New Skete Monasteries News

By Kenn Knowlton I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am sixty-eight years old and a retired (or semiretired) teacher. I had wanted a dog since I was twelve years old. In my sixth-grade class, a boy named Mike had a collie named Laddy. Every day Laddy walked from Mike’s house to Crestview Elementary School, arriving at the end of the school day, and was waiting at the bottom of the school steps for Mike to appear. Mike and I would greet him, and he would run and play with us in the schoolyard until Mike told him, “Let’s go home.” Laddy would walk at his knee as they disappeared down the street. That memory is what prompted me after I retired to entertain the possibility that I might get a dog with whom I could share the kind of relationship I had witnessed between Laddy and Mike. I’d had space for a dog in my life many times over the years, but from my point of view that was not enough. Many friends and acquaintances had the space in their home for a dog, but not time for a dog. Wha...

By Brother Marc This summer I read The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks, a 2015 New York Times bestseller. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel March , the story of a family man (the father in Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women ) caught up in the terrors and mass destruction of the Civil War.  The Secret Chord paints a fresh portrait of the Biblical figure David as a gifted artist, dedicated visionary, charismatic outlaw, and warrior king. He was a vainglorious alpha male—ruthless when necessary—with great passions and deadly flaws. He struggled with conflicting emotions as husband and father yet was able to deeply repent of his moral transgressions.  The novel takes place around 1000 BCE. It dramatizes the conflict of right and wrong amid the unending brutality of war and political survival . It tackles the tensions between reason and romance, religion and politics, and creativity and survival. We can feel and understand the excite...

On September25th through the 29th, sixteen students attended a retreat/workshop at New Skete Monastery to begin or expand their knowledge of painting icons.   After two years of consideration, research, and planning , Philip Davydov and Olga Shalamova from Sacred Murals Studio in Saint Petersburg, Russia, were signed up to instruct the class.   Philip and Olga guided the students through the process of painting an icon from beginning to end.   The students stayed at the monastery or at a nearby inn, enjoyed their meals in the monks’ refectory, and attended daily worship.   Sister Cecelia, prioress of the Nuns of New Skete and an iconographer for over fifty years, joined the students to experience the difference with working with egg tempera instead of acrylic paint. Group photo of students and instructors. What Makes an Icon? By Sister Cecelia What makes an icon?   That was the question often put to the group who attended New Skete’s first i...