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
Winter Solitude Retreat, Feb 20 2021, 10 am - 4 pm (CT), zoom
with Drs. Almut Furchert & Chuck Huff
In the depth of winter, this virtual gathering inspired by RM Rilke invites you into a shared time of rest and solitude: together we read, contemplate, reflect, journal and share, supported by the poetry of wise women and men before us. This year we will bring a brief text by the Danish writer Søren Kierkegaard on the deeper self to help us along. We especially invite those in-midst of life's transitions, at a threshold of life, in times of challenge or change, and also those who are in need to share solitude with others.
If the world around you
gets so busy
that you fear to drown in the noise
retreat to the little things
which your heart can capture
and hold in real time….
Hildegard helps us to see that we have, all along, already been traveling with the wise (wo)men on their journey. This is the journey of the heart to the place where Divine wisdom dwells, away from what we considered urgent and important and towards the living light, who wants to dwell in us.
Birthing the holy is not an easy task. No Spa treatment has it on the menu. But it is the heart of Christmas after all. A humble stable. Birth pangs and exhaustion. A little tender cry of hope. A child. A newborn. Immanuel. God with us...
On this first Sunday in the New Year we invite you to a time of non-doing. Invite gratitude, practice joy, be present.
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.
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.
With this image of the sun breaking into the Sacred Heart Chapel at Saint Benedict's monastery, MN on New Year's Eve we greet you one last time in 2020. Von guten Mächten wunderbar geborgen (By gracious powers wonderfully sheltered) is a much-loved hymn that is widely sung in German speaking lands at the turn of the year. May it grant you peace and consolation at the end of this year…
Instead of simply saying good riddance to this Annus Horribilis, we invite you for a time of gracious recollection and redemption. You can do this by walking in silence, by looking back on the reflections of this 12 day journey so far, or by taking some time to look with kindness on your life using the practice we provide.
Today we muse on the difficulties and distractions of the way before us and we invite you to deepen your heart, and to (re)visit or practice some aspect of this shared journey. Do not lose heart, dear one. Take courage.
We live in challenging times, thrown back more than usual onto the small communities of our household. You may have suddenly found yourself becoming a caretaker or a parent again. Or found yourself lonely and longing for someone with whom to share your solitude. So now more than ever we need to practice the art of solitude and especially to learn how to share places of solitude.
This first Sunday of Christmas, take time to ponder the Mary of the stable and of the Magnificat. We invite you into a Visio Divina meditation on a ceramic Madonna and Child.
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.
Let JS Bach transform your sorrows this Christmas season. Listen, ponder and sing…
This Christmas Eve might be the darkest and quietest night for many, one not seen in a life time. It might well be the night which brings us closest to the original Christmas. No busy church services calling for attention. No big family meals to prepare or plan. No last minute shopping in overflowing malls. Thrown back onto ourselves we walk into this night wondering, quietly, pregnant with the unknown …
