Instead of lectio this morning, I decided to visit the oblate blog and noticed a theme stretching across both Ric’s account of Abbot General Notker Wolf’s reflections at an international oblate gathering, and Sister Ruth’s reflections on inserting a verse about the whole earth belonging to God into her reading of a psalm. That theme is both challenge and promise: the challenge of living in a world of innumerable sufferings with a regular sense of the presence of God. Continue Reading
Benedictine values
A Women's Minyan
The Women’s Minyan is the title of a play by Naomi Ragen about a woman who is ostracized by her Ultra-Orthodox community when she leaves her husband because of a range of abuses. She leaves in night when she must save her life, and the community refused to let her see her 12 children, believing lies told about her by her husband and the rabbi with the support of the town’s women. The plot revolves around the ostracized woman’s plea to ten women in the community (including her mother and former mother-in-law, two daughters, and a sister-in-law) to hear her case in a women’s minyan. Normally a minyan for purposes of prayer and justice involves ten men in orthodox Judaism, but a women’s minyan may be called for rare occasions, including an effort to reconcile enemies. Continue Reading
Benedictine Oblate Musings 