Abbot's Notebook

The Abbot's Notebook for July 19, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  Finally some rain has come to our area.  Not much yet, but the temperatures have cooled down a bit.  Most of my life, I have been able to live in hot or cold temperatures...

The Abbot's Notebook for July 12, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  The former Abbot Primate of our Benedictine Confederation arrived here on Monday and was able to preside at the Conventual Mass here in the Monastery on Tuesday, July 11th,...

The Abbot's Notebook for July 5, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  Always there are surprises in monastic life, even if the general rhythm is the same day after day.  In our monastic tradition, we tend to avoid too many surprises but we also...

The Abbot's Notebook for June 28, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you! Sitting at my desk, even with the best of chairs, sometimes causes me a lot of pain right now. There are days when both of my legs hurt so much that I want to do nothing! Yet I...

The Abbot's Notebook for June 21, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  Learning to slow down is a real challenge for me.  I think that I have done it well and then comes a day and I seem to work all day and the next day I have to have even more...

The Abbot's Notebook for June 14, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  So I have been back in the Monastery just over a week and I continue to recover from the surgery.  Cutting the breastbone in half always causes a challenge of recovery.  Most...

The Abbot's Notebook for June 7, 2017 My sisters and brothers in Christ, Blessings to you!  Today Mother Hilda, the Prioress of Our Lady of the Desert, is having surgery to remove a fibroid tumor from her uterus.  Clearly it is time of surgery for our communities!  My...

The Abbot's Notebook for May 31, 2017 Blessings to you!  Here it is the day before my surgery and all seems to be going well.  I feel pretty good overall and it is still a bit difficult to imagine that I have this tumor in my chest and tomorrow the doctors will open...

The Abbot's Notebook for May 24, 2017 Blessings to you!  Spring seems to come and go this year.  There are days which are almost hot and yet not quite.  Other days, it seems like it might snow again.  We have had snow this late in May before so it is possible that it...

The Abbot's Notebook for May 17, 2017 Blessings to you!  Blessings to you!  Although I am still in my own rooms, it is a very different experience not to be the superior of the house.  I was first appointed superior of our community in October of 1976, over forty...

The Abbot's Notebook for May 10, 2017 Blessings to you!  Easter Season continues and is fill with Alleluia.  Here in the community it is a time of joy and peace.  Father Benedict has been named Prior and now functions as the superior of the community so that I can...

The Abbot's Notebook for May 3, 2017 Blessings to you!  Christ is risen!  Alleluia!  Well, it turns out that I do have cancer but it is not as bad as it sounds.  I have a tumor with the name “thymoma” and the cancer is, apparently, still totally contained in the tumor...

The Abbot's Notebook for April 26, 2017 Blessings to you!  Christ is risen!  Alleluia!  Still we celebrate Holy Easter and rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus our Lord!  What a wonderful celebration of life and of joy!  And I am still here at my own desk in my office...

The Abbot's Notebook for April 19, 2017 Blessings to you! Christ is risen! He is truly risen! Alleluia! Sometimes for me, just to get through all of these celebrations is a challenge. This year, I did not preside at anything and so the challenge was less. I still...

The Abbot's Notebook for April 12, 2017 Blessings to you!  Most likely I will be writing to you from here in the Monastery for many, many months, since I won’t be doing any traveling away from the Monastery except for day visits to doctors!  God has His own ways of...

The Abbot's Notebook for April 5, 2017 Blessings to you!  I am writing to you still from my own office at the Monastery.  Most likely I will be here for many months now because of the health challenges.  It makes my life easier in lots of ways.  I take a lot of time...

The Abbot's Notebook for March 29, 2017 Blessings to you! As you can guess, I am still home, in my own room and working in my own office. I don’t have any trips planned for a while! The challenge is simply to recover from the surgery on the appendix, from the blood...

The Abbot's Notebook for March 22, 2017 Blessings to you!  Here I am again in my own office, writing to you from my normal computer.  The past couple of weeks have been a challenge but so often life is a challenge and always we must learn to see the challenge and...

The Abbot's Notebook for March 15, 2017 Blessings to you!  Well, by the time you get this, I might be home once again.  It all depends on further developments in my health.  I have been so healthy all my life that I have never had to pay much attention to my health. ...

The Abbot's Notebook for March 8, 2017 Blessings to you!  This last week after I returned from South Africa, I began to feel some kind of illness and no matter what I did, it did not get better.  I was supposed to fly to Dallas on Sunday, March 5th, and then...