cowley magazine winter 2014

Volume 40 • Number 2 Winter 2014

©2013 by The Society of Saint John the Evangelist, North America

Cover photo:The Monastery Chapel, alight for our Savior on Christmas Eve.

IN THIS ISSUE: Reconciliation with Creation

To follow the latest news from the Brothers, visit www.SSJE.org where you can listen to weekly sermons, watch videos, and view photo galleries of the Monastery.

We would welcome hearing what you think of this issue of Cowley Magazine. Visit www.SSJE.org/cowleymagazine to share comments, ask questions,

or see Cowley in color!

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please call 617.876.3037x55, or email [email protected].

In the Monastic Wisdom insert on “Reconciliation,” Br. Curtis Almquist suggests why and how to prepare our hearts for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Br. James Koester delves into the scriptural meaning of gardens and how they reflect our deepest longings.

Can we “own” any part of Creation? Br. Mark Brown relates the Brothers’ own experience of stewardship at Emery House.

The renovated Cloister Garden at the Monastery opens the door for a new relationship with Creation, which Br. Robert L’Esperance shares.

Br. Jonathan Maury tells of his journey to the Monastery: a slow conversion of being called to fullness of life.

Letter from the Superior | Letter from the FSJ | Spotlight on Community Life

The Society of Saint John the Evangelist 3

Dear Members of the Fellowship of Saint John and other Friends,

A Letter from the Superior

Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE

A Letter from the Superior

The season of Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical

year and a time of expectant waiting, as we look ahead to the nativity of Jesus. Often our feeling of anticipation and expectation can get absorbed into tasks of planning and preparing for Christmas celebrations. Yet what we await and what we celebrate in this season is about more than presents and festivities: We celebrate nothing less than the arrival of new life in our midst.

We Brothers have been so aware of new life springing up within and around us over the past year. We had the opportunity during the month of August to spend time together in our yearly retreat and community discussions amidst the beauty and peace of Emery House. We reflected on our life together as a community, and in particular on our vision for the future.

There has been a wonderful sense

of energy and creativity over this past year. We Brothers have felt it, and other friends have remarked on it. I believe it is a sign of life and hope. Some years ago the art historian Kenneth Clark produced a renowned BBC series and book entitled “Civilization.” It was his belief that all the great civilizations of the world came to an end, not because of war or hostilities, but because they simply ran out of energy and they then lost their confidence. I think the same can be said of churches and religious commu-nities. Over this past year we Brothers, encouraged and supported by so many of you our friends, have experienced a real surge of creative energy, which is very exciting!

One of the fruits of this energy is that it is appealing, and we have been very blessed by the arrival of new vocations. We currently have three novices and three postulants, with one or two

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Geoffrey Tristram, SSJESuperior

Faithfully,

others likely to arrive in the coming months. They are, as the Rule puts it, “the promise of new life and hope for the future – a source of joy” (Ch. 36). We have also recently welcomed Matthew, Sarah, and Raphael as our new monastic interns. Our internship program has given us the gift of so much creativity and energy.

One of the wonders of the “internet age” is that through our website we are able to transmit a lot of our monastic and spiritual life to the wider church, and share in the ministry of Christian formation. We have an amazingly creative communications team who oversee our daily devotional “Brother, Give Us a Word,” and who are planning a daily video series on the Gospel of John for Lent 2014, as well as video reflections on the ‘O’ Antiphons during Advent. We delight in sharing our worship with our congregations at the Monastery and at Emery House, as well as with thousands of others through the internet. Our liturgical life is a vital ministry with “its power to permeate life with the remembrance of God” (Ch. 16).

During our retreat at Emery House, our conductor The Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas helped us to see just how important the natural world is to our creativity. Our relationship with Creation is a fundamental element of our identity as Christians. So the theme of this Cowley, the final one in our four-part series on reconciliation, is “Reconciliation with the Creation.” Within these pages, you’ll find stories about gardens in Scripture, the new Cloister Garden at the Monastery, and

our stewardship of the land at Emery House. Emery House, with its beautiful grounds, birds, and animals, is such a gift, which we long to share with as many people as we can. Many of you have been our guests. Over the past few years we have been experimenting and inviting people to share in our life as interns, short term residents, participants, and volunteers in our work weekends. We are now visioning how to expand this invitation and construct a program which channels our energy in the best possible way. To this end we have been meeting with many advisors and recently spent a weekend, to pray and vision together.

One of the greatest sources of creative energy that we have discovered is working with our advisors, mentors, and other wise people. We are most grateful to those who guide us in our finances, our investments, our stewardship, in the care of our buildings and grounds, and in so many other ways. Thank you for sharing this vision with us, for encouraging and strengthening us in so many ways, and for supporting us with your prayers and your gifts.

We are very grateful and hold you in our prayers and in the love of Christ. May the season of Advent and the celebration of Christmas be a time of confidence, creativity, energy, and joy for you all.


When I planned to spend two months of my sabbatical as a

Resident at Emery House, I had such romantic ideas about what my time there would be like. I imagined myself on a sort of extended retreat, wander-ing the woods, writing all the time. I knew I would have some work duties, since the program is a work study, but I had this very glamorous, pastoral image of my life with the chickens and the pigs. I quickly learned that the Brothers really needed help with vacuuming and cleaning toilets – much more practical. And I also learned I would be living on liturgical time. Four times a day – 7:30, 12:00, 6:00, and 8:00 – you’re called to prayer. I experienced a lot of frustra-tion with this at first, because anytime I tried to start doing work, the bell would ring and I would have to go to prayer. I quickly realized that I wasn’t there to sit on my little cushion or walk in the woods and be alone with God. I was there to work as part of a community.

Letter from the FSJ

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Perhaps that’s why some of my strongest memories of Emery House are the times I spent in the dishroom in the kitchen. When we picture the monastic life, we somehow imagine these perpetually spiritual beings praying while doing the dishes and making that into a sacred act. So as I washed the dishes alongside the Brothers, I kept thinking there would be some spiritual lesson, that something else was going to happen. Eventually I realized that this was it: it was about getting into the stream of life. We’re just cleaning out the scuzzy rack in the bottom of the dishwasher because it’s clogged. Yet that, too, is prayer when you do it in a prayerful way, full of gratitude and love. God was in the dishes, and the dishes became a prayer.

At Emery House I learned how everything really does blend together. The work, the time in chapel, the conversations all blended into one experience. And the result was that the mundane became more sacred, and the sacred became more mundane. Even being in the Chapel got mundane. I remember one Sunday, when the bell was ringing, I just thought, “Not another Eucharist” (because you have a lot of them there). I thought, “No more bread.” But you go, you show up, and you pray, no matter how you feel. And you know what? It always transformed me to be in that Chapel. I would go with my resistances up, but then once I was in that chair, something would break open, and I would think, “Wow, this is sacred; this is holy.” – Janet Pocorobba


One Foot in EdenGardens in Scripture

James Koester, SSJE

Gardens and farms have been associ-ated with monastic communities

since the beginning of the monastic movement in the Church. We read stories of the Desert Ammas and Abbas tending their gardens. We know from the his-tory of gardening that the monasteries of Europe were always associated with gardening (and in some cases plans and inventories have survived telling us, for instance, that garlic was one of the most popular things grown in English mon-asteries before the Reformation!) This connection between monasteries and gardens was for both practical and theo-logical and spiritual reasons.

Practically speaking monasteries needed to feed themselves and the extended communities that grew up around them. As they are today, monasteries were centers of hospitality and mission and there were always people who needed a bed, a meal and a listening heart. Then, as now, food played an integral role in the daily life of any monastic community. What could not be produced by the monastery needed to be purchased and so a surplus of what could be produced was used to buy or trade for what could not be produced. By the late middle ages, some monasteries in Europe had become great landholders, employing hundreds of people to farm and tend the

land. In some cases land management and tenant relationships became a major preoccupation for many of the monks.

Spiritually speaking, the gardens, and especially those within the immediate confines of the monastery, took on an “other worldly” character. The cloister garden assumed an Eden-like quality with its lush plantings of trees and flowers and often a pond or fountain interlaced with foot paths. Frequently the cloister garden was divided into four quadrants to represent the four rivers of Eden, or the four elements of creation (earth, wind, fire and water). It is interesting to note that some of the earliest sketches of the monastery in Cambridge include just such an imagined cloister garden, complete with a “well” or fountain in the middle.

An early, quadrant garden at 980 Memorial Drive.

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It is no accident that in the midst of many monastic complexes there exists a garden that calls to mind our first home. Since our original parents were first cast out, humanity has longed to return to paradise. This search for paradise is deeply imbedded in our spiritual DNA. For some this search has literally propelled them to the far ends of the globe. For others it has sent them into their own backyard to recreate for themselves an Eden-like paradise.

We probably all have our own ideas about what paradise would look like. For me, among the many qualities of paradise, four stand out: beauty, union, intimacy, and encounter. With these, paradise becomes a place and a search for restoration and reconciliation. In my imagination, Eden, our first home, was a place of beauty, union, intimacy, and encounter, and Adam and Eve, who wanted not simply to enjoy it but to control it, fell from grace and were expelled.

It may come as a surprise that I place beauty at the top of my list of the qualities of paradise, and thus essential for restoration and reconciliation. Fortunately we have come a long way since the days of Father Benson, who took great pride that the original Mission House was the “ugliest building in Oxford.” Today beauty is an essential characteristic of our community, and we hold before us the importance of beauty in our ministry of hospitality when we say “our houses have simple beauty.” Beauty is not simply an aesthetic quality. In and of itself it can be a grace-filled ministry which brings comfort, healing, and restoration. While we don’t know what Eden might have looked like, in my imagination it is exquisitely beautiful, and knowing that, my heart can find healing, wholeness, and rest. It is healing, wholeness, and rest that I search for when I search for the beauty of Eden.

For a long time I assumed that Adam lived in harmony with all creation in Eden, but I wonder today if the word I am searching for is not union. Harmony implies, at least to me, a degree of equality and we know that Adam did not find an equal in the animal kingdom because for him “there was not found a helper as his partner” (Gen 2:20). Instead what Adam found was a degree of union or communion with those with which he shared Eden because he joined with God in the work of naming all living things. To name something, or to be named by someone, is to enter into a relationship with them. When we name or are named, we enter into communion with the other. That is why names are so powerful: They convey not simply an identity but a relationship as well. It is communion that I search for when I search for the union of Eden.

One of my favorite lines in scripture comes from the story of Eden: “[Adam and Eve] heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze” (Gen 3:8). It seems that God, at the end of a long day, was in the habit of taking a stroll around the block before bed. The memory of similar walks with my parents at the end of a long, hot summer day as things began to cool down for the night fills my mind as I imagine similar walks in Eden. These summer evening walks with my parents, sometimes wordless, sometimes hand in hand, were in many ways sacramental, because they were outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual intimacy I now seek in my relationship with God. Yet, like Adam and Eve, having lost my childhood innocence I now sometimes hide from God in fear and shame. The call of Eden, however, is to lose my shame, recover my innocence and walk again with God, naked and unashamed. It is


Historic glimpses of the Monastery Guesthouse Garden.

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intimacy that I search for when I search for the cool evening breeze of Eden.

There is, however, another tradition that is woven into the fabric of monastic gardens and that is the tradition of the Garden of the Resurrection. Just as gardens represent for us the Eden, the Garden of Paradise, so too do they represent for us the Garden of the Resurrection and a place of encounter with the Divine. It was in the Garden of the Resurrection that Mary Magdalene recognized the gardener as the Risen Lord in the speaking of her name: “Mary.” She replies, “Rabbouni,” and then declares, “I have seen the Lord.” Mary knew the Risen Lord not by what he looked like or what he wore, but what he said and what he sounded like. Several years ago I had the experience of calling a distant cousin on the phone. When she answered I introduced myself by saying, “Hello, this is James Koester speaking.” There was a long pause and she finally asked, “Who did you say you were?” I repeated my name and explained who I was. She finally laughed and told me she had a brother named James and she thought I was playing a joke on her. My cousin did not recognize me in the speaking of her name, because I sounded all wrong. Mary, bewildered by this stranger standing in front of her, knew instantly who he was when he opened his mouth and spoke her name: Mary. Rabbouni. I have seen the Lord. It is this sense of knowing and being known that I

search for when I open myself up to an encounter with the Risen Lord.

There is a third garden in scripture which few of us wish to cultivate but all of us have experienced, the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane is a place of struggle, betrayal, and submission. It was there that Jesus struggled with his destiny. It was there that he was betrayed. It was there that he finally submitted to his Father’s will. Few of us relish the thought of struggle. We are hurt and offended when we are betrayed. We resist submitting to the will of another at all costs. Yet wherever our personal Gethsemanes are, we cannot discover our Gardens of Resurrection or return to our Garden of Eden without first experiencing our Garden of Gethsemane. It is no accident that prominent in our new Cloister Garden is a large crucifix. It is no accident that high above the Merrimac River and deep in the woods here at Emery House are two crucifixes, one a traditional European woodcarving and the other made in Haiti from a used oil drum. It is no accident that these three crucifixes have a prominent place in our monastic gardens and before them many have stopped struggling and laid down their burdens; many have forgiven past hurts and betrayals; many have finally surrendered to God’s will for their lives.

The Gardens of Eden, Resurrection, and Gethsemane all appear in the pages of Scripture, and they appear in the scripture of our lives. We enter them every time we seek the solace of beauty, know communion, find intimacy, and encounter the One who speaks our name. We find ourselves in them whenever we struggle, or are betrayed or surrender our wills. The search for Eden takes us through Gethsemane before we finally find ourselves saying with Mary at the Empty Tomb: “I have seen the Lord.”

The Guesthouse Garden today, in the process of being restored to early designs.


Reconciliation with Creation

Mark Brown, SSJE

I’m writing from a room at Emery House with a bay window looking out

over the meadow and the river beyond, which I can just make out through the trees along the bank. Some of you have probably stayed in this room (we call it the “Meadow Room”) while on retreat. I hear someone mowing in the distance behind me; Sophie, our “labradoodle,” is playing in the field across the road. There’s a lovely soft breeze today, the kind of delicious whispering through the woods that makes Emery House such an intoxicating place to be on a summer day.

The Brothers have been here since the 1950s, when this farm, which dates from 1635, came into our care, thanks

to the generosity of the Emery sisters. But it was not only generosity to the SSJE that motivated these remarkable women. Sarah, Mary Elizabeth, Frances Louisa, and Georgiana Emery were devout Episcopalians who lived modestly on this farm, even after coming into a large inheritance. The legacy they received enabled them to be active in a number of ministries to the poor; in time, their paths crossed with Brothers from the SSJE, who were involved in some of the same charitable work.

When Georgiana, the last of the Emery sisters, died in 1952, the farm was given into the care of the SSJE with the provision in the will that the property be used for Christian ministry. The Brothers

Reflections Written on a Summer Day

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” – Luke 14:33

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do not actually own Emery House; we have stewardship of this place for the express purpose of the ministry we continue here. Considering their inheri-tance a gift from God and not their own, the Emery sisters gave abundantly of those resources. They have passed along much of what they received to us, no doubt with the expectation that we will hold this place in trust to be a gift from God to be shared with others in God’s service.

We Brothers try to remember to think of ownership and possession in these terms. If we were to purchase a property and “own” it in the legal sense, it would still be with the understanding that we wouldn’t in truth “own” it, but we would be stewards or caretakers. All that we have use of, from our toothbrushes and clothing to the Monastery buildings to the financial resources that sustain our ministry, we try to remember, do not, in truth, belong to us.

The traditional monastic vow of poverty, the giving up of “all our posses-sions,” as Jesus counseled, actually opens up for us a way to relate to all of Creation. We could say a more “recon-ciled” relationship with Creation. Yes, we may in a legal sense “own” something – ownership is a convenient and necessary legal construct for a kind of stability in society (not without problems, however). But there is freedom in the full realization that “the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24). We are passing through and may have the care of resources for a season.

And who, after all, “owns” a poem? After the poet speaks the poem into existence, who can say he owns it? Who can say she possesses it? We are, and the world is, in a sense, the poem. When we recite the ancient creeds we say we believe in God, the maker or creator of all things. As it happens, the original Greek of the creeds uses

The beauty of Emery House shines in every season, a reminder of the grace of Creation.


the word poietes, for maker and creator. This is the same word used in the Bible for “poet” (Acts 17:28). God is the maker, the creator, the poet of the universe; we and all things visible and invisible are “spoken” into existence – we ourselves are the “poem,” heaven and earth are the “poem,” the seas and dry land and all that dwell therein and thereupon are the “poem.” Can one line of a poem possess or own another – in truth?

Can the sunshine over the meadow own the moonlight over the woods? Can the river say to the grassy hill, “I own you”? Once we begin to awaken to the wonders to be told in stones and trees and the lay of the land; once we begin to hear the poetry in roots and leaves and micro-organisms; once we begin to read the words of the Divine Poet in all creation, we begin to see how absurd the idea of possession is. Beholding the glory of one single tree (let alone the forest); really seeing the complexity of a single flower (let alone the glory of the meadow) – how can we say we own any of these things? We can only stand in awe. Or, perhaps, even kneel in silent wonder.

Jesus’ words from Luke quoted above sound very hard, even unattainable. Who can do without stuff? All God’s children need stuff. But we might hear in those challenging words an invitation to a new way of being: give up “possession” itself. Give up the notion of ownership and be opened up to a new way of being in relationship to the world around us. Relinquish notions of dominion and domination and subjugation (all rooted in fear) and discover your rightful place in the seamless web of life, in God’s seamless, infinite web of poetry. Celebrate God’s infinite web of poetry whose words are written in light and life and love.

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A Reconciling Landscape The New Cloister Garden

Most High, all – powerful, all good, Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor and all blessing.

There is a cost to being in touch with our natural world. Like just about

anything worth having there is a cost to it. There is real joy in discerning nature and its wonders and there is also the pain of knowing this too.

How utterly removed many of us are from nature that we don’t even seem to have a care for what we are looking at. On the one hand we see the autumn colors in the fall and we think “What a pretty picture!” What a glorious creation. Or we see the first spring green in the

Robert L’Esperance SSJE

woods and say to ourselves, “How thrilling!” What a glorious creation. But we know the names of nothing. And that makes our lives easier. Once you learn the name of things, maybe you will see the early fall color along New England roadsides and think, “Oh, my, look at all those choking vines aglow in yellow: oriental bittersweet, everywhere.” That first spring green in the woods? Japanese barberry. The downside to knowing the names of things can be an element of disenchantment.

To witness the Creation truly, it should be an honor to know the names of things, to know our world by name.

The Cloister Garden, during (left) and after (right) the year of renovation at the Monastery.


A Reconciling Landscape The New Cloister Garden

Naming the world was one of God’s first gifts to humankind. Even though it might sometimes mean introducing new heartache or anxiety into our lives where before there was none, where before there were just pretty pictures.

But learning the names of things also deepens our appreciation for the sugar maple, the white oak, the tree or the shrub we may before have regarded as just some tree or bush like all others. The tree and the shrub become individuals, which is what they are, with an identity in the creation that is unique and fantastic, with an ancient lineage all its own. A lineage like your own that brought you to this place, time, and moment in creation. That tree, that shrub is an inheritor of billions of years of survival and each also is a giver to pollinators, birds, and the myriad upon myriad of icky things from which we would rather turn our gaze.

Birders can tell a sparrow from a sparrow, or a gull from a gull – and the world becomes richer, truer, more real. And what might be thought of as a dull sparrow becomes a source of excitement and joy.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother, who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces various fruits with colored flower and herbs.

On an August afternoon during the Monastery’s renovation, the Brothers made a field trip to Garden in the Woods, located in Framingham, Massachusetts, about twenty miles west of Boston. That trip constituted a turning point for the community in thinking about how to restore and renovate the Cloister Garden after the site was cleared of the construction materials that were housed there during the renovation. Up to that point, we had been thinking along quite conventional lines. That trip to Framingham helped us to begin to imagine something that would seek to bring other values to our idea of what our garden should be like.

It was in that visit that the idea of a naturalistic, native plant garden was born. The results of that vision are now visible from the cloister windows.

With hundreds – no maybe thousands – of hours of careful research, planning, and design, the community’s friend, Patrick Smith, helped us bring to birth (the process sometimes felt just like that!) a vision of the Cloister space that has been a transforming and life-giving experience for the entire community and to our guests. Like so many other notions about the earth, the environment, and our role in that great interchange, ideas about what a garden

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is and should be are undergoing great changes. The garden design that Patrick developed for us tries to take many of these new understandings seriously and put them into practice.

We have been encouraged to think of our garden as an opportunity for us to be the best stewards of the land that we can be. Each plant was chosen with the site in mind, bringing into play the current thinking which advocates choosing plants that are appropriate to the existing

environment rather than trying to artificially modify the environment to accommodate a less appropriate choice. This is about working with nature and what nature has already given to the site, rather than imposing something out of place. We also saw our garden as a being that should be life-sustaining to itself, us, and the other living beings with whom we share this space. This impulse lies behind much of what motivates any gardener to sink

The native plants of the new Cloister Garden aglow in Fall colors.


her hands into the soil: the desire to cultivate and connect with life itself.

Our garden is also intended to be a marker of time. We live our life according to a liturgical calendar that marks the natural rhythms of the seasons by recalling the great salvific acts of the Creator. Through the four seasons, the garden is designed to be a grand calendar, from snow covered limbs, through the bud-break of a million shining chalices, the steamy heat of summer alive with crickets and katydids, and then through cool and refreshing fire of autumn’s colors.

Finally, the garden is a way of extending monastic hospitality to non-human guests. We are blessedly close to the beautiful Mount Auburn garden cemetery, home or migration ground to so many birds and animals. Our garden’s berries, water, and shelter are already drawing wild birds that we have never seen before on the Monastery’s urban enclosed grounds. In a sense, those visiting and lodging birds have become ambassadors by carrying those seeds and berries outside the garden perimeters into the wider world.

As a nourishing and nurturing place, the Cloister Garden has in common with other native plant gardens the capacity of existing beyond its borders for the benefit of all.

The new Cloister Garden is a palate that will hopefully help each of us grow more and more into relationship with the individual plants. We hope guests who come will learn, as we Brothers have, to name and know the beautiful and varied forms and flowers of native dogwoods, sourwood, sweet-bay magnolia and autumn witch hazel, old man’s beard, ironwood, serviceberry and paw-paw. We hope you’ll spot the divine presence along the paths that wind through an understory of viburnum, rhododendron, holly, spice-bush, and mountain laurel.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks, and serve him with great humility.*

* The italicized quotes throughout this article are taken from Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures (The Society of St. Francis, Little Portion Friary, Mt. Sinai, NY: 1926).

Novices and Brothers enjoy the Cloister Garden along with visitors from the Trappist monastery, St. Joseph’s Abbey, in Spencer, Mass.

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Called to Wholeness of Living

A Conversation about Vocation with Br. Jonathan Maury

When did you first have a sense of your vocation?

When I was a young chorister in my parish, I became fascinated by the Church’s history and very caught up in its worship. Although only half aware of it at the time, I do remember being very drawn to images of monastics as depicted in books or films. When my brothers and I would play together, they’d always want to be the knights, and me the friar! Also early on, growing up on Nantucket Island, I became aware of a contemplative component to my emerging personality. I spent much time on my own, in solitude and communing with God in nature. Often I had a sense that I was being called to a “different” kind of life. And hearing the gospels, I knew that Jesus invited people to a different way of being in the world, renouncing individualism and violence, and dedicated to community and mutual love.

It wasn’t until I was an undergraduate at the College of William & Mary that these indistinct feelings began to grow into anything like a sense of vocation. While I was there, I was called into a leadership position with the Canterbury Association, a fellowship group for Episcopal students. Over the next few years, our group grew to a sizeable community of students who spent most of their waking hours together: worshiping, studying, doing outreach service, and above all, living in community with one another as Christians, under the inspi-ration of the Holy Spirit.

I went on to spend ten years after college living on my own, working in the interior design business, and active in a Cape Cod parish in music and as a lay pastoral assistant. Yet I felt somehow incomplete, restless, and longing for more. I sought an elusive wholeness, and the draw to life in community which I had known with my fellow students never went completely away.

How did that sense of longing for community lead you to the Monastery?

At the time I graduated from William & Mary, I had begun the process of discerning a vocation to ordination in the Diocese of Southern Virginia. At that time, it seemed to me and others that a desire for vocation in the church could be fulfilled only through ordination. The diocesan bishop had been recommending that postulants for ordination do some time in the military as a kind of “roughing-up” experience before entering seminary. But it was 1973, and having engaged in protests against the Vietnam War, I chose instead to participate in the diocese’s companion relationship with the Diocese of Alaska as a mission worker at Fort Yukon, eight miles above the Article Circle.


It was at the local community center there that I had my first conscious encounter with the religious orders of the Episcopal Church. In Holy Cross magazine, I discovered the Order of the Holy Cross and the Order of St. Helena, and was amazed, fascinated and a bit unsettled to learn that there were monks and nuns, sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church. I began a cautious connection with Holy Cross, but kept my distance and never actually visited the community.

I came to know the SSJE only in the early 1980s when in Cambridge to visit the Episcopal Divinity School as a prospective student. When I was not accepted for the ordination process in the Diocese of Massachusetts, it became clear that the time had come to seek God’s vision for me, and then to make a life-commitment decision about my calling. Yes, I was connected to the life of the Church, had work which I enjoyed, my own home, and loving friends, yet I felt that something inside me was stillborn or dying. Outward appearances notwithstanding, something was missing—an integration of body, mind, and spirit, a sense of wholeness as God’s child. The more I sought to discern Christ’s call, the more apparent it became that I had to test a vocation to religious life. It just kept presenting itself to me in prayer: to seek a life in God’s service and in community seemed to be the only way forward. I came to realize that Christ had gently been calling me all my life, patiently waiting until I had exhausted the efforts and plans which I could not make happen on my own. The time had come to look around, see, and accept the invitation God had been making all along.

One morning in October 1983 I woke up and said, “This is the day. I’m not going into work today because I’m going to make inquiries about visiting SSJE.” I made a ten-day inquirer’s visit in November 1983, and was resident by January 24th of 1984.

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So what seemed to be an instantaneous realization had actually been brewing over time?

I now see that decision to which I came on that October morning was but a sudden moment of clarity in the ongoing process of life conversion. It was the product of having been drawn into relationship with Christ in prayer and in worship, through study and service, and in the keeping of a rule of life (though I didn’t know then to name it as such)—all elements I had inherited from my college days in the Canterbury Association fellowship. Gradually I was brought to see that, in community life, all the various elements of my passions and interests could be brought together, as well as being the place in which I could confront my need for healing and forgiveness, and be made whole. It became clearer and clearer to me that that transformation for which I longed could only take place in communion shared with others who were called to seek the same.

I heard Jesus’ words in John’s gospel as though spoken directly to me: “I can do nothing on my own…I seek to do not my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.” For me that meant, it is only through life in community that I will know my heart’s desire and that of God’s. I arranged that first inquiry visit to SSJE knowing that the moment had come to begin testing

a call to community life with particular brothers in a particular place.

How was that first visit and the transition to testing monastic life?

I actually had two “first” visits to the Monastery. The first was a sort of stealth retreat to check things out without committing myself. That experience taught me sympathy for first-time retreatants and postulants who come to us now. My emotions moved between attraction and desire to come and see, and being scared to death that something would change in or happen to me if I visited. I came in the door but kept my back to the wall the whole time. I knew I was drawn to this life, but I was also running scared because of what I perceived as giving away my freedom. But following conversations with novice guardian James Madden SSJE, my later ten-day inquirer’s visit was an experience at the opposite extreme. I found myself deeply touched by the gracious hospitality and kindness shown me, and greatly consoled by the promise of finding what I had always been seeking. Though still aware of the stretching and growth which monastic life would require of me, I found myself feeling at home in a way I’d never before known.

As to the actual transition experience, I found myself upon my arrival as a postulant over-reaching


the grace which had been given to me. Almost immediately I turned to thinking, “Okay, now I know what the rest of my life will be like; in five-and-a-half years I’ll be life professed and will have arrived.” This mindset made it difficult for me to “stay in the moment”—a very necessary element in monastic living. It took quite some time and much good counsel for me to come to understand something which I now find myself telling prospective members of the community: when one is drawn to test a vocation, we tend to feel that, for the moment at least, nothing else will do for us, nothing else will satisfy or present a hope for abundant life. That’s why we come to try a vocation. For some people, that testing of a vocation is the whole gift. Even though they leave us after initial testing, the grace of that time will remain with them. So I’d now say it’s best to come to community with openness of heart and mind. It’s best to come, thinking, “Well, Lord, I’ll follow where you’re leading me in the company of those who have already experienced this. Beyond that, we’ll see.”

How did the process of discernment unfold for you? Were there struggles along the way to life vows?

Absolutely. I had many trials along the way. Much of my novitiate was straight-forward, but I also contended with all of the various challenges that we speak

about in the chapters of our Rule on the vows. As much as I was drawn to community life, I still found it surpris-ingly difficult to actually be living in community with others again. I remem-bered only slowly that community had been challenging even in my halcyon college days. It was difficult relearning how to be a respectful friend to others and to live in a community of interde-pendence and accountability. At each of the stages along the way toward final vows, I had crisis moments. But Christ’s care and the desire to remain overcame them.

On the day of my initial profession, I was at prayer alone, kneeling before the icon of the Beloved Disciple in the Holy Spirit Chapel. Suddenly, I opened my mouth and spoke aloud this prayer: “Well, Jesus, you’ve ruined me for anything else, you know. So, here I am.” I said it with a smile. And, by God’s grace, that fact remains as true now as I knew it in that moment.

Do you think that everyone has a vocation?

Yes, I do believe that every person has a vocation to life in Christ. Everyone is called to the fullness of life which Jesus promised, whether they name it as such or not: that is what vocation is. Now there are a variety of occupations and lifestyles, infinite ways of being in God’s world, which can provide a possible context for life to be lived to the full.

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Vocation to life takes many forms. “Vocation” can be narrowly defined

as being connected to the institutional Church, but that’s an inadequate apprehension of God’s gift and intention. One’s vocation to abundant life might be to be married or to be religious or to be a single person or to do a particular kind of work that may seem only tangentially related to church life. I believe that there are as many vocations as there are individual souls. Accepting the uniqueness of one’s vocation is linked to that wonderful and mysterious realization that each uniquely created being—who in one sense stands alone before God—only becomes fully who God envisioned each to be in relationship with Other and others. Vocation is about living out our unique passions and possibilities for fullness of life within the community or communities to which God draws us.

What has been the most rewarding thing for you about living this vocation?

I’ve been given the gift of being able to be present with and to hear the experiences of other people who are passionate about their life in God. That gift of listening is sacramentalized in the ministry of spiritual direction, in which I’ve been blessed to take part. But at its most basic, this ministry has also given me the gift of learning obedience in its truest sense: listening to the voice of the One who’s completely, utterly committed to me, and whose only desire is that I come to the vision which God had for me when I was brought into being. This obedience is manifested in relationships

within our community of Brothers, as well as with our friends, volunteers, and employees. I find myself again and again humbled, honored, and blessed by the willingness of people to speak of their experiences of God. I realize now very clearly that though never ordained as deacon or priest, I exercise gifts of those ministries in a unique way that could not have come about in any other fashion. That has been a great gift.

From welcoming everyone who comes to us, retreatants and inquirers, I fully believe that we all have within us the yearning—no matter how much we’ve resisted it or had it socialized out of us—to be in union with God. Some people actively respond to this call, others run away from it for a time, yet the yearning for God enlivens every human being. One might even call it the inner monastic found within us all. When people say to me, “What a special blessing to be called to the monastic life!” I’m quick to remind them that every vocation is a special blessing for a particular person, the grace to fully become the beloved creature whom God has envisioned each of us to be from before creation.

I see a wonderful, paradoxical mystery in my experience of vocation. That which God desires me to be, I could never have brought to fruition by my own efforts. Yet, drawn by Love into a mutual and ordered “company of Christ’s friends,” I, along with my Brothers, have been given the privilege and joy to model for others and to awaken in them the longing for God.


A series of workshops celebrating the gifts that God offers us will be held at the Monastery on Saturday mornings, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Participants are invited to stay and join the Brothers for Noonday Prayer at 12:30 p.m.

RetReats at the MonasteRy

RetReats at eMeRy house

Upcoming Workshops & RetreatssatuRday WoRkshops

For more information or to register visit www.SSJE.org/guest

February 7-9Gay Men’s RetreatAn opportunity for gay men living in partnerships to explore the meaning of their commitment in the context of gay and Christian cultures. What does it mean for us to be both Christian and gay? How do we integrate these two parts of our identity?

March 21-23 Lent RetreatThe Law, sin, and repen-tance lie at the core of Jesus’ gospel teaching. This Lenten retreat will invite participants to re-imagine the meaning of these core elements as sources of transformation, healing, and new life.

June 6-8 Eco-theology 101Theology literally means “God-talk.” This retreat i s an int roduct ion to that conversation that seeks to re-frame both meaning and context for man’s dependence on and responsibility for the health of our planet.

January 11 The Gift of Meditative PrayerMeditative or contemplative prayer seeks to provide a different kind of “software” for processing the big questions: death, love, infinity, suffering, and God. This workshop will explore both theory and praxis of contemplative prayer.

March 13 The Gift of Silence and SolitudeThe monastic wisdom of seeking God in silence and solitude is much needed today and can be a wonderful balm for our troubled souls. We’ll discuss practical applications of the wisdom of silence and solitude for life in the 21st century.

May 16-18First Time in SilenceIf you haven’t yet come on retreat with us because it’s new or daunting, this weekend is for you. A Brother will gently usher you into the experience of silence and solitude, offer reflections, and suggest ways you might experiment with prayer between sessions.

December 20-22O Come Thou Wisdom from On High This Advent retreat offers expectant silence, prayer, worship and rest, as we await the coming of the Christ, and prepare to join in the doing of justice, the making of peace and reconciliation, and the healing of the whole human family and the planet.

March 21-23Come Play Lent is about divine love, not dreary inconvenience. Come be refreshed through silence and creativity. We’ll play with our prayer to rekindle child-like wonder and trust. This weekend retreat includes invitations to praying with color, collage, movement and the imagination.

An Advent Video Series

on the O Antiphons

O Sapientia O adOnai

O Radix JeSSe O ClaviS david

O ORienS O Rex Gentium

O emmanuel www.SSJE.org/advent

“tOmORROw i will Be theRe”

Dec 19 Dec 20

Dec 21 Dec 22

Dec 23

Dec 17 Dec 18


O adOnai

Support SSJEPlease consider becoming a Friend today by supporting SSJE’s Annual Fund. A tax-deductible contribution may be made by check (payable to “SSJE”), credit card, direct deposit, or a gift of securities. Gifts may also be made online through our website www.SSJE.org/donate.

I’m a full-time music director at an Episcopal church in the Diocese of Pennsylvania and I’ve been coming to Emery House for over a decade. When I requested and was granted a sabbatical by the Episcopal church, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with the time. I knew I didn’t want to do any kind of extended study or traveling. I really wanted a sabbatical that was a chance to be more than do. When I found out about the residency program the Brothers had begun at Emery House, I knew that was how I wanted to spend my sabbatical.

One of the gifts that came from this sabbatical time was quite unexpected: I inhabited my own musical self again. In many ways, I feel that I gained my voice back. Because of my work, I spend so much time teaching and helping others to sing that, even though I studied voice, I think of myself primarily as a keyboardist. But at Emery House, there was nothing for me to do but sing. I wasn’t there a week before the Brothers asked me to take turns in helping to cantor the services. It felt like an awesome responsibility: carrying the voice of prayer and embodying it in a very personal way by using my own voice. (In fact, my husband, who is a professional singer, said that the first couple of times he cantored at Emery House, he was more nervous than when he sang in Carnegie Hall!). It felt like an awesome responsibility at first, but then I realized that it was part of what all the Brothers do there, and I was sharing in it.

The chance to focus on the simplicity of a capella singing at Emery House and to re-inhabit my own singing voice in this way, was very profoundly what I needed. It helped me to reconcile with myself, with God, and to know myself again as the beloved child of God that God has created me to be. To become at home again in your own self is to be at home with God. Singing at Emery House helped me to discover that anew.

– Sue Ellen Echard

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Monastic life has traditionally provided a rhythm which orchestrates the stewardship of mind, heart, and body. As we say in our Rule of Life, we are learning “to pray our lives,” not just when we share in corporate prayer and worship, or when we return to our cells for our daily hour of meditative prayer, but equally as we work, study, converse, rest, exercise, play, and savor the amazing gift of life.

At Emery House, we Brothers have been pleased to invite guests to experience for themselves a monastic balance of life through our Residency and Garden Volunteer programs. Emery House Residents live and work alongside the community for an extended period of time, sharing in our daily round of prayer and worship, in the work of caring for the land around Emery House, as well as the work to be done inside, from cooking and cleaning to preparing the Chapel for services.

Guests who stay with us for a shorter time are also invited to experience this blend of prayer and work as an Emery House Garden Volunteer. We seek able-bodied volunteers to help with the care of the vegetable and flower gardens as well as the lawns and laneways. Garden assistants work outdoors, with minimal supervision. While knowledge of gardening is helpful, it’s not required. We ask that volunteers bring their own work clothes (gloves and tools will be provided), and plan to stay for three to five nights. Accommodation and meals are provided. And of course, volunteers are encouraged to join the Brothers for the daily round of prayer in the Emery House Chapel.

We hope, through these programs, to help our guests discover how prayer “makes drudgery divine,” to borrow the words from George Herbert’s “The Elixir”: “Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, Makes that and th’ action fine.”

Drudgery Divine


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lifeThis fall, Br. David Allen was able to return to Japan through the generosity of a Friend of the SSJE who sponsored the cost of the round-trip airfare. Br. David had lived in Japan for many years while ministering at SSJE’s Japanese houses. This was his eleventh visit since 1975.

On this return trip, Br. David was delighted at how natural it felt to be in Japan again, riding the trains, especially in Tokyo, and walking in the suburbs and Inokashiro park around the Nazareth Convent, an Anglican order, where Br. David stayed for some of his visit. He was pleased to join with the Sisters at some of their Daily Offices and Eucharists at the Convent, enjoying especially the chance to pray the services again in Japanese.

During his visit, he had the chance to spend several days with SSJE Brother John Oyama. Together they stayed one night at the former SSJE monastery, which is now a Retreat house run by the Diocese. They also visited some sites familiar to them from earlier years.

Br. David was especially grateful for the generous hospitality of Bishop Barnabas Mutoh, a long-time friend since when they met as young priests in 1964. Bishop Mutoh greeted Br. David at the airport on his arrival and took care of many of the arrangements during the three week stay, sharing with him in worship, meals, and other visits and events.

The highlights of the trip for Br. David were the visits to three different churches, on each of the Sundays in Tokyo: Meijiro Church, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, and the Rikkyo University Chapel; and the four days he spent at KEEP (Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project) with Bishop Mutoh, including a day trip at Trinity Monastery, OSB, where Br. David had previously made retreats.

On his return, Br. David remarked on just how natural being back in Japan had felt: “On my first night back, more than half of my dreams were in Japanese!”

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cowley magazine winter 2014

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