Holy Cross's New Website

Okay, the new website for Holy Cross Monastery is up and running. Still a lot to do, but it's ready for it's "shakedown" cruise. If you spot any typos, do let me know...

Still left to do:

1. Redo the Order's Website (as opposed to the Monastery's website that I just did!)
2. Implement an .htaccess to execute server-side 301 redirects (though I did put HTML-based redirects in temporarily)
3. Add a search engine
4. Add a shopping cart front/back end to process online book store orders
5. Add a Script to auto-generate RSS feeds
6. Migrate the site over to a CMS back-end
7. Add a social-networking site for Associates (possibly Jomsocial?)
8. Add videos highlighting aspects of HCM life including worship, community life, vocations, hospitality ministry, outreach, history of the order, etc.
9. Train the monks to maintain the site
10. Possibly add dynamically-generated Ordo?

Anyway, it's an ambitious project. I'm pleased to be this far with it. Obviously, a lot of content came from the monks (especially the photos from Br. Randy). But as usual I relied on my trusty ORAC running Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Bridge to compile everything and make it look pretty. Thank God for Photoshop scripts! I saved myself a lot of time by creating batch processes to add drop shadows and borders and such.

For the next stage (CMS-Content Management System) I've set up a testing server on ORAC that basically creates an emulation of an Apache Server with MySQL so that I can set up and test my scripts locally before I go live with them.



I'm particularly proud of some of the detail touches like a new Incense order form that is a fill-able PDF form.

The monks say that virtually everyone that books a retreat or comes considering vocation has spent considerable time looking over the website, so having a decent one is an obvious priority. I was glad things worked out for me to help them with it!

As for the videos. I have two of twelve interviews done. Each is a about an hour. Plenty of content coming together already, but I have more B-Roll to shoot (tomorrow I'll get Edward cooking) and won't be able to film much for the next 10 days anyway as the monks are on "Long Retreat."

You see, now that the Guest House is closed it's time to take a break. 10 days of silence and prayer and meditation. We kicked it off with a party, of course (read Bede's description if you're curious), and now things will get deep in a different way.

My project for Long Retreat (since I can't interview any of the monks, anyway) is to build my amplifier. I've got almost all the parts (still need the wood and brass to build an enclosure) and have started assembling the circuit board. I'm substantially modifying the K-12G design using VoltSecond and Bruce Heran's recommendations. I find myself really wishing I had a good bench Oscilloscope with an audio analysis module. Both VoltSecond and Bruce did a lot of trial and error and testing to perfect their builds, and I'm just standing on their shoulders.

Still, the smell of solder is pleases me!

-t

Quiet, peace, and the deep and vigorous life...

From Bede's blog, this nice post...

But the best moment of Thanksgiving for me was in the evening, after supper, when I walked around outside for a bit and experienced a few moments of the intense and almost magical silence that sometimes comes to this spot on major civil holidays. It was so still: there was no traffic on the highways on either side of the river, no boat traffic, either. It was between the tides and the Hudson River had stilled as well, and its surface was a mirror that reflected not only the lights from the buildings on the other side but also the most brilliant of the stars, and that's something we don't often see. In that profound quiet and beauty was the promise not only of peace but of deep and vigorous life. It was a moment of knowing that God never forsakes us and that God's comfort and strength is there just in reaching out for it. (source)

-t

RIP William Sibley, OHC

Br. William, OHC
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

I mentioned the deaths at the Order of the Holy Cross. The latest is Br. William Sibley, who died in the hospital last week. I knew William, though not well. Bede has a really lovely post about his experience of the passing.

Then, when our vigil was over, we closed the casket and had a very simple Requiem Eucharist and expressed our faith and received communion together with the casket in our midst. After the mass was ended, the casket was taken to the door and put into the hearse and then we had a small ceremony that the funeral director has provided for us for many years in which the hearse drives away up our driveway very, very slowly, and I thought of all the years and all the times that I have watched that car go up the drive and disappear around that last curve... (source)

-t

Time and Timelessness

Bede's post this week is a very interesting discussion of those moments when the barriers between this moment and the next or this person and the next seem to dissolve. He describes feeling this way about time itself on his recent trip to Turkey.

I think these experiences are pretty common. I think, in fact, that they happen with both frequency and regularity. But in our radically secular culture we are trained to ignore them. And if they are strong enough that we have to notice them, we almost never, ever mention them to another person. People in our society don't talk about that sort of thing. You have to be someone pretty quirky, like a monk or a teen, to do that. But these experiences of awareness of the spiritual dimension of things are part of life. People who do brain research can even point to the places in the brain where they happen. They are part of the gift of our human nature; God pulling us to that place where boundaries aren't what we thought, and where we are really one with each other and with the world as it is and as it was. Quite a thing for an old man and a young man to share. (source)

Bede also talks about the role of meditation in noticing such things:

I first began noticing it in meditation. Meditation is an old and familiar experience to me, and the technique is part of my ordinary consciousness: attend to your breath (or whatever you're using), when you notice that you've drifted away, bring yourself back to the present, and do that as many times as necessary, with a gentle but firm touch. So if I'm sitting there meditating and find a thought of, say, the city of Sardis in Turkey coming into my mind, I just label it as "thinking", and bring myself back to the present. The trouble is that I'm no longer sure that Sardis is part of the past. What if that ancient city, those ancient ruins, are actually part of my present? This isn't anything that I'm thinking my way into. It's just happening. I can't seem to muster up the energy necessary to regard Sardis as a "distraction", because it seems very much a part of now. (source)

The Bridge in West Cornwall
I've noticed this sort of thing myself from time-to-time. For instance, a few years ago I was visiting my therapist at the time, Mary, up in a place called West Cornwall, Connecticut. It's a beautiful New England village in a small river valley. It is best known for an old-fashioned covered bridge across the Housatonic River. I was approaching this red bridge walking along the bank when I noticed--I mean really noticed--the sight and sound of the river flowing over the rocks in the river. Suddenly I felt as though I was a part of that river and that it was part of me. I sat down on the bank and stayed with the feeling until it began to fade.

It's a wonderful thing to notice, and I think Bede is right that pretty much everybody has these moments. It's too bad we are conditioned to ignore them, as they do reveal something very important about the nature of things.

-t

Bede and Benny Hinn

Bede's blog last week in which he talked about the dead with honesty sparked some predictable controversy about what is appropriate to talk about and what isn't. This is particularly relevant for us bloggers, as the competing goods of privacy and openness contend in the fields of inquiry. Bede's take on this is that in our culture we tend to suppress the "negative" rather than engage it fruitfully:

"I haven't got time for the pain" says the familiar commercial. But what happens when I do the unthinkable and take time for the pain? Well, just to give one man's testimony, when I learned to take time for the pain of a headache a whole area of my life opened up. I saw directly the ways in which I create tension for myself and how my body responds by trying to get me to stop doing this destructive thing to myself. My headaches, particularly the ones that start at the crown of my head and radiate through my neck and down into my back, have become friends instead of enemies, because they warn me that I am harming myself. And this happened just because I took some time and some openness with something that isn't positive. The same is true with death. Those kids need to know about death, and so do we all. We need to know that we aren't going to live for ever in this particular life, and that our time is limited and we don't have any of it to squander. This sense of limitation can push us to open ourselves to each moment and to be alive to what can be accomplished now. It can expand our lives in countless ways. (source)

I agree. A lot of what passes for "being polite" is actually an effort to avoid unpleasantness. But unpleasantness is part of life (and, for that matter, ministry). Overcoming this takes patience and training. Prayer is one way. But I know so many people that pray thinking that they know what the answer to their prayer ought to be and thus they are disappointed. Maybe God has something better in store for your headache than it's remission!

I'm troubled when I see this resistance to God-given-reality manifest in religion. Take Benny Hinn, for example. Got diabetes? If you believe in Benny Hinn and send him money, God might cure you. If not, then you didn't believe enough. This guy feasts on people's inability to let God be God. I'm all for healing prayer--but this guy isn't interested in real healing. (BTW, it's amusing to read the TON of websites that document his various frauds, unfulfilled prophesies, investigations, and heretical theology.) But I digress. The point is, pay attention!

-t

Monastic Honesty

In Bede's blog for this week he talks about two Brothers of the Order who died within a week of each other (during the Order's Annual Chapter Meeting, no less): Br Michael Stonebraker and Br Bernard van Waes. Br. Stonebraker, incidentally, spent some time at the Cathedral here in Toronto and is therefore known to many in these parts. But what's striking about Bede's obituary is that it is plainly honest in the scandalous ways that monastics can be:

Contrary to the projections often sent in our direction, the monastic life is no ideal state, freed from the conflicts that everyone else in life faces, and I do my best not to hide either the joys or the trials of our life in this column. These two brothers were greatly talented and marvelously accomplished human beings and many people were genuinely transformed by their ministries. They also had lives that were deeply marked with hostility, anger and chaos, and both they and the community bore those marks as well. All of this we carried through the days of their dying and as we sang the Office of the Dead for each of them, and we carried their lives, and ours, to the altar at the Requiem Eucharists for them. Michael's funeral was done here at West Park in the presence of his community. Bernard's funeral will be July 14 in Santa Barbara. The ashes of both of these brothers will be laid to rest in the columbarium here at West Park where most of the departed members of our community rest. And of course stories will be told about them for many, many years.

May they rest in peace, and rise in glory. (source)

Every day (except on the community's sabbath day--Monday) the community at Holy Cross gathers for a "Chapter" Meeting to discuss house business and various other things that concern the community. One of the traditions at Holy Cross is to remember departed Brothers by reading his obituary at Chapter on the anniversaries of his death. These obituaries are honest and graceful in the same spirit as Bede's writing about Michael and Bernard. Originally the idea, I'm told, was to help newer members of the Order learn about the personalities of the men who went before them. But the tradition is really much powerful than that, I think, because it models a kind of honesty and charity towards people. We remember them as they were, not as we wished them to be.

This can be disturbing. Some might call it baring the dirty laundry, but I think that this is short sighted. The best way to honor the dead is to remember them accurately. Otherwise we are just spinning myths to suit our needs.

-t

Sunday Vespers

As usual, Bede writes articulately about an experience I have shared, but haven't been able to articulate. Sunday afternoon the monastery after the guests leave is a special time. I find Sunday afternoons to have a similar feeling for me at COTM. It's one of the reasons I stay at COTM for a few hours after everyone has left--I need to feel the building relax around me. I need to know the place as quiet.

Here Bede is reflecting on the Sunday afternoon Vespers service:

Just last week I was thinking of the quality of my attention at Sunday Vespers, and it's quite an interesting thing. I'm not riveted on the meaning of the words, I haven't got the energy. Sunday Vespers is not the time for intense prayer, at least for me. It's a time for sitting in God's lap. I'm not absent from the words of the Psalms and the readings, but I'm not closely focused on them, either. The years have given me the Psalms as a part of my consciousness and they are never absent from me. But at this time I'm conscious of them pretty much in the way that I'm conscious of my bones or my toes. They are there, they are crucial, they carry me. But at this point, they aren't the center of my attention. My attention is more diffuse. I'm taking in the light, the smells, the sounds, whatever is there. (source)

I'm especially moved by his comment "The years have given me the Psalms as a part of my consciousness and they are never absent from me."

BTW, the Order is meeting in Chapter this week and a Superior will be elected on Saturday--so be sure to remember them in your prayers...

-t

Case Studies in Pastoral Care

Bede has the story of a fascinating Pastoral Care encounter he had on a recent plane trip. Those of you interesting in knowing about how Pastoral Care works should check out his blog entry. Here's an excerpt:

But I'll have to say that he takes to it pretty quickly. He's amazingly and genuinely both open minded and open hearted And we haven't been talking very long when he reveals to me that just a couple of weeks ago he gave a talk to the kids he works with about being so dedicated to God that you are willing to have everything taken away from you. He even said that he could see himself being destitute for the sake of his faith. "And who," I say, "do you suppose you were preaching that for?" He guffaws. That's not a word I ever use, but it's the only one that fits this particular response. There's an explosion of laughter and relief and he struggles to get out his answer: "Me", he says.

Ok - I've managed to put a bit of perspective into this situation, and I've suggested a change of view that he can explore and even respect. But here's where it gets really interesting, because here's where stuff begins to flow in the other direction. With a good deal of enthusiasm he gets up and fetches his computer and pulls up a sermon from the Internet. It's where his talk to the kids came from. It's entitled: "God is Enough". And boy, is it powerful. It is by a talented and anointed preacher saying something something that reaches all the way down to the bottom of me. It's a sermon designed to counter the arguments of the Propserity Gospel - the view that all you have to do is believe rightly and act faithfully and you will be rewarded monetarily. And over and over again in the course of a homily of about 5 minutes, this guy drums out: "Whatever your circumstance, whatever your needs, whatever your demands, God is enough." Some of his illustrations are outrageous - they are intended to be. This talk is designed to break through ordinary human resistance with the Gospel. God is enough. (source)

No wonder this guy is my role model.

-t

Back From HCM

Ok, I'm back. Funny how even just three days can really rejuvenate the spirit. I came back to Toronto Saturday evening and had enough energy to even sow some grass seed in the yard and BBQ dinner. The weather has been incredible both in Toronto and West Park.

One of the things I did on this trip was take Bede out for a delicious birthday supper (his, not mine). We ended up going to a restaurant in the Catskills named Peekamoose. We each had an incredible Charred tomato bisque, followed by sauteed Hudson Valley shad roe. Then Bede had another fish (was it salmon? I can't remember) while I had a very nice oven-roasted rabbit. For dessert: flourless chocolate cake for me and some kind of cheese confection for Bede (again, I can't remember the name). All matched with a nice wine, of course. As is our custom, we spent the first hour sipping single malts and talking before we even opened the menus.

One of the interesting things about Peekamoose is that despite the very sophisticated food, the place is no trace of pretension. The owner's kids were trailing around after her, and that just completed the affect of an excellent but-low key affair. Yum.

And yes, there was time for profound moments at the monastery, too. I particularly felt the tug of the eternal while watching the river flow.

You know, I have been coming to Holy Cross Monastery for over ten years! Amazing. And always the place has new mysteries to reveal. This weekend I was noticing how much I loved the silences. I've been living long enough in a city that the silence of a monastery in the country is shocking.

-t

Bede on Holy Week

I commend Bede's blog to you for an account of the Triduum Services at Holy Cross this year. Here's one of the fine moments in that story:

Early in the meal I turned around to get some page of the Liturgy that I needed and there was the full moon - the Paschal Moon - rising over the River. I stopped and looked at it for a while. To my left was a young woman whom we have known, along with all of her family, for many years, and she said quietly: "One of my earliest memories is of seeing the full moon through that window." And I thought: "Oh, my." I have been here for a lot of years, but I was a well-formed adult when I came here. I just thought for a while what it would be like to have always had this place in your consciousness. What does it mean to a life if one of the first things you remember is the moon through the Monastery window? I had a moment of very deep gratitude for being able to carry someone through life like that. (source)

Bede has a remarkable way of being present and available to the moment. I once asked him how that could be maintained "in the world," and he said that it is very difficult to maintain outside of monastic community, but it has been done. It seems that the people that we know capable of maintaining this kind of sensitivity are very disciplined meditators.

This morning at our contemplative Eucharist I had a thought about this. I think much of the talk about meditation is really unnecessary. I'm not even a huge fan of giving much instruction to guide novices as they sit. I think the real key is simply sitting down with the intention to be aware. The preconceived notions of what that awareness will feel or look like--descriptions passed down to us from teacher to student about about non-attachment to passing thoughts and so forth--ought to be self-evident from the practice. "Don't just do something: Sit there!"

My contemplative heart misses the days when I could just sit and adore God. I'm desperate to get to Holy Cross soon. Yes, I know I could "sit and adore" anywhere, but places, liturgies, and people all have ways of helping me return to my best self.

-t

The Present Moment

Bede's blog is particularly good this week. Flooding in the church is fodder for a discussion about the nature of spiritual attentiveness to the present moment....

So if, in retrospect, I go back to that moment, what can I recover? What was the Present Moment, if I had been willing to be there? Well, there was a lot of frantic dashing about, some of which was useful and some of which was merely using up excess energy. There was the feeling of tension and anxiety. There was some feeling of hopelessness while the powers of nature roared outside our door and we couldn't do anything about it. And, if I'm right, there was a rather cosmic chuckle behind things at the thought that we could build a Church on this hillside and forever escape the powers that govern the law that says that water flows downhill. And there is also that freedom that does come with practicing the present moment: the sense that the best and most lasting things about life are behind and beyond and within all that is going on in this present moment. The present moment in fact can liberate or bind us, and sometimes it does both. But, as the old hymn says: "Underneath are the everlasting arms." (source)

-t

St. Nicholas Day

Today is the Feast of St. Nicholas (aka Santa Claus). There is a wonderful collect written for the occasion:

Eternal God, in your great love you gave your servant Nicholas a perpetual name for deeds of kindness on land and sea. Grant that your Church may never cease to work for the happiness of children, the safety of sailors, the relief of the poor and the help of those who are tossed by tempests of doubt or grief; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This sets me to thinking about love--always a worthy thing for Christians to ponder.

My Spiritual Director, Bede, has a great blog that he writes once a week. His post for this week is about Jake the Dental Dog--the very paragon of love...

Jake’s job is to love people. He obviously likes his job quite a lot. He’s not always there when I go to the office, but when he is he roams from treatment room to treatment room spreading love wherever he goes. He delights people and delights in people. He eases the tension that always goes with dental treatment. In between times of wandering through the office he lies in a corner of the reception area, napping. But he’s always glad to interrupt his nap when the call of love arises. He is a real treasure. ....

One of the people Nettie loved most was me. She looked across the street and saw the trouble that was in our house and looked at me and saw the weight of that burden in my life and how heavy it was for me to carry. She knew what to do about a small child sinking under a heavy burden, and she responded as she knew best: she loved me with all her heart. That’s what saved me. I'm not exaggerating: it really did save me, and much of what I have of balance and stability and just plain sanity is due to the love of Miss Nettie Robinson (and also to my Aunt Sarah, another great lover of people) I know how important it can be to love people.

So this Advent, can I take up this vocation? Can I love in the mold of Miss Nettie Robinson, and of my Aunt Sarah? Can I love, just because love is what I am called to as a Christian and as a monk? Couldn’t I be just a bit like Jake, in the ways it would be proper for me to be like Jake? Could I wiggle with all my heart when someone comes along? ...

Amen, brother.

-t

Several Billion Times

Bede, my spiritual director, has a great blog entry this week about the sort of thing driving me crazy right now. Here's a quote:

My whole life is, in fact, part of the search for God, if I will let it be. To find God, I have to find the present moment: God is here, now, not in my fantasies of the future or my ruminations of the past. If I'm going to meet God in my life I have to BE in my life, and that requires practice - constant, gentle, repeated, continuous practice. Come back to this moment where God waits. Come back several billion times. Investigate just why you failed to stay in this present moment, and do it with penetrating honesty and also with gentle humor. Resist the urge to beat up on yourself. Do that several billion times. ...

-t

Holy Cross Pictures...

Some pics from time at OHC....
The Lesser Cloister
The Hudson flowing patiently by the Monastery
The Monastery Church
Another view inside the Monastery Church
This is the Stream that flows by the Little Bear Restaurant in Woodstock, NY

I'm already missing the place again. Thankfully, in my new position I can organize things in a way to make it possible for me to visit more often...

-t

The Monastery Experience

I'm writing this from Holy Cross Monastery. I'm using one of the computers in the library. Yes, they have computers in the monastery. They even have a relatively sophisticated computer network that helps them carry out various functions of their common life (like manage guest house bookings and the ~16,000 volume library and the incense business and on and on). Anyway, so I'm writing this from a computer in the monastery library with a nice view of the Hudson River below. There is a rolling green lawn that slopes down the River. Turkeys graze there tentatively, glancing up at the monastery buildings between bites of insects.

I think the best way to describe life in the monastery is to say that it is simply an effort to organize a community around the intention to know and love God. The brothers do this by organizing their common life and individual practices around ancient means to that end. They attempt to balance the four foundations of Benedictine spirituality: Prayer, Work, Study, and Leisure. More than anywhere I have ever lived, here there is some harmony in daily living. We pray, we eat, we do the little jobs that we are asked to do, and we do this in such a way that we have time for everything in our day. In helps that this happens in the context of extraordinary natural beauty.

I started off my time here on Friday with a meditation retreat. We were practicing the discipline of silence, and it was neat to notice just how simple my life became when I only had to do what I had to do--praying, meditating, eating, resting. But the feeling goes way beyond simple relief from the burden of "normal" life--when you live this way you see things and experience things that change you. They were always there, but it becomes possible in holy living to know them. This is nothing less than the truth of the world offering itself to us at every moment. It's an incredible thing to listen to what the sun rising over Hyde Park has to tell you about time or what your body has to tell you about the evening time.

There will be a lot to do when I get back to Toronto. But really only is one thing necessary--to know and love God. If I can manage that, by shaping my life habits according to my best intentions, everything else will follow--the growth, the kingdom, the happiness, and everything else desireable.

One of my most imporant ordination vows (one that I renewed when the Bishop "Invested" me with the responsibility for COTM in his chapel at the Diocesan Centre last week) is "holiness of life." What else could possibly meant than this, to live in a holy manner? And that's not a vague thing. It's a crystal clear reality that you can feel in your bones if you allow yourself to do so.

I've been coming here to Holy Cross for something like 10 years. I was even married here. And everytime I come it gets a little thinner to me--a little more transparent. And through that thinness I can see deeper into the reality of the holiness I seek behind the monastery, and that's the real treasure of this place to me. The buildings and the chant and the Rule and the way of life point the finger of intention to something grand and powerful and life changing. I'm just going to sit here and let that truth change me....

-t