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! :)

Chimes: Time’s Poetic Parallelism. A Benedictine oblate blog

The Bok Carillon (Bell) Tower, Florida, USA

The Big Ben chimes in our home mark every quarter hour (listen to the chimes software we use).

Hearing the chimes throughout the day turns my mind to see God’s call and opens my heart to hear His voice.

The progression of chimes through each hour creates a kind of time parallelism. This is similar to the way Hebrew parallelism in the Psalms organizes and structures ideas. Read the rest of this blog here.
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Footnotes:

The picture is Bok Tower copied from a post card. Bok Tower is in Florida, USA.   Bok Tower was built in 1929 as a sanctuary for the American people.  It is a favorite place we visit often.  This Bok Tower picture was suggested for this blog by my wonderful wife.  Thank you, good choice.

Our Chimes are Back. A Benedictine oblate blog

My wonderful wife and I try to keep our home monastic quiet except for bell sounds that chime the time — like the chimes we hear from the bell tower at the monastery where we are oblates.

We use and highly recommend PC Big Ben Chimes Computer Software by Aquarius Soft to create such bell chimes if you do not have a resounding grandfather’s clock. The sound from the program is remarkable. We play the sounds on a set of Altec Lansing VS4121 speakers with great resonating bass and one Acoustic Research wireless speaker. We can hear the rich sound throughout the house.

Some time ago we used an old laptop computer to run the PC Big Ben chime program to constantly remind us to pray without ceasing. And of course it reminded us of our visits to the monastery because the chimes from this super program sound just like the ones at the monastery.

OK, so everything was working fine until the old laptop computer broke leaving us in the dark — sound-wise.

A couple of days ago we got a used computer for $75 and now have chimes back in our quiet home. We are very happy and have missed the structure of the day marked by the chimes — like guardrails for our monastic spirits.

“Listen” is the first word in the Rule of St. Benedict. But equally important is the next part of the first sentence in the Rule:

“LISTEN carefully, my son, to your master's precepts, and incline the ear of your heart (Prov. 4:20).

The chimes help incline the ear of our hearts to the precepts of quiet living and prayerful meditations.

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Footnote:

The picture is "Bell of Reconciliation" in Berlin. Photographed by ThunderChild5, thank you.

The picture is "one of the Bells from the Reconciliation Church on Bernauer Strbleepe, Berlin [built in 1884]. This church formed part of the infamous Berlin wall until it was blown up by the East German Army in the eighties.... A new church was built after reunification on the existing site, the bells are now housed in a wooden slatted structure."

Big Ben Chimes Mark the Time for Oblate

One of the additions to our house that has helped in ordering the day — creation of what some people call a family monastery — was the purchase of a big ben chime program that runs on an extra computer and sounds throughout the house on wireless speakers. The chimes are just like the ones at the monastery we visit.

PC Big Ben Chimes, by Aquarius Soft (Elegantly Human)

As an aside, all of the Aquarius Soft products I have are remarkably well designed.