New Skete Monasteries News

Reflections by Brother Luke When I entered the Monks of New Skete back in 1995, all the monastery cooking was done by monks. Even the abbot pitched in from time to time, since he also loved food and loved to cook. After all, the monastery table was a central part of our life and the core of the tradition of monastic community and hospitality, so it was unthinkable that someone other than monks would prepare the food. After we turned the corner into the new century, monks were still the cooks. Brothers Elias, John, James, and Peter took turns at the stove. And the Italian roots of Father Laurence and Brother Elias were still very much in evidence on our monastic table.  However, as we moved further into the 21st century and witnessed the change in our house demographics, we realized that we were going to have to make some changes in the way we managed our community meals. With our abbot retired and Brother James moving on to become a parish priest in Georgia, we were down ...

By Brother David Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation.   (Rumi) We recently (October 17, 2015) had an excellent retreat about silence.  We talked a lot about silence.  A lot.  Then we heard a piano concert with Mr. Haskell Small, who performed his piece A Journey in Silence: Reflections on the Book of Hours as well as Bach’s B minor Partita, with an encore of “For Aline” by Arvo Pärt.  (Terrific concert!)  So we said a lot about silence—in PowerPoint and Symphony (for the Mac users) no less!  And heard music about silence.  So, where was the silence in all this talk and presentations and concertizing? At this point I had considered presenting you, dear reader, with two and a half pages of single-spaced blank with a final statement: “There! There’s silence!”  I decided against that for three reasons: 1: It wouldn’t be silence; it would be only blank space. 2: It would be intellectually lazy. 3: Anna...