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Showing posts from February, 2017

Kwih-chee-yuh ook-teep ts̓uh-wey-yoos (Land of Rainbows)

By Brother Stavros My brother used to kid me: “Why would a monk cooped up in a monastery all year want to go to an even more remote place for ‘retreat?’” “I don’t know—you’d just have to live here,” I would answer. Truth is, in the heart of every monk or nun lives some fascination for the wilds. I’ve indulged this attraction, usually including water, at places like a small island in Lake George, a big island in Narragansett Bay, and Cape Lookout in Oregon. Most of the time my trip has been supported by benefactor friends, and the time is determined by our two yearly breaks. This February I reached the apex of remoteness: Cape Flattery and the Makah Indian Reservation at the northwestern-most tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. You can go no farther west on this continent without going to Alaska. My northern odyssey was based at a monkish 1950’s motel cabin in Port Angeles with a view of the Olympic Mountains to the south and the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the north.  My ques

Pilgrimage to Canada

  By Brother Christopher “Father, may they be one, just as you are in me and I am in you...”       John 17:21             During the week of the Octave of Christian Unity (January 18-25), Brother Stavros and I had the opportunity to visit two Roman Catholic monastic communities in Quebec, Canada: the Jerusalem Community of Montreal, and Val Notre-Dame, a Cistercian (Trappist) monastery in St-Jean-de-Matta, about an hour northwest of Montreal. How the trip transpired goes back to a brief encounter I had with Dom Andre Barbeau, the Abbot of Val Notre-Dame, over a year ago. In the course of our conversation, he mentioned that his community had long wished to make a connection with an Orthodox monastery, so he asked if some sort of visit might be possible during the celebration of the following year’s Octave? I replied that since we’re a small community, it would all depend on scheduling, but that in principle we would be open to such a visit.             As the months passed