Thank You, Volunteers! 

Lara DulinVolunteers 1 Comment

Dear Volunteers of Holy Wisdom Monastery,  Words cannot express the value that volunteers have at Holy Wisdom Monastery. Over many years, you have supported this small community of sisters in their mission, and helped guide the monastery toward bringing Benedictine spirituality to the greater community. However you serve the monastery – on the prairie, in the kitchen, at Sunday Assembly, on a committee, as a spiritual guide, at the front desk or elsewhere – know that you are always welcomed and needed here. As coworkers, we look to you for the wisdom, energy and talents that you bring to Holy …

Easter Reflection

Holy Wisdom MonasteryBenedictine Reflections 6 Comments

By Pam Shellberg The biblical story familiarly known as Paul’s Damascus Road experience (Acts 9) is really less a story of his “conversion” than it is a brilliant portrayal of an archetype of a rite of passage or an initiation. As such, it has become, for me, a really meaningful meditation, both on the season of Lent and the resurrection promise of Easter. Paul’s story begins, as initiations do, with separation. A faithful and zealous Jew, Paul was absolutely certain that Jesus of Nazareth could not possibly have been God’s messiah to Israel. Paul’s persecutions of Jesus-followers bear witness to …

A Desert in the Woods 

Holy Wisdom MonasteryBenedictine Reflections 9 Comments

By David McKee opening  the Opus Dei  in this  bardo  intimate  as ever  was  Five days alone in the hermitage—no phone, no internet, no reading, no writing, no music—only the Liturgy of the Hours, many hours of wordless prayer, walking, eating, sleeping and silence—suspending all the usual outer distractions of daily life in order to face all the inner ones—all the things that drop a veil between myself and God—all the false selves for which I have so many names, and the desire to let go of all those names and disappear into the true self that is hidden in …

Good Friday

Holy Wisdom MonasteryBenedictine Reflections 2 Comments

By Roberta Felker, Sunday Assembly, Board of Directors In 1373, reputedly around Good Friday, an Englishwoman lay stricken by what appeared to be a fatal illness, possibly related to the Black Death that had recently returned to Norwich. As it was, she did not die. Her birth name is unknown, but the name she assumed is familiar to us: Julian of Norwich, one of the greatest of the English mystics. In her fevered haze, Julian experienced the first of a series of visions that she recorded in a book entitled, Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love[1]. The Eighth Revelation is the heart of …

Beauty during Lent 

Lynne Smith, OSBBenedictine Reflections 3 Comments

The monastery’s theme for 2022 is beauty. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamozov: “The world will be saved by beauty.” The first image that came to me as I pondered this was that of Vedran Smajlovic playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor in the bombed streets of Sarajevo in 1992. He played each day for 22 days to mark the death of the 22 people killed standing in line for bread during the siege of the city. Hear the story from BBC news.    Beauty can keep the human heart and spirit alive in the midst of suffering. The PBS …

Pushing My Buttons

Holy Wisdom MonasteryBenedictine Reflections 12 Comments

By Leora Weitzman Putting a pebble in your shoe can still be found under Ten Simple Penance Ideas for Lent at CatholicLiving.net. By now, most pebbles have probably gone metaphorical. Still, what if your shoes are already too full of metaphorical pebbles to add any more? Maybe some pebbles already in our shoes can become our offerings. In my case, pebbles of anxiety and sadness about current events are becoming a focus to sit with more consciously in prayer—which means fasting from at least some efforts to numb those feelings. And as for almsgiving… Do you interact regularly with someone …

Limited in Time

Denise West, OSBBenedictine Reflections 20 Comments

“The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent.” So begins Benedict’s brief chapter on the observation of Lent. We should always be preparing for the appearance of the risen Christ. We should always be seeking to rid ourselves of bad habits, practicing self-denial, realizing our faults and living each moment in gratitude for God’s abundant love that pours down on us just as we are.   Since few, however, have the strength for this, we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure and to wash away in this …

reSTORYation: Doctrine of Discovery

Holy Wisdom MonasteryreSTORYation Leave a Comment

Submitted by Sally Bowers and Julie Melton, Friends of Wisdom Prairie In this installment of reSTORYation, we invite you to consider the doctrine that allowed newcomers to this continent to forcibly remove the indigenous people that were already here. We learn the troubling stories of how doctrines and laws dehumanized indigenous peoples through the removal of their mind, body and spirit. We begin reSTORYation with conciliation. Conciliation occurs with truth telling. Conciliation without truth is like trying to bring health without comprehensive diagnosis. A lament emerges from the confrontational nature of truth and the honest response to the truth.1 The …

Breaking Out of Silence: An Invitation to Remember

Holy Wisdom MonasteryLiving in Community 12 Comments

By Mary Chiang With cups already full of all kinds of grief, it’s difficult for me to begin to express myself. Yet too many lives have been lost due to inaction, silence and distraction, I find myself unable to be as I have been, a “safe” and distant observer. I must begin somewhere even if I will stumble along. Because of the caring nature of the Holy Wisdom community, I hope to offer my experience of racialized trauma* from the Atlanta shootings last year. I invite you to honor the lost lives of the following victims of anti-Asian hate, gun …

Lectio Divina: Prayerful Reading of Scripture Part Two

Joanne Kollasch, OSBBenedictine Reflections 1 Comment

As we choose spiritual practices for Lent, we might consider the practice of lectio divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture. (See part 1) This slow reflective reading may be done alone or within a group. The method of lectio divina is often referred to as fourfold: lectio (reading the text), meditatio (reflecting and meditating on the text), oratio (praying from the text) and contemplatio (deep contemplation of the text). “Reading as it were, puts food whole into the mouth, meditation chews it and breaks it up, prayer extracts its flavor, contemplation is the sweetness itself which gladdens and refreshes.” (Guigo …