Good Zeal

Tonight I was reading a pdf document on the computer that was shrunk down to a miniscule font. Being too lazy to right-size the text with the cursor, I just squinted and read on. When I got to the part of the document about the Prayer of Confusion I was,…

These days of mid-December have always felt a little awkward to me. On the one hand, we still are still draped in the shawl of Advent, with the color of violet filling the chapel and the O Antiphons filling our O-shaped mouths with the sound of longing. On the other…

With as many scripture readings as we proclaim during the course of our daily liturgies, we regularly encounter unpronounceable names that must be pronounced – out loud and in public and in a liturgy – which means it’s important to get it right. Sometimes we ask one another how to…

Yesterday, on the weekend between the departure of the demolition crew and the arrival of the earth movers who will smooth and shape our hillside, I took a walk across the upturned earth of the demo site. I don’t know if I was supposed to be there because caution tape…

Structures which our Sisters have inhabited for generations have been falling all around us…and none of us seem upset. I’ve heard no moans, no sighs, no poignant words of regret. Our guests routinely bemoan the loss of Mary Hall, the old Rafter Room, etc. and say things like “The Sisters…

Mid-way through Lauds this morning, during a silent pause between Psalms, the demolition crew began their day by toppling sections of the old cellar walls next door and trying to burst through the concrete foundation. The giant excavator’s ferocious work sent repeated jolts through the chapel that we didn’t just…

This morning, brick by brick, I dismantled my day in prayer. Lingering in the quiet chapel after Lauds I took the day apart before it even began, letting my plans, my constructions, my assumptions, my dreams absorb back into God like the nighttime dew absorbs back into the day. Sure,…

Lately I’ve had a few administrative tasks added to my usual duties here at the monastery. I’ve never done much administrating so it’s been, as they say, a learning curve. But it’s not just a new set of tasks to learn. It is the taking on of a whole new…

Here in the southland (and maybe other places, too) we have an expression for folks who don’t exactly see eye to eye. “They just don’t geehaw,” we say. Or perhaps they do see eye to eye, but they still somehow manage to work at cross purposes despite their best intentions….

When the earth trembles, is there someone to hold her hand? When she shivers with cold, does the firmament drape a warm wind across her shaking shoulders? When her hidden springs well up into a torrent of tears, do the heavenly hosts comfort her with a lullaby? On these cold,…