#monastic wisdom

[weeorphan]

The Untamed Beast

Why the Repair Manual Must be Lived You can read a service manual on renovating a gasoline engine cover to cover — torque specs memorized, diagrams understood, procedures clear on paper. But until your hands are black with oil, a bolt snaps, a gasket leaks, and the engine refuses to turn over, you don’t actually know the machine. The knowledge remains intellectual and oddly distant, like maps…

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[acityhermit]

Fear of Death

“Listen to another story. Once a nun wrote to me to say that she was ill and would die if she didn’t have an operation. I wrote to her saying exactly the opposite. She wrote back saying that the doctor told her that she would die in so many days if she didn’t have an operation. I repeated my request, “Have faith; leave it all to God; prefer death .” Later she sent me her response saying that the…

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[laudate117]

"the wise man knows what he knows not"

- Msgr. James Anderson

[dude-gimme-a-beat]

Judgment

What we see in the face and form of Jesus is love, a judgment of love; you are judged lovable, you are judged beloved.

-Br. Curtis Almquist

Full Sermon:  http://ssje.org/ssje/category/sermon/?p=531

Jackie Wilson - To Be Loved

One of my favorite of the SSJE meditations: “a judgment of love”.

[laudate117]

No one fights against me more than my own heart

John Cassian, Conference 18

[captureacloud-blog]

When I ask people if God loves them, they're pretty confident. They go "oh yeah, yeah, of course." But when I asked them, "Does God like you?" they're not so sure.

monk at SSJE monastery, Cambridge, MA

[dude-gimme-a-beat]

Freedom

Our benchmark in life is not to achieve higher mobility – to be the greatest in our little hemisphere of the world – but simply to claim freedom to be: to be wholly and fully who God created us to be, and to welcome others into that same freedom.

-Br. Curtis Almquist

Full Sermon:  http://ssje.org/ssje/category/sermon/?p=343

Funkadelic – You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks

Still reeling from yesterday’s meditation! A whole flood of emotion and memory and realizations snuck up on me from Br. Mark’s words yesterday. Today, Br. Curtis speaks to what is pretty obvious to me at this point, and innately, I think this has just been me forever. The only ambition I’ve ever had in my life is to have and be exactly what Br. Curtis identifies. For a long time, I was troubled by the fact that I didn’t know how to convey that I simply didn’t give a shit about the material world, or “achievement” to other people. So, I was angry. For a really long time, I was angry and people could sense that. And I choked on it a lot. But little by little, I am learning to let go of it, and releasing the anger feels so good – literally like a load is coming off of me. And with it, I’m finding a better voice to interact with people, although in all honesty, I’m still very selective about who I am around. Because the funny thing is, “accomplished” people are even more insecure than me! So what good is the status or the achievement if you feel you’re always comparing it to someone else? Where does it end, and where does inner peace begin? In Boston, where transient, ambitious people now seem to dominate, it’s very easy to suffocate on the egos all around. Even in Cambridge, a perceived bastion of so-called progressivism, people seem to have this lust to demonstrate how good and righteous they are. Yuck. I get mad just thinking about it. The last thing I am interested in is usually the first thing most people ask upon meeting someone. “What do you do?” It’s like a desperate sniffing of the pecking order right from the jump. No thanks. I’ll take Funkadelic and their glorious vibe on my own road, and invite any fellow misfits along with me. I like it that way. It’s a lot more beautiful.

[dude-gimme-a-beat]

Listen

We need to be willing to be called by God. If you are not willing, or if you have no interest, if you are reluctant or hesitant or resistant you probably won't hear the voice of God speaking your name, even if shouted from the housetops.

-Br. James Koester

Full Sermon:  http://ssje.org/ssje/category/sermon/?p=2098

M’Boom – Rumble in the Jungle

Yes, Br. James! This meditation speaks to the necessity of learning to have a mature understanding of God, and what communicating with God entails. Actually, it speaks to communication with anyone – being an attentive listener. Just as we learn to be astute enough to hear people beyond their words – their body language, facial expressions, tone, pitch, choice of words – so too, with God. God has spoken to me through pretty clear signs in my life. It’s actually rarely a voice, although I have had that experience. It may be scriptures, or books, or music, or circumstances, or the voice of another person. Taken as a whole, through a lens of awareness, God gives us signposts along the path. As one of the brothers once said, “listening is not waiting for your turn to speak.” I selected this song because it is a percussion ensemble, yet the piece is nuanced and delicate at spots, a great example of the complexities of composition possible with rhythms. Just as we may expect an all percussion track to be thunderous and massive and blow us away, we may expect God to speak similarly – burning bushes, thunder claps, some big dramatic voice or flashpoint moment. But percussion has a vast range of voices. So does God. God may in fact be whispering to you right now.