I woke up this morning to a beautiful display of clouds right before sunrise, though I missed sunrise in order to attend Matins (Morning Prayer) at 7:00 AM. Mornings at the monastery are quiet as we observe "The Great Silence" from the end of Compline at 8:30 PM until 8:30 AM. It's always unusual to eat breakfast in silence while in the presence of other people (another of those monastery traditions that seems weird at first, but quickly gets quite comfortable).
Our theme for the youth worker's retreat is water... how it nourishes us, reflections on our baptism, and all those wonderful water thoughts relating to faith (we even have a little "altar top fountain" in the middle of the room). This is good because it rained all day. The bad thing about the rain is that this area doesn't really need any more water right now, having just survived a hurricane and tropical storm in quick succession. That was the cause of a large problem for me because (those who know me will attest) I'm never too far from my blackberry (there's even a YouTube video of me playing guitar in a church rock band talent show thingy wearing that ever present blackberry). I figured out how to get it silent enough so it makes no noise at the monastery... except for AccuWeather's warning tone. Unfortunately they seeemed to feel that I needed to know of a local flood watch several times (luckily not once during worship) and announce each message with a loud long beeeeeeeeeep!
I'll get better pictures of the chapel later, but the one above shows the layout for worship. The monks sit in stalls facing each other and the congregation is in a small "nave" just behind them. A bulk of most of the services is the monks chanting the psalms (they go through all the psalms every two weeks) back and forth to each other. A given worship service might cover 3 or 4 whole psalms so it's significantly longer than what we do in our church on a Sunday morning. Guests are welcome to chant quietly as well once we get the hang of it (which is happening quickly for me now that this is my third visit).
Now it's time for my confession... I skipped one service today (and missed most of another). Something happened to me over the weekend on a drive back from PA and my allergies have been killing me. Mid morning I just could not keep from coughing and decided to bag Eucharist for today. Midway during Vespers (at 5:00 PM) i had to leave for a coughing fit. So I went out to the cloister by a great tree where I could at least listen to parts of the remaining service.
I finally left the monastery grounds and drove up to the Port Ewen Pharmacy (on Br. Bernard's recommendation) a quaint little store that's still one of those "owned by pharmist" operations, where he patiently advised me on what I could add to my drug cocktail to keep from coughing too loudly during worship. I hope it kicks in soon.
The youth workers retreat is great... I'm really surprised more don't show up. There really is nothing else for Episcopal Youth Leaders out there. This evening we shared our favorite resources. Fran (with the guitar) lead a song he learned from a camp in AL. I shared The Way Of Pilgrimage books we used for confirmation a year ago, and I got lots of other good ideas, some useful for the youth... others for the youthworker.
Earlier in the day Br. Julian lead us on a Lectio excercise (a Visio?) where we read and prayed through St. Mark's version of the parabell of the sower (Mark 4:1-9) using a resource from the St. John's Bible. I never heard of this before but it's a newly hand copied and hand illuminated bible that was commissioned by St. John's Abbey in MN. I'll have to check it out in the gift shop later this week.
As I said, it was an extremely busy Wednesday....
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