Exploring Monastic Wisdom for Day to Day Living

Exploring Monastic Wisdom for Day to Day Living

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

Jan 1
Jan 1 The 8th Day of Christmas. A Walk, a Poem, and some Spiced Wine

12 Days of Christmas 2020

A warm welcome to you into the new year! On such a day, we do not recommend any heavy spiritual lifting or deep meditation. We propose instead a New Year’s walk to clear the mind and to welcome your body into the new year. Follow this by imbibing Hildegard von Bingen’s spiced wine to warm your hands and heart. There is a recipe at the very end of this reflection.

The 2nd Day of Christmas. Finding good ritual

Dec 26

Dec 26 The 2nd Day of Christmas. Finding good ritual

This COVID Christmas invites us like no other to breathe new life into our rituals. The enforced isolation casts us back on our own resources and on our own tenuous grasp of the holy. But it also opens a space that we can fill with rituals that give structure to our longing. They provide a form, a frame, and an architecture in time that support the slow and painful birth of the divine within us and that bind us together in love. Having abandoned them once, we can now re-inhabit them in that love.

Apr 8
Apr 8 "He went out and wept bitterly." Finding consolation in Peter's regret

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.

Jan 4
Jan 4 The Eleventh Day of Christmas: God with us

Whether or not we have eyes to see, the Christ child is being born, God is with us, the Divine is seeking shelter, all around us. The holy birth is not reserved for Christmas Eve. It happens for us every time again, when we open our heart to a sacred encounter

Jan 3
Jan 3 The Tenth Day of Christmas: Welcoming the Child Within

My daughter has seduced me into learning again how to smile. I have always thought that my smile was a natural and winning one. It is shy, kind, and a bit mysterious and ironic. It is also completely useless when trying to communicate with a 9 month old baby…

Jan 1
Jan 1 The Eighth Day of Christmas: Walking with a Child

Today we invite you to take a New Year’s walk, and be gently and graciously aware of the gifts you carry. Cradle the beginning of the new year as it would be a baby child.

Dec 28
Dec 28 The Fourth Day of Christmas: Walking into the Christmas Story

12 Days of Christmas

What if you, like the shepherds, kings, and other visitors long ago, were able to be there at the manger in Bethlehem? Today we invite you to walk into the story with child like curiosity…

The Second Day of Christmas: Practicing the Presence of God

Dec 26

Dec 26 The Second Day of Christmas: Practicing the Presence of God

On this Second Day of Christmas we invite you to become present to “God with us” and “within” us.

Jan 4
Jan 4 The Eleventh Day of Christmas: Transforming our work

12 Days of Christmas 2018

Work is sanctified in the light of Christmas, and is judged to be of worth, on a shockingly different scale than how economists value it. The work that we often value least, service work, women’s work, is valuable because it is done for others. If we see our work this way, we can bring Christmas into our lives all year.

Jan 1
Jan 1 The Ninth Day of Christmas: Welcoming the Holy

12 Days of Christmas 2018

This is the lesson one draws from the Abbey guesthouse: that we should welcome guests in our lives as we would welcome Christ. But today, after our walk, and the evening prayer, I have become aware of so many more levels to this hospitality.

Jan 1
Jan 1 The Eighth Day of Christmas: Beginning Anew

12 Days of Christmas 2018

It is an historical accident of sorts that in the very season when we remember the birth of the holy one among us, we also celebrate the birth of the new year. On this day of new beginning, then, we will investigate another monastic room as we have done before: this time, the Novitiate, the process by which a person becomes a monastic.

Dec 30
Dec 30 The Sixth Day of Christmas: Pausing at the Threshold

12 Days of Christmas 2018

In our journey so far, we have almost rushed from one room to the next in a most un-benedictine manner. But now we have a significant threshold before us: the door into the new year. With half the pilgrimage ahead of us, and on a Sunday, let us take a meditative Sabbath pause.

Dec 29
Dec 29 The Fifth Day of Christmas: Educating the Heart

12 Days of Christmas 2018

For one quarter of the day, every Benedictine is supposed to do reading from the monastery library. But here is the crucial insight. The point is not to have the reader go through the book. It is instead for the book to go through the reader. How different would we read the Christmas story, if we do not just go through the story but let the story go through us?

Dec 27
Dec 27 The Third Day of Christmas: Creating Sacred Space

12 Days of Christmas 2018

When we pray regularly, we create an architecture in time that allows the transcendent to break through, slowly, imperceptibly – in the way flowing water shapes stone.

Dec 25
Dec 25 The First Day of Christmas: Opening the Gate

12 Days of Christmas 2018

Who is this King of Glory? Oddly, when we open the doors, our royal guest is an infant. And the child comes in the most astonishing and appropriate way, borne by a mother in pain and hope, born in poverty, bound to a life of wandering and homelessness.

Dec 16
Dec 16 Entering the Christmas Season

In this time of expectant waiting, whether your heart is burdened or joyful or some of both, we hope that Christmas soon will find you where you are.

Advent is a pregnant time, a time of expectant waiting. This Advent has been transformed for us because we are indeed…

Mar 31
Mar 31 The Heart of the Desert and the Threshold of Easter

The sorrow of the days before Easter is at the heart of the Desert Elders' teaching. But grief is out of fashion. We prefer to be spiritual.

Mar 24
Mar 24 Cleansing the Self for Service: again, that fiery humility

What to do when we find ourself in the Desert? Welcome our fears with a fiery humility.

Mar 20
Mar 20 Pilgrimage, Interrupted

Our pilgrimage is interrupted by unexpected events. Can obedience to these interruptions be the real journey?

Mar 17
Mar 17 The Obedience of the Desert Elders: a tool for reflecting the true self

When our will bumps up against the will of another, we can discern the desires of the true self.

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