Welcome to our “little cloister”
where we
EXPLORE MONASTIC WISDOM FOR EVERY DAY LIVING
Drs. Almut & Chuck with little one
Home of
+The Hildegard Seminar,
+Kierkegaard Masterclass,
+Bach Passionweek Consolations,
+The 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations &
+The “Little School” of Spiritual Formation
All tagged Mary
It is in holy birth, that our sufferings and joys intermingle. Come listen and see, and hold your sorrows into Christmas.
On the fourth Day of Christmas, take time to ponder the Mary of the stable and of the Magnificat. We invite you into a Visio Divina meditation on a ceramic Madonna and Child.
A warm welcome to you into the new year! On such a day, we do not recommend any heavy spiritual lifting or deep meditation. We propose instead a New Year’s walk to clear the mind and to welcome your body into the new year. Follow this by imbibing Hildegard von Bingen’s spiced wine to warm your hands and heart. There is a recipe at the very end of this reflection.
This first Sunday of Christmas, take time to ponder the Mary of the stable and of the Magnificat. We invite you into a Visio Divina meditation on a ceramic Madonna and Child.
The tale of three wise kings sounds too much like a fairytale from former times, but, on the second view, it may hide deep wisdom. Aren’t we all know of wannabe kings, who do not rest, until the world bows before them? Much rarer are the real kings who courageously humble themselves to bow before a higher truth. Therefore I like that the kings of Epiphany are supposed to be wise kings. How urgently we need wise leaders in this world, don’t you think?
Yesterday, in arctic temperatures, we went on our New Years' walk over the lake towards Stella Maris Chapel. Our footprints in the snow, and the icy stairs reminded us of a poem by the German poet Hermann Hesse. Hesse knows we often prefer to live with our comfortable selves, and not step out into the challenging new. Here he calls us to health and wholeness, to taking courage, to walking through our farewells, to stepping forward by leaving behind, one step at a time. We share this, our own translation of the poem, with you as a blessing for this day.
I often do not know what to do with Advent, the season of walking towards Christmas. In this time of hustle and bustle we sometimes want to just walk away from it. But this year I was introduced to an Ignatian exercise which leads one to put oneself into the story. It is like reading the familiar again in new ways.
As a Benedictine Oblate, I regularly pray the daily office, and at the end of the day find myself praying the Magnificat. My long apprenticeship as a Protestant metho-bap-terian did not prepare me for the beauty and terror of this praise poem. Through long practice, I have seen deeper levels and more variety of meaning than my initial Calvinist skepticism would have expected. The text has alternatively left me peaceful, puzzled, cold, frightened, hopeful, and comforted.
This is a canticle of justice finally being done, of a deliverer finally coming to the aid of the oppressed. It is part of a long tradition of Hebrew women in scripture who sing pointed praise songs about a deliverer who "triumphs gloriously" in favor of the oppressed...
