Janine Veto became an oblate in 2012
I came to Holy Wisdom seeking a framework and a community within which I could deepen my spirituality. I am, by nature, an ecumenical and eclectic seeker: scraps of Buddhism, Jung, a host of writers and artists are all layered thickly over the static, patriarchal Catholicism of my youth, which I emphatically exited in my teens. My professional life since moving to Madison nine years ago has been in the environmental field, while my 25 years in New York was steeped in the arts, my first and most enduring vehicle for knowing and expressing the sacred.
Through becoming an oblate and studying the Rule of Benedict, I found the net within which I could gather the illuminations of a lifetime for ongoing exploration. The Rule offers balance to a life that was too often stressed and over busy, giving permission to slow down, savor and pause in statio (intentional pause) before proceeding to the next moment of fullness. Hospitality is imbedded in the Rule, as is deep listening; two qualities that I embrace and appreciate. The arts and the beautiful are honored as expressions of the divine. Care of the earth is manifested in a building of sustainable beauty and light set amidst a devotionally restored prairie.
At Holy Wisdom the limiting faith of my youth is transformed into a flowing, living spirit within a community of faith and humor, laced with all the foibles and glories of the human. Plus, the food is great!
In thanks to you all, I offer a poem that formed itself in my mind last fall during prairie planting.
