Benedictine Practices for a Balanced Life

Lynne Smith, OSBLiving in Community, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Benedictine spirituality aims at helping the sisters at Holy Wisdom Monastery live a balanced life. It provides time for prayer, work, leisure and study. We have time built into the day and week for solitude and time with others. The various activities of our days serve to integrate the body, mind, spirit and soul over the course of our lives. Manual labor and service to others keeps us from being in our head all day. Prayer keeps us from expending all our energy outward giving us time to go inward and reflect. Study stimulates our intellect and provides for growth …

Hispanic Family Christmas Sharing Project

Car McGinleyUncategorized Leave a Comment

Christmas delivered early This past Friday, the Sunday Assembly social justice initiative – Hispanic Family Christmas Sharing Project – provided joy, gifts and food to 35 Hispanic families and their 74 children. Together with more than 30 volunteers and 79 donors we raised $14,262.50.  With these generous gifts, we were able to provide each family with Christmas gifts for each child, Christmas-inspired meal kits from our partner at The River Food Pantry, a $250 Woodman’s Market gift card, chocolate treats and a sweet note offering Christmas joy and blessings from the greater Holy Wisdom family. As one of our co-chairs, …

Reflections of a racist nun*

Denise West, OSBLiving in Community, Racist nun, Uncategorized 14 Comments

Did the title catch your attention? I hope so, because it is intentional. I wonder what the world would be like if every morning thousands of white people took a page from 12-step programs and greeted one another with, “Hello. My name is _______, and I am racist.” I was recently diagnosed with the disease of racism. The strange thing is that I made the diagnosis myself, which is really the only way you can know if you have it. The metaphor of racism as a disease (as opposed to racism as individual actions carried out consciously by bad white …

Finding hope in Benedictine life

Lynne Smith, OSBUncategorized Leave a Comment

We are reading an article in chapter* by Sister Ephrem Hollermann, OSB from St. Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, MN entitled “Reflections on the Conversation” (American Benedictine Review 66:4 – December 2015, 391-400). In it she cites an article written by Matthias Newman, OSB, a monk of Saint Meinrad Abbey in Indiana entitled “Dimensions of Hope in the Benedictine Vision (Benedictines 32:2 (Fall-Winter 1977) 67-74; 110-113).” Sister Ephrem found Father Matthais’s article extremely helpful back in 1977 after experiencing 10 years of loss and change early in her Benedictine life following Vatican Council II and multiple deaths in her community. …

Alison Long’s Homily from May 10, 2020

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHomilies, Prayer & Worship, Sunday Assembly, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I have to admit, I was hoping to draw a simpler scripture for my first homily. Maybe a parable or something really easily hopeful considering how heavy the world feels right now. But here we are. An initial reading of these three scriptures is a little grim. We start with the stoning of Stephen and then move into two scriptures that pull pretty heavily on house imagery – which probably feels more hospitable outside of our current safer at home situation, when many of us are longing to be anywhere else. Plus, we get a familiar clobber verse in John …

Holy Wisdom Monastery announces next CEO

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCCR, Friends of Wisdom Prairie, Media Coverage, Oblates, Sunday Assembly, Uncategorized 8 Comments

Middleton, WI, May 8, 2020 – The Benedictine Women of Madison Board of Directors at Holy Wisdom Monastery is pleased to announce the appointment of Charles P. McLimans as the organizations next Chief Executive Officer. He will join Holy Wisdom Monastery on July 1, 2020. Charles McLimans currently serves as president and CEO of The River Food Pantry where he oversees all organizational strategies, while facilitating collaborative opportunities to achieve a fully nourished community. Prior to The River, McLimans served as the president and CEO of anti-hunger organizations including Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin—Wisconsin’s largest food bank—and Loaves and Fishes Community …

Steve Zwettler’s Homily from March 22, 2020

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHomilies, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Sunday Assembly Homily Fourth Sunday of Lent 2020 Steve Zwettler First Streaming of Sunday Assembly Liturgy In Time of Coronavirus Pandemic Readings: Chronicles:  2:34-22-33 Ephesians:  5:8-14 John:  9:1-41 “Sight & Light”      Oh My!  What an historic and unprecedented time right now!  Universities closed, schools closed, businesses closed, churches closed, government services closed sporting events closed, the stock market diving, countries closed—-who would have thought that a month ago that we would be experiencing such social and cultural upheaval?  The Coronavirus Pandemic and social distancing have turned our lives upside—-and as we gather for Prayer—thru this gift of technology and …

Lent – 2020

Lynne Smith, OSBLiving in Community, Prayer & Worship, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Every year Lent offers us an opportunity to reflect on our lives and the values by which we live. Traditional practices such as prayer, fasting and alms-giving draw us first inward in an examination of our living out of Gospel values and then send us out in service to our neighbors.  This year the COVID-19 virus provides an additional challenge and opportunity for reflection and service. Saint Benedict in his Rule tells us to daily remind ourselves that we are going to die (RB 4:47). Rather than a morbid focus on death, this is a call to humility, to remember …