laid several options on the table. Each sister could go to her own denominational church. We could go as a group to churches of various denominations …

Sisters at Holy Wisdom endorse statement from LCWR on gun violence

Holy Wisdom MonasteryJustice, Sunday Assembly Leave a Comment

The Benedictine sisters at Holy Wisdom Monastery endorse the following statement from Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR): Mourning is Not Enough: LCWR Calls for Action to Prevent Gun Violence February 23, 2018 On February 14 a very troubled 19-year-old took an AR-15 assault rifle to Marjory Stoneman High School and opened fire killing 14 students and three staff members. The shooting was a horrible tragedy that has become all too familiar to students, teachers, and parents across the country. The heartbreak in Parkland, Florida is far too common. A recent study of World Health Organization data published in the American …

Romance at the monastery?

Monica JefcoatWeddings Leave a Comment

February is the month most associated with romance. The reasons are somewhat lost to history but may be due to celebrations for martyred Christian saints with romantic ideals or practices rooted in pagan festivals. Most likely traditions can be attributed to both resulting in our modern Valentine’s Day where expressions of adoration and token gifts are shared by those who live in North America, parts of Europe and Australia. Now, a monastery may not be the first place you think of when you think of romance, but romance lives strongly at Holy Wisdom Monastery in February and throughout the year. …

Holy Wisdom Monastery to Restore Lost Landscape

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth Leave a Comment

  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 …

Benedictine Sisters win international Assisi Award for conservation efforts spanning more than 60 years

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Living in Community, Uncategorized 2 Comments

The Benedictine Sisters at Holy Wisdom Monastery received the inaugural Assisi Award for faith-based conservation at the 28th International Congress of Conservation Biology’s Opening Ceremony on July 23, 2017 in Cartagena, Colombia in front of nearly 1,500 attendees. The Assisi Award acknowledges organizations and individuals whose work demonstrates that faith-based conservation is contributing significantly to the common global effort of conserving life on Earth. Sisters Mary David Walgenbach and Joanne Kollasch accepted the award on behalf of their religious community located near Madison, Wisconsin. Their community is the first ecumenical Benedictine community in North America where Catholic and Protestant women …