What do monasteries do today

As 21 st -century monks, we are aware of being humble heirs of a tradition extending back over a thousand years. Nevertheless, we look to the future rather than to the past. This is because, as heirs, our duty is to enrich and hand on what we have received.

Tradition is by definition living. Many strive to follow the daily monastic prayer regimen of the Liturgy of the Hours, either on their own or with their monastic communities. They regularly practice lectio divina, a method of praying slowly and meditatively with scripture that monks and women religious have used for centuries. Behold I am doing something new. Do you not see it? Sister Teresa Jackson, membership director at the Monastery of St.

Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho, uses these lines from Isaiah to describe both the opportunities and challenges oblates represent. Several monasteries are experimenting with ways to better integrate oblates into their religious communities. Mount St. Gertrude says. A community indicates mutuality and responsibility. Oblates already play many key roles that would have been unlikely just 50 years ago. When the sisters of Red Plains Monastery in Piedmont, Oklahoma left several years ago to join the monastic community in Atchison, Kansas, they left behind a number of oblates they had trained to become spiritual directors.

At the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Idaho, the chief financial officer is an oblate. About 20 years ago, Payer walked into Our Lady of Guadalupe for the first time.

While there, she wears a simple white dress that serves as a kind of habit. Most oblates wear a pin or oblate medal on a chain. Occasionally an oblate vocation will develop into a religious profession. Camille Wooden was working as a public school teacher when she became one of the 50 oblates at St.

Placid Monastery in Lacey, Washington, a community with only 11 sisters. Wooden says she was drawn to Benedictine spirituality because of its emphasis on balance, moderation, and contemplation.

In the classroom, Wooden says, she always wore her oblate pin. He likes to eat. But he rarely cooks for himself. With cooking, you have a beginning, middle and end. I enjoy providing things for people, to provide an occasion, to have a good time, to enjoy a meal. The dynamic of what happens when people sit down to eat is timeless.

Because of her, he still makes a Polish soup with smoked ham hock. Because of her, he never orders apple pie from anywhere; she created his gold standard by using red apples, making the crust from lard to form a pie that stands on its own rather than slithers on the plate like lava from a volcano.

He honors a recipe once. After that, nature over nurture. He has a noodle pot, rolling pin and Pyrex cake pan from one of his great-grandmothers. Sometimes you need that. Food is the first point of intersection but there are so many other values that get strengthened and promoted on the way. Are you a Herald print subscriber? You get free, unlimited, access.

Click here. November 5, Father Adrian Burke, left, lifts weights in the St. Meinrad Archabbey campus gym a few days a week, often after morning Mass. Father Adrian said the workouts are a form of meditation, a time to focus his attention inward and let go of everything going on outside of the room.

A crucifix, pictured right, adorns the gym wall. Most of his stamps come to him in a bag, as pictured right. As he sorts, he tapes stamps to his desk and trims off the extra edges of envelope to leave one-quarter inch of envelope on each side. Brother Joel recently wrote music, pictured left, for an English companion to a Latin chant that was used during Mass. Father Julian Peters, right, enjoys cooking for others and sharing his culinary knowledge with the seminarians.

He still uses old family recipes and tools like a rolling pin, pictured left, from a great-grandmother. The rolling pin is repaired with a piece of metal pipe where one handle broke off. They even tried their hand at raising ostriches and emus. Not all religious orders find themselves needing to worry about dollars. Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites, for example, are considered mendicant orders, and the friars -- not called monks -- depend exclusively on charity.

They're more along the lines of Buddhist monks who travel with begging bowls, although those bowls have morphed into platters of support presented by benefactors and through organized capital campaigns. Paul Sullins, a sociology professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, explained by e-mail.

Monks invented the hourglass, Sullins says, which fed into their disciplined -- and by all counts successful -- lives. He says 20 to 30 percent of the entire economic output in medieval times resulted from monks who led the way in agricultural innovation.

At the time of the Reformation, he adds, monasteries owned a third of the land in England. Smart monks were appointed to manage the money. They didn't quit their jobs. They didn't throw cash away on women and booze. They became the banks of Europe, Stark says, loaning money with interest. Monk money-making ventures today, however, don't fuel military exploits and the spread of power.

They're simply about having enough to get by and give to the poor.