New Skete Monasteries News

By Brother Christopher     It’s no secret that within the Orthodox Church monasticism has often been extremely critical of the Church’s involvement in ecumenism. Particularly since the Orthodox Church’s participation in the World Council of Churches and the renaissance of Athonite monasticism in the 1970s and 1980s, there have been strong anti-Western and anti-ecumenical voices coming from Orthodox monastics who see engagement with non-Orthodox on social, cultural, and religious levels as leading the Orthodox Church down a perilous path of betrayal, departing from its inheritance of being the one true Church of Christ. The thinking goes that since the Orthodox Church is exclusively the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church on earth, possessing the fullness of truth, the only possible justification for Orthodox involvement in the ecumenical movement is one of witness with the aim of converting non-Orthodox to Orthodoxy. Since that hasn’t happened and the likelihood of...

By Sister Cecelia The scriptural admonition to “Pray always” led me to the monastery so that I could learn how to pray always. After many years of even doubting that prayer was doing any of us any good, I have come to believe it does. How it does, takes a big leap of faith, which requires a huge change of heart and mind. Jesus warned his disciples against hardening their hearts. A hardened heart cannot grow or expand. The Pharisees were consistently blinded to the gifts Jesus was bringing because they tried to fit him into the strict rules of who they understood God to be. Getting a glimpse of the meaning of God’s unconditional love was the trigger to delve further into what I understood God to be. I knew, and know, that the Infinite God cannot be understood by our finite minds. Yet, God gave us many talents, and using our minds to understand life better is a challenge for all of us. If we divide our life into natural (profane) and supernatural (mystical), it is a little difficul...

  By Brother Luke   Friday, January 7, 2022. Whoosh, out the door go my three dogs. Ready as always to play outside, hoping to head off into the woods. Today it is snowing, and that just adds to the excitement.           I have been spending some time working on a new hiking trail up the northernmost peak of Two Top mountain, usually with my dogs and sometimes even with volunteers. Mostly it's just me and the dogs and the woods. We have a large property, over 470 acres, much of it mountainous. The brothers tried farming in their early years here, only to discover that this terrain is not ideal for that endeavor. Our work with dogs, both training and breeding, is much more confined. However, the woods are ideal for hiking, and this is a great outlet for our dogs as well as for guests and our neighbors. Our hiking trails are open to the public. Fuller and Amira at the beginning of the new trail up Two Top Mountain  On the new tra...

  By Ralph Karow It’s hard to believe, but I’m actually coming up on my two-year anniversary of living at New Skete. I came in January 2020 as a Resident Volunteer to get some exposure to Orthodox music and liturgy before heading off to St Vladimir’s Seminary in September 2020. It was only supposed to be for three or four months. Then along came the quarantine, and Br Christopher asked me, “Why don't you  just stay?” Hopefully he's not now thinking, “Why don't you just leave?!” I'm joking, of course, but since I had and still have no intention of becoming a candidate here, it would be a valid question. For myself, I'm experiencing far more spiritual and theological growth than I could have ever expected or even hoped to attain in the seminary. Now that’s all well and good for me, but I have to wonder why the monks are willing to let me stay.             There are practical reasons for my being here … able-bodied worker...

 by Bonnie Moore Having just retired from 25 years of parish ministry as a United Church of Christ pastor, I jumped at the opportunity to spend five weeks at New Skete as a Volunteer Resident.  I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing after retirement, and I imagined that the time spent at the monastery might provide some solid time for discernment. I was assigned, primarily, to work in the puppy kennel.  At the end of my first day, after helping with the socialization, feeding, and (frequent) cleaning-up of ten puppies ranging in age from 3 to 7 weeks, as well as ensuring that the two adult females in heat were well exercised and that their kennels were kept clean, I was amazed to see that I had clocked over 18,000 steps!  After Vespers, supper, and helping to wash (humans’) dishes, I was ready for nothing more than to collapse in bed. Soon, however, I began to settle into the rhythm of the monastery.  Matins and Vespers bracketed each day, and fortified by a delicious ...

 By Sister Cecelia The ground hogs (woodchucks) had made numerous homes under the sloped handicap entrance to the nuns’ front door. As a result, there started appearing holes in the walkway where a wheelchair or a foot could get caught. After encouraging the groundhogs to find other homes the holes were filled and to prevent the holes in the future, it seemed a good idea to use cast cement pieces to line the walkway that would prevent the holes from reappearing again. Next the walkway was smoothed and ready for laying down the Pavers. The jagged edges would be made straight by cutting each piece with a special saw. A level entrance is completed for the walk up to the front door!

 By Sister Cecelia While the addition to the bakery was being done, the 25-year-old  shingles on the newer wing of the monastery needed to be replaced.   They dated from the early 1990s, so it was time to change them. A  rental lift got the shingles up to the roof. The old shingles were  removed and tossed into a waiting box, and the lift hauled them to the dumpsters. During a very hot summer the men were up on the roof attaching the new  shingles, so we are in good shape for the next 25 to 30 years!