Monastic Habits





This video is well worth watching- it's a wonderfuly candid and far ranging interview with a monk from Glenstal Abbey, near Limerick. Its a recording from Ruairí McKiernan's "Hitching For Hope", a hitch-hiking listening tour of Ireland.  





The video is the beautiful chant "Ubi Caritas," sung by the monks of Glenstal Abbey.

Click here for links to lyrics in Latin and English translation.



Next up : At St Paul's Cathedral in London there is a Sunday Forum series of lectures with prominent Christian authors and I was delighted to see that some of these are now on You Tube. 

There are 126 videos and a wide range of speakers from many different faith traditions. As a Catholic, it would be nice to see my own "mother church" in the UK do something similar.  Westminster Cathedral, are you listening ?

After a brief skim through, I have chosen this one to post here for now.

The first concerns a book, "Crossing - Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives" by Benedictine monk Mark Barrett, which has been described as a modern spiritual classic. 

I read it several years ago and loved it. It truly is a treasure and one of the few books I find myself returning to again and again.

From the You Tube description - " In the video below, Mark Barrett, opens up the life of a 21st century monk in the hope that "the reader would find that we monastics -- so often the shadowy medieval figures of media-gothic -- are in reality fellow-seekers,vulnerable  apprentices training among the tools of a spiritual workshop". 

He talks about his book in which he explores the spiritual journey made each day in the cycle of the ancient monastic offices, from Vigils before dawn, when he hopes 'to want to want to pray', to the night office of Compline, 'a time for remembering the reality of death, lest we forget to live in the first place'. 

More than ten years on from its first publication -- years that were punctuated by unexpected fame for the monks of Worth Abbey through the acclaimed television series, "The Monastery," he reflects on how he came to write the book, the responses to it, the TV series, and the continuing search for prayer inside and outside the monastery."


More information on the book "Crossing" from here.

and this reflection refers to an extract from the book.

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