Interrupting the Silence

Category: Monasticism

  • What Is The Songline Of Your Life? – A Sermon On Luke 1:46-55

    What Is The Songline Of Your Life? – A Sermon On Luke 1:46-55

    Are you familiar with songlines? Songlines are a part of the aboriginal life. The aborigines tell a creation story in which creation ancestors wandered the continent singing out the name of everything that crossed their path – birds, animals, plants, rocks, caves, desert brush, waterholes – thereby singing the world and all creation into existence.… Read more

  • Deliver Me From The Hand Of My Brother – A Sermon On Genesis 32:3-31

    Deliver Me From The Hand Of My Brother – A Sermon On Genesis 32:3-31

    We all have an Esau. Individuals, communities, parishes, religious orders, nations, you, and me – we all have an Esau. I am not talking about a literal Esau but a symbolic and metaphorical Esau. That does not mean, however, that Esau is not real. He is absolutely real. Esau is the face of our past… Read more

  • Episcopal Monastics, the Order of St. Helena

    Episcopal Monastics, the Order of St. Helena

    “There has never been a renewal of church life in western Christianity without a renewal of prayer and Religious Communities, in some form or another, often different.” – Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 7/5/13 In some ways the monastic has always stood as a counter-cultural symbol, a subversive immersed in what St. Benedict, in the Prologue to Read more

  • Falling Up – St. John Climacus

    It seems to me that those who have fallen and are penitent are more blessed than those who have never fallen and who do not have to mourn over themselves, because through having fallen, they have pulled themselves up by a sure resurrection…. Nothing equals the mercy of God or surpasses it. To despair is Read more

  • The Last Anchorite

    In a previous post I mentioned Father Lazarus, a hermit on the mountain of St. Anthony. His life is one of detachment, silence, and solitude. Those things are not about absence but rather presence. They are practices and ways of life that open us to the very heart of God. They are interior conditions that Read more

  • Extreme Pilgrim – A Journey to St. Anthony’s Monastery

    The following video (about an hour) is a BBC production documenting the journey of Father Peter Owen-Jones, an Anglican priest, to the monastery of St. Anthony in the Egyptian desert. Father Peter is going to the desert where “there’s no escape, there’s no distraction” and we face and deal with our “issues.” He will live Read more

  • The Seven Rules of a Monk

    These are the seven rules of a monk: In the first place, as scripture says, “Love God with all your soul and all your mind.” Then, love your fellow human beings as you love yourself. Fast from all evil. Never pass judgment on anyone, for any cause. Never do evil to anyone. Discipline yourself and Read more