New Skete Monasteries News

By Brother Stavros Tragically, there are many crisis zones simmering or flaring around the globe. Ukraine at the moment is simmering: a young country, as nation-states go, with many centuries of border shifts and what we now term occupation. It has a proud history uncomfortably shared with Russia. Both nations emerged from 12th and 13th century Rus’ as a fusion of South Slavic and North Viking tribes. Kiev (Kyiv) is its capital on the banks of the Dnieper River. The penetration of Christianity was a momentous pivot in European history. Kievan Rus’ quickly became a commonwealth of culture and commerce as well as a citadel of education and monastic spirituality. Western Europe, by comparison, was just emerging from the Dark Ages. Some weeks ago at Pentecost this bruised nation mourned the passing of the “spiritual father of today’s Ukraine.” We ourselves remember him. His Beatitude (also known as Cardinal Husar) was born in Lviv. It is important to remember him in ...

By Brother Luke Jaci’s latest litter of 7 puppies was born overnight on June 7-8. This time the process started in the kennel, not in my room. That at least saved me some extra clean-up work. The first puppy was born just before midnight, and almost like clockwork they came out at 1-hour intervals. Only puppy number 6 was a little problematic. The sac was broken, and I saw the tail coming out, but before I could get hold of the puppy it went back up into the track. So, I decided to give Jaci a small dose of Oxytocin. It was at a time when that posed no danger to her or the pup. It worked, and the puppy came out alive. Number 7 followed 30 minutes later. Jaci is a Mom on the move. If you have seen any of my videos of her playing, she is always the first of my dogs to retrieve the chuckit ball, and she can outrun all the other dogs. That characteristic doesn’t go away in the whelping pen. She often moves the whelping pool away from the wall so she can circulate around the outsid...