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! :)

Listening to a "silent" church. A Benedictine oblate blog.

The art, designs, forms, and symbols in the interior of a church are a language that speaks to those who enter. See the blog The Silent Sanctuary Speaks I wrote a few days ago.

This language of art and designs — which is mostly unknown to me — spoke of four functions. At least that is what I thought I could hear murmuring as I sat on the pew and looked around at the cool church before the monks came in for the Divine Office.

CARRYING ME SAFELY TO THE MASS.

The interior of the church contained pictures of angels and I recalled Psalm 91 which is part of Compline Divine Office and that wonderful verse, “For God commands the angels to guard you in all your ways. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”

I knew that these visual stories were intended to help strengthen me and carry me in safety.

RECALLING GOD’S WORKS.

I sometimes look at a stained-glass window and the book or an animal or container it depicts along side the saint.

If I have a general idea of what the scene is about, I will do some study to learn about the major themes in that saint’s life and I can sometimes learn more about what work of God is being shown and that I should have readily in my mind.

It is exciting to try to solve the mystery of what’s being shown in the stained-glass window.

If this interests you and you want to help my current mystery, I think the stained-glass window at the top of this post is St. Benedict at the cave of Subiaco, the bread on the rope is from monk Romanus who supplied Benedict out of Romanus’ own allowance. The bell is so that St. Benedict will know the bread is there. I think the bird and the cross tell the story of when Benedict was assailed by temptation.

But what is the blue jar or vase? And I think there is an hour glass? Is the hour glass for knowing when to pray the liturgy of the hours?

I think the stained glass window’s scene is from Chapters 1 and 2 of “The Life of Our Most Holy Father Saint Benedict,” by Pope Saint Gregory the Great.

Here are some beautiful pictures of the Subiaco cave.

CLEANSING THE MIND.

The cloud of witnesses and acts of God spoken of by the church’s interior help me shed the anxieties of the world, the interior of the church holds my heart and mind on God. I have found no place better than the interior of a silent yet speaking church for this important part of prayer.

SUPPORTING THE LITURGY.

Liturgy — public acts of worship — are aided by the language of the art, forms, and designs in the church — like a choir singing.

I miss going to the abbey church. Maybe I can go next week.

God knows how to plan a vacation. A Benedictine oblate blog.

I am back from two weeks in a North Carolina cabin — thanks to the generosity of my wife’s parents.

The cabin was up a steep, winding, gravel road so just driving to and from the cabin from the main highway gave us all the sense of getting away.

While at the cabin I read “Saint John Cassian on Prayer,” translated by A.M. Casiday ISBN 9780728301665. The silence of the mountains helped me see why remote living was sought out by the earliest desert monks.

I wrote before about such remote silence not being silent at all and that such places are not inactive, but move at God’s pace. Both the God-created sounds in such silence and the pace of day are easy to see.

The songs of three or four different birds could usually be heard, there were butterflies and large moths everywhere, flowers added color where the sun hit the ground, trees towered above and all around the cabin except for the view into the valley in Haywood County, NC, USA, and the local people were especially kind to us — without exception. Mountain people deserve their reputation for neighborliness, and we hung hummingbird feeders after we saw a hummer fly up and look into our kitchen window the second day we were there.

Wishing you and I were both there!

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.