Thursday, May 31, 2007

May 31 - The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

After the angel Gabriel had announced to Mary that she was to become the mother of Our Lord, Mary went from Galilee to Judea to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, soon to be the mother of John the Baptist. This visit is recorded in Luke 1:39-56. Elizabeth greeted Mary with the words, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." Mary burst forth with the song of praise which we call the Magnificat, beginning, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord." We are told that even John the Baptist, still unborn, leaped for joy in his mother's womb. Thus we are shown, side by side, the two women, one seemingly too old to have a child, but destined to bear the last prophet of the Old Covenant, of the age that was passing away; and the other woman, seemingly not ready to have a child, but destined to bear the One Who was Himself the beginning of the New Covenant, the age that would not pass away.
by James Kiefer

Monday, May 28, 2007

First Book of Common Prayer 1549

Almighty and everliving God, whose servant Thomas Cranmer, with others, restored the language of the people in the prayers of your Church: Make us always thankful for this heritage; and help us so to pray in the Spirit and with the understanding, that we may worthily magnify your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006

Saturday, May 26, 2007

we are very small

"Pentecost" by Giotto, c. 1305 Scrovegni Chapel, Padua


May 27 - Pentecost Sunday

"Pentecost" by Emil Nolde, 1909, Nationalgalerie SPMK, Berlin
O God, who on this day taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Book of Common Prayer, 1979

Friday, May 25, 2007

May 26 - Augustine of Canterbury, 605 A.D.

O Lord our God, who by your Son Jesus Christ called your Apostles and sent them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless your holy name for your servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating your Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom you call and send may do your will, and bide your time, and see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006

Thursday, May 24, 2007

May 25 - Bede the Venerable, 735 A.D.

Bede was a monk at the English monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in Northumbria. From the age of seven, he spent all his life at that monastery except for a few brief visits to nearby sites. He says of himself: "I have devoted my energies to a study of the Scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight."
He was the first person to write scholarly works in the English language, although unfortunately only fragments of his English writings have survived. He translated the Gospel of John into Old English, completing the work on the very day of his death. He also wrote extensively in Latin. He wrote commentaries on the Pentateuch and other portions of Holy Scripture. His best-known work is his History of the English Church and People, a classic which has frequently been translated and is available in Penguin Paperbacks. It gives a history of Britain up to 729, speaking of the Celtic peoples who were converted to Christianity during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and the invasion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans in the fifth and sixth centuries, and their subsequent conversion by Celtic missionaries from the north and west, and Roman missionaries from the south and east. His work is our chief source for the history of the British Isles during this period. Fortunately, Bede was careful to sort fact from hearsay, and to tell us the sources of his information. He also wrote hymns and other verse, the first martyrology with historical notes, letters and homilies, works on grammar, on chronology and astronomy -- he was aware that the earth is a sphere, and he is the first historian to date events Anno Domini, and the earliest known writer to state that the solar year is not exactly 365 and a quarter days long, so that the Julian calendar (one leap year every four years) requires some adjusting if the months are not to get out of step with the seasons.
- James Kiefer

Heavenly Father, who called your servant Bede, while still a child, to devote his life to your service in the disciplines of religion and scholarship: Grant that as he labored in the Spirit to bring the riches of your truth to his generation, so we, in our various vocations, may strive to make you known in all the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A Rare Snow Shower in Africa!





Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa, May 21, 2007

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

On the Development of Christian Doctrine - Vincent of Lerins

From the Book of Instructions by St. Vincent of Lerins

Is no religious development possible in the Church of Christ? There is indeed, and it is very extensive. Who could be so jealous of their companions and so hateful to the Lord as to try to prevent such development? But it must be genuinely a development of the faith, not a changing of it. Development implies that a thing becomes more fully itself; change implies the transformation of one reality into another.
There must be extensive growth, then, for individuals and for the whole Body, in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom; but it must be growth in kind, that is, the truth and its meaning must remain the same. Religion in this respect follows the pattern set by the body: the body grows in weight and size and develops its members, yet it remains ever the same body. The flower of youth and the ripeness of old age are quite different things, yet the old person is the same person who was once young. One and the same person’s stature and outward guise changes yet the nature and person are the same.
The following, then is undoubtedly a legitimate and correct rule for the occurrence of true development and of growth in the proper sense of the word: the years reveal in the grown-up those parts and shapes with which the Creator wisely endowed the child.
If the human form were changed into something of another species or if some vital members were added or take away in the course of time, the whole body would either perish or become a monstrosity or, at the very least, be seriously weakened. The truth of the Christian religion follows these same laws of development: time and age can only consolidate it, broaden it, and make it more sublime.
Our fathers in early times sowed the seeds of faith in the field of the Church; it would be very wrong indeed if we their descendants reaped the weeds of error. Beginning and end may be discrepant, then; wheat was planted, wheat must be reaped.

Monday, May 21, 2007

"Off into the Unknown" - Thomas Merton

The peculiar monastic dimension of this struggle lies in the fact that society itself, institutional life, organization, the “approved way”, may in fact be encouraging us in falsity and illusion. The deep root of monastic “dread” is the inner conflict which makes us guess that in order to be true to God and to ourselves we must break with the familiar, established and secure norms and go off into the unknown. “Unless a man hate father and mother…” These words of Christ give some indication of the deep conflict which underlies all Christian conversion - the turning to a freedom based no longer on social approval and relative alienation, but on direct dependence on an invisible and inscrutable God, in pure faith.

- Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Cloudy Morning


Taken by Br. Randy Greve at Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa, May 18, 2007

"In a Tent in this World" - Henry David Thoreau

The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountaintops. But lo! Men have become tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer, and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"The Art of Minimums" - Wendell Berry

As Thoreau so well knew, and so painstakingly tried to show us, what a man most needs is not a knowledge of how to get more, but a knowledge of the most he can do without, and of how to get along without it. The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or have and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums. Granting the frailty, and no doubt the impermanence, of modern technology as a human contrivance, the man who can keep a fire in a stove or on a hearth is not only more durable, but wiser, closer to the meaning of fire, than the man who can only work a thermostat.

- Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Aloe blooming at the monastery

Taken by Br. Randy Greve at Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa, May 19, 2007

Bono at National Prayer Breakfast 2006

Friday, May 18, 2007

May 19 - St. Dunstan of Canterbury, 988 A.D.

O God of truth and beauty, you richly endowed your bishop Dunstan with skill in music and the working of metals, and with gifts of administration and reforming zeal: Teach us, we pray, to see in you the source of all our talents, and move us to offer them for the adornment of worship and the advancement of true religion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2006

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

May 17 - Ascension Day

Almighty God, whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: Mercifully give us faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth, even to the end of the ages; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen
Book of Common Prayer 1979

"A Mysterious Alchemy" - M. Scott Peck

I cannot be any more specific about the methodology of love than to quote these words of an old priest who spent many years in the battle: “There are dozens of ways to deal with evil and several ways to conquer it. All of them are facets of the truth that the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there like blood in a sponge or a spear into one’s heart, it loses its power and goes no further.”
The healing of evil - scientifically or otherwise - can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil.
Then what prevents the destruction of the soul? If one takes the evil itself into one’s heart, like a spear, how can one’s goodness still survive? Even if the evil is vanquished thereby, will not the good be also? What will have been achieved beyond some meaningless trade-off? I cannot answer this in language other than mystical. I can only say that there is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
I do not know how this occurs. But I know that it does… Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.”

- M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

"Kingdom Monitors" - Mike Yaconelli

Painting: "The Incredulity of Thomas" by Caravaggio
When Jesus and his followers show up, it isn’t long before people start pointing fingers and calling names. Jesus was called all kinds of names: wine-bibber (what is a wine-bibber, anyway?), Sabbath breaker, blasphemer. Over the centuries, religious people have refined name calling to an art… According to his critics, Jesus “did God” all wrong. He went to the wrong places, said the wrong things, and worst of all, let just anyone into the kingdom. Jesus scandalized an intimidating, elitist, country-club religion by opening membership in the spiritual life to those who had been denied it. What made people furious was Jesus’ “irresponsible” habit of throwing open the doors of his love to the whosoevers, the just-any-ones, and the not-a-chancers like you and me.
Nothing makes people in the church more angry than grace. It’s ironic: we stumble into a party we weren’t invited to and find the uninvited standing at the door making sure no other uninviteds get it. Then a strange phenomenon occurs: as soon as we are included in the party because of Jesus’ irresponsible love, we decide to make grace “more responsible” by becoming self-appointed Kingdom Monitors, guarding the kingdom of God, keeping the riffraff out (which, as I understand it, are who the kingdom of God is supposed to include).


- Mike Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality

Monday, May 14, 2007

From "A Timbered Choir", by Wendell Berry

Photo: Silver Tree by Br. Randy Greve
Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa

I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives for a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

- Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997

Sunday, May 13, 2007

"Liberation" - Segundo Galilea

Struggle and gratuitousness, liberation and communion, are demands not only of the Christian way, but also (and for the same reasons) of the human condition. They are experiences of the Christian people: a people who work, a people who celebrate communion because they know that the total reality of human beings, both in their relationship to God and to others, is much more than a matter of struggles; because they likewise know that the capacity to celebrate God’s life and covenant with us is already an experience of liberation. This people can live in the night of suffering and injustice while maintaining the light of their faith and hope in God.

- Segundo Galilea, The Future of our Past, p. 39

"Keep Wrestling" - Carlo Carretto

Painting: Jacob Wrestles with the Angel by Gustave Dore, late 19th Century
Union is not yet mature, desire still lacks clarity.
A great struggle is still necessary, and the night is night just for this.
Then daybreak will come, and everything will change.
But as long as we are on this earth we shall keep wrestling, like Jacob on the bridge, with the visible and the invisible, the earthly city and the heavenly city, the natural and the supernatural, the health of the body and the eternal salvation of the soul, the desire to live here below and the hope of going up above, the hunger for bread and the insatiable desire for heaven, the dream of enjoying the seasons of life and the knowledge of entering the one eternal season of the Kingdom.
But the battle is long and demanding.
And we may become limp, as did Jacob, if for no other reason than to remind us that the conquest of God is not in the race, but in the patience of death.
Only afterwards will it be possible to enter completely into the Kingdom, and we shall be mature enough to embrace God chastely and with Him to embrace all creation.

- Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes, p. 51

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Simon of Cyrene

Photo Credit: from "Stations of the Cross" by Chris Woods
Heavenly Father, whose most dear Son, as He walked the way of the Cross, accepted the service of Simon of Cyrene to carry his physical burden for him: grant us each the grace gladly to bear one another's burdens, for the love of him who said, "As you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me," your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

"You Are There!" My Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter

You Are There!

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery
May 6, 2007
Revelation 21:1-6 (The Message)

Revelation 21
Everything New
1 I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, and gone the sea. 2 I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. 3-5 I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new. Write it all down—each word dependable and accurate."
6 Then he said, "It's happened. I'm A to Z. I'm the Beginning, I'm the Conclusion. From Water-of-Life Well I give freely to the thirsty. Conquerors inherit all this. I'll be God to them; they'll be sons and daughters to me
.


When I make friends, when I’ve forged a deep bond with someone, I don’t like saying goodbye - especially if I’ll not see my friend for a long time. Most especially if it’s a forever goodbye. It’s an awkward moment, sometimes tearful, and reminds me of the many good friends to whom I’ve said goodbye, likely never to see again in this life. I always miss them because a friend is one with whom I have shared a gift of life - its joys and pains - of human connectedness that makes me more alive and grateful. It is perhaps appropriate that gifts of such value are not let go of easily.

Often advertising will tempt us with the idea that we can avoid goodbyes - or at least the emotional pain involved - that if we long for emotional connectedness we can simply buy it. The reproduction is as good as the real thing. Listen to what’s written on the back of a bottle of air freshener we have down at the monastery:

How often have you wished that you could capture a moment, a memory, a smell associated with something good! Airoma’s Imagine range of sense-soothing home enhancers is ambience in a bottle freeing your mind, body, and soul! Imagine standing beneath the invigorating shower of crisp mountain falls as it cascades down and surrounds you with all that’s natural. With Airoma’s Mountain Falls you no longer have to imagine - you are there!
I’d love to be free in body, mind, and soul but I don’t think a bottle will quite do it! It’s just chemicals!

Goodbyes are all around us and woven into the physics of the world. Our individual goodbyes are tiny reflections of the end of so much that was intended to last and made to endure. The great structures of ancient Greece and Rome seemed immovable and eternal 2,000 years ago but today are the crumbling ruins of their former glory - battered by war and vandals, wind and rain. Over time, like them, this church will decay. Will monks still be praying here in one hundred years? Two hundred? A thousand? Will anyone remember or know that a monastery was ever here in centuries to come? One day this valley, which was once millions of years ago probably a great river and before that, in ages past, perhaps barren and uninhabitable rock or the scene of volcanic upheaval as the continent was being molded and formed, will say its goodbye. South Africa, the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the whole continent, the whole world, which evolved through eons of fire and rain and struggle to become what we love and care for today is all temporary - only one chapter of the story - is waiting for goodbye. Stuff doesn’t last forever. I am going to die someday. What is flesh and bone, thoughts and feelings, memories and relationships today will one day cease to exist and turn to dust. Your body will cease to exist one day, too.

In the Revelation John is witnessing the ultimate goodbye of all he knows of earthly life - the very earth and sky and sea itself. It is here that the biblical story comes to a close. Having described the ultimate and eternal defeat of the devil and his demons, John gropes for language for what he sees next: the passing away of the old, the coming of the new - new earth, new sky. The story of creation, which began in Genesis, ends right here. There was a time in the past when the earth did not exist. There is coming a time in the future when it will cease to exist. In these last, moving words of scripture, as the arch of time and space as we know it dips down, as all we know of earthly life is consumed and erased, we encounter dramatically and fully the love and mercy of God. God with us and us with God. Our lives completed and fulfilled - free from pain, tears, suffering, death, evil and loss.

While we celebrate with joy the good news of new life, of the Resurrection of Our Lord from the dead on Easter Day, we know as well that the processes of decay and death, pain and suffering, are all too real and very much present. We are in a strange in-between state, a period many theologians have called “already, but not yet”. The reign of Christ on earth is the promise of the kingdom, yet we live in a mixture of its reality and mystery, its presence and absence. It’s here, I’ve seen it, it’s true, but I also have those moments when it all seems like a science fiction novel of a far away place and a distant future that’s far removed from my ordinary life. I trust finally in the promise that I am not now, we are not now, what we will be. That the story is not over, the play has not yet reached a final act. While an existence with God and in community absent from pain, suffering, tears, death - absent all goodbyes forever - seems too good to be true, that is exactly what we are promised. And God always keeps His promises.

When the kingdom fully and completely comes, when hope becomes reality, we will be delivered from all that keeps us separated and we will be fully liberated to live in Christ and He in us, to spend eternity being known and loved and knowing and loving in return. While in this age Christ gives us the sign and seal of presence in his body and blood, in the kingdom it will be his real, living, bodily presence that feeds us.

That’s great for the future, you may be thinking, but today people are suffering, crying, in pain and grief and dying. What about them? We care for the suffering and work to alleviate pain today as signs of Christ’s love and promise and in the knowledge that a future full of joy and free from all pain is coming for those who choose it. John’s vision adds life and urgency to today because as we work to ease each other’s burdens and lighten each other’s loads, we’re moving somewhere - we point to that day when all burdens and loads will be not just eased and lightened but put away and forgotten. Our life in the kingdom, which is what John is describing, is the great reunion and restoration of all we’ve known - all the joys preserved and the pains healed. This hope brings us into the present because our future is decided, a place is prepared for us. Christians never really say goodbye to one another, we say “to be continued”, because whether we see each other in this life again or not, we are members of a larger family, a grander history than time or space can contain - that outlives the very heaven and earth itself. And our home, our destiny, our hope, is to be together in one, big, joyful community for all time in an eternal “hello”.

The Valley Song - Jars of Clay

Afternoon Sun in the Valley


By Br. Randy Greve n/OHC
Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa, May 2007

The driveway on the right leads down to the new monastery building visible in the distance. A wonderful porch overlooks the valley and its eastward facing view provides a panorama for sunrises.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

The Tent of this Kingdom

Welcome to my new blog. In the centuries before the printing press, when books were hand written, it was often the monks, striving away in scriptoriums, who kept copies of the Holy Scripture available. They were the pioneers of mass communication in their day. The blogging monks of the 21st Century are keeping this pioneering spirit alive through the instant accessibility of the Internet, the likes of which monks of the Middle Ages could never have imagined. But here we are!

Guests at the monastery are often curious about the lives of monks. Stereotypical and romanticized ideals about monks and monastic life are "archetypes" to use the Jungian term - wired into our brains from the beginning as a kind of holy other, the ones outside, the mystics and seers, contemplatives and actualized persons we may believe are out there somewhere but somehow not real. Guests come with their archetype and then encounter the reality. Much of the curiosity is around the question "Is my image real or not?"

Hopefully this blog can be one way guests and others who are curious can encounter both our differtness and our ordinariness. I've quite carefully chosen the title from the Rule of St. Benedict because it holds so much biblical and symbolic meaning: tent and kingdom. The tent, Tent of Meeting, Tabernacle, (from the Latin tabernaculo) is rich in Old Testament theological meaning. Kingdom, of course, is the word Our Lord uses to describe the inbreaking reign of God on earth through the hearts of disciplies out into the world expressed in love, mercy, justice, truth, and righteousness. St. Benedict, as he often does in the Rule, conflates the images and mixes them into what is for him the earthly striving toward the heavenly. Our transitory life in time and space is the gift with which we pursue our eternal glory in the presence of the risen and ascended Lord of glory. The Prologue to the Rule is one of the greatest pieces of inspirational theology in the monastic tradition. This verse, coming near the end, is Benedict's rousing final call to holiness; a real holiness that can be run toward today, now. As his urgency and passion pour out in a flood of words, we hear his deep desire for his communities of monks to keep that prize before them and be willing and eager to sacrifice their egos, their wills, their greed, and their status for the eternal prize.

This blog will be our journey together to exploring what it means to live in the tent of this kingdom. Through my own writing and photos as well as the words and images of others, we will face both the struggle and the celebration of the Christian life.

A Valley Scene


Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa, May 8, 2007.