Welcome to our “little cloister”
where we
EXPLORE MONASTIC WISDOM FOR EVERY DAY LIVING
Drs. Almut & Chuck with little one
Home of
+The Hildegard Seminar,
+Kierkegaard Masterclass,
+Bach Passionweek Consolations,
+The 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations &
+The “Little School” of Spiritual Formation
All by Chuck Huff
The “inner monastic” is a nice metaphor for the goal of spiritual formation. This image will always be shaped by our prejudices of the true goal, our limited experience, and our own psychological needs and fears. So our progress toward the goal will require constant revision. We can unpack it as the cultivation of attitude (e.g. of longing, of proper detachment), of knowledge, (e.g. of particular practices, but also knowledge of oneself), and of skills (e.g. listening, self-critique). Over this coming Fall, I will begin a series of posts on these aspects of waking your inner monastic. Please join us.
Today we walk with Peter through his courage, betrayal, and desolation at the cock crow. The music is frenetic and the themes are challenging. But Bach has strategically placed soothing moments that show empathy for the sufferer and offer consolation. We will look together at both the difficulties and the consolations, and then suggest a process and practice to bind them together.
Mindful obedience sets us free because it balances the heart on the eternal. Never finished, always imperfect, always getting up again, always needing sound advice from others, always desiring, or wanting to desire, the eternal.
The practice of Lent often distracts us from its point: to return to the eternal. Proper action based on discernment is central to regaining our balance. This is one lesson from the Desert Elders’ idea of obedience.
Three hundred years after the death of Jesus on the outskirts of Jerusalem and 1,000 kilometers away, the habitable margins of the deserts of Egypt were filling up with strange people devoted to becoming more like him. The eldest and most revered of these are called the Desert Elders. Most were native Egyptian villagers and peasants who left their villages and farms to enter the desert and follow more seriously the way of Christ. They were mostly poor, not well educated, and of lower social class. Their language was Coptic, with its roots in the ancient agriculture of the Nile.
The innkeeper in Bethlehem has gotten bad press for many centuries, even though he barely makes a cameo appearance in the story. But, was he really the embodiment of uncaring rejection we make him out to be?
Today we invite you to take a walk, and be gently and graciously aware of the gifts you carry. Cradle what you find in your heart as it would be a baby child.
Let’s visit the desert father Abba Moses and see what we can learn from him.
I gave a talk on the cursing psalms the day after Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists attacked multiple targets in the USA. In these days of renewed war in Europe, what shall we do with our sorrow, our despair, and our anger at such naked aggression, mass slaughter, and soulless calculation for war? Poetry gives us words for our unspoken, and unspeakable, feelings.
Why is it that we fall in love? How do we lose our balance to do this? And isn’t this a good thing, this falling? At the beginning of this New Year, listen to Rumi’s poetry calling you into the wide expanse of this new year. Try something different – slip to one side of yourself and fall in love with this new day.
Hannah is adamant that the figures in the manger scene in our Christmas Angel are Mama, Papa and Hannah. No Joseph, Mary, and Jesus baby. Almut thinks she has a point. “It is deeper, than play,” she says, “We really are Joseph and Mary and Jesus.” Then I saw her vision of the holy in all the ordinary, even in our own ordinary stories. We, today, are the manger, we are Bethlehem.
We will always fall down. Indeed, it is necessary. But grace is available to not despair, to gently cradle hope and to get up again and continue. The gentle powers, and even our own perseverance, are more evident in how we get up again than in how long we manage to walk without falling.
