"See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life."Prologue 20It is the liturgical season of Lent as I write this. Is it for you as well?Many of us spend Lent in clutch mode, interspersed with bouts of guilt when we fall off the Lenten wagon. Suddenly we...
Purpose of the Tool: To help you develop a practice of realizing God’s love for you in the ordinary stuff of daily life. Background on the Tool: God’s love is with us all the time. We just need to open our eyes and ears to this love. The Tool: To adopt a practice...
What is the desire of your heart? To lose 20 pounds, to find a better job, to get your son to pick up his room, to find help with care-taking responsibilities? These may be helpful, but desire of the heart I am asking us to consider is an inner desire that springs...
Purpose of the Tool: To help discern the desire of your heart and take steps to bring this desire to life. Background on the Tool: Every day we make choices in what we do and say that are impacted by what we truly desire. We are not always aware of what these...
Do playing games and The Rule of St. Benedict seem miles apart? On first glance it might seem so. St. Benedict was serious about the search for God and salvation. And the times were uncertain and harsh. Yet Benedict was understanding and compassionate. Might he...
Way back in August of 2015 Esperanza ( "hope" in Spanish), Espy for short, then a four month old kitten, appeared at Amma’s back door. Acting really cute so that Amma Jane and Prior John were enamored, she landed abruptly in the cloister. Well this really disrupted...
I have some sad news to report. We lost one of our faithful members in the cloister of eight. Marcy had cancer and got really thin and weak. Amma Jane and Prior John did all they could to help her. The vet tried hard as well. But when Marcy left the house...
Hello! Hope you are having a good day. Do you ever think about things that happened to you years ago, maybe when you were a child or teenager? This morning I was thinking about my early history, living with my mother, my sisters and my brothers in the "wilds" of...
I was reading the Rule today and came across what Benedict says about cultivating fairness in our lives. The Rule is loaded with instructions about how to treat others with fairness and consideration. He was concerned that the monastics, and by extension, us felines...
Hello! I hope you are curious about the title I gave to this article. It’s an acronym for a way to live within your family, workplace, church or other organizations, and anywhere you go. R-I-C-K is really helpful when we get into those emotion-packed discussions,...