Interior renewal, being grounded in Reality

It was touch-and-go as to whether I was going to post a traditio this week. Needless to say, it's been a fairly draining time. The good thing about this show is that it need not go on.

There are desolations aplenty. In his goodness, God also provides consolations. Among the consolations over these past several days have been continuing to read Jane Foulcher's Life Here Together: The Prophetic Gift of the Tibhirine Monks and listening to the episode of John Dear's "The Nonviolent Jesus" podcast with Jim Finley on God and the mystics.

The monks of the monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria

For six years immediately following high school, Finley was at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. Pater Tom served as his novice master and provided him with spiritual direction. Jim also wrote what remains one of the best books on the spirituality of Pater Tom.

First published in 1978, ten years after Pater Tom's death, Finley's Merton's Palace of Nowhere is still worth reading. In fact, I am going to re-read it in September.

I plan to also read How Far to Follow?: The Martyrs of Atlas, by Bernardo Olivera, OSCO. Not be confused with the famous soccer player of the same name, at the time of the kidnapping and murder of the seven Cistercian monks from Our Lady of Atlas Priory in Algeria in 1996, Father Olivera was serving in Rome as Abbot General of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OSCO).

You may ask, to whom or what do these monks called "Cistercians" strictly observe? It's a great question. They seek to strictly observe the Rule of Saint Benedict. Dating to the twelfth century, the Cistercians are a Benedictine reform movement.

While I have had the book for several years, I will probably also (finally) read The Rule of Saint Benedict: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 4, which contains Merton's teaching as novice master at Gethsemani on Saint Benedict's Regula.

Anyway, kind of a data dump and a Cistercian one at that. Maybe should institute "Media Monday." I really feel the need for interior renewal. I have also started listening to the first season of Finley's podcast Turning to the Mystics. Pater Tom is the main focus of this first season.

Our traditio for this First First Friday of August is a chant of the Jesus Prayer. This is chanted in "Church" Slavonic. This seems appropriate both given what I wrote above and that Fridays remain penitential days.

It occurred to me on Wednesday that I missed last month's anniversary. 19 July 2006 was the date I began posting regularly here in this cyberspace. While I started blog nearly a year earlier with a few posts written over a few days, it wasn't until nearly a year later that this endeavor really took off. So, it's been 21 years in total, but 20 as far as this being a real effort.