The Contemplative House. A Benedictine oblate blog

by cohdra

[Click picture to enlarge]

Lectio divina, praying the divine office, the treasured spiritual retreats at a monastery, and time spent at rest in the harbor of silence, are all helped by several home improvements.

Big Ben Chimes. Every fifteen minutes we hear beautiful chimes just like those at the St. Leo Abbey where we visit. Our chimes are played on an inexpensive second-hand computer we bought from a man who repairs and then resells old computers. The computer is connected to a pair of deep bass speakers and another set of wireless speakers located in another part of the house. Every fifteen minutes we are reminded to pray. We use this chimes program. The sound from this program is of very high quality.

Wind Chimes. We like to be reminded of the Holy Spirit and the wind chimes give that reminder in beautiful sounds. Both the Big Ben Chimes and the wind chimes outside our home illustrate that although we often speak of making our home quieter, that is somewhat misleading. What we actually want to do is replace noise from the world with sounds that call us to God's peace and turn our hearts to his path. We have the grandfather chimes from Jacob chimes.

Phone flasher. Silencing the phone is a way to avoid noisy disruptions. We bought the KMFT-793 Krown Strobe Visual Flasher that allows us to see a very subtle flashing light anytime we have a phone call. Although the small flasher is called a strobe, if you are imagining the strobe lights you have seen on emergency vehicles or remember from your college days (oh, boy) — you have the wrong image of the Krown Flasher — the light is subdued and lacks anything that could be called intense.

Prayer chair. Some fortunate oblates have rooms in their homes set aside for prayer. We have not been able to do that, but I have a chair that is used for praying the divine office and lectio divina.

Candles for prayer. I like to light a candle when praying the divine office. We will light a sanctuary-style candle in the weeks before we go on retreats at the abbey.

Incense. I have not used incense yet, but after writing this blog, thought it would be another practice I should try. You can get incense online from the incense shop of Hermits of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel who are in Texas, USA.

Shades open. We like to have as much natural light in our home as possible and are surprised by the number of people whose homes have the shades or blinds shut so the home is always dark. I think people were meant to live in the light.

Home Shrine. We do not have one, but here are some links to pictures of home "altars" or places of prayer. I liked each of these examples of drawing close to God. The links are to a thread about home shrines on the Catholic Answers forum. It is a long thread and I selected some of the most recent pictures. The short descriptions are my own -- my impression of the pictures.

Simple, Benedictine

Icon beauty in gold

Celtic ocean calm

Window cross

Mother and child

Angels protecting

Prayer reading corner

Book stand. My wife reads without one, but I like to use a small wooden book stand when I am sitting in the prayer chair. I use the books The Monastic Diurnal and Benedictine Daily Prayer, both require a lot of flipping back and forth. The book stand helps.

Gardens. This takes the most time and is constantly on our list of projects, but no matter how large or small, some form of garden is part of the monastic pattern.

How does your home help you on the journey to dwell with God?

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Footnotes:

The garden picture at the top of this blog is 000_0008_0001ENHsml.jpg by cohdra and is used subject to license.

I have linked to several of the products we use -- there are places where similar or superior products might be bought and I receive no compensation for the links placed in this blog or any purchases you make. I am not associated with any of the companies listed. You must decide if any of the products would help your home, but I do think it is a sign that the first review on Amazon for the Krown Strobe Visual Flasher said the unit was purchased for a church! :)

The Rule in 2 words. A Benedictine oblate blog

CSIRO Parkes radio telescope

In some ways, the Rule of St. Benedict might be thought of as springing from two concepts, listening and stability. If asked to summarize the Rule in two words, I would use “Listening and Stability.”

Listening is theological and vertical in the sense of the relation to God. Stability is practical and horizontal in the sense of the relation of monks and nuns to their community -- their family.

From the basic principle of “listening” flows the Rule’s chapters on the divine office, 8 to 19; shortness of prayers, 20; and lectio divina, 48; for example (1) — all part of “seeking God” (quaerere Deum (2)).

We might say that the monastic life begins with listening — not asking God to hear us, not wondering how and under what conditions God will “answer our prayers.” The first word of the Rule places its readers in the mode of listening to the divine call.

When one moves from speaking to listening, we are seeking a new world — we seek monastic stillness — we turn down the volume of the world — we want to declutter our lives so we are free to devote all attention to listening. The contemplative life comes from listening.

From the basic principle of “stability” flows the Rule’s chapters on how to live in a monastery under the authority of an abbot. The monastic enclosure marking the boundary between the monk’s life and the world serves to ground stability to a particular place. The Rule’s guidance on living in harmony and without the poison of murmuring tracks back to the idea of monastic stability.

Stability is the first of the Benedictine vows from chapter 58 of the Rule. Monks and nuns make a vow of stability, conversatio morum (fidelity to monastic life) and obedience. It is sometimes said that this is a single constellation of one monastic vow (as distinguished from three separate vows). But you will often hear monks speak about three Benedictine vows.

In summary, do listening and stability operate in different dimensions as the vertical and horizontal descriptions suggest? No, not at all. Such distinctions may even make some Benedictines cringe -- and rightfully so. Listening and stability are not separate concepts. They are linked and assist each other. That's the Benedictine way.

Listening gives direction and substance to how to be stable in a community and why it is important in the first place. Stability leads to the quiet life of conversatio morum — the necessary fidelity to a monastic life centered on listening to God.

For lay people like an oblate following the Rule of St. Benedict much of the power found in listening and stability is readily applicable to life in a family, in a home, outside the walls of a monastery. Many lay people pray the divine office and practice lectio divina. In addition to being Lord and savior, Christ is a fine abbot for any family.

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Footnotes:

Picture is CSIRO Parkes radio telescope in Parkes, Australia. The telescope was made more famous in the movie, "The Dish" which is one of my favorites.

From the Parkes' web site: "The CSIRO's Parkes Observatory is celebrating the International Year of Astronomy and the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On 21 July 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first people to set foot on the surface of the Moon. This remarkable achievement was the realisation of a long held dream of mankind. The television pictures of this historic event were received by the CSIRO Parkes telescope and relayed to 600 million people or 1/5th of mankind at the time."

(1) For explanations of these terms see divine office, reading, and lectio divina.

(2) From MEETING WITH REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE WORLD OF CULTURE ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI Collège des Bernardins, Paris, Friday, 12 September 2008

Monastic life. A Benedictine oblate blog

Lay people living a monastic life: For many people it is the desire for a deeper spiritual life that causes them to follow this little-known and ancient part of the Catholic church.

Benedictine spirituality drew me and my wife to the Catholic Benedictine monastery near our home. We knew something was there for us the minute we walked on the abbey grounds.

Benedictine spirituality is peace, tranquility, and rest in God. For us, we had travelled many years on a spiritual path, and this was like coming to the headwaters of the stream.

Benedictine spirituality is not something added to our lives, it was the conversion of our ordinary lives into a life for God: an oblation.

Liturgy/Lectio is a window. A Benedictine oblate blog

Ora et Labora (prayer and work) is a well-known theme for the Benedictine balance in the lives of monks, nuns, and sisters. But that is exactly why I, as an oblate, also like Benedictine spirituality for my regular life in the world where I have a job, spouse, extended family, and bills like everyone else.

It is not so much that I want to be a secluded monk, but I want a deep spirituality in my regular, ordinary life. Oblate monasticism gives me that balance. And as you can tell, I have been thinking a lot about that lately.

I wrote in the previous blog post that the first word in the Rule of St. Benedict, “Listen,” is the recurring link in the cycle of prayer and work.

And there may be a more elemental way for me to see the Benedictine balance between my life of detachment in prayer and my life of attachment to this world in work.

Liturgical prayer and lectio divina serve as a window. On one side they open my spiritual life to God and on the other side they open the same spiritual life to this world.

What oblates do. A Benedictine oblate blog

Dom David Knowles wrote the following summary of Benedictine life:

“THE LIFE which Saint Benedict wished his monks to lead was one in which full scope was to be given to the growth of supernatural motives and supernatural virtues. It was a life to be passed in the presence of God, with every action and activity directed towards Him. It was, therefore, to be a life without distractions, a life of prayer. In this life there were three chief instruments, liturgical prayer, reading, and work.”

Knowles moves from the detachment principles I wrote about in a prior post to the three activities that ground the Benedictine life in the real world. Those three main Benedictine activities are:

1) liturgical prayer (the divine office — an example here);
2) reading (discussed here in the second post of this blog); and
3) work (illustrated by the picture).

As an oblate (defined), those are also good instruments for a life lived in the presence of God.

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Reference

Quote from:

"The Benedictines," A Digest for Moderns
By Dom David Knowles, page 8
Monk of Downside Abbey
Introduction by Marion R. Bowman, O.S.B.
Abbot of Saint Leo Abbey
The Abbey Press
Saint Leo, Florida
1962
Here is an incomplete, online version of this classic work.

The Picture:

I received the picture from the young daughter of a friend who lives in Germany. Work is a large part of the Benedictine life and perhaps is never better than when it is creative and expresses the beauty of God’s creation.

Change what you don’t like. A Benedictine oblate blog

After my morning divine office, I read the day’s section of the Rule of St. Benedict. Many versions of the Rule divide the text into sections for reading each day so that during the calendar year you will read through the Rule three times. Today I read part of chapter 18 — “In What Order the Psalms Are to Be Said” which states:

“We strongly recommend, however,
that if this distribution of the Psalms is displeasing to anyone,
he or she should arrange them otherwise,
in whatever way he or she considers better,
but taking care in any case
that the Psalter with its full number of 150 Psalms
be chanted every week
and begun again every Sunday at the Night Office.”

St. Benedict (summary of his spirituality and life) illustrates one of the strengths of his Rule in the passage quoted above. He gives an instruction, but also allows for modifications. This shows great trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the wisdom of those who, understanding the principle behind a particular instruction in the Rule, should be free to apply that principle to a particular setting in the future.

I try to apply that Benedictine principle in my life as an oblate. What is the principle to be applied?

There is much freedom in the Benedictine way, but note that along with that freedom there is actually more responsibility — mindlessly following a set of rules misses the deeper point of the wisdom. I must understand the living principle not the dry rule. Very Benedictine.

Contemplative Prayer. A Benedictine oblate blog

Some people find a foundation and structure for contemplative prayer in monastic practices described in some of the earliest Christian writings.

Major Third orders and lay groups are the:

Third Order Lay Franciscans,

Lay Carmelites - Third Order, T.O.C.s or T.O.Carm.s,

Secular Carmelites, Discalced Carmelite Secular Order, O.C.D.s, (1)

Fraternities of St. Dominic,

Norbertine Lay Associations,

Lay Missionaries of Charity,

and my favorite lay associates, Benedictine oblates.

My web site for people just starting to learn about Benedictine oblates is the Oblate Spring.

The lay associates such as Benedictine oblates are “regular” people who live in the world with jobs and spouses, don't wear special clothing, but who often practice Lectio Divina, for example, which is a commonly used method for contemplative prayer, and who also live by the principles of their Order/group as much as their state in life allows.

The association of contemplative prayer with monastic principles is not surprising. Author Mike Casey writes that long ago the term monastic applied to a broader group of people than we sometimes think of today.

Today some people may think of monastics as only monks and nuns who live cloistered lives separate from the rest of the world. In the first several centuries after the resurrection of Jesus, a monastic life also applied to Christians who lived in the world, but who sought a deeper spirituality in contemplative prayer and a more ascetic lifestyle.

In other words, those people today who pursue contemplative prayer in ancient monastic practices are following long-established traditions.

Here is a short video by the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration on Benedictine monastic practices. It is a beautiful, inspiring video. I recommend it to anyone seeking the contemplative life, even while you “keep your day job!”

There are about 2 million Third Order Franciscans, about 30,000 Third Order Carmelites, and about 25,000 Benedictine oblates in the world today.

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Footnote:

As I find links to Third Orders and lay groups since the date of this blog, I will add them to a web page on the Oblate Spring web site. For a list of all the links I have found to Third Orders, please visit here.


There exist two traditions in the Carmelite community. The differences are described here, scroll down to the FAQs paragraph 7.

Oblate Sunday, Part 3 of 4. A Benedictine oblate blog.

Here is Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog on my typical experience at an oblate Sunday at the abbey.

The abbey gives oblates and visitors a great gift by allowing us to meet at the abbey each month. My wife and I remind ourselves that we are being allowed into someone’s home when we go to the abbey — it is the monks’ home.

My wife and I attend the two oblate classes held at the monastery on oblate Sunday. One class is for oblate novices and the other is for oblates. But it is OK for anyone (including visitors) to go to both classes. Many oblate novices and oblates attend both classes.

In the oblate novice class we are going through the Rule of St. Benedict and in the oblate class we going through Sacred Reading, by Mike Casey.

As a Protestant for many years, I have been in many excellent Bible studies. But I have changed my approach to such religious “studies” as a result of oblate Sundays. I am looking at them less and less as academic instructions — less as something new to learn. (Old dogs probably view new tricks the same way.)

In the past I viewed classes as a way to acquire the correct knowledge, but now I attend oblate classes seeking how to live life as a Benedictine oblate. I am looking for insight rather than information.

For me this new approach to a class setting takes more effort and concentration than acquiring knowledge. An analogy is that I may use several ways of thinking and comparisons to see all the meanings in a poem, while reading the same poem simply to know the facts is a less complex task. Certainly there are overlaps when we try to understand a poem or a set of facts, and neither method of thinking or evaluation is exclusive of the other.

Because I approach oblate classes differently than an academic-type class, I spend more time trying to link ideas to other ideas. I also find myself resting in new insights.

But in addition to resting in some insight acquired on oblate Sunday, I also find that my life is carried along through the coming weeks by what happens in the oblate class. And it is not only what happens in the classes — it is the entire oblate Sunday. It is one Benedictine experience.

I am already looking forward to the next oblate Sunday when we will be invited back to the monks’ home.

A Jewel Paid Into the Church Treasury. A Benedictine oblate blog.

I recently had one of those moments when what I “knew” about monasticism was changed into what I “understood” about monasticism.

I have always known that secluded monks pray often throughout the day. But after reading "Saint John Cassian on Prayer" and "The Benedictines," by Dom David Knowles, it became clearer to me, a flash of understanding — monks do not go into the desert primarily so they can be alone, they go to be alone so they can “pray without ceasing.”

Praying without ceasing is the charge by Paul in I Thessalonians 5:17. The heart of monasticism is living to fulfill that command.

Saint John Cassian wrote, “The whole purpose of the monk and perfection of his heart tends toward continual and uninterrupted perseverance in prayer.” 1

Origen wrote, “He prayers ‘without ceasing’ who unites prayer to the necessary deeds and fitting actions to prayer, since virtuous deeds or fulfilling the commandments are included as a part of prayer; for we can only accept the command to ‘pray without ceasing’ as meaning something possible if we mean that the saint’s whole life taken together is one great prayer.” 2

Dom David Knowles wrote about the monk, “He must realize that as a monk he owes this praise to God as his day's piece-work, and that apart from exceptional circumstances it is not a question whether missionary or teacher or student serves God better than he does. This prayer, liturgical and contemplative, is what God wants of him as a Benedictine monk, the peculiar talent that is his, the special jewel which Benedictines pay into the treasury of the Church.”3

This truth about monasticism — a life of prayer — rather than a life as a hermit — helps explain why oblates have always been a part of the larger monastic community and why in the 21st century the number of Benedictine oblates is increasing rapidly.

Many people are seeking a life of deeper spirituality and they are finding it in an expanded and structured life of praying the Psalms as part of the daily Divine Office.


******

FOOTNOTES

1. Page 11, "Saint John Cassian on Prayer," translated by A.M. Casiday

2."Saint John Cassian on Prayer," footnote 25

3. Page 46, "The Benedictines," A Digest for Moderns
By Dom David Knowles
Monk of Downside Abbey
Introduction by Marion R. Bowman, O.S.B.
Abbot of Saint Leo Abbey
The Abbey Press, Saint Leo, Florida 1962
Here is an incomplete, online version of this classic work.



.

Oblate Sunday, Part 2 of 4. A Benedictine oblate blog.

Part 1 is Here.

It refreshes my spirit just to see the other oblates at oblate Sunday at the abbey. Sometimes because of our schedules, I have not seen them in months.

But of course it is not just seeing the other oblates that is an encouragement to me — it is talking with them about what is happening in their lives. It is easy to talk with other oblates because of our common monastic-based practices and interests in Benedictine monasticism.

In Part 1 of this blog, I wrote that oblate Sundays gave me a sense of being part of an old tradition. But from knowing the other oblates, I also have the sense of movement into the future.

Blessings to all oblates, thank you.

The Crafty Oblate. A Benedictine Oblate blog.

[Revised Aug. 13, 2008 11:20 to reformat the material]

This blog is about a common practice among oblates — personalizing the books and materials we read for the Divine Office. This blog is about my recent project to replace card-stock section dividers I made for the book Benedictine Daily Prayer. See the footnotes for background information.

Anyone who is familiar with the book Benedictine Daily Prayer will tell you — often with a groan and a little smile — that if you use this book and similar books, there is a lot of flipping back and forth between sections. BDP does not have all the material needed for each day in one place. If it did, the book would be several volumes instead of one handy volume.

BDP comes with ribbons, but I found them difficult (I could never remember what section each color represented).

I eventually decided that ribbons did not work for me and I needed a better solution.

I tried some stick-on tabs, but while that helped find the various sections of the book, I still needed movable dividers.

About a year ago I made a set of 12 card-stock dividers with tabs. I typed particular Psalms or antiphons on some of the dividers. I loved the way it made finding things so much easier.

Through time, the card-stock tabs became worn and recently I replaced the 12 dividers I made a year ago and even added four new dividers for new texts or sections. The new-improved version of dividers still uses card stock, but now I use tabs from Tabbies. I use an ultra-thin Sharpe permanent colored marker to write the name of the section on the Tabbies. I use Tabbies all the time in my work, but originally thought Tabbies would be too big and bulky, but recently my wife suggested using plastic tabs. She was right.

So, the Benedictine Daily Prayer I use has been spiffed up with some new section dividers that will make it easier for me to have the text I read at hand with less flipping.

I felt downright monkish as I took card-stock, scissors, a ruler, pencil, and made the new hand-made dividers with often-read material. OK, I also used the computer to type the text. But if there were computers in the middle ages, I am sure every monk would have had one too.

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Footnote 1


Benedictine Daily Prayer is a breviary — a book of prayers for daily use. The prayers are primarily the Psalms and Hymns and Bible readings placed in a structure based on ancient monastic traditions.

Another book I use is the very user friendly (no flipping) "Benedictine Weekly Psalter," by Scott Knitter (who has a liturgy blog). Scott's book has the Psalms and canticles in daily order — it is wonderful companion to the BDP because BDP does not use all the Psalms.

Benedictine Daily Prayer is in the tradition of previous books published by monasteries (in this case St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota) “which sought to provide the English-speaking world an unofficial ...edition of the Divine Office for those who sought to pray with the Church in a more simplified manner.”

You can see the Table of Contents and some of Biblical readings in BDP at AmazonOnline Reader. Thank you Amazon.com

Here is an overview and example of a Divine Office. In Footnote 2 is a brief history of the Divine Office and why it is prayed. Its roots go back about 3,000 years.


Footnote 2:

“The custom of reciting prayers at certain hours of the day or night goes back to the Jews, from whom Christians have borrowed it. In the Psalms we find expressions like: "I will meditate on thee in the morning"; "I rose at midnight to give praise to thee"; "Evening and morning, and at noon I will speak and declare: and he shall hear my voice"; "Seven times a day I have given praise to thee"; etc. (Cf. "Jewish Encyclopedia", X, 164-171, s. v. [see article on "Prayer in the Jewish Encyclopedia" and the paragraph heading Number of Prayers in that article]). The Apostles observed the Jewish custom of praying at midnight, terce, sext, none (Acts 10:3, 9; 16:25; etc.). The Christian prayer of that time consisted of almost the same elements as the Jewish: recital or chanting of psalms, reading of the Old Testament, to which was soon added reading of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and at times canticles composed or improvised by the assistants.”

Above material is from the classic 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia in the article on the Divine Office.

Oblate Sunday, Part 1 of 4. A Benedictine oblate blog.

The monthly oblate meeting was this past Sunday at the abbey.

My wife and I had our 1-year-old grandson stay with us on Saturday night and we were not able to get up Sunday morning after a late night with him not wanting to go to sleep, drop him off at his parent’s house in the morning, and drive the 45 minutes to the abbey by 10:00 am — but we should have.

The sequence of events at the abbey on oblate Sundays is:

1. Mass at 10:00 am
2. Oblate novice class at 11:15 am
3. Midday prayer with the monks at about noon.
4. Lunch
5. Oblate class 1:30 pm to about 3:00 pm

These times may not be exact, I do not pay any attention to the time while there, I arrive and move with everyone to each next event.

[Bookstore browsing 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm — this is not part of the planned activities, but many people like to spend time after the oblate meetings looking through the well-supplied book and gift shop at the abbey — often we will hear of a new book in class and want to buy it.]

Most everyone leaves for home between 3:30 pm and 5:30pm.

On most oblate Sundays my wife and I usually stay for vespers at 5:00 pm, because we typically are in the abbey bookstore until it closes at 4:00 pm and we walk the abbey grounds or sit in the front of the church until about 4:40 pm when we go into the church to prepare for prayers at 5:00 pm. So, for us we are usually heading home at 5:30 pm on oblate Sundays.

However, last Sunday we left the abbey to come back home at about 3:45 pm because we were very tired and when we got home we went to bed about 8:30 pm — and we are night owls by nature.

So that's the typical schedule. I included it for those who might not have any idea about the overall structure of an oblate Sunday -- at least at the abbey we know.

One of the primary feelings I have on oblate Sundays is the sense of being part of an old tradition. While memory is a friend to many religious institutions, memory is the guestmaster of monasticism.

How I enter prayer is how I pray. A Benedictine oblate blog.

I have been thinking and writing about silence a lot because I have been reading "Saint John Cassian on Prayer" and because I have had some times away from home in complete silence. I highly recommend both activities. (As an aside, I feel more rested than I have in over four years. It’s bad for the spiritual life to be bone weary and drained of energy for long periods of time. Note to self — don’t let this happen again. It really is true that many problems are solved just by getting enough rest.)

OK, back on track in this blog.... I understand better why preparation for prayer is essential and why it is an important monastic principle.

Saint John Cassian wrote:

"... [W]e need to prepare ourselves before the time for prayer to be as we would wish to be found when we pray, since the mind is shaped in its petitions by its previous state. As we bend ourselves to pray, images of the same deeds or words or thoughts in keeping with our previous condition will dance before our eyes to anger us, or sadden us, or recall former projects and lusts, or shake us with stupid laughter...." "Saint John Cassian on Prayer," translated by A.M. Casiday, pages 12 and 13.

Cassian’s insight into WHY we should prepare for prayer is a good reason for me to spend time in the church before the times for the Divine Office and in silence in my home. I hope to soon return to the abbey for a visit. I will let you know.

A flame in the flower. A Benedictine oblate blog

After returning from a two-week vacation in a North Carolina Smoky Mountains cabin, I have a better understanding of why it is important to have a special location in the home for prayer. It helps create the visual, sounds, and pace of praying in a remote solitude.

The prayer-related objects in my home move me out of sight of the world, favorite music or outdoor sounds help me hear a special type of silence — more like the silence God creates, and the window through which I can see the clouds and trees, give a better sense of God’s pace carrying me through time.

Lighting a candle incorporates and provides all these elements and I have a better understanding of what it can represent in creating the solitude for prayer.

God's Silence is at God's Pace. A Benedictine Oblate Blog.

I am leaving this wonderful cabin in the North Carolina Smokey Mountains just north of Maggie Valley with a better sense of how silence and being away should fill my life as an oblate — I should do more of it!

Silence has been a part of this vacation and I have been reading “Saint John Cassian on Prayer,” translated by A.M. Casiday ISBN 9780728301665. Although the book is not about silence, Cassian’s advice about prayer has helped confirm in my mind that as an oblate in today’s world, I need to devote more time to free my soul from the “cares and anxieties of the world” (p. 13) and “withdraw from all the disturbance and chaos of the crowds so that, while still living in this body, [I] may fit [myself] in some degree to a likeness of that bliss which is promised hereafter to the saints and for us, “God may be all in all.” I Cor. 15:28.” (p. 41)

When I am in God’s silence and I bring to it a silent heart, I can understand what Saint Cassian is writing about.

This evening about 6:30 pm, as I sat on the cabin’s wrap-around porch and watched the clouds/fog move slowly through the trees which are at eye level around the cabin, I understood that the slow pace of the moving clouds, the wind, a light rain, a little white bug flying from one leaf to another, is God’s model of the pace at which my own heart and mind should be moving.

God builds this pace into the silence when we are out in his creation.

The Silence Created by God Comes in Two Halves. A Benedictine Oblate Blog.

After being in a mountain cabin for a week, I have had some rare times of complete silence, and I could sense that this type of silence comes in two halves. One half is quieting my own heart and mind. A prayer or the Glory Be, sheds the inner noise. I know this comes from God.

The second half is also created by God. The second part of silence I experienced became clear to me while sitting here in the evening and hearing only birds and wind in the trees that surround the cabin.

To me, I imagined that God may not want us to seek silence in a soundproof booth.

He himself has provided the second part of a complete silence for the human heart and mind. This is a silence that God intends to wrap us in. It is not a complete absence of sound, it is not sensory deprivation. It is the absence of manmade sounds, but as music is a movement through time, this second half of a full silence is almost soundless, but not completely.

God carries us through time with His sounds, a bird song, a falling twig, and the wind in the trees — a quiet sky.

With both halves of silence in place, I experienced the full silence offered by God — at least at this place along the narrow mountain road.

Silence. A Benedictine Oblate Blog

Silence has been on my mind recently because I am away from home in a cabin that is quiet when the rest of our family group is away on an outing.

While it is good to be with them for many reasons, when the rest of our group is away, the total absence of any manmade noise coupled with my wife and I being quiet makes those times very special while we are here.

We moved some more comfortable wooden chairs to the front porch were the view is better and treasure the whole feeling. We are about 3,500 feet above sea level here.(Remember to read the tiny, hard-to-spot high-altitude instructions if you bake a cake at this altitude!)

It is very rare that I am in a place that has no manmade sound — no car, air conditioning, or airplane noise and no sound of people talking.

A natural quiet is difficult to find.

With a cup of tea and a very tasty piece of cake that has been trimmed of all its burnt crust, it is quiet enough that this silence becomes part of a prayer.

Ask and Try How Other Oblates Pray the Divine Office. A Benedictine Oblate blog

In praying the Divine Office, I have experimented with different places in the house, procedures (lighting a candle was a huge help as was having a dedicated place), and fine tuning what works best for me. Everyone is so different. My advice is to learn about what everyone else does and then try everything to see what works best for you.

There is always room for what works for you in the Benedictine garden.

Click on the picture at the first of this blog to see all the individuals in this garden.

For Benedictine oblates small acts are forever

The Benedictine life is ordered in a comfortable harmony of prayer, reading, and work.

When the entire day is set apart for the Lord, it easier to see why every part of the day, no matter how small, is essential to the whole. The day is built from those small acts.

A good day is not one big accomplishment while everything else is ignored, a good day is when all parts, each small task is done heartily for the Lord or for others.

Benedictines honor every tiny chore especially when done to help others. And long prayers when there is nothing else scheduled are not more meaningful than the one-word prayer (called a monologion) I say when I hear the big-ben clock chimes in the middle of my work. That monologion becomes part of my current project — it lives on.

Every kindness no matter how small has an eternal existence and takes its place as part of the kingdom of God.

Benedictine Balance

Benedictines sometimes talk about the Benedictine Balance. Most often Benedictine Balance is viewed (in somewhat of an oversimplification) as integrating work and prayer (ora et labora) into one mode of living.

Benedictine oblate and author Wil Derkse also notes that he believes Christians can be enriched by other beliefs. He said that "Buddhism, Taoism, [and] the environmental movement appear to be capable of being fruitful in the Christian practice of life." This welcoming view of other traditions is also part of the Benedictine Balance.

With typical Benedictine balance, one of Wil Derkse’s example is the following Zen encouragement: "Before the enlightenment: cut wood and draw water; after the enlightenment: cut wood and draw water."

Background Info.

Benedictines — These are people from all walks and religious traditions who are interested in or live according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule of St. Benedict describes how monks should live communally in a monastery and St. Benedict compiled the Rule about 530 AD. The Rule became the widest Rule used by monks. If you have a general idea of monks in black robes living in a monastery and copying scrolls — it’s probably the Benedictine monks you are thinking about.

Wil Derkse wrote:"The Rule of Benedict for Beginners," Liturgical Press, 2003.

Oblates — (the word comes from a Latin word meaning offering or gift to God) are lay men and women who live in the world, but who follow the Rule of St. Benedict as their circumstances in life allow. Oblates at Catholic and Anglican monasteries come from many religious background such as Baptists or other Protestant traditions.

Work & Prayer — A more historically accurate view of the ora et labora concept is that monks living under the Rule of St. Benedict combined work, reading, and liturgical prayer in a harmonious whole.