Open yourself up to new experiences at Holy Wisdom Monastery

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Friends of Wisdom Prairie, Hospitality, Justice, Prayer & Worship, Sunday Assembly, Volunteers Leave a Comment

Our mission is to weave prayer, hospitality, justice and care for the earth into a shared way of life. Here are some of the ways we invite you to live our mission with us. Prayer Holy Wisdom Monastery offers opportunity for spiritual growth every day of the week. Offerings include engaging in communal prayer, spending time in nature, attending a program or joining one of our spiritual communities, Oblates of Holy Wisdom Monastery, Center for Clergy Renewal or Sunday Assembly. Hospitality Our Benedictine tradition of hospitality means that all people are welcomed here as Christ. We invite you to experience this …

Reflections from a Summer Steward

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHospitality, Living in Community, Monastic Life, Prayer & Worship, Summer Stewards, Weekly Wisdom, Women Exploring Community 2 Comments

Submitted by Hannah Keziah Agustin In the beginning of our day, there is silence. We center ourselves on the presence of God in the basement of Holy Wisdom Monastery’s main building at 7:30 in the morning, our chairs facing toward each other as we pray. Outside of the windows, the prairie sprawls with the bloom of a Wisconsin summer – bergamot, coneflowers and butterfly milkweed decorate the fields in the day’s early sun. Here, Benedictine sisters, retreatants and community members gather for the hearing of the liturgy, the singing of worship and the reading of God’s word. Here, we come …

Interfaith Transgender Day of Remembrance Service

Holy Wisdom MonasteryJustice, Prayer & Worship Leave a Comment

A diverse group of affirming religious communities spanning the faith spectrum are joining together for Madison’s second annual recognition of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, held this year at Temple Beth El. The planners of this event feel the need to recognize the ongoing harm faced by the transgender community, especially by Black transgender women. Rabbi Jonathan Biatch of Temple Beth El says, “our goal is to elevate, to raise up” toward “the intention and the action of the Creator.” He adds, “acts of memory evoke love, acts of memory evoke action.” Cantor Jacob Niemi adds that “it’s important to …

An Overdue Reflection on Advent

Denise West, OSBPrayer & Worship, Spirituality Articles 4 Comments

Lent is around the corner but I’m of a mind to look back on the wintry beginning of Advent. The gift – and torment – of the season of Advent is the quiet stillness that beckons us to turn inward, to perceive the darkness residing within. By December every year I’m aware of some niggling bit of unpleasantness that separates me from God, and I know that ‘now is the time’ to reckon with it. I always look forward to the peace and space, the early sunsets that make it easier to use the evening time for reading and reflection. …

Earth, Our Home

Holy Wisdom MonasteryCare for the Earth, Prayer & Worship 1 Comment

By Dennis Crowley O Sacred Cosmos, wherein our Universe so massively and silently moves.  O Sacred Cosmos, where our Galaxy joins with numberless Galaxies drifting in spaces beyond our comprehension. O Sacred Cosmos, it is within this Universe and this Galaxy, that our small Solar System imperceptibly circulates in gyrations beyond our daily reckoning. O Sacred Cosmos, we come to you with heavy hearts because Earth, held so gently in this, oh so small Solar System, is in pain. O Sacred Cosmos, Earth is being buffeted, torn, scorched, and polluted by the very species honored with the charge, “Be faithful …

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‘Holy Week: Origins and Traditions,’ The Holy Wisdom Podcast

Brooke MoriartyMonastic Life, Podcast, Prayer & Worship, Sunday Assembly Leave a Comment

Want to be the first to hear every new episode? Click here to sign up for email notifications! This month, Sister Lynne Smith and Lynn Lemberger return to talk all about Holy Week. Lynn gives us an overview of the history, including a first-hand account from a woman’s travel journal of Roman celebrations. Learn why Palm Sunday is named after palms, and the significance of this week leading up to Easter. Meanwhile, Sister Lynne shares the traditions we normally hold throughout this week. Maybe you can bring some of these celebrations to life in your own home! Where to Listen? …

Leora Weitzman’s homily, Jan. 17, 2021

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHomilies, Prayer & Worship Leave a Comment

2nd Ordinary Time  •   1 Sam 1:9b-18a, 20  •   1 Cor 6:12-20   •   Jn 1:35-51   •   Jan 17, 2021 You are in a cave-like holy place. Candles flicker in the stillness. Slowly, slowly, you let yourself sink down… through the layers of struts and scaffolding that held you up through the week so you could keep doing what you had to do… letting those fade away, letting yourself thaw and melt, letting feelings and longings re-emerge. That’s what the candles are for, one for each longing, many of which have no words. Let them in… let them in. And then, …

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‘Advent & The O Antiphons,’ The Holy Wisdom Podcast

Brooke MoriartyLiving in Community, Podcast, Prayer & Worship 3 Comments

Want to be the first to hear every new episode? Click here to sign up for email notifications! December summons feelings of tradition and familiarity for many of us. In some faiths, this includes the preparation for Christmas known as Advent, and the singing of the O Antiphons. In this episode, we have Sister Lynne Smith and Holy Wisdom Monastery’s own Director of Worship and Music, Lynn Lemberger. Join us to learn about these traditions and how we might be able to honor their meanings in our own lives. Where to Listen? You can listen to The Holy Wisdom Podcast at any …

Alison Long’s Homily from May 10, 2020

Holy Wisdom MonasteryHomilies, Prayer & Worship, Sunday Assembly, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I have to admit, I was hoping to draw a simpler scripture for my first homily. Maybe a parable or something really easily hopeful considering how heavy the world feels right now. But here we are. An initial reading of these three scriptures is a little grim. We start with the stoning of Stephen and then move into two scriptures that pull pretty heavily on house imagery – which probably feels more hospitable outside of our current safer at home situation, when many of us are longing to be anywhere else. Plus, we get a familiar clobber verse in John …

Lent – 2020

Lynne Smith, OSBLiving in Community, Prayer & Worship, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Every year Lent offers us an opportunity to reflect on our lives and the values by which we live. Traditional practices such as prayer, fasting and alms-giving draw us first inward in an examination of our living out of Gospel values and then send us out in service to our neighbors.  This year the COVID-19 virus provides an additional challenge and opportunity for reflection and service. Saint Benedict in his Rule tells us to daily remind ourselves that we are going to die (RB 4:47). Rather than a morbid focus on death, this is a call to humility, to remember …