The Book of the Battle Maiden

Holy Leisure

2012-01-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

The following passage is from an article in the December 2011 issue of The American Benedictine Review. A previous essay written by Terrence Kardong was read by Michael Hochschild, a Paris sociologist. He was then interviewed about Kardong's essay for Erbe und Auftrag, a German monastic periodical. Toward the end of the interview Hochschild says:

Leisure is the guarantee for the dignity of a man who undertakes the monastic way. It is a costly pursuit, to discover oneself as a creative idea of God. It is a pledge of my religious disposition. This goes so far that if I maintain this life today, I would already be leading another life. I see clearly that my life amounts to more than my duties and plans, my life is more than the expectations of others and the promises of the world (453).

Praises of the Cross

2012-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

Right now I am reading An Icon Painter's Notebook: The Bolshakoy Edition, which is translated and edited by Gregory Melnick. The original edition was published in Russia in 1903 and based on material from the seventeenth century. The first section of the notebook is an anthology of practical information for working iconographers, as well as devotional material. Much of the material in the anthology is anonymous.

The crucifix behind the altar at Queen of Angels Monastery

The passages below are from a section of the anthology entitled "The Praises of the Cross." Below are a few of these praises:

The good wood annoys the devil.

The royal blossom blooms in the Church, the foundling found by God.

O most glorious Tree, the Cross of the Lord, you might appear small, but the expanse of the Cross and the expanse of the heavens are equal.

Reading Servais Pinkaers

2012-01-22T15:36:00.000-08:00

Last week I attended an M.A. thesis presentation by Federico Dundas at Mount Angel Seminary. His thesis is entitled "The New Law in Sevais Pinckaers' Theology." I was glad to see a seminary student focus his thesis on moral theology.

The new law is the gift of the Holy Spirit that enables us to live the teachings of Christ. Federico included this passage from Pinckaers on the handout that accompanied his presentation:

"Faith in Christ marks the starting point of the New Law within us. We have too frequently forgotten that faith in Christ is the mother of Christian morality; we have reduced faith to a few obligations concerning truths to be believed under the pain of sin, and have attenuated the lines that link faith to works."

For more about Federico's presenation, visit the seminary's journalism blog.

Wisdom of John XXIII

2012-01-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

I have recently found or have been given several lists of maxims pertaining to Christian living. The first is from Pope John XXIII, a list of ten maxims that he wrote as a young man. The refrain "Only for today" reminds us that today is really all we have. Good Pope John:

1) Only for today, I will seek to live the lifelong day positively without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.

2) Only for today, I will take the greatest care of my appearance: I will dress modestly; I will not raise my voice; I will be courteous in my behavior; I will not criticize anyone: I will not claim to improve or discipline anyone except myself.

3) Only for today, I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy, not only in the other world but also in this one.

4) Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.

5) Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.

6) Only for today, I will do one good deed and not tell anyone about it.

7) Only for today, I will do at least one thing I do not like doing; and if my feelings are hurt, I will make sure no one notices.

8) Only for today, I will make a plan for myself: I may not follow it to the letter, but I will make it. And I will be on guard against two evils: hastiness and indecision.

9) Only for today, I will firmly believe, despite appearances, that the good providence of God cares for me as no one else who exists in the world.

10) Only for today, I will have no fears. In particular, I will not be afraid to enjoy what is beautiful and to believe in goodness. Indeed, for 12 hours I can certainly do what might cause me consternation were I to believe I had to do it all my life.

To conclude: here is an all-embracing resolution: "I want to be kind today and always, to everyone."

The Silence of Saint Serafim of Sarov

2012-01-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

Through the grace of God, Saint Serafim was able to see the truth of the lives of the people around him. His lack of words in solitude led him to greater understanding. This part of the Flame in the Snow is also quoted in the introduction by Donald Nicholl:

In communicating through speech, words are our instrument: an instrument, potentially, of great precision. Entering deeper into the realm of silence, Serafim completely stemmed the flow of words within him. Not only the flow of spoken words; even the flow of words that well up in the mind. He joined the host which supplicates, lauds, and blesses without words.

His mute exchange of friendliness with the beasts raised their mutual understanding to a new rung of perfection. His prayer ceased to be a logical sequence of words. The name of Jesus, the essence of constant prayer, ceased to be a word; it became the direction of his soul in its flight Godward; the tone of his soaring soul.

The tone was Jesus. And the direction was Jesus. Tone and direction blended. The velocity, received from the initial impetus, heightened. When it reached the limits of the notion of speech, he entered a realm more perfectly still than any other. In this realm, his mind was trained to hear the primordial word.

When the ebb set in, and human life was once more spread out before his mind's eye as a concrete network of ordinary facts, the fabric of particular human lives appeared before him with its particular design; the pattern that every one of these lives should follow was obvious to him. Men's mistakes - intentional and unintentional, in the present, past, and future - stood out as clearly discernible blotches and tangles. They disfigured the particular pattern of divine purpose (xii).

Saint Serafim of Sarov - East and West

2012-01-16T14:30:00.000-08:00

St. Serafim of Sarov is a great Russian saint known for his healing and peace. While he is invoked for many kinds of individual healing, we can also pray to him for healing of the larger divisions and strife in the world and within Christianity.

In his introduction to Flame in the Snow: A Life of St. Serafim of Sarov by Julia de Beausobre, Donald Nicholl uses some of the thoughts of Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton also loved St. Serafim, and Nicholl's uses the following words that Merton wrote in Confessions of a Guilty Bystander:

The sphere in which the need for such healing is most obvious, and where the touch of Serafim can be vital, was highlighted by Thomas Merton, who was deeply devoted to Serafim, when he wrote, "If I can unite in myself the thought and devotion of Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and Latin Fathers, the Russians with the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Christians (xiii).

Starting the Mother of God of the Sign

2012-01-04T11:26:00.000-08:00

Recently I have started work and prayer with a new icon, The Mother of God of the Sign. This first photograph is a copy of the prototype from which I am working:

According to the book Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the position of the Mother of God in this icon echoes the form of the cross as she prays. Christ Emmanuel appears right over her heart. The feast day for this icon is November 27th, and a Byzantine hymn associated with the image sings: "Your womb is vaster than the heavens, since in it you carried Him whom the heavens cannot contain, O Mother of God."

One of the first steps of working on a new icon is analyzing the geometry that serves as the foundation for the image.

The geometry supporting this image of the Mother of God of the Sign.

Geometry focusing on the face of the Mother of God.

Geometry focusing on the face of Christ Emmanuel.

With the geometry analyzed and established, I can begin work on the drawing. Mother of God and Christ Emmanuel, pray for us.

Bridge to Terabithia: A Love Story

2012-01-02T14:18:00.000-08:00

As I am preparing for classes next semester, I have been writing a short study guide for Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. The literature class I will be teaching for English language learners will be studying this book.

This time around, I was hit hard by this passage toward the end of the book. Leslie has died, and Jesse is struggling to find a way to honor his friend. This is a deeply religious book, a story that takes the reader right into true grief and true love, yet it does not offer any easy answers. I have read Bridge to Terabithia many times, yet I think this is the first time it really struck me that for this moment Jesse chooses the words of Jesus on the cross. Katherine Paterson:

He sat in the clear space between the bank and the first line of trees and bent a pine bough into a circle, tying it with a piece of wet string from the castle. And because it looked cold and green, he picked spring beauties from the forest floor and wove them among the needles.

He put it down in front of him. A cardinal flew down to the bank, cocked its brilliant head, and seemed to stare at the wreath. P.T. let out a growl which sounded more like a purr. Jess put his hand on the dog to quiet him.

The bird hopped about a moment more, then flew leisurely away.

"It's a sign from the Spirits," Jess said quietly. "We made a worthy offering."

He walked slowly, as part of great procession, though only the puppy could be seen, slowly forward carrying the queen's wreath to the scared grove. He forced himself deep into the dark center of the grove, and, kneeling, laid the wreath upon the thick carpet of golden needles.

"Father, into Thy hands I commend her spirit." He knew Leslie would have liked those words. They had the ring of the sacred grove in them (120).

The Dormition of the Mother of God

2011-12-31T07:23:00.000-08:00

In this final bulletin note, I wrote as if the community were about to bless a new icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God for our chapel.

Bulletin Note #4: The Dormition of the Mother of God

Catholics and Orthodox Christians share the belief that the body of the Mother of God did not know decay but was assumed directly into heaven. The West refers to the feast we celebrate today as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, while the East refers to the Dormition of the Mother of God, of the Virgin falling asleep (Tradigo 153).

In the Orthodox liturgy for today, the people sing “Neither the tomb nor death had power over the Theotokos, who is ever watchful in her prayers and in whose intercession lies unfailing hope” (Baggley 160). We see here two keys to understanding today’s celebration. Because of her faith in her Son, death did not triumph when the earthly life of the Mother of God came to an end, and the same is true for us. The Mother of God also has pride of place within the communion of saints, the union between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Our love for one another does not end with death, and we are also bound in Christian love to those holy people we are yet to meet face to face.

Today we are blessing and venerating our new icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God. As we gaze upon it, we see the Mother of God on her bier with Christ standing behind it and holding a small Virgin in swaddling clothes, her soul. These strong vertical and horizontal lines create the cross, the image and the moment that defined the life of the Mother of God just as it does ours (Tradigo 154). At the head of the bier Peter is swinging a censer, and at the foot Paul is bent in prayer. Around the bier many other angels, apostles, bishops, Church Fathers, and pious women also pray and lament for the Virgin. Above Christ we see the heavens opening and the Mother of God ascending with the archangels and surrounded by the twelve apostles (Tradigo 154). In the icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God, we see the great paradox of Christianity: “The source of life is laid in the tomb, and the tomb itself becomes a ladder to heaven” (Baggley 163).

In an Orthodox Church, an icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God is placed on the west wall of the nave, the door people use when leaving the church after the Divine Liturgy and for the final procession at a funeral. We will place ours above the door on our south wall, for this is the door through which each of our funeral processions leave to take our sisters to their final places in our cemetery. The Dormition of the Mother of God reminds us that while we mourn, death is also a time of commendation and hope (Baggley 165). Therefore, let us accept the invitation found in the Orthodox liturgy for this feast as we venerate our new icon today: “Come, O ye faithful, let us approach the tomb of the Mother of God, and let us embrace it, touching it sincerely with the lips and eyes and foreheads of our hearts” (Baggley 163).

Bibliography

Baggley, John. Festival Icons of the Christian Year. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000. Print.

Tradigo, Alfredo. Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Trans. Stephen Sararelli. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006. Print.

Advent and John the Baptist

2011-12-30T15:48:00.000-08:00

This post continues the bulletin notes I wrote for The Development of the Liturgical Year at Mount Angel Seminary. For this note on Advent, I wrote as if we had an icon of John the Baptist in our chapel and imagined that the community was going to visit one of the Orthodox parishes in Portland.

Bulletin Note #3: Preparing for Advent with John the Baptist

We understand Lent as a time of preparation, and the Church encourages us to approach Advent in a similar way. If Lent may be compared to an annual retreat, Advent may be compared to a great vigil, a time of joyful expectation preceding the feast of Christmas (Cheline). Advent does not have the same penitential character as Lent. However, waiting in the darkness reminds of our need for a Redeemer (Cheline). We may still approach the next four weeks as a time to prepare our hearts for the celebration of the Incarnation of the Lord.

Our preparation for the coming of Christ is two-fold. We remember and prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ at Bethlehem, and we also anticipate his second coming at the end of time (Cheline). We have many great figures to accompany us through Advent, including though not limited to the prophet Isaiah, the Mother of God, and John the Baptist (Cheline).

John the Baptist is one of the most popular figures in the Orthodox faith, and he occupies a privileged position in the Deesis tier of the iconostasis (Tradigo 115). The iconostasis, the wall of icons that separates the nave of the Church from the sanctuary, is divided into tiers. The placement of each icon is done according to specific theological understandings, and John the Baptist appears in the Deesis or second tier. He appears in the Deesis with the Mother of God and other saints as intercessors on either side of the enthroned Christ (Tradigo 10).

As the last and greatest of Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist is always pointing toward Christ (Tradigo 115). He has waited for the Lord, and when the Lord appears at the Jordan he says, “I have seen and born witness that this is the Son of God” (John 2:34). John the Baptist is so prominent in Orthodoxy that he has a number of titles other than the Baptist. He is also called the Forerunner and the Angel in the Desert. His diverse iconography includes John with angel’s wings, images of his beheading and the finding of his head, and images of his nativity. In all of his iconography, we could say that John the Baptist is the embodiment of the great prayer of Advent – Maranatha – Come, Lord Jesus (Cheline).

This Advent, we have been invited to St. Nicholas Orthodox Church for an evening of worship and fellowship. We will join the clergy and faithful for Vespers, a talk about the iconography in their church, and refreshments and visiting. Let us use this opportunity to learn more about the Redeemer we all need and to exclaim with our Orthodox sisters and brothers, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!”

Bibliography

The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. Catholic ed. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966. Print.

Paschal, Cheline. Lecture. The Development of the Liturgical Year. Mount Angel Seminary. 15 Nov. 2011.

Tradigo, Alfredo. Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Trans. Stephen Sararelli. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006. Print.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit

2011-12-29T10:15:00.000-08:00

Below is the second bulletin note that I wrote for the assignment that I explained in my previous post. As with the bulletin note on Easter and the icon of the Anastasis, I am imagining that we actually have an icon of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in our chapel. I also imagine that our liturgy on that day is followed by a chapter meeting in which individual sisters will be sharing about their work. Here is one example of an icon of this image.

Bulletin Note #2: Pentecost and the Descent of the Holy Spirit

After fifty days of celebration, we have reached the grand conclusion of the Easter season, the Sunday of Pentecost. While many Catholics speak of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church because of the intimate connection between the Church and the Holy Spirit, we must keep in mind the equally intimate connection between the Paschal Mystery and Pentecost. The redeeming work that Jesus accomplished through his death and resurrection continues in the Holy Spirit and through his Church. The Church lives in the Holy Spirit now and until the end of time (Cheline).

Communally and individually, we experience the Spirit moving through our lives in an infinite number of ways. Most fundamentally, we experience the Spirit as the primary mover in the liturgy, in the Eucharist and each of the sacraments. The Spirit binds us to Jesus Christ and takes us to the Father. The Spirit is also the bond that makes Christian community and unity possible (Cheline). As Jesus prays to the Father in John’s Gospel, “keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11).

In our icon of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, we see in line and color this understanding of listening and celebration, of unity and community. The apostles are seated in a horseshoe arrangement, an echo of Christ teaching and enlightening the elders in the synagogue. As with the elders, and as with the apostles, we too have Christ in our midst and pray that our hearts and minds are open to the teaching and guidance of His Spirit (Tradigo 151).

At the top of the icon, the Holy Spirit as a ball of fire shoots out rays of flame, and separate flames break away to rest above the Mother of God and each of the apostles. We see here an emphasis on both the individual and the community (Tradigo 152). It is always the same Spirit, the same ball of fire, but He touches each sister in a way that calls on her particular gifts, talents, and circumstances within the monastery and the wider local community. We are given the Spirit so we may bring the presence of Christ to world, so that we may be his sacrament for so many who need so much.

During our chapter meeting this afternoon, we have set aside some time for a number of our sisters to speak to the community about their ministries. They are ready to share with you and to answer your questions. If you are unfamiliar with their work, your conversation with them can certainly include questions about their schedules, responsibilities, and colleagues. Remember, though, that through the Holy Spirit, their work is about much more than completing tasks and bringing home a paycheck. Deep down we know this, though we do not always express that understanding. You have the opportunity to do so today. Ask your sisters about the deeper movements in their work. Ask them how they have been set on fire by the flame of the Holy Spirit.

Bibliography

The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. Catholic ed. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966. Print.

Cheline, Paschal. Lecture. The Development of the Liturgical Year. Mount Angel Seminary. 3 Nov. 2011.

Tradigo, Alfredo. Icons and Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Trans. Stephen Sararelli. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006. Print.

The Anastasis

2011-12-28T14:35:00.001-08:00

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I am working on a D.Min through the Graduate Theological Foundation. As a part of that program, I took The Development of the Liturgical Year at Mount Angel Seminary this past semester.

One of our assignments was to write a number of bulletin notes. These are short pieces, appropriate for a parish bulletin or similar publication, that explain some of the history and theology of a particular day or season and encourage the people toward specific spiritual practices.

For each of my bulletin notes, I focused on a particular icon appropriate for the given day or season. Sometimes I imagined that we have the icon I am discussing in our chapel, even if we currently do not. Perhaps someday we will. Click here for the best photograph I was able to find of the Anastasis. Click on the small image of Christ for a large image of the whole icon.

Bulletin Note #1: Easter and the Anastasis

The night of the Easter vigil and throughout the fifty days of the Easter season, we celebrate the Risen Christ and the salvation he has brought us. That salvation was accomplished for all people and for all time. In union with the Father and through the Holy Spirit, Christ crushed the finality and fearsomeness of death. Where Christ reigns, life and confidence in all that is good abounds.

In the weeks after Easter Sunday, set aside some time to pray with our icon of the Anastasis, the Resurrection. In this icon we receive the theological truth of the Paschal Mystery in line and color. Just as we hear and ponder the Scriptures, we see and contemplate this holy image. In Psalm 107 we hear “for he shatters the doors of bronze, and cut in two the bars of iron,” and in our icon we see the doors of Hades beneath Christ’s feet, broken in pieces, never to be made whole again (Psalm 107:16).

Why are those doors gilded? Why do lines of gold adorn the barrier between those in Hades and God? The very presence of Christ in Hades and the life he brings and that he is transfigures those doors. In the Easter liturgy from the East, our Orthodox brothers and sisters sing “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life” (Baggley 117). The strength and power of God takes those doors, a symbol of alienation, fear, and isolation – all that we experience when we are separated from God – and makes even them beautiful to behold.

In your time with the icon, rejoice with all of those who are united with God in their death, and pray for all those who need to be set free, who struggle with despair and fear. In our icon we see Christ taking Adam and Eve in hand, and behind them we see King Solomon, King David, and John the Baptist. All of those from the Old and New Testament and all of humanity that awaits the Lord are set free by Christ. What happened that Easter night happens now; he comes to all who are imprisoned in Hades, imprisoned in their separation from God. He breaks open the tomb of each woman and man, shattering their darkness with his light (Baggley 124).

In our human weakness we will have times of fear, but our icon can remind us that Christ’s resurrection has changed everything. We will pass through times of fear, but we do not need to let that fear take root in our hearts. St. John Chrysostom exhorted his people: “Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free: He has destroyed it by enduring it, He has despoiled Hades by going down into its kingdom” (Baggley 119). Pray for the boldness that comes after the tombs and chains have been shattered, and let the light of Christ flood the world through each of you.

Bibliography

Baggley, John. Festival Icons of the Christian Year. New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000. Print.

The Holy Bible. Revised Standard Version. Catholic ed. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1966. Print.

Nocent, Adrian. The Liturgical Year: The Easter Season. Trans. Matthew J. O’Connell. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1977. Print.

The Icon of the Transfiguration

2011-12-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

The icon below of the Transfiguration is in our chapel here at Queen of Angels Monastery. After it was written by the students and teachers of the Iconographic Arts Institute, it was blessed and installed in our chapel in 2005.

This post is also intended as support for the reflection paper I am writing for the Graduate Theological Foundation about the course I took at Mount Angel Seminary this semester, The Development of the Liturgical Year. As a part of that paper, I am written short pieces about the icons in our chapel, including this one.

The Transfiguration

Christ with the mandorla behind him, Elijah on the left, and Moses on the right.

Christ in his white robes.

The Prophet Elijah converses with Christ.

Holy Moses converses with Christ.

James and John tumble down the mountain.

Peter asks to set up booths for Christ, Elijah and Moses.

Russian Public Libraries

2011-12-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

My most recent foray into reading about Russia is a new biography of Leo Tolstoy by Rosamund Bartlett. Below she explains some of the research he did for War and Peace. Hooray for public libraries!

Rosamund Bartlett:

Numerous friends, relatives and acquaintances helped Tolstoy with the research for War and Peace, including leading historians and his doughty father-in-law Andrey Bers, who shared his personal memories of living through the events of 1812 as a child, and rounded up an army of old Moscow ladies ready to tell their story. Andrey Estafevich also enjoyed the task of tracking down contemporary newspaper cuttings for Tolstoy, as well as the correspondence of people who had lived in Moscow during Russia's war with Napoleon. Tolstoy made regular research trips to Moscow, and profited particularly from a long visit he made in the autumn of 1864 after breaking his arm. He had been riding his horse Masha, accompanied by two of his borzois, and had fallen off while impulsively galloping over a ploughed field in pursuit of a rabbit one of them had spotted. Old Dr. Shmigaro did such a poor job of setting the arm in Tula that Tolstoy traveled to Moscow for a further operation, and he spent his convalescence researching early-nineteenth-century Russian history. Sometimes this meant sitting in the Rumyantsev Museum, poring over manuscripts about Russian freemasons, and sometimes he took himself off to the Chertkov Library to read letters and memoirs and look at portraits of Alexander I's generals. These two public libraries had just opened in Moscow, and without them his task would have been much harder. Tolstoy actually picked a wonderful time to write a historical novel (167).

The Protecting Veil of the Mother of God

2011-12-19T14:51:00.000-08:00

I recently took the pictures below of the icon of The Protecting Veil of the Mother of God in our chapel here at Queen of Angels Monastery. The icon was written by Mary Katsilometes and the other teachers and students of the Iconographic Arts Institute.

In my previous post, I explained I am writing a reflection paper for the Graduate Theological Foundation about the course I took at Mount Angel Seminary this semester, The Development of the Liturgical Year. In the section in which I apply the content of the course to my training in iconography, I refer to this beautiful icon that has blessed our community.

The figures in the icon are about five feet tall. The architecture is based on our buildings. Our monastery with its steeple is behind the angel on the left, and our chapel with its lantern is behind the angel on the right.

The Protecting Veil of the Mother of God

The angel on the left of the Mother of God

The Theotokos

The angel on the right of the Theotokos

Above the door of our monastery, we have a niche with a white statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In our icon, we have a tiny statue of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God.

Penance and Abstinence

2011-12-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

During the Christmas break from teaching at Mount Angel Seminary, I am working on a reflection paper I am sending to the Graduate Theological Foundation as part of my Doctor of Ministry program. In the paper, I apply the material of the course I recently took at the seminary, The Development of the Liturgical Year, to my current ministries of teaching, retreat work, and iconography.

I refer to the piece below, which I wrote in September, in that reflection paper. After reading these two documents on penance and abstinence, our professor asked us to write a response that reflected on the meaning of the documents for contemporary Catholics.

Fasting and Judgment: A Short Reflection

In the apostolic constitution Paemitemini and the pastoral statement “On Penance and Abstinence,” the Church affirms the place of penance, abstinence, and fasting in Christian spirituality while also expanding the practices that may be useful for individuals and communities as they strive to follow Christ. As I have pondered these two documents, I have focused on two points, fasting and passing judgment, points that are also of importance for other contemporary Catholics.

Paemitemini explains that while penance is aimed toward a conversation of heart, it “cannot ever prescind from physical asceticism” (252). I am reminded of and reaffirmed in fasting, the disciplining the body and mind in relation to food and drink for the sake of spiritual growth. I have experienced this practice as particularly important for our mainstream American culture in which an abundance of food, and often unhealthy food at that, is available twenty-four hours a day. Even in a secular sense, we can easily forget what counts as normal and healthy meals, to the point that the feasts celebrated by our families and communities loose their significance. The U.S. bishops remind us that we may have greater joy in our liturgical feasts, and I would add in the community meals that follow, if we choose “to prepare for each Church festival by a day of particular self-denial” (1). In this we would also be in closer harmony with our Orthodox brothers and sisters who observe lengthy fasts before celebrations, most recently before the Dormition of the Mother of God. Overall, through these two documents I am encouraged to continue and extend the fasting that I practice so as to be more prepared to honor each Sunday and solemnity throughout the liturgical year.

Paemitemini states that the faithful are bound to observe abstinence on all Fridays and on Ash Wednesday during Lent and to observe fasting and abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The U.S. bishops remind those who wish to observe abstinence on Fridays throughout the year to “not pass judgment on those who elect to substitute other penitential observances” (2). This is important for two reasons. First, as the bishops mention, it would be laudable and beautiful if more people fulfilled their Friday penance through acts of charity and service. Not only would they be helping those in need, but their actions may prompt their friends and colleagues to ask about the reason for those actions, thus providing an opportunity to offer an explanation for their hope, as St. Peter urges us to do (1st Peter 3:15). Second, given the harsh and abrasive nature of many conversations in the Church today, we must exercise humility and prudence in our regard of others. No relationship can survive contempt, and we are simply not privy to the conscience of others.

Fasting and refraining from judgment are simple yet powerful practices in any Christian life, and as I have discussed above, particularly needed in our churches in the United States today. May we be granted the grace to pursue them more fully and thus reach a greater love of God and one another.

Burning Books

2011-09-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished rereading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I am continuing to compile a list of possible novels and novellas I can use in the literature classes for non-native speakers of English at the seminary, as well as for Writing in the Humanities.

At the end of the edition I read, Bradbury added a coda in which he discusses the ways various editors have reduced the text of Fahrenheit 451 after it was originally published. This is a real irony of course; the most dangerous censorship in the Farhenheit 451 doesn't come from the government but from people who have given up on listening to the ideas of others and thinking those ideas through for themselves. Bradbury has a few words for those who would like to "help" him with his books. Ray Bradbury:

For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides from Dante, Milton, or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you. (179)

While I have read Fahrenheit 451 a number of times, I couldn't put it down this weekend, perhaps because it seems to me that the need to think ideas through for ourselves is more urgent that ever.

Reading and Spiritual Direction

2011-09-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

In the section entitled "Whim" in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs argues for picking up the book that strikes you at the moment rather than the next big and important classic from a recommended reading list. He refers to an essay by Cathleen Schine when he writes:

That is to say, she came upon a world of wonderful books when she was ready for them, when she could receive what they have to offer. "I got to read Huckleberry Finn for the first time when I was 35 years old. I read My Antonia for the first time last month. That is a kind of grace. If . . . I had read Huckleberry Finn at 14, would I have reread it at 35? Maybe, but it wouldn't have been the same transcendent experience as discovering it as an adult."

So the books are waiting. Of this you may be confident: they'll be ready when the whim strikes you (25).

I identify this grace with the Holy Spirit, with the personal spiritual direction that comes through our reading. In his book, The Art of Spiritual Direction: Giving and Receiving Spiritual Guidance, W. Paul Jones dedicates his first chapter to describing types of spiritual direction, the first of which is personal or self-direction. W. Paul Jones:

The serious Christian is always involved in self-direction. While favorite disciplines in this regard are prayer and journaling, the most widespread form of personal direction is between author and reader. Spiritual directors for many folks include Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, Richard Foster, or Annie Dillard. Most of have a minilibrary of favorite spiritual books, most apparent by their worn covers and markings in the margins. To these we keep returning for personal direction, for the journeys of these particular authors help us to focus our own (15).

When I bring these two passages together, I also acknowledge the place of novels and children's literature in my own personal direction. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and Bridge to Terabithia are among the worn, well-loved spiritual reading on my bookshelf.

Defending Christianity

2011-09-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend I finished reading Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller. Miller is a Christian speaker and writer from Portland, Oregon, and a member of the Imago Dei Community and the Burnside Writers Collective. By the end of the book, I was quite taken with Miller and his message, in part because he was honest about his own selfishness and inability to do as Jesus would have him do.

He also seems willing to take seriously the roadblocks so many people face when they meet Christianity or even hear the word. The more I have thought about this, the more key and respectful this seems, particularly given that Oregon and Washington are the most unchurched states in the nation. Miller explains how he dealt with this during a radio interview:

In a recent interview I was sternly asked by the host, who did not consider himself a Christian, to defend Christianity. I told him that I couldn't do it, and moreover, that I didn't want to defend the term. He asked me if I was a Christian, and I told him yes. "They why don't you want to defend Christianity?" he asked, confused. I told him I no longer knew what the term meant. Of the hundreds of thousands of people listening to his show that day, some of them had terrible experiences with Christianity; they may have been yelled at by a teacher in a Christian school, abused by a minister, or browbeaten by a Christian parent. To them, the term Christianity meant something that no Christian I know would defend. By fortifying the term, I am only making them more and more angry. I won't do it. Stop ten people on the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the word Christianity, and they will give you ten different answers. How can I defend a term that means ten different things to ten different people? I told the radio show host that I would rather talk about Jesus and how I came to believe that Jesus exists and that he likes me. The host looked back at me with tears in his eyes. When we were done, he asked me if we could go get lunch together. He told me how much he didn't like Christianity but how he had always wanted to believe Jesus was the Son of God (115).

As I read Miller's story, I heard an echo of a verse from the second letter of Peter: "Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls on you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentlenenss and reverence." If Miller had defended Christianity in the way the host was asking him to do, alienation and anger would have been the result. However, he found a way to speak to his hope in way that the host could hear, and perhaps some of the people listening on the radio as well.

Of course believing that Jesus is the Son of God is the essence of Christianity, but if a person is blocked by particular language, he or she will not be able to come through the front door of the Church. Miller is using his gift as a writer to open other doors to people who might otherwise walk away.

Sarah's Key

2011-08-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

I have added a new novel to the above novels page - Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. The novel consists of two interconnected stories. The first is of a ten-year-old girl who is arrested with her family during the Vel' de Hiv' Roundup of the Jews of Paris in July of 1942. When the French police come to her door, Sarah hides her younger brother in a secret cupboard and promises to come back to save him. The second story is that of a journalist in Paris who uncovers Sarah's story as she writes about the commemoration of the Roundup.

While the story is fictional, the historical circumstances are not, and while both are dark and heartbreaking, this is a novel well worth reading. It has also been made into a film starring Kristen Scott Thomas as the journalist. Click here to see a trailer for the film.

A Prayer for Justice

2011-08-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

The final chapter of A Theology of Reading is simply entitled "Justice." Alan Jacobs writes:

The lessons are, I believe, clear, though daunting: no justice without the precedence and governance of charity; no charity without the guidance of the faithful and obedient church; no church without the Gospel that constitutes and inspires it. Charitable readers, equitable and just readers, will always be found here and there - one hopes - but a potent and fully articulated hermeneutics of love will arise only from a healthy community of believers. 'Our kindness to ten persons' can be made righteous only in that context; only that context can teach us how to make our 'circle of duty gradually and naturally expand itself.' In the life of the Church those become the common and quotidian elements of justice. Such fully charitable reading, in a just association of persons, will be an ecclesial, not personal, achievement" (144).

When my reading and writing students at the seminary reach their theology classes, they will learn about reading and interpreting the Scriptures with the mind and wisdom of the Church. Before they reach that point though, I hope they will have experienced in my classroom that we can read any text with the wisdom of the Church. Faithfulness, hope, kenosis, justice - these apply to all of their studies, all of their reading.

Charitable reading as an ecclesial achievement: to see and experience this is my hope, my prayer, for my students and myself as we begin a new year of study today.

Risking Conversion

2011-08-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

The fourth chapter of Alan Jacobs's A Theology of Reading is entitled "Kenosis," the dying to ourselves to which we are called by Christ as we conform our lives to his. Jacobs writes:

Though all genuine friendships in their full flower possess mutuality, they had to begin by someone extending the offer of affection and attention without knowing whether the other would reciprocate . . . though it is obvious that many people for many different reasons choose to take that risk - otherwise there would be no friendships, no loves at all - is seems almost cruel to demand that people do so. Yet Christianity makes just this demand, knowing . . . that in merely human terms the demand is unjustifiable (112).

If we were to approach our reading in those merely human terms, I suppose we would rarely move beyond our basic likes and dislikes. We would not want to waste our time on books we may not like, and a deeper level, we may fear how we would be changed if we moved beyond those preferences.

However, as Jacobs points out, as serious reader and as a Christian, I must move beyond them. I think this demand is deepened even more so for those of us who have committed ourselves to the Rule of St. Benedict. With God's grace, by meeting that demand we can be changed. I can name four or five books for which for me there was life before and life after I read; to some extent I died to my old self and was born anew through the hospitality and the hope I extended to those new books and authors.

Reading with Hope

2011-08-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

The next chapter of Jacobs's A Theology of Reading is entitled "Love and the Suspicious Spirit." Through each chapter he is adding to his definition of a charitable reader. First, a reader approaches each book as a neighbor; then he is faithful to his neighbor. Next, Jacobs adds the virtue of hope. The wager he refers to is the risk a reader takes as to whether he will profit in some way from the reading at hand. Jacobs writes:

And yet I have just said that Ricoeur makes this wager in part because he hopes to receive something in return, and hope is a virtue: Indeed, hope is the virtue by means of which suspicion is overcome. The charitable reader offers the gift of constant and loving attention - faithfulness - to a story, to a poem, to an argument, in hope that if will be rewarded. But this hope involves neither demand or expectation; indeed, if it demanded or expected, it would not be hope (89).

By steeping ourselves in the virtue of hope, we can strengthen our ability to resist the temptation to require the reading of a text to result in a particular outcome for us before we will put forth the effort reading it requires. We set those expectations aside. In a classroom setting, we hope that the instructor's choice of a text will yield good results for us, even if we do not know the shape those results will take in the future.

In his encyclical letter Spe Salvi: On Christian Hope Benedict XVI wrote, "All serious and upright human conduct is hope in action" (37). In the chapter, Jacobs continues to show me and - hopefully! - my students how to make our reading a morally sound action as we begin a new school year.

Reading Our Neighbors

2011-08-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I mentioned Alan Jacobs and his book A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love. When I discuss his ideas with one of my writing classes at Mount Angel Seminary, we will also focus on the following passage from chapter two "Love and Knowledge":

Similarly, we will not read all books with full sympathy, with a sense of kinship, with an awareness of expanded understanding, with the conviction that this book teaches me what I need to know and could not have learned from any other book. In short, not all the books we read will become our friends. But if we consider that we owe a debt of love and constant attentiveness (of faithfulness) to all the books we read - whether they be friends, foes, or neighbors - we provide for ourselves what Bonhoeffer calls the cantus firmus, the ground over which variations can be elaborated and developed (67).

After developing an understanding of each book as our neighbor, I think we can have a more realistic understanding of how to proceed with serious reading or study. Sometimes students (as well as others!) protest that they just don't like a book and see this as a reason to put the book aside.

While it can be important to acknowledge the emotions provoked in us by a particular reading, it doesn't mean that the reading needs to stop there. If it did, we could not strengthen the faithfulness we bring to our reading and studies. Part of faithfulness is proceeding with the task at hand, with the text that has been given to us. Our faithfulness, our willingness to offer our love again and again, will open us to more insight than simply relying on our likes and dislikes for guidance.

Iconography and Epistemology

2011-08-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

Right now part of my iconography reading is The Meaning of Icons by Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky. (The book is available here through the Iconographic Arts Institute). In the first section of the book, an essay by Lossky entitled "Tradition and Traditions," Lossky carefully leads the reader through the distinction between the Tradition and the smaller traditions - scripture, dogmatic formulations, liturgy, iconography - that convey but do not fully contain the Tradition. Toward the end of the essay Lossky writes:

Although it transcends the intelligence and the senses, the Christian Revelation does not exclude them: on the contrary, it assumes them and transforms them by the light of the Holy Spirit, in the Tradition which is the unique mode or receiving the revealed Truth, of recognizing it in its expressions whether scriptural, dogmatic, iconographic, or other and also of expressing it anew (22).

This understanding seems connected to another book I am reading at the moment, Introduction to Phenomenology, by Robert Sokolowski. Why am I reading this book? This semester, my teaching responsibilities include a communications class that supports one of the seminary's philosophy courses, Epistemology. Sokolowski's book is the text for Epistemology this semester.

In the third chapter of his book, Sokolowski discusses identities and manifolds. An identity is revealed through a variety of appearances of an object or experience, often to more than one person. An identity is also always more than the total of its appearances. Sokolowski further explains:

"What we try to do in our philosophical analysis is to secure the reality of such identities, to bring out the fact that they are different from their manifolds of presentation, and to show that despite their slippery status they truly are a component of what we experience" (31).

As I read these two texts, it seems we could connect identity with Tradition and manifolds with all the ways the Tradition is expressed. As varied and full as those expressions or manifolds may be, the Tradition and light of the Holy Spirit can always contain more. As I continue with Sokolowski's book and start the link class, I look forward to working with the students as they think through and unpack his book as well.

A Whirl of Words

2011-08-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

"A language is a fecund, redolent buzzing mess of a thing,

in every facet, glint and corner, even in single words" (9).

John McWhorter, What Language Is (And What It Isn't And What It Could Be)

I just started reading McWhorter's book, and this sentence is a great thought to ponder as we begin the school year at Mount Angel Seminary. A high number of our students are not native English speakers, so I spend a lot of time with people who are experiencing the "buzzing mess" of English.

While that can be overwhelming, I also hear a lot of joy behind McWhorter's words. Language is alive and buzzing because we are too, experiencing and reflecting anew each day.

Secrets and Insanity

2011-08-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Secrets are pervasive in Susan Richards's Lost and Found in Russia, mostly due to the damage they have caused individuals and all of society. Midway through the book Richards explains:

More than once on my journey I had felt as if my sanity were under assault. Now, gazing into the night I felt clear. At the moment, things were inside-out and back-to-front in Russia. But the craziness was not to be found in the obvious places. The people seeing those visions in Zarafshan were not the really crazy ones. Nor were the Old Believers, even if they did bury their televisions in the frozen earth. Nor was I, despite the fact that I had heard the forest singing. I knew little as yet about Vissarion's sect, but whatever the newspapers were saying, these sectarians were going to have to be very dotty to compete with the madness of life in mainstream Russia.

The true insanity had been there in that awesome experiment which Russia had undergone, that imperial mission to collectivize the human soul; to own and control everything, from the natural world to every last word printed in the empire.

Today this was a country going cold turkey, drying out from that experiment, from an addiction to control, to secrets, secrets, secrets. Things might seem all over the place, but people were recovering. Before the country could start to develop the first vestiges of a civil society, or institutions which respected the concept of the individual, much more time was going to pass and many more of those toxic secrets were going to have to be drained out of the poisoned body of the state (172).

Perhaps part of the nature of truth - about ourselves as individuals, our relationships, our work, or the larger society - is that if large portions of that truth must be kept secret, it isn't really the truth deep down. Truth that tells us who we really are and must do is to be proclaimed from the housetops.

Russian Reading

2011-08-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

My interest in iconography has also led to an interest in all things Russian. My most recent reading in this area includes Lost and Found In Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape by Susan Richards. Over the last twenty years, Richards traveled to and far beyond Moscow, meeting friends and strangers whose lives were filled with chaos and fear as communism collapsed.

For local readers, this book can be found at our local public library.

The societal collapse made simple tasks nearly impossible. Susan Richards explains:

Staying with her [Richards's friend Tatiana], I began to appreciate how looking after a small family could occupy all her time. In theory, Marx [her town] had running water, gas and electricity. But in practice, one or other and sometimes all three were turned off for periods every day. Keys were another problem: there was nowhere in town to get one cut, so Tatiana had only one key. The family appeared to live with all "mod cons," but there was nothing modern or convenient about their lives. Their washing machine had not worked for five years, the man who came to mend it having walked off with a broken part and never returned. The town had a launderette, but it was a long way away and it tore clothes to shreds. So, like everyone else, Tatiana washed the family's clothes by hand. As for the telephone, since Misha [her husband] was earning reasonable money, they jumped the five-year queue to get one installed. But you could use it only for local calls. For all others, you had to walk half an hour to the main post office. There, you booked and paid for the call, returned home, and waited until the manually operated switchboard chose to put you through (53).

Passages like this have given me a sense of dizziness as I read this book, perhaps because of the disconnect between what seems to be available and what is not, what worked even marginally in the past but is now broken.

Teaching in Love

2011-08-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing . . . Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

A portion of 1st Corinthians 13:1-13

the reading for Vespers at Queen of Angels Monastery this evening

Given that tomorrow the faculty at Mount Angel Seminary will begin its work for the new school year with its faculty orientation, these were striking words to hear this evening. All that happens in the classroom, in our offices, and up and down the hallways is for nought without love.

That seems simple, but I think most students and teachers can recall times in their education when love was absent and knew the damage that absence caused. When we are exasperated, overwhelmed, or frustrated - these are the times, perhaps, that love counts the most because it is so hard won.

As we begin the school year, let us pray for the grace to begin and abide in love.

Hospitality to the Text

2011-08-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of one of the courses I teach at Mount Angel Seminary, Writing in the Humanities, I am going to take a day to discuss hospitality to the text. We usually understand what it means to be hospitable to another person in our physical presence; we listen closely when he are speaking, and we attend to his needs and comfort. These actions are not necessarily dependent on whether we like this person or agree with her ideas.

We will be discussing how to apply hospitality to the texts in front of us, written by people we will never meet face to face. I will use the book A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love by Alan Jacobs as a jumping off point for this discussion.


A Theology of Reading along with some of the texts I have been or will be teaching at Mount Angel Seminary.

Below are two of the pertinent passages I will draw from the first chapter of Jacob's book:

But the hermeneutics of love requires that books and authors, however alien to the beliefs and practices of the Christian life, be understood and treated as neighbors (13).

But if our love is only preferential - if we select some books as the proper and worthy recipients of our love, while excluding others from our charmed circle . . . it fails to achieve genuine Christian charity. Charity demands that we extend the gift of love to all books, and receive the gift of love when it is offered to us (33).

Chapel Dedication

2011-08-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

Today is the thirteenth anniversary of the dedication of the chapel of Queen of Angel Monastery. We pray in gratitude for the beauty in which we are able to worship and the beauty of those who pray within its walls.

"For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ."

- 1st Corinthians 3:11

One of the angels with our chapel in the background from the large icon

in our chapel of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God.

Details of the rose windows in our chapel that were included in the architecture

for our icon of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God

The Transfiguration

2011-08-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we celebrated the feast of The Transfiguration, and our chapel has been blessed with a large icon of The Transfiguration written by the students and instructors of the Iconographic Arts Institute. Christ's disciples are knocked to the ground by the overwhelming beauty of his transfigured humanity, by the reality we all called to as his followers.

The bust of Christ from the icon of The Transfiguration at Queen of Angels Monastery.

Christ with the prophet Elijah on his left and Moses on his right.

Thus Christ assumed nothing foreign, nor does he take on a new state,

but He simply reveals to his disciples what He is.

- St. Gregory of Palamas, quoted in The Theology of the Icon by Leonid Ouspensky

Writing with Style

2011-08-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading How to Write a Sentence by Stanley Fish, which I enjoyed because I have been looking for additional ways to teach and talk about style with my writing students. Stanley Fish:

Here is a very partial classification of sentences, some of which will turn up in these pages, some of which won't. There are short sentences and long sentences, formal sentences and colloquial sentences, sentences that satisfy expectations and sentences that don't, sentences that go in a straight line and sentences that surprise, right-branching sentences and left-branching sentences, sentences that reassure and sentences that disturb, quiet sentences and sentences that explode like hand grenades, sentences that caress you and sentences that assault you, sentences that hide their art and sentences that ask readers to stand up and applaud. The languages resources are finite, but the effects that can be achieved by deploying them are not, and the skill of writing is to find those (formal) resources that will produce the effect you desire . . . In short, pick your effect, figure out what you want to do, and the figure out how to do it (44).

So this coming semester at Mount Angel Seminary, I will be trying out more sentence-level work with style with my students so that they can put various styles at the service of their studies and ministry.

Academic Ethics with Steven M. Cahn

2011-07-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Today I finished reading Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia by Steven M. Cahn, and because it gives such a solid and full picture of the professorial life, I wish I would have had this book when I started working at Mount Angel Seminary last fall. While I had experienced a portion of that life through my previous teaching, last fall I stepped into the profession as a whole for the first time.

Every new professor, regardless of his or her place within academia, should read this book. It would also be of great value to those who are discerning a call to academic life. Cahn clearly identifies the responsibilities of a professor that, when properly fulfilled, lead to real learning for the student and a clear sense of mission for the professor. Steven M. Cahn:

In short, although the professorial life is remarkably autonomous, it nevertheless entails a wide range of professional responsibilities. These are faced in a variety of settings - in classrooms, departmental meetings, and faculty meetings - and whenever one's advice is sought, one's recommendations are requested, and one's evaluations are needed (7).

The privileges of a professorship come with serious responsibilities toward one's students, colleagues, and community. A call to the academic life means putting all of one's learning at the service of others.

Morals and Eyelashes

2011-06-21T10:10:00.000-07:00

One of the main characters of Adam Bede by George Elliot is Hetty, a vain girl whose looks are leading her into all sorts of trouble. Concerning Hetty our narrator says:

Long dark eyelashes, now: what can be more exquisite? I find it impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind behind a deep grey eye with a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us (159).

This passage can lead us toward all kinds of interesting questions regarding beauty. What does real beauty consist of in a man or woman? Is it completely disconnected from outward appearances? How does the beauty of a person's soul, or ugliness for that matter, find expression in the person's outward appearance?

Care of Our Neighbors

2011-06-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend I started reading George Eliot's Adam Bede. I was reminded of it while rereading A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love by Alan Jacobs. I will be posting on A Theology of Reading later, yet there is this thought for now: whether or not we are fully charitable may not depend so much on large, clearly heroic acts, but the small invitations we receive to love those right in our midst.

The copy of Adam Bede from the Silver Falls Library which I am reading,
an old copy, for the cover price says seventy-five cents!

Here the narrator in Adam Bede describes the rector of the small village where the novel takes place:

On the other hand, I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality towards the Rector's memory, that he was not vindictive - and some philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant - and there is a rumor that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to the very illustrious virtue - he was tender to other men's failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know best only by following them away from the market-place, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric (71).

Our community begins our annual retreat this evening, and perhaps this is a good thought on which to ruminate over the week. If someone followed me "away from the market-place" what would she see? Would my words and actions be in keeping with my baptismal commitment and my monastic profession?

A Song for Dads

2011-06-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered NPR's Song-A-Day; if you sign up for the song-a-day newsletter, they will send you a link to a song each weekday. The songs cover all different genres, and it is a great way to hear a lot of music I wouldn't hear otherwise.

Today's song is "This One's for Dad" by the rock band Guyz Nite. Click here for the story and the song, and perhaps pass it on to a dad you know!

Guerrilla Learning - Support

2011-06-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

The Five Principles of Support

1. Take care of yourself.
2. Make sure the goals are theirs, not yours.
3. Keep checking out how much support children need and want.
4. Help your kids identify their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Well-being comes first.

The last key of guerrilla learning is support, putting your own resourcefulness at the service of others. Llewellyn and Silver add that support does not have to be limited by or to just money. Our own time, elbow grease, organizational skills, and verbal encouragement are just as if not more important.

I've been considering how these five principles would apply to those students who work as tutors in writing centers. Since we are not responsible for grading the work of the students we see, our work is all about support!

#1 - Make sure you are not sacrificing your own need for time to study (and sleep!) If you are, the resentment you feel will come through loud and clear, ruining the good that may come from a writing center appointment.

#2 - What does the student want to accomplish with this assignment? What are they hoping for? You may need to discuss with them whether those hopes are realistic, yet the conversation should start with information and responses that the student provides.

#3 - This applies to adults and children alike. Would the student like to come back for another appointment? Would they like to take some handouts with them? Briefly and unobtrusively checking in with the student outside of the time in the writing center can be helpful as well.

#4 - Even the best writers have weaknesses that can benefit from some additional attention, and I have yet to encounter a student writer that didn't have some good work or ideas on which he or she could build.

#5 - We all have times in which we are experiencing larger difficulties that, at least for a time, diminish the importance of a giving writing task or assignment. A death, financial crisis, emotional problem, may need to be at the center of a student's attention.

Guerrilla Learning - Freedom

2011-06-10T09:40:00.000-07:00

The more you can sincerely offer your child choices and stand aside as a neutral loving guide, the more she will take responsibility for her own life. When kids really understand that their academic learning is up to them, that their choices affect them more than they affect you, everything shifts. When they stop feeling that you are pushing on them, they will gradually relax their rebellious energy, decide what they want, and reach for it (135-136).

The fourth key to guerrilla learning - freedom - is not the freedom to do whatever you want. It is the freedom to choose and to understand and live with the consequences of those actions. The parents or other adults, therefore, have to have those consequences clear in their own minds and have the willingness to let those consequences play out.

Emotionally, this is not always easy to do, even with adults. Sometimes my students, through their own decisions and actions, choose to receive a poor grade. If I have made the consequences of their actions clear, their grade should not be a surprise to anyone, but it still isn't easy to write down those Ds or Fs. Freedom and interest - the third key - seem to be intimately tied together as well. Not choosing can also indicate that lack of interest.

This book makes it very clear how much the child's development or avoidance of hang ups depends on the example set by the parents. Thus the author's include exercises for both parents and children at the end of each chapter.

Guerrilla Learning - Interest

2011-06-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Nor are we concerned with how to "use" kids' interests to "get" them to learn specific information. Guerrilla Learning is about providing kids with the space and support to pursue what they're interested in. To some extent, we can work within the schools to use them as resources to accommodate our kids' interests. To some extent, we can help our kids make it through the parts of school that bore, frustrate, or even upset them. Otherwise, we can provide as much freedom and support as our resources allow to help our children explore their interests in what's left of their lives after school is over (125).

The third key to Guerrilla Learning is interest, and as with the other passages from this book, I continue to find myself considering how all of this applies to the adult world. Llewellyn and Silver point out that while adults provide or respect the first two keys - opportunity and timing - the child is responsible for this third key. The child indicates - implicitly or explicitly - the direction in which he or she needs to go.

Of course adults have responsibilities that limit them in ways that children do not necessarily experience, yet adults too can allow themselves and each other the freedom for their interests once those responsibilities have been met. We don't have to let our hearts live where we work, unless we want to do so.

In social gatherings with new people, rather than asking people what they do, I've started asking them "What do you like to do?" Instead of hearing about their job, I may hear about their kids, travel, reading, hobbies or sports. This is a small way of inviting interests to lead the way.

Guerrilla Learning - Timing

2011-06-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

We've all noticed how children learn things in bursts - they may do nothing for a long time and then all at once make big strides. And if we pay attention to our adult selves, most of us will notice that we, too, learn and do things in uneven increments. We forget this when our kids go through a period of apparent dormancy or downtime, particularly at school or in an academic area; we'd do them a great service by keeping it in mind (109).

The second key of Guerrilla Learning is timing. Learning a subject or a skill early isn't necessarily better, and learning it later - whether that be a couple months or a decade - isn't necessarily negative. This can be difficult to accept as a classroom teacher, yet it doesn't change the reality. Some students are not ready for what you have to offer when they arrive in your classroom, and this isn't necessarily a reflection on the teacher. It is simply life's timing.

I also think of another student with whom I am currently engaged who is so ready he is the proverbial sponge. The events of his life have made the timing nearly ideal. While we can be ready for when that happens for a student, I don't think anyone could explicitly planned for it. I think taking in this understanding of timing can ease a lot of the pressure we put on others and ourselves to push, push, hurry, hurry, hurry.

Guerrilla Learning - Possibility

2011-06-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

Opportunity consists of anything that gives a human being more of a sense of possibility, especially a sense of delightful possibility. As your kids' strongest link to the adult world, you, therefore, do them a great service by happily tinkering away at whatever you like to do, right under their noses. And make mistakes, wonder out loud, choose gorgeously large goals for yourself and attempt valiantly to reach them, pursue questions big and small . . . engage in much of this in the family room, at the dinner table, or on the telephone within earshot (96).

In their book Guerrilla Learning, Llewellyn and Silver outline three keys for guerrilla learning: opportunity, timing, interest, freedom, and support. While they are speaking of parents and children, I have been considering how their description of opportunity applies to adults as well.

Opportunity just means allowing people to see that an activity, interest, or area of study exists and that people happily spend time pursuing it. Opportunity is an introduction, a glimpse. As a teacher of adults, I feel just as responsible for offering opportunity as I would if I taught children. I can offer students a glimpse into my writing, scholarship, and other pursuits. This can be as simple as making some deliberate choices about what to post on my office door or have on the table in the office where I meet with students.

This sense of opportunity can be important within a monastic community as well. What are my sisters reading? What are they the most passionate about in their work and play? In what ways are they experiencing the riches of the world that I am not aware of? What avenues of opportunity are available right in our own backyard?

Responses to these questions, offered with joy and humility, have more power than we think. The world does not have to get smaller as we get older; it can get wider and deeper every day if we offer and look for opportunity.

Gurerrila Learning 2

2011-06-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

We repeat: Students create their success. Learning may take place in schools, but learning is bigger than schools, and schools don't make learning; learners do. And you'll do your family a favor if you can turn conventional thinking on its head. Instead of seeing their learning only within the context of school, begin to see school as just one (of several) elements within the larger context of their learning . . . When you really begin to see school as smaller than your kids' educations, you may find that you're able to relax and stop worrying as much about the markers of conventional success (or failure) (41).

The above is another passage from the book I mentioned yesterday. Since I started teaching, a lot of people have asked me how I motivate my students. In response I maintain that students motivate themselves. I try to say so gently since this isn't always the answer the questioner is looking for.

Yes, I have an important part to play in the classroom, but in the end the student decides what they will put into a particular activity or project. In a sense, one of the best actions I can take is to stay out of the way as they make that decision. I can offer opportunities and discussion, yet the decision is for the student to make.

Part of that discussion may be raising their awareness around just that point since people tend to give that power away to someone else. When they do they lack the power to take the initiative in their own learning, whether in the classroom or the wider world.

Guerrilla Learning

2011-06-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

We invite you to discard the oppressive ideal of the "perfect" classroom - whether traditional or progressive - because that ideal subtly robs families of their own power and responsibility. We say that education is the responsibility (and privilege) of the family, regardless of current laws and social structures and economic needs. Sending children to school does not relieve the family of that responsibility. Instead of asking, "What would make schools better?" or "How can we get our kids to perform better in school?" this book invites you to ask "What is education to our family?" - to ask what kinds of lives you want for your children and what kinds of lives they want for themselves (28).

The above passage is from Guerrilla Learning: How to Give Your Kids a Real Education With or Without School by Grace Llewellyn and Amy Silver. I read Llewellyn's previous book The Teenage Liberation Handbook, though long after I was a teenager. While that book was written for the children and teenagers themselves, Guerrilla Learning is for the parents.

Even though I have remained engaged in formal schooling as a student and as a teacher long after reading The Teenage Liberation Handbook, it dramatically changed how I think about my own education and that of my past and current students. It meant claiming, often for the first time, huge parts of my life I had so easily handed over to others.

The question she directs at families I have continually asked myself: What is education for me? How does it occur? What is appropriate and respectful and what is not? The answers cannot just be written down; they must be lived.

Reading and Rereading

2011-06-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

This fall I will be teaching To Kill a Mockingbird with a class in which I know there will be several students who have read the novel before. I've been thinking about ways in which to discuss rereading when I came across this passage by Sven Birkerts in his book Reading Life: Book for the Ages. Sven Birkerts:

Re-reading - the going back, the reiteration - is what gets us deeper into what reading is because it forces us to let go of the idea of a text as static, or stable, in its meanings, and of ourselves as simple translators of written signs into contents. Re-reading immerses us in the dynamic of change and indeterminacy, and in the process more closely merges our reading and the inner life, for in going back to a book we can't help reconnecting with our prior subjectivities. Focused though we may be, we are not seeing just the text in front of our eyes. No matter how thoroughly the passing of time may have erased the traces of an earlier encounter, some expectations remain. And these become, inevitably, the screen through which we take in the narration. We re-read the way we walk a once-known path, playing off what we see in front of us against what we expect: a turn, a hill, a brambly patch (16).

Using these thoughts as a jump off point, we can spend some time looking at how this second reading of To Kill a Mockingbird can be different from the first. It may be the same path, but we will have changed since the last time we read it. For some students for whom English is a second language, there may be a shift in their understanding of the language. Regardless of the nature of the shift, though, we will all experience a new reading of the novel.

Reading Wit

2011-06-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

On the recommendation of a friend, I finally read the play Wit by Margret Edson. The main character, Vivian Bearing, is an English professor and scholar of John Donne who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. As the play progresses, we watch her relationship with language shift and simplify. At one point she describes reading a storybook as a child, her first memory of the power of words:

The illustration bore out the meaning of the word, just as he [her father] had explained it. At the time, it seemed like magic.

So imagine the effect that the words of John Donne first had on me: ratiocination, concatenation, coruscation, tergiversation.

Medical terms are less evocative. Still, I want to know what the doctors mean when they . . . anatomize me. And I will grant that in this particular field of endeavor they posses a more potent arsenal of terminology than I. My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary. (43-33)

She does learn the vocabulary, but she also learns to simplify her own language, her own descriptions of her experience. As her death approaches, she says:

(Quickly) Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit.

And nothing would be worse than a detailed scholarly analysis. Erudition. Interpretation. Complication.

(Slowly) Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness. (69)

This play asks for many more rereadings; I feel I have seen only a sliver of what is contains in the hour or so it took to read it straight through. It is certainly about words, their strength and weakness, their use and the many ways in which they can be abused. It is also about students and teachers, patients and doctors and nurses, and love.

The Little Things

2011-06-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

Toward the end Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions, Pico Iyer has a lovely little essay entitled "In Praise of the Humble Comma." He begins with a comparison between the comma and the gods. Pico Iyer:

The gods, they say, give breath, and they take it away. But the same could be said - could it not? - of the humble comma. Add it the present clause and, of a sudden, the mind is, quite literally, given pause to think; take it out if you wish or forget it and the mind is deprived of a resting place. Yet still the comma gets no respect. It seems just a slip of a thing, an pedant's tick, a blip on the edge of consciousness, a kind of printer's smudge almost. Small, we claim, is beautiful (especially in the age of the microchip). Yet what is so often used, and so rarely recalled, as the comma - unless it be breath itself? (241).

Perhaps this essay can be a gentle reminder of the power of all the little things we take for granted, in our writing and in our life. Pax!

Embracing Contraries with Pico Iyer

2011-05-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

I often use the concept of embracing a contrary, holding in creative tension two ideas that are both true and important, with my writing students. As I've continued with Pico Iyer's Tropical Classical, I connected embracing contraries with this passage from the previously mentioned essay on Bombay. Pico Iyer:

Yet the biggest shock of all in VT [Victoria Terminus] is that somehow, amidst all the chaos, something works. Every morning, a small army of dabbawallahs - couriers in Nehru caps and khaki shorts - scatters around the city, collecting cylindrical stainless-steel lunch boxes, or dabbas, from housewives in the suburbs. They then bring the virtually identical containers to VT - more than 100,000 of them in all - and, with the help of nothing more than a simple color coding, deliver the right one to the right man at the right desk in the city. The third rule of Bombay is that its wonders are as beyond reason as its horrors (67).

Chaos and order - both true, present, and with their own importance - all mixed together in the simple delivery of lunch boxes. Perhaps next semester I can expand our discussion of embracing contraries and ask the students if there are particular places that embody this idea.

Names and Pico Iyer

2011-05-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Another essay in Pico Iyer's Tropical Classical is entitled "Bombay: Hobson-Jobson on the Streets." He describes the mind-boggling chaos of the streets, the contradictions and the joy. One passage focuses on names. Pico Iyer:

Thus was I introduced to the first great rule of Bombay life, which is that everything goes wrong, and everything's all right. I never did locate the British cemetery, but when I turned around, there - as if by magic - was an Afghan War Memorial, complete with small weathered cross and plaques inscribed to "My Beloved Wife Lily Meek" and "Sarah Chandy." In the church behind the memorial, the reverend was sending birthday greetings this month to Mr. Chistopherson Ebenezer and Bishop S.B. Joshua. (Names have always told the history of Bombay - or Mumbai - and the map is still a lexicon of bittersweet hybrids - Apollo Bunder, Cross Maidan, the J.J. Parsi Benevolent Institution. Mahatma Gandi Road crosses Wellington Circle here, and the figure of Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit looks nobly out amidst a sea of Kemps and Wellingtons. Though the independent government tried to rename all the great British sites when the last imperial regiment sailed away, it was as quixotic a gesture as most things here: no one ever talks of Netaji Subhash Road when she's off to Marine Drive (66).

Perhaps when we out on our own next adventure, we will remember to consider the place names around us, to wonder at their how and why.

Travelling with Pico Iyer

2011-05-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

For a couple years now, I have included a quotation from the travel writer Pico Iyer at the top of the syllabus for a number of my writing classes: "The final destination of any journey is not after all the last item on the agenda but rather some understanding, however simple and provisional, of what one has seen."
I don't remember where I found the quotation, and until now I had not read any of Iyer's books. However, I am working on remedying that situation by reading his Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions. In the first essay he describes his time in Ethiopia, and the last paragraph seems to exemplify the quotation I have been sharing. Pico Iyer:

Before I went to Ethiopia, I had said, half facetiously, that I was going there to "get around Christmas," leaving, on December 25, to avoid the commercialism and loneliness and impossible expectations that constitute the holiday for us. I had not known that Ethiopia really was the way to get to the heart of Christmas, and of almost everything else. I am no Christian, but Christianity made sense to me in Ethiopia - and many things as basic as hope and dignity, necessity and faith - and as I looked at the stars through the branches and the flickering candles, I really could imagine three wise men coming to a manger, following the skies. Everything revved up and complicated fell away, and I was left in Ethiopia with the small, forgotten soul of the whole thing: thanksgiving amidst hardship and songs of glorious praise" (19).

This passage and the whole of his book seem to speak of such openness, readiness. May we all cultivate a similar stance in our journeys, those far away and those close to home.

I Will Get Better!

2011-05-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

Below is another passage from the article mentioned in my previous post below. I like the determination of this writer:

Once I figure out all the things I want to change, I must figure out how to effect that change. I must be willing to try and fail and try again. What was that great Samuel Beckett line" "Try again; fail better." But I content myself with this knowledge: one day soon, I will master one small task. And one day soon after that, I will master another small task. Each time, my writing will get better. Each time, I will get better (495).

This student's words reminded me of thoughts I plan to share with my class on Writing in the Humanities in the fall. "I cannot promise you," I will say, "anything about the particular grade you will get in this class. I will promise you, though, that if put your heart into the process I am offering you, you will not be in the same place as you were at the beginning of the semester."

Writing Through Our Badness

2011-05-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

In the February 2011 issue of College Composition and Communication I found this passage from the article "Toward Graduate-Level Writing Instruction" by Laura R. Micciche with Allison D. Carr. The article contains boxed items in which a student who took the writing course Micciche is discussing comments on her experience. Below is one passage that I particularly enjoyed:

I have learned that badness is just part of my process, and I love the badness for helping me get to better-ness. If I want to accomplish anything, I have to allow myself to have bad ideas, to write bad sentences, to make bad claims. Badness, I think, is my first language. The fun is in the process of sorting it out, translating, recomposing in a more artful language others can understand and appreciate" (491).

Here is a student, a writer, who is not afraid to make mistakes and is also willing to have some fun along the way. This passage may go up on the wall in the writing center at Mount Angel Seminary this fall. "Love the badness" may become my new battle cry!

Play Scripts

2011-05-19T10:13:00.000-07:00

This summer my reading-for-fun project is reading play scripts, both ones that are new to me and rereads of some favorites. This is also part of keeping an eye out for plays to use in my teaching at the seminary. To share this reading, I have added a new page above for play scripts and drama. Enjoy!

The Beginning of The Tie That Binds

2011-05-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

If I recall correctly, in my last post about Kent Haruf I said that if I was to do justice to my favorite passage, I would have to post the whole book! It was so seamless that pulling out a paragraph or two felt like doing damage.

Last night I finished his first novel, The Tie That Binds, and I would have to say the same about this book as well. It also takes place in Holt County, Colorado, and it works its way toward resolving the mystery that appears in the first chapter. So, I will offer the first paragraph of the book in the hopes that it will encourage you to pick up his work. Kent Haruf:

Edith Goodnough isn't in the country anymore. She's in town now, in the hospital, lying there in that white bed with a needle stuck in the back of one hand and a man standing guard in the hallway outside her room. She will be eighty years old this week: a clean beautiful white-haired woman who never in her life weighed as much as 115 pounds, and she has weighed a lot less than that since New Year's Eve. Still the sheriff and the lawyers expect her to get well enough for them to sit her up in a wheelchair and then drive her across town to the courthouse to begin the trial. When that happens, if that happens, I don't know that they will go so far as to put handcuffs on her. Bud Sealy, the sheriff, has turned out to be a son of a bitch, all right, but I still can't see him putting handcuffs on a woman like Edith Goodnough (1).

Summer Beginnings

2011-05-11T08:50:00.000-07:00

One of my projects this summer is writing a study guide for To Kill a Mockingbird. I read this novel with one of my classes at the seminary this semester, and the questions the students asked gave me the urge to put together a study guide that includes a list of characters, a glossary, discussion questions, and some background information. Some of this material I will be able to pull from other study guides, but I would like to create my own that can specifically address the questions of the English language learners at the seminary.

So all of that means that right now I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird for about the twentieth time - still laughing out loud, still looking forward to each chapter. We just finished the school year at the seminary with graduation on Saturday, so this passage from To Kill a Mockingbird particularly resonated with me:

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch on cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill (45).

Work and Peter the Great

2011-05-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

Last night I finished reading Peter the Great: His Life and World - Whew! At almost nine hundred pages, picking up this book was a commitment, but it was well worth it. As the Russian Csar for over forty years, he strove mightily during the late 1600s and early 1700s to make Russia a modern nation. My study of iconography has also been leading to an interest in all things Russian, so if you share a similar interest, dive into Peter the Great.

Robert Massie's final paragraph is one of the best closing paragraphs of a book I have read in a long time. For me it summed up not just Peter the Great but the experience of reading his book as well. Robert Massie:

"The arguments about Peter and the controversies over his reforms have never ended. He has been idealized, condemned, analyzed again and again, and still, like the broader issues of the nature and future of Russia itself, he remains essentially mysterious. One quality which no one disputes is his phenomenal energy. "Eternal toiler upon the throne of Russia," Pushkin described him. "It is an age of gold in which we are living," Peter wrote to Menshikov. "Without loss of a single instant, we devote all our energies to work." He was a force of nature, and perhaps for this reason no final judgment will ever be delivered. How does one judge the endless roll of the ocean or the mighty power of the whirlwind?" (855).

Reading and Journalism

2011-04-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

For those who visit here regularly, I apologize for the dearth of posts in the last month. If you visit and there isn't much happening here, you may like to visit the blog for the journalism program at Mount Angel Seminary. Sometimes my posting efforts are diverted into that project. On the blog you will find lots of good writing by the journalism students covering the news at the seminary, as well as reflections on and resources for the practice of journalism.

I have added to the above novels page two books by Kent Haruf. I just discovered him recently, and he is wonderful. If I were to post a favorite passage from one of his novels, I would have to post the whole book! His plain, spare style reflects the landscape in which in his characters dwell, and I read both books in nearly one sitting. Highly recommended!

All You Need Is Love

2011-03-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Visit this link for a wonderful and uplifting version of The Beatles song, "All You Need Is Love." People from 156 nations sang this song together at the same time on the same day - groups, pairs, individuals, with a range of instruments and in a great variety of clothing. Enjoy!

Little Poems

2011-03-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Below is a little poem I wrote late last week:

Dream

I didn't know you drove an orange
Chevy, that you would steer with one hand

when I slid across the cracks in the seat
and leaned on your shoulder without asking.

Little Books

2011-03-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

Today I started reading Don't Trust the Abbot: Musings from the Monastery by Jerome Kodell. Fr. Kodell is the abbot of Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas. His book is a collection of the short columns he has written for his community's newsletter while he has been serving as abbot. In the introduction, he writes:

"This little book, I'm afraid, will not be much use in trying to reach the top shelf, but I've found that small books are more likely to be read than large ones, even though they may not be as nearly as important. Small books don't look so scary, and you can carry them around in a pack or purse. And the size of the book doesn't determine the size of the topic" (vii).

Take heart bloggers, poets, and short essayists! I would add that even a large book usually needs to be divided up into smaller parts, whether by the writer or the reader. Small does not mean trivial by any means, so let us expect great things from those who work with words on a small scale.

Kings and Heroes

2011-03-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (see my page above on novels). Dunstan Ramsay, the main character, looses a leg and part of an arm in WWI. He is also awarded the Victoria Cross. In this scene, he receives his decoration from King George V. Robertson Davies:

"There was a moment, however, when the King and I were looking directly into each other's eyes, and in that instant I had a revelation that takes much longer to explain that to experience. Here am I, I reflected, being decorated as a hero, and in the eyes of everybody here I am indeed a hero; but I know that my heroic act was rather a dirty job I did when I was dreadfully frightened; I could just as easily muddled it and been ingloriously killed. But it doesn't much matter, because people seem to need heroes; so long as I don't lose sight of the truth, it might as well be me as anyone else. And here before me stands a marvellously groomed little man who is pinning a hero's medal on me because some of his forebears were Alfred the Great, and Charles the First, and even King Arthur, for anything I know to the contrary. But I shouldn't be surprised if inside he feels as puzzled about the fate that brings him here as I. We are public icons, we two: he an icon of kingship, and I an icon of heroism, unreal yet very necessary; we have obligations above what is merely personal, and to let personal feelings obscure the obligations would be failing in one's duty" (86-87).

After the war, Ramsay continues to explore the intertwining nature of the mystical and the historical, the personal and the public. I was stuck here by his easy acceptance of the interplay between the two. He sees no need to resist the role in which he has been placed; he even accepts it as necessary for others. At the same time, he doesn't take it too seriously and knows the larger story that is behind the act that caused him to be called a hero.

I think that for those readers who are serving in a variety of public roles, Davies description is worth considering. Those public roles are important, but they don't define everything about us. It doesn't seem to be a matter of choosing the public or the personal, the mystical or the historical, but honoring the place of each in society and in our individual lives.

Words and Silence

2011-03-04T08:41:00.000-08:00

Last night during Vespers, my community blessed the icon of the Pantacrator I finished recently. The blessing is below, and while I think the words are beautiful, for me the silence at the beginning of the blessing and during the veneration is even more beautiful.

A Blessing for an Icon during Vespers

Before Vespers begins, the icon is placed on a stand in front of the altar. The blessing takes place after the reading.

Prioress:
Let us pause in silent prayer to look upon this icon and to call upon You, our God, to bless us with your holy presence as we do so.

Pause for silent prayer.

Prioress:
May this icon of Christ be a sign of your continuous presence. May all who pray with it enter more fully into your divine life and see the face of Christ in all they meet today and always.

We offer this blessing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The prioress blesses the icon with holy water. After the conclusion of Vespers, the assembly may venerate the icon with a bow, a touch, or a kiss.

Conflict and Virtue

2011-03-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

As we move toward to the end of the school year at Mount Angel Seminary, the undergraduate students are presenting their capstone projects. Yesterday I attended an excellent presentation in which the seminarian discussed the influence of John Henry Newman on the Catholic novels of Graham Green. The student included the following quotation on his handout:

Blessed John Henry Newman:
"If there were no enemy, there could be no conflict; were there no trouble, there could be no faith; were there no trial, there could be no love; were there no fear, there could be no hope. Hope, faith, and love are weapons, and weapons imply foes and encounters; and, relying on my weapons I will glory in my suffering."

How difficult it can be to welcome conflict! However, if we see it as an opportunity to sharpen our weapons, to grow in the Christian life, we are blessed indeed. Let us pray for the grace to see the conflicts in our lives - big and small, the petty and the seemingly insurmountable - as an opening for God's love.

Kyrie Pantokrator

2011-03-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

Below is a prayer I will be sharing with my community, colleagues, and students as I share with them the icon of the Pantacrator that I completed recently. It is drawn from an apocryphal part of the Scriptures and is used as one of the canticles in the daily office of the the Episcopal Church.

This prayer is also very appropriate for Lent. May you begin that holy season with God's grace and blessing.

Christ Pantacrator

Kryie Pantokrator: A Song of Penitence
Prayer of Manasseh, 1-2, 4, 6-7, 11-15

O Lord and Ruler of the hosts of heaven,
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and all their righteous offspring:

You made the heavens and the earth,
with all their vast array.
All things quake with fear at your presence;
they tremble because of your power.

But your merciful promise is beyond all measure;
it surpasses all that our minds can fathom.
O Lord, you are full of compassion,
long-suffering, and abounding in mercy.

You hold back your hand;
you do not punish as we deserve.
In your great goodness, Lord,
you have promised forgiveness to sinners,
that they may repent of their sin and be saved.

And now, O Lord, I bend the knee of my heart,
and make my appeal, sure of your gracious goodness.
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,
and I know my wickedness only too well.

Therefore I make this prayer to you:
Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.
Do not let me perish in my sin,
nor condemn me to the depths of the earth.

For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent,
and in me you will show forth your goodness.
Unworthy as I am, you will save me,
in accordance with your great mercy,
and I will praise you without ceasing all the days of my life.

For all the powers of heaven sing your praises,
and yours is the glory to ages of ages. Amen.

Hospitality

2011-03-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

One of the essays in A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century is ""Soli Deo Placere Desiderans" by Bonnie Thurston. In her discussion of hospitality, she situates hospitality within our intellectual lives, now and for the future of monastic life:

"But, historically, monasteries were centers of learning, cauldrons in which new ideas stewed. This openness to new thinking, to unfamiliar ideas needs, once again, to be imaged for the larger society . . . The spiritual reading that monastic life encourages can be an example of the opening of the intellectual or inner heart life to the ideas of others. We use the idiom 'entertain ideas,' but in what contexts do we do it? . . . Especially in this era of bitter polemics and polarization, it is important to have an example of and a place where new and different ideas and thoughts can be welcomed, listened to, discussed, and understood, if not always agreed with or ultimately accepted. The kind of hospitality of which I am speaking, the gracious and reverent welcome of the guest, human, divine, and ideological, can only occur in an atmosphere of openheartedness" (12).

During one of my courses at the seminary last semester, we discussed the idea of hospitality to the text. Just as we would welcome a guest in our home, we should strive to welcome the text we are reading. We would listen to our guest and do our best to assure we understand their needs and point of view during our conversations. We would refrain from dismissing them before or while they were speaking.

As we read, we want to strive for a similar openness. Have I dismissed this writer before I finished reading the whole text? Have I taken the necessary steps to ensure I have fully understood his or her points? Have I attempted to understand why the author feels this work is important?

While such steps are important in a classroom setting, perhaps they are even more important within our monasteries. In the classroom we may be held accountable by the larger academic setting in which we are working. In our monasteries, we need to hold one another accountable as we discuss the ideas we find in our reading or the guests at our table. Additionally, this openness to new ideas is part of the love we show one another, the love that is hopefully observed by our guests and visitors.

Christ Pantacrator - Christ Ruler of All

2011-02-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I finished writing this icon of the Pantacrator, an icon of Christ as the Ruler of All, Lord of the Universe:

For an icon of Christ in which he is holding an open book, the iconographer should select a text of Christ's own words. Since this is Christ Ruler of All, I selected a passage from the Book of Revelation:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me. He who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. - Revelation 3:20-21

As with the written Scriptures, we can do a prayerful reading of an icon, and as we do so, other words, texts, and events may take on a new richness. Today, the first day this icon will be shared with others, we had these words in the hymns at Eucharist this morning:

For God, our great and sovereign Lord, / Above all gods he dwells; / Depths of the earth are in his hand, / The strength of hills as well. - "O Come and Hymn Our Mighty Lord

Jesu, joy of our desiring, / holy wisdom, love most bright, / Drawn by you, our souls aspiring, / Soar to uncreated light. / Word of God, our flesh that fashioned / With the fire of life impassioned, / Striving still to truth unknown, / Soaring, dying, 'round your throne.

Lord Jesus, Ruler of All, be with us so that we may see and reverence your face in all of the people we meet each day. Amen.

Silence

2011-02-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

Another essay included in A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century is "The Secret Ingredient" by Kathleen Norris. She is, in part, approaching the question of monastic life in the future through the lens of her experience as a writer. She emphasizes silence, the counterpart to words, in her reflection. Here she is considering a passage from Thomas Merton:

"In the Springs of Contemplation Merton reminds his monastic audience that 'it is terribly important for us to be clear about our silence,' and also be clear about its prophetic value in a world of noise. 'The tyranny of noise,' Merton observes, 'always has a will behind it,' and 'There is a note of supreme injustice in noisemaking: the noise made by one person can compel another person to listen.' He goes on to say that the monastery's 'service to the world might simply be to keep a place where . . . people might be silent together. This is an immense service if only because it enables people to believe such a thing is still possible.' Silence, as Merton understood it, is foundational to human freedom and psychological well-being. He also saw intentional silence as a necessary and valuable counterweight to society's thoughtless and excessive veribage" (45).

In the last few days I have found myself return again and again to idea of "the supreme injustice of noisemaking." I think this is because it strikes me as true. Even at a most basic level, in a crowded room it will be the person who talks the most who gets the most attention. It can take a long time to discern the actual worth of what they are saying.

It has also made me more conscious of the ways in which I use my verbal words. Establishing legitimate authority and credibility is one kind of action, but using those words to try to unduly impress people is another. I find it is always worth asking myself not just about what I am saying but also why I am saying it.

Perhaps, too, we can each ask ourselves why we listen to the people that we do. Hopefully, it is for a legitimate reason. However, if it is not, if we find that one way or another our listening is compelled by the other person, it may be time to walk away.

Love

2011-02-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

At Mount Angel Seminary, a colleague and I regularly begin our classes with a poem. Sometimes the poem is related to the material for the course that day; sometimes it is just a beautiful piece of writing we would like to share with others. Earlier this week, my colleague shared the poem below with his class.

Perhaps these words can also serve as an examination of conscience as we consider the people who surround us each day - at home, at work, and in our communities. Whose love are we overlooking? Who perhaps loves us without being able to say so? Are there ways of offering love that we have failed to see or understand?

Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Monastic Rest

2011-02-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

This passage comes from an essay by Bonnie Thurston, the first essay in A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century. She begins by reflecting on the passage from the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus says to his disciples, "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile" (Mark 6:31). Bonnie Thurston:

" 'Rest' encompasses that greatest (and most neglected?) of monastic virtues, the end toward which the life is organized: leisure. To rest is not to be idle, but to avoid frenetic activity that prevents deep confrontation with who one truly is. To 'rest' is to give up care and anxiety, to cast all one's cares on the One who cares ultimately for us. As Jacque Winandy, former Abbot of Clervaux in Luxembourg, wrote, 'To reform a monastery is to restore its rest'" (2).

This resonates with a point I have been considering for some time now concerning stances toward time, schedules, and the long list of tasks I wish to accomplish. This passage reminds me that I can be at rest regardless of how many appointments and tasks I have in my planner on a given day. I can approach those responsibilities with a frantic attitude, or I can take up each task, one at at time, and honor the work and the people involved with my full attention. When I manage to do that, I am at rest.

I agree with Ms. Thurston and Jacque Winandy that one of the major challenges facing monastic communities is the loss of a sense of leisure, of rest. Perhaps with further reflection, I can contribute to restoring that rest among those with whom I live and work.

The Song of Songs

2011-02-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine - Song of Songs 7:10

The introduction to A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century is written by Bernardo Olivera, a Cistercian monk from Argentina who has served as the Abbot General of the Cistercians. Each contributor to the book was asked to consider what shape and emphasis the world and the church might see monasticism take in the next century. As part of his introduction, Olivera replies:

"Monastic life loses all its meaning if mystical or contemplative union with God is taken away, since it is God himself who calls, purifies, embraces, and transforms the human person by means of the dazzling shadows of divine Love. If monastic life in the future is not a living, updated edition of the Song of Songs, it will have very little to say to tomorrow's generations! Monastic foundations in the future have to be founded on the conviction that without mystery there is no mysticism and without mysticism there is not monasticism" (xv).

The ring I received on the day of my perpetual monastic profession.

In my experience as well, this mystical aspect of the monastic life is the seed for all else that grows from within a monastic community. This aspect is also the most difficult to explain, and perhaps that is as it should be. There may always be understandings that remain just between you and your beloved.

Brothers, Sisters, and Saint Scholastica

2011-02-10T15:18:00.000-08:00

Today is the feast day for Saint Scholastica, the twin sister of Saint Benedict. According to Saint Gregory the Great, Scholastica became a nun, and once a year Benedict would visit his sister for a holy conversation. One year Benedict wished to end their conversation and return to his monastery before nightfall, but Scholastica prayed to Lord, and a great thunderstorm began that prevented Benedict from leaving her that night.

The gospel reading for Mass today is from Saint Luke, and it also tells the story of two siblings: "On their journey Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who seated herself at the Lord's feet and listened to his words" (Luke 10:38-39).

Martha was angry with her sister because Mary was not helping Martha with the household tasks. When she asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her, Jesus gently reprimands Martha by recognizing Martha's anxiety and Mary's willingness to peacefully listen to his teaching.

I find myself pondering the relations with have with our siblings, our sisters and brothers. Perhaps those of us who only have one sibling, whether it be a brother or a sister, may be particularly mindful of our shared history. We have a unique relationship. Even with differences in age and temperament, there is still only one other person in the world that shares some understanding of what it was like to grown up in the years of our childhood in our particular house.

Benedict and Scholastica, Martha and Mary, pray for us, and pray for our sisters and brothers.

You Have Rescued Me

2011-02-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Since Ordinary Time began in January, our community has been reading from the Book of Genesis during Morning Prayer. Today, the reading tells the story of Abram rescuing his nephew, Lot:

"When Abram heard that his nephew had been captured, he mustered three hundred and eighteen of his retainers, born in his house, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He and his party deployed against them at night, defeated them, and pursued them as far was Hobah, which is north of Damascus. He recovered all the possessions, besides bringing back his kinsman Lot and his possessions, along with the women and other captives" (Genesis 14:14-16)

The crucifix behind the altar in the chapel of Queen of Angels Monastery

What does this capture and rescue have to do with us, with the sisters in the chapel of Queen of Angels Monastery this morning? We can read this passage through the lens of Christ and all that he has done for us; we can read with an understanding of everything from which we have been saved.

Christ rescues us from our sins and reconciles us to the Father. He saves us from despair when seemingly insurmountable difficulties threaten to overwhelm us. In the psalms for Morning Prayer today, we also read:

To mortals and beasts you give protection.
O Lord, how precious is your love.
My God, the children of the earth
find refuge in the shelter of your wings. (Psalm 36:8)

May we accept the gift of God's salvation; may it permeate our days with His Peace.

Studying Theology

2011-02-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

Last night I finished reading the novel Great House by Nicole Krauss. I learned about it through the Review-A-Day I receive from Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon.

The novel intertwines several stories around a huge antique desk with many oddly-shaped drawers. The husband of one of the owners of the desk is scholar of the English Romantic poets, and he finds that he studies his wife much in the way he would study a text. At first this may seem cold, but then he says:

"The more I've learned in my life, the more acutely I've felt my hunger and blindness, and at the same time the closer I've felt to the end of hunger, the end of blindness. At times I've felt myself to be clinging to the rim - of what I can hardly say without the risk of sounding ridiculous - only to slip and find myself deeper in the hole than ever. And there, in the dark, I find again in myself a form of praise for all that continues to crush my certainty" (80-81).

Just part of the shelves of books from my theological studies.

In this character's words I also found a beautiful description of what it means to study theology. This character would probably not say that what he is slipping into is the mystery of God, yet that is what I hear behind his words. To move between a hunger that is fed by study and a hunger that cannot be satisfied and to rejoice when our certainties are shattered by the depth of God - this is all part of studying theology.

Prayer and Practicalities

2011-02-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

In The Intentional Life, Cardinal Hume has some advice for the young men who are about to begin their novitiate in his community. Singing the Divine Office several times a day is a privilege and a joy, but that doesn't mean it is always easy. Cardinal Hume:

"If from time to time you find the Office is not going well, if it is becoming a bore I have a couple tips. Make it your practice to look forward to the next office. Advert to the fact, when going to bed at night, that within seven hours you will be in choir praising God in Matins. It is extraordinary what an effect this little device can have next morning. And is is not a bad idea to have a special intention for a particular Office, or a special reason why you want to get up and sing God's praises in the morning. Another thing: find in the Office of the the day a "friend" among the psalms. When the Office is going through a bad patch, a reading of the psalms is an admirable exercise. We have to be practical" (26).

The intentions book outside the chapel of Queen of Angels Monastery with St. Joseph in the background.

This is sound advice from a man who served his community as abbot and saw many young men begin their journey in the Benedictine way of life. Our own intentions book, in which the sisters and our visitors write their prayer requests, is a great source for the intentions he mentions. Cardinal Basil Hume, pray for us.

Monastic Instincts

2011-02-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

One of the speakers for the 55 and Under gathering that I attended last weekend was Sister Karen Joseph, OSB, a member of the Sisters of St. Benedict in Ferdinand, Indiana. The theme of the gathering was "United in Hope," and Sister Karen spoke on a verse from chapter four of the Rule of Saint Benedict, "The Tools of Good Works" - "And finally, never loose hope in God's mercy."

Sister Karen said she found the phrase "monastic instincts" in the work of Cardinal Basil Hume, a beloved Benedictine abbot from England. I found a passage in which he discusses monastic instincts in his book, The Intentional Life. Cardinal Hume:

I do not believe that in a Benedictine monastery all should be treated alike. And let me add - though it may seem a bit over-defensive - I do not think Superiors should necessarily be consistent. The onus is very much on the individual to know when to ask and when not to. "There is no harm in asking," is the comment of a schoolboy, not an adult. This is not intended as an attempt to "tighten up," but rather to pick our way over a very difficult area and to impress on us all, myself included, the importance of frugality and simplicity. The tendency to take things easy is part of the make-up of each one of us.

What I am trying to say is that we should each of us recognize our responsibility and thus cultivate what I call a "monastic instinct." For not only can the spine go out of our prayer life: the entire community can lose its spine (9).

As a monastic, I love reading a book written by the leader of a Benedictine house. The material for The Intentional Life was drawn from conferences Cardinal Hume gave to his own community, yet within that specificity is a universal teaching for all of us monastics. In the end, we are responsible for our choices, our asceticism, and it is those choices that will determine the quality of the monastic life in each of our houses. With God's mercy, we can cultivate our monastic instincts.

Fences

2011-02-04T14:25:00.000-08:00

Today in the literature class I teach for English language learners at Mount Angel Seminary, we finished studying the play Fences by August Wilson. In our final class dedicated to this work, we returned to the epigraph Wilson wrote for this play:

When the sins of our fathers visit us
We do not have to play host.
We can banish them with forgiveness
As God, in His Largeness and Laws.

The fence surrounding St. Joseph's Garden at Queen of Angels Monastery

August Wilson also makes the lyrics from a folk song about a hunting dog, Old Blue, a key part of his play. Troy Maxon, the main character of Fences, sang this song, and his children learned it by listening to him:

Old Blue he died and I dug his grave
I dug his grave with a silver spade
Let him down with a golden chain
And every night I call his name
Go on Blue, you good dog you
Go on Blue, you good dog you

Troy worked hard, and his family and his friends acknowledged that. However, he also caused his family much pain because of his inability to make peace with his flaws and mistakes.

Saint Joseph with our wooden fence in the background.

All of our predecessors, within our blood families and within our religious communities, leave something of themselves with us when they die. Sometimes we are left with their triumphs and graces, sometimes with unfinished difficulties that, until the forgiveness comes, feel like burdens.

Perhaps we cannot truly honor those who came before us until that forgiveness permeates our memories of them. As one of my students pointed out today, by the end of the play Troy's children, Cory and Raynell, do not sing the parts of the song that are about Blue's hard death. They sing about Blue in heaven.

Our Work in the World

2011-02-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

First, a few words from Katherine Paterson, from her book A Sense of Wonder:

"My philosophy of publication goes something like this: Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me. My creative task is done. The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers. I had my turn to make of it what I would, now it is their turn. I have no more right to tell readers how they should respond to what I have written than they had to tell me how to write it. It's a wonderful feeling when readers hear what I thought I was trying to say, but there is no law that they must. Frankly, it is even more thrilling for a reader to find something in my writing that I hadn't until that moment known was there. But this happens because of who the reader is, not simply because of what I have done" (34).

Paterson has a wonderful sense of holding her work loosely, gently, of setting it down in the world after it is finished and waiting to see what happens. Even that waiting isn't anxious; it is a disinterested curiosity more that anything else.

A similar dynamic is present in iconography, and perhaps on an even more profound level. I wrote this image of the Holy Face during the beginner's session of the Iconographic Arts Institute. Since I finished it I have brought it to several of my classes, and I never know how the students will respond. Sometimes it is more technical questions - how was this accomplished? I also always trust that the face of Jesus will speak to them in other ways deep in their spirits.

I did not create the image I have written but received it from the iconographic tradition. Once the image is done, it lives its own life with people bringing to it whatever may be in their hearts. All of that is the sometimes surprising and always grace-filled movement of Holy Spirit.

Sisters

2011-02-02T11:22:00.000-08:00

This weekend I attended a gathering for Benedictine women under the age of 55 in Atchison, Kansas. Sister Vicki Ix, a Benedictine from Bristow, Virginia, has written a lovely post about the gathering and today's Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. See it on her blog, Monastics on a Journey.

Sister Vicki's writing is full of love for the Benedictine way of life!

Sisters of the Love of God

2011-01-07T20:06:00.000-08:00

The community of Sister Benedicta Ward (see previous post) also has a lovely website. Visit it and learn about the life of prayer and work that supports Sister Benedicta's writing and scholarship.

Teaching and Spreading the Gospel

2011-01-07T19:57:00.000-08:00

First, a passage from The Venerable Bede by Sister Benedicta Ward:

Articulate people, especially those consecrated to communicating the word of the Gospel to the English, were constantly in Bede's mind; he was one with them as a priest, and fulfilled his own commission to preach the word by teaching the teachers, but it was not the official clergy only that he had in mind. There was a duty of exposition and therefore learning for every Christian who was responsible for others, a kind of spiritual qualification [now Sister Benedicta includes a passage from Bede]:

But by shepherds we must understand here not only bishops, priests and deacons or even monastic superiors, but all the faithful however small their house may be are rightly called shepherds insofar as they rule over that house with watchful care. (82)

This is a good reminder to all of us who have any kind of responsibility for another person. I think it even applies to relationships that are more mutual than teachers and students, parents and children, such as relationships among peers or friends. We are all witnesses to the Gospel for others, and in that sense we are all teachers. We are all responsible for sharing the Gospel accurately and joyfully.

Prayer

2011-01-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

As we begin the new year and as I've finished reading Introduction to Ecumenism, here is a passage that includes words of encouragement from Theresa of Jesus. The whole of this book is organized around the Church as a koinonia, a communion:

The understanding of the Church as a kiononia and of the real, if imperfect, kiononia that exists among the still divided churches, will require the spiritual and ascetic qualities such as a deep sense of caring and openness, a commitment to dialogue, and a total reliance upon God. As Theresa of Jesus reminds us:

Let nothing trouble you
Let nothing frighten you
Everything passes
God never changes
Patience obtains all. (240-241)

Faberge Eggs

2011-01-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

Part of my current reading, Nicholas and Alexandra, contains a long description of the work of Peter Carl Faberge, the Russian jeweler who is famous for his jeweled and intricate eggs. This in the concluding paragraph of the passage about Faberge:

Faberge himself survived the Revolution, but his art did not. With his workshops broken up and his master craftsmen scattered, Faberge escaped Russia in 1918 disguised as a diplomat and lived his last two years in Switzerland. An artist and purveyor to emperors, he had created works of art that survive as symbols of a vanished age, an age of opulence but also of craftsmanship, integrity and beauty (177-8).

Of course it is best to have pictures of this astounding work, so here is website of a Faberge collector. She includes the history of the Romanovs and of Faberge, the current locations of the Faberge eggs, and a number of videos that capture the beauty of the eggs much better than a still photograph. Enjoy!

Words and Style

2010-12-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

In Dreams of My Russian Summers, a boy growing up in Soviet Russia discovers the French language and culture through his French grandmother. In between visits with her, he has been reading as much as he can about France. In the scene preceding this passage he has shared a poem with a schoolmate about a boy who risked being shot by soldiers. The poem caused his schoolmate to run into the snow with tears in his eyes. Andrei Makine:

And then, that evening I grasped that it was not anecdotes that I must seek out in my reading. Nor words prettily arranged on a page. It was something much more profound and at the same time much more spontaneous: a deep harmony within the visible world, which, once revealed by the poet, became immortal. Without knowing what name to give it, from now on that is what I pursued from one book to the next. Later I was to learn its name: style. And I could never accept the empty exercises of word jugglers under this name. For in my mind's eye, I would see Pashka's blue legs, thrust into a snowdrift on the banks of the Volga, and the reflections of the flames in his moist eyes . . . Yes, he was more moved by the fate of the young rebel than by his own narrow escape from drowning an hour before! (113).

Teaching and the Classroom

2010-12-22T11:00:00.000-08:00

Below is an excerpt from a wonderful essay entitled "A Touch of Class" by Louis Masson in the Winter 2010 issue of Portland magazine, which is published by the University of Portland. Dr. Masson:

. . . for a class is, above all else, a group of people, mostly young people at that. Bring them together in a classroom and they fuse in unpredictable ways, acquiring a shared personality. Very soon in our careers, we teachers remember not only our experiences with particular students but also with particular classes; teaching is, finally, all about people, especially for those of us working our trade in the classroom rather than more impersonal lecture hall. A class is a kind of performance, and as any actor will admit, it is often the audience that triggers how well the performers will do. So much chemistry is at play, and chance throws and mixes the various elements together: where the students come from, their life experiences, the room we meet in, the time of day, the weather, the ages of the students, the opening or closing of the semester - the list of potential catalysts is overwhelming. The art of teaching is brewing these elements with care.

The Work of Mercy

2010-12-19T09:04:00.000-08:00

Toward the end of Fredrick Buechner 's Brendan, Brendan and his companions travel to Wales and meet the monk Gildas. In terms of history, Gildas was a Welsh monk who first recorded the story of King Arthur. It is because of his work that historians find that the Arthurian legends have some basis in fact.

When Brendan meets Gildas, he finds Gildas is missing one leg below the knee. Brendan's response and the narrator Finn's reflection on it bring together many threads of the story, the sadness and the need for mercy. Fredrick Buechner:

I'm as crippled as the dark world," Gildas said.

"If it comes down to that, which one of us isn't, my dear?" Brendan said.

Gildas with but one leg. Brendan sure he'd misspent his whole life entirely. Me that had left my wife to follow him and buried our only boy. The truth of what Brendan said stopped all our mouths. We was crippled all of us. For a moment or two there was no sound but the bees.

"To lend each other a hand when we're falling," Brendan said. "Perhaps that's the only work that matters in the end."

Work's Consolation

2010-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

I continue reading Fredrick Beuchner's Brendan. During their first long voyage, all of Brendan's companions are seasick, and after all of the other consolations he tries to offer, he find all that he has left to offer his sick men are chores on the boat. Fredrick Beuchner:

There are ropes to coil and spare halyards and sheets to sort so they won't tangle. There's such a clutter of stores in the waist you can hardly stir without skewing an ankle. I set them to stowing it all shipshape wherever it best fits. They lash down the water skins. They lay the oars trim along the center of the hull. I make sure the anchor's on top. You need tidiness to hold onto in a stormy world. A monk needs the lauds and prime and tierce of his tidy prayers. A woman needs her cups lined up straight on the shelf. Is it not why Thou madest light the first of all things, my dear, knowing we'd take fright else with everything formless and void and dark on the face of the deep as well as within our own faces? (104).

Embacing Contraries, Ending the Semester

2010-12-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite writing assignments that I offer my writing classes is a paper on embracing a contrary, bringing together two ideas, two actions, two truths that are good and important yet in creative tension with each other. I use the quotation below by Jonathan Rosen to help illustrate embracing a contrary.

I was reminded of this passage today as the semester ends at the seminary and I worked on cleaning up my office. One semester ends and the next will soon begin. The work is completed, yet is also shifts and continues.

Jonathan Rosen, from The Talmud and the Internet:
And so I face a page of the Talmud as I face a computer screen as I face the Western Wall. The unfinished state of things is ancient and abiding. As one of the sages in Pirke Avot’s ‘Sayings of the Fathers’ declared two thousand years ago, "It is not your duty to complete the work; neither are you free to desist from it.’ The rest, one might say, is commentary."

The Venerable Bede

2010-12-13T20:12:00.000-08:00

Today I started reading The Venerable Bede by Benedicta Ward, and she opens the first chapter with this quotation from another historian, David Knowles. Bede, the saint of steady clarity, intercede for us -

David Knowles:
There is no brilliance in Bede but much steady clarity; no overtones and undertones, no subtle intuition, no lightening flash of genius. He lives and writes in the noon-day sun . . . Simple, sane, loyal, trusting, warm-hearted, serious with that ready sense of pathos which has always been a mark of English literature . . . falsehood and vanity of any kind were quite foreign to him . . . a good man who, as he himself said, could live without shame and die without fear.

Liturgy

2010-12-12T12:17:00.000-08:00

The next to last chapter in Benedicta Ward's High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English History discusses Anglo-Saxon prayers. She includes a few passages from the Anglo-Saxon poem Christ 1, a meditation on the O Antiphons used with the Magnificat during the last week of Advent. This is the passage on O Dayspring:

O Dayspring Refulgence of eternal light and sun of righteousness, come and illumine those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Dayspring, brightest of angels sent to men upon middle earth and the sun's righteous radiance, of a brilliance exceeding the stars, you by your own self continually illumine every hour.

Holiness

2010-12-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

Since I am following a line of reading in early English and Irish church history, I've decided to reread Brendan, a novel by Fredrick Buechner. (See the novels page for the addition of work by Buechner). Brednan undertook several sea voyages that became the subject of some of the most popular medieval legends. Here the Abbess Ita speaks with Finn, a young man who will accompany Brendan on his voyages. In this passage Finn is slaughtering a pig, and it reminded me of St. Benedict's teaching that we are to treat all utensils as if they were the vessels of the altar. Fredrick Beuchner:

"It's a smirchy sort of business you're at with that pig, some would say," she said. "There's many a monkish boy either he'd beg out of it or turn green as a toad doing it. But it's neither of those with you, I see. You could be laying the holy table for mass the way you set those cuttings out. That's the deep truth of things too no matter or not if you know it."

Ita's eyes disappeared entirely when she smiled.

"Smirchy and holy is all one, my dear," she said. "I doubt Jarlath has taught you that. Monks think holiness is monkishness only. But somewheres you've learned the truth anyhow. You can squeeze into Heaven reeking of pig blood as well as clad in the whitest linen in the land" (35).

Orthodox Litany for the Evening

2010-12-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

This is a lovely litany that I found in Introduction to Ecumenism by Jeffrey Gros, Eamon McManus, and Ann Riggs. May it be a blessing to you:

That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
We pray to you, O Lord.

That your holy angels may lead us in paths of peace and goodwill:
We pray to you, O Lord.

That we may be pardoned and forgiven our sins and offenses:
We pray to you, O Lord.

That there may be peace in your Church and for the whole world:
We pray to you, O Lord.

That we may be bound together by your Holy Spirit, in communion with all your saints, entrusting one another and all our life to Christ:
We pray to you, O Lord.

The Communion of Saints

2010-12-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

Right now I am reading Benedicta Ward's High King of Heaven: Aspects of Early English Spirituality. In the fourth chapter she discusses the sense of companionship the first English Christians felt with those who had gone before them and how this understanding fit into how they already lived. Benedicta Ward:

This sense of the household of God on earth and in heaven was especially attractive to the Anglo-Saxons in their entry into this new religion; here their existing sense of the value of the kin-group was given a new and lasting dimension . . . Perhaps it was not after all so strange that to see someone in their chosen light, which was that of Christ, should not make for distance but for all the warmth and closeness of real holiness" (57)

Her last phrase here - warmth and closeness - is very appealing. When holiness has touched us in our own communities and families, our relationships with others surely have a warm honesty, a gentleness, that is indicative of true communion.

Writing

2010-12-08T18:24:00.000-08:00

This semester in the literature class I teach for seminarians who are learning English as a second language, I asked them to create their own commonplace book. They included passages from the works we have studied as well as from works of their own choosing. I'm starting to read their completed work, and a few of their selections may appear here. This is one:

What is most divine in the heart of man cannot be expressed in writing.

- St. John Vianney

I am reminded that as good and important as the work is that the class has accomplished over the semester, there is much more that cannot be put into words. We are learning at many levels, some of which are only reached by God.

Embracing Beauty

2010-12-08T18:16:00.000-08:00

Abbey Press, a ministry of the Benedictine monks in St. Meinrad, Indiana, are publishing a series of booklets entitled Notes from a Monastery: The Sacred Way Every Day. The next set of booklets will be available this month, and I wrote the one entitled Embracing Beauty Encountering the Sacred Through Our Senses. Our oblates have ordered and read a number of the booklets in this series, and they have enjoyed them very much. For a taste of this booklet, here is a quotation drawn from The Glenstal Book of Icons by Gregory Collins, OSB:

"Through the symbolism of the icons, access is gained to the absolute otherness of God. One goes through the sense of sight to the One who is beyond all vision."

May all the holy saints depicted in our icons intercede for us and help us to see the beauty in each person we encounter, today and always.

Teaching and Mentoring

2010-12-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

Last night I finished reading Page After Page by Heather Sellers, and toward the end of the book she gives some wonderful advice about how to be mentored well. In essence, we must prepare ourselves for the mentors we find by being worthy of their time and attention through our own preparation. Heather Sellers:

You must take advantage of all the ways you're already being mentored before anyone is going to find you an appealing project to take on. Mentoring is all around you. Get on it.

I know a lot of people who complain. I used to wonder about this a lot. I knew I had been mentored, beautifully. But when I look back on it, I see that I really did my part, too. I was a great mentee. Some people just like to say that want a mentor. They don't seem to really want to know more information. They need an excuse as to why they aren't writing.

Mentors are made by mentees (190-191).

Teaching

2010-11-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

I have added another new page at the top of my blog, this time books on writing. The most recent book on writing I have read is Page after Page by Heather Sellers, a professor of English at Hope College. Graphically this is an imaginative book, and Sellers also as a great sense of humor. This passage is drawn from the chapter entitled "Compost." She seems to be primarily addressing fiction writers, yet her points apply to academic writing as well. No one wants to read a piece of lifeless academic writing either. Heather Sellers:

It's [compost] what happened to you, what stuck onto your soul. My main job as a teacher is to get students to write their compost; compost is where everything fascinating and good is. And it's under you. It's in the backyard of you. Stop going across town. Stop importing stories that aren't really yours. If you aren't dreaming down deep into your own history, your own passions, your actual true, real, daily concerns and obsessions and the shapes of your lived life, you aren't going to be able to improve as a writer. You have to start where you are (119).

The Pillars of the Earth

2010-11-22T15:06:00.000-08:00

I only have about 100 more pages to go with The Pillars of the Earth, and it has been a great adventure. In England this book has also been made into an eight-hour miniseries. You can visit the site for the miniseries here. Enjoy!

Reading and Novels

2010-11-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

I have added a new page for novels at the top of my blog, and it will be updated as I discover new stories. When I take them up in the right spirit (and don't let them keep me up all night!), I consider novels a part of my spiritual reading.

Reading

2010-11-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

One of the characters in the novel The Pillars of the Earth is a young man who was raised in the forest by his mother who taught him to read and memorize stories in several languages. For a time he is monk in Kingsbridge Priory, and under the auspices of improving his Latin, he is allowed to read any book in the monastery library:

Much of what he read was disappointing. There were pages of genealogies, repetitive accounts of miracles performed by long-dead saints, and endless theological speculation. The first book that really appealed to Jack told the whole history of the world from the Creation to the founding of Kingsbridge Priory, and when he finished it he felt he knew everything that had ever happened. He realized after a while that the book's claim to tell all events was implausible, for after all, things were going on everywhere all the time, not just in Kingsbridge and England, but in Normandy, Anjou, Paris, Rome, Ethiopia, and Jerusalem, so the author must have left a lot out. Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended (617).

Iconography Reading

2010-11-20T14:26:00.000-08:00

I have added a new page to my blog, a bibliography of the reading I am pursuing as part of my iconography studies - see the tab for the page at the top of my blog. It will be updated as my reading continues!