Volume 28, Number 3, October 1998 RICHARDTON, ND 58652
The Grey Yellow Pages
Copies of Monastics: Life and Law Reflections of Benedictine Canonist Daniel J. Ward, O.S.B. are still available for $7 each (includes postage). This collection of columns from the American Monastic Newsletter over the last ten years offer both inspiration and practical advice for living as a Benedictine monastic in today s Church and world. The readership is not limited to superiors or formation personnel but embraces all who are serious about Benedictine monastic life today. This publication of the American Benedictine Academy is available from
Renee Branigan, OSB
2441 10th Ave. W #10
Dickinson, ND 58601
Phone: 701-483-2350
E-mail: reneeosb@ndsupernet.com
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Plans are underway to launch a direct mail catalog which features products made exclusively by monasteries and religious communities. Monastery Greetings will include a wide selection of greeting cards and note cards, as well as food, craft and devotional items. The catalog will be available in the fall of 1999, in time for the Christmas season.
Traditionally many monasteries and religious communities support themselves with businesses and cottage industries which produce unique, high quality products. (Perhaps best-known examples are fruitcakes and jams made by Trappist monks.) Many of these communities are also home to artists who contribute their talents to designing greeting cards and note cards, as well as devotional items such as icons. Since many of these communities are small or cloistered, they are unable to reach a wide audience. From these elements, Monastery Greetings was born.
Monastery Greetings will bring many of these products together. More than twenty monasteries and religious communities have already offered to sell products through the catalog. When they do, the results will be mutually beneficial: customers will be able to locate and order these hard-to-find products and communities will earn revenue through the sale of their products. Monastery Greetings will also have an educational dimension, profiling religious communities and telling people about their life.
You can add your name to the mailing list now and receive a free catalog when it is ready in the fall of 1999. Monasteries and religious communities that would like to learn more about offering products through the catalog are also invited to contact
Monastery Greetings
3287 Hyde Park Ave.
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118-2131
Voice: 216-321-2720; Fax: 216-371-1993
E-mail: mogreeting@aol.com
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Audio tapes from this summer s American Benedictine Academy convention entitled "Hospitality: Prism for the 21st Century" are available at $3 each plus $1 postage. The 90 minute tapes can be obtained from
Jeanne Giese, OSB
Mother of God Monastery
110 28th Ave. SE
Watertown, SD 57201-8418
E-mail: monastery@dailypost.com
When ordering, please specify which tapes you want of the following:
"Hospitality: Prism for the 21st Century--Entertaining Divine Presence according to the Rule of Benedict" by Demetrius Dumm, OSB; Response by Patricia Kirk, OSB, and Dialogue;
"Contemporary Hospitality: Where the Present Becomes the Future" by Rosemary Rader, OSB; Response by John Klassen, OSB, and Dialogue;
"Dangerous Angels: The Demand of Liturgical Hospitality" by Genevieve Glen, OSB; Response by Placid Solari, OSB, and Dialogue;
"The Pilgrim s Way in Cyberspace" by Diana Seago, OSB (short tape);
"Hospitality to the Environment" by Paul Schwietz, OSB, and Carol Ann Wassmuth, OSB;
"Presidential Address" by Eugene Hensell, OSB.
Those of you who prefer hard copies of the talks and additional input from the convention can wait for the Proceedings which will be published and announced early next year in the American Monastic Newsletter.
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The Benedictine nuns of the Abbey of St. Walburga are now offering their new calendar for 1999. As in past editions, this wall calendar features quotations from Christian tradition and original black and white photographs celebrating everyday life at the abbey, a community of twenty-one Benedictine nuns who moved last summer from Boulder to a ranch forty miles north of Fort Collins, CO.
"The Lord's is the earth, and everything in it" (Psalm 24:1). In a lovely rural location one becomes ever more aware of the splendor of creation. But God s splendor is just as present in the realities of everyday work and the slow process of constructing a permanent monastery and retreat house. In this calendar, the nuns have combined photographs from their own monastic life with inspiring lines in calligraphy to try to convey to others the joy of a life rooted in the praise of God.
The seasons and major celebrations of the Catholic Church are indicated on the calendar as well as those saints feasts celebrated at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Walburga. Included are notes on the history and meaning of the feasts. Compilation and calligraphy are the work of nuns of the Abbey.
The 1999 Abbey Calendar sells for $8.95, plus $1.50 for postage. They can be ordered by phone, fax or mail from
Sister Hildegard Dubnick, OSB
Abbey of St. Walburga
1029 Benedictine Way
Virginia Dale. CO 80536-7633
Phone and fax: 970-472-0612
E-mail: dubnick@juno.com
Website: www.walburga.org/
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For forty years St. Andrew s Abbey has welcomed artists and craftspersons to its Fall Festival in Valyermo, CA, where people could purchase or view their works. In the year of the millennium, the monks of Valyermo are planning to come to the city to bring their tradition of support of the sacred arts to a wider group of people. In addition to the display of juried works, particularly by artists and craftspersons connected with monasteries and monastic schools, the Sacred Arts Festival will feature music, drama, poetry and film.
A committee of volunteers appointed by the abbot of St. Andrew s Abbey will manage the Sacred Arts Festival and is presently locating a venue, beginning by approaching centrally located Catholic schools.
If you are interested in learning more about the Sacred Arts Festival, or would like to have your work considered for either purchase or display at the festival, please contact the organizers. You will be kept informed about the festival and will be sent a formal application form in spring 1999. Initial submission of works will be by photos or slides and will be adjudicated for selection by a jury of artists and monks associated with St. Andrew s Abbey.
For more information, contact
Sister Theresa Scheuren, OSB, Development
St. Andrew s Abbey
P0 Box 40
Valyermo, CA 93563-0040
Phone: 805-944-8958
E-mail: stheresa@ptw.com
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Videotapes continue to become more of an asset and resource for those who wish to articulate monasticism for a wider audience of interested persons. The Public Broadcasting System recently aired an exceptional one-hour documentary on the monastic life at Mepkin Abbey, which is available from Paulist Media Works.
Twelve vocation directors of monastic communities, men s and women s, Cistercian and Benedictine, in the mid-portion of the United States recently pooled their resources to have an eighteen minute documentary made on what it means to be a follower of St. Benedict. It includes footage filmed at monasteries in Subiaco, AR; Ft. Smith, AR; Shawnee, OK; Tulsa, OK; Piedmont, OK; Ava, MO; Atchison, KS (Mount St. Scholastica), and Conception, MO. Other communities involved are those at Nauvoo, IL; Covington, KY; Gethsemani, KY; and Columbia, MO. It intersperses quotations from the Rule with observations on the life by community members of diverse ages and experiences. The result is a clear and relaxed insight into the challenges and joys of the monastic life. Produced as a vocation tool for vocation inquirers, youth groups and family ministry, the task of making something which will attract and captivate such an audience makes it ideal for use with almost anyone who wants to know something about monasticism (e.g. visitors, oblate inquirers, religion classes, etc.).
Entitled "Journey of Faith" and listing all of the cooperating monasteries, it has been produced in such a way that each community will be able to film a short introduction to its own monastery to be appended as a ten-minute addition. For more information, or to obtain copies, any of the sponsors, known as the Heartland Monastic Vocation Ministers, may be contacted.