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
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.
With his Passion JS Bach has created a grand lamentation. He does not to believe that coping with our fears and sorrows means to keep them in check in order to quickly get over them. Instead his music gives us a container for our sorrows and seduces us into the beauty of lamentation. Joining in this orchestrated experience of mourning can actually be self-soothing and a strategy for resilience in the face of tragedy.
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.
Some women point out rightly that if it had been three wise women, they would have brought different gifts to the holy child, perhaps a blanket and some food, and they might have watched the baby so Mary could sleep. But when we translate the story into our own inward journey, bringing our most precious gifts might not be so inappropriate, after all.
Today, on the last step of our journey though the 12 days of Christmas we invite you to ponder the Divine word within.
Weary from the pilgrimage we seek refuge in some wisdom words by Kierkegaard and Rumi.
Today we invite you to tend to your dreams like you would looking at sacred art.
As it belongs to our human condition to rest in order to grow, the same is true for our spiritual life. On this second Sunday of our journey we invite you to a sacred pause.
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.
With this image of the Christmas star over our home we greet you at this turn of the year. By gracious powers wonderfully sheltered is a much-loved hymn by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that is widely sung in German speaking lands at this threshold. May it comfort you walking into the new 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.
It is in holy birth, that our sufferings and joys intermingle. Come listen and see, and hold your sorrows into Christmas.
On the fourth Day 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.
On this third Day of Christmas we invite you to ponder the “virgin heart.”
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.
Let JS Bach transform your sorrows this Christmas season. Listen, ponder and sing…
