Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!

Although she has been helping out on dish teams, reading at prayer regularly, and working at a community ministry for more than a year, yesterday was a special day, indeed. The Erie Benedictine community welcomed Jackie Small as a postulant, the first part of the journey toward discerning a monastic vocation with our community.

The ceremony, which involves knocking on the door to the welcome and blessing of the women who create the community, is simple, yet touching. I still remember looking at the group of people in front of me when I knocked three and a half years ago and seeing those women who would teach, guide, listen, and accompany; it was a bit overwhelming and so full of gratitude

Whatever Jackie ends up discerning for herself, we are graced with her presence in the here and now, and we offer our prayers of support to her. Of course, I might be a bit biased, but I hope her journey with the community lasts and lasts and joy and more of it.

Jackie is a wise woman, a passionate voice, and a true seeker. Yay for us all!

This was the minute no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.
She did not cry, “I cannot, I am not worthy,”
nor, “I have not the strength.”
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.

(Consent, by Denise Levertov)

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Happy Dirt Day!

Today is a gorgeous, sunny day here in Erie, the perfect day for Jackie Small, our upcoming newest postulant, to move into the monastery. It also happens to be Earth Day, a perfect day to celebrate the new life that Easter brought us this weekend. As I took a walk in the sunshine today, I listened to a fantastic episode of On Being featuring the poet Sharon Olds. In it, she read a poem called Ode To Dirt, and I couldn’t help posting it here on this feast of our planet, our land and waters so in need of the new life and love that we can offer to them.

Also, enjoy a photo of Jackie holding dirt, or to be more politically correct, soil. One of Jackie’s resolutions, as she tries on monastic life, is to grow a deeper appreciation for nature. Call this photo “forced growth” on my part, a pre-official-entrance foray into conversatio morum.

Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,
I thought that you were only the background
for the leading characters—the plants
and animals and human animals.
It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space
in which to shine. Subtle, various,
sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain,
you’re our democracy. When I understood
I had never honored you as a living
equal, I was ashamed of myself,
as if I had not recognized
a character who looked so different from me,
but now I can see us all, made of the
same basic materials—
cousins of that first exploding from nothing—
in our intricate equation together. O dirt,
help us find ways to serve your life,
you who have brought us forth, and fed us,
and who at the end will take us in
and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Welcome, Jackie!

Waiting—“Triduum at the Monastery” edition

Triduum has been a most blessed time here at the Mount. And now, “This is the night.” Here is a bit of a photo log from the past few days.

The tables waiting for Holy Thursday dinner...

The fog waiting to clear on Good Friday morning...

This year’s Good Friday Peace Pilgrimage focused on the climate crisis. Cherylann was a beautiful Mother Earth, waiting to begin the Stations...

Processing down State Street to Dobbins Landing, waiting at the crosswalk...

The Vigil candles lit walking into chapel, waiting for the day to break...

The Tenebrae candles ready for prayer, waiting to be lit...

Flowers waiting to be placed...

The Easter cloth unfurling over the balcony, waiting to be seen...

The Easter fire, waiting to ignite us into “Alleluia”...

The Exultet waiting to be proclaimed...

A chickadee feasting at the window, waiting for me not to look...

How I’ll feast tomorrow!

The wait is over. Gone is the night.

Happy Easter everyone!

Let us walk in the Holy Paschal Presence.

A Weekend of Wonders

This past weekend held much magic and wonder:

• An early-morning bike ride in which the day slowly revealed itself
• The first hammock sit/read of the year
• An incorporation of Mary Oliver poetry into a Lenten reflection
• A pitch-perfect Passion Sunday Liturgy
• A gearing-up for Holy Week via practices and anticipatory Spirit
• A birthday celebration gathering/garden blessing/friend sing-along

It was just lovely. 

Private Lives

Allan Peterson

How orb-weavers patch up the air in places
like fibrinogen, or live in the fence lock.
How the broom holds lizards.
How if you stand back you will miss them
afflicted by sunset,
the digger bees mining the yard,
birds too fast to have shadows,
the life that lives in the wren whistle.
You will see moth-clouds
that are moving breaths
and perhaps something like the star
that fell on Alabama
through the roof of Mrs. E. Hulitt Hodges
and hit her radio, then her.
No, you must be close for the real story.
I remember being made
to stand in the corner for punishment
because it would be dull and empty
and I would be sorry.
But instead it was a museum of small wonders,
a place of three walls
with a weather my breath influenced,
an archaeology of layers, of painted molding,
a meadow as we called them then
of repeatable pale roses,
an eight-eyed spider in a tear of wallpaper
turning my corner.
The texture. The soft echo if I talked,
if I said I am not bad if this is the world.

Let us seek and find the smallest of wonders in this holiest of weeks.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Interculturality

This past weekend we enjoyed an inter-community formation gathering in Villa Maria, PA, as we do a few times each year. Fr. Tony Gittins, CSSp was the presenter; he spoke on intercultural mission, and he was quite a fine presenter at that. Tony used the sessions to help define for us interculturality, distinguish it from multiculturality and crossculturality, and incorporate these ideas into the Christ life and discipleship.

Tony even admonished us to never put our race on a form; always write in the word "human," as is the truth of our shared life. This made me think of these words from Joseph Campbell, this week's poem for National Poetry Month.

The divine manifestation is ubiquitous,
Only our eyes are not open to it.
Awe is what moves us forward.

Live from your own center.
The divine lives within you.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen,
but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.”
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere.
The world is a match for us.
We are a match for the world.
The spirit is the bouquet of nature.

Sanctify the place you are in.
Follow your bliss...

Let us walk in the holy presence.

total bliss imbibing the gift of morning in the natural world

Poetry, Again...Or Always

It's that time of year again; April marks National Poetry Month—a rather joy-filled time for all of us lovers of verse. So, in keeping with tradition, I will exclusively post poems this month.

Naturally, I begin with Mary Oliver. This selection, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?, is a bit longer than usual, but it came to mind during some recent conversations I've had about showing up as our whole self—a not-so-often-easy thing to do. First we must discover the truth of who we are, and then we must live that truth with integrity. From my young understanding, it takes a lifetime. Read about Mary Oliver's own journey of discovery.

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
     of other lives—
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
     hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,
     feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
     with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
     the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
     that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
     in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
     continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
     with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left—
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
     from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
     the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
     not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
     with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
     god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
     present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
     in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

—

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

—

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
     to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
    caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

—

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
     is coming with its own heave and grace.

—

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
     upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

Cheers to poetry! Cheers to the journey!

Let us all ramble back home.

Let us walk in the holy presence.