"... we still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become "spiritual," when the Christian revelation was precisely that you are already spiritual ("in God"), and your difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human.'
-Richard Rohr, "The Naked Now" p 69.
-Richard Rohr, "The Naked Now" p 69.
Our Story and Values
Grounded in the spirit of ancient Celtic Monasticism, we are a present
witness to the monastic character of the Celtic Way. We make no claims of being
a "traditional monastic community, even though we may borrow some outward
aspects and some aspects of their daily lives
The Abbey is an intentional and inclusive network of adults who are called to form a new monastic spirit, living in our own homes or with our families.
We are an intentional community of adults because we believe that for most people their 'second calling' into where the meaning of life is to found comes sometime in the early middle of life, when we wake up one morning to discover that how we 'measure' life has changed. What we have been doing for years, we begin to realize, simply does not fit us anymore. We have outgrown the young life that we thought would go on forever and have found within us a whole new person. Worse, we find ourselves lodged in a life we no longer find stimulating or satisfying or exciting. We are unfamiliar—even to ourselves. We find that we are living some kind of creeping death, sloughing off what fit us in the past, in the old life we thought we loved, and unable to find a new way to fit into our present.
The feelings that come with the realization are overwhelming. One part guilt, one part fear, they make us ill in soul. We know what we cannot admit. If we do not stay as we are, we will feel forever unfaithful. If we force ourselves to stay as we are, we will go to dust inside.
There is so much at stake now. So much life behind us has been invested in what we now find to be lifeless. And yet there is so much life left to live. How can we possibly live it like this? And where did we go wrong? What happened to our commitment to the life decision we made in an earlier life? And what is at the root of this shift of centeredness: a lack of the kind of personal responsibility that sees a thing through? Immaturity? A lack of focus? What?
And the usual answer is “none of the above.”
Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process. For most of us, in the moanstic sense of sprirual exploring we come to this in our adult years.
So, as adults we are Inspired by all the great Celtic and other monastic founders, in particular those who founded Iona and Lindisfarne, such reformers as Benedict and Francis, to seek to witness to the world in a Monasticism that reflects today's spiritual needs and concerns.
We seek to balance mindfulness with caring towards all in need in the deserts of our cities and towns, as witnesses to and through the practice of a compassionate presence.
So why are we endeavouring to connect in this way?
There may be many answers, but here we just want to float the following:
...the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old, but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Extract from a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick January 14, 1935
The divine presence-who-is-with-us approach to life is refreshingly simple for us. This requires no great resources or buildings, no slick marketing plans to ‘win others over’ and no highly talented people.
From Acts 2:43-47...
Everyone around was in awe--all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.
The Abbey wonders if we again need to hear Bonhoeffer's prophetic words more pointedly in these end times for the institutional church like the clang of a piercing bell echoing along the corridor of time...waking us from our complacency. Is this a time, are there people willing to live a life that lacks compromise? ... Is it time to gather small 'wells' of connection around this?
Perhaps too, the era in which we lived, where community broke down into a philosophy of every [man] for themselves...it was getting your piece of the pie before you were staring at an empty pie plate with nothing more than crumbs to pick at. Some of that did trickle and seep into the church like a leaky septic tank...there was a shift from communal goodly living and where the morlaity of love is the only morality worth embracing to one of individual spirituality... a 'creed of prosperity.'
As we at he Abbey think, particularly of our own journey as a family over the last few years, and of all of us, some of the things we have been highlighting are prone to threaten many of the mainstream church practices. The challenge of being the a person of heart, of soul, of mind and of spirit in the post-modern world is the challenge to break out of the ways where we are sometimes tied down by the traditional way of doing things. Not to disparage those traditions, for in and of themselves they are good: but to say, let us not thereby domesticate the ways of searching for menaing believing that somehow our ‘small-picture god’ is anything like the big- picture God of Jesus. We often say it is unwise to become too close to any religion - it is not good for your health!!
Now this is dangerous stuff. Is the Spirit calling us out right now to do something significantly different? To take risks? We believe so. That’s a hard word to hear in many ways, and to pick up what many commentators are saying, that the mainstream Churches at this point in their histories, are being pruned back. The image of the vine keeper pruning back the vine is a painful image. The process of being pruned back is not comfortable. But it is done so we might come through to a new place where new fruit is born. Are we there? That is a hard place to be...
We can feel very inadequate and perhaps threatened by that. That is a great danger - the sense of risk to re-discover something far more simple, real, honest and transparent can become too much; the sense of challenge can become a bit overwhelming. In a moment like this we might actually withdraw back into that domesticated version of what it means to be a person of who trusts in a good and well-lived life and lose the call of the Spirit to go out and permit the Spirit to be the wind within our sails!.
So, this is where we now begin. 'Two or three gathered in his name' who are connected intentionally to many far wide who search through similar questions as ourselves, and through connections of the heart, which transcend time and distance.
So to those people out there foolish enough, radical enough to enter into a new way of conencting as human beings, not really new just the old earlier way come back to challenge and affirm us, where we enter into a wisdom, where the foolish confound the wise; where the captives have been set free; where because of the experience of the suffering... we wish you well on yoru journey. If this website can of any assistance to you on that journey - the abbey is glad to have helped... We are the all part of a a 'Team Humanity' caught up in the embrace of the Divine Presence...a place where Love casts out all fear.
The Christian apostle to the new world, Paul of Tarsus exhorts that we have been given every spiritual gift in the heavenly places. This is not waiting till Christmas, it isn't waiting till we die to receive our inheritance...It's NOW...it's yours and it’s ours – and in this the Abbey supports and encourages you to welcome the adventure into your 'Monastery of the Heart.'
The Abbey is an intentional and inclusive network of adults who are called to form a new monastic spirit, living in our own homes or with our families.
We are an intentional community of adults because we believe that for most people their 'second calling' into where the meaning of life is to found comes sometime in the early middle of life, when we wake up one morning to discover that how we 'measure' life has changed. What we have been doing for years, we begin to realize, simply does not fit us anymore. We have outgrown the young life that we thought would go on forever and have found within us a whole new person. Worse, we find ourselves lodged in a life we no longer find stimulating or satisfying or exciting. We are unfamiliar—even to ourselves. We find that we are living some kind of creeping death, sloughing off what fit us in the past, in the old life we thought we loved, and unable to find a new way to fit into our present.
The feelings that come with the realization are overwhelming. One part guilt, one part fear, they make us ill in soul. We know what we cannot admit. If we do not stay as we are, we will feel forever unfaithful. If we force ourselves to stay as we are, we will go to dust inside.
There is so much at stake now. So much life behind us has been invested in what we now find to be lifeless. And yet there is so much life left to live. How can we possibly live it like this? And where did we go wrong? What happened to our commitment to the life decision we made in an earlier life? And what is at the root of this shift of centeredness: a lack of the kind of personal responsibility that sees a thing through? Immaturity? A lack of focus? What?
And the usual answer is “none of the above.”
Assuming that tomorrow will be the same as today is poor preparation for living. It equips us only for disappointment or, more likely, for shock. To live well, to be mentally healthy, we must learn to realize that life is a work in process. For most of us, in the moanstic sense of sprirual exploring we come to this in our adult years.
So, as adults we are Inspired by all the great Celtic and other monastic founders, in particular those who founded Iona and Lindisfarne, such reformers as Benedict and Francis, to seek to witness to the world in a Monasticism that reflects today's spiritual needs and concerns.
We seek to balance mindfulness with caring towards all in need in the deserts of our cities and towns, as witnesses to and through the practice of a compassionate presence.
So why are we endeavouring to connect in this way?
There may be many answers, but here we just want to float the following:
- perhaps because our society needs to see a, simpler alternative way of life....
- perhaps because the mainstream churches need to see a simpler alternative way of supporting human life....smaller, poorer, non-clerical, non-judgemental, yet real...
- perhaps because the pursuit of wealth, social status and pleasure which are the current social values, need to be counter balanced... gently -yet with strength.
...the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old, but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Extract from a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick January 14, 1935
The divine presence-who-is-with-us approach to life is refreshingly simple for us. This requires no great resources or buildings, no slick marketing plans to ‘win others over’ and no highly talented people.
From Acts 2:43-47...
Everyone around was in awe--all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person's need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.
The Abbey wonders if we again need to hear Bonhoeffer's prophetic words more pointedly in these end times for the institutional church like the clang of a piercing bell echoing along the corridor of time...waking us from our complacency. Is this a time, are there people willing to live a life that lacks compromise? ... Is it time to gather small 'wells' of connection around this?
Perhaps too, the era in which we lived, where community broke down into a philosophy of every [man] for themselves...it was getting your piece of the pie before you were staring at an empty pie plate with nothing more than crumbs to pick at. Some of that did trickle and seep into the church like a leaky septic tank...there was a shift from communal goodly living and where the morlaity of love is the only morality worth embracing to one of individual spirituality... a 'creed of prosperity.'
As we at he Abbey think, particularly of our own journey as a family over the last few years, and of all of us, some of the things we have been highlighting are prone to threaten many of the mainstream church practices. The challenge of being the a person of heart, of soul, of mind and of spirit in the post-modern world is the challenge to break out of the ways where we are sometimes tied down by the traditional way of doing things. Not to disparage those traditions, for in and of themselves they are good: but to say, let us not thereby domesticate the ways of searching for menaing believing that somehow our ‘small-picture god’ is anything like the big- picture God of Jesus. We often say it is unwise to become too close to any religion - it is not good for your health!!
Now this is dangerous stuff. Is the Spirit calling us out right now to do something significantly different? To take risks? We believe so. That’s a hard word to hear in many ways, and to pick up what many commentators are saying, that the mainstream Churches at this point in their histories, are being pruned back. The image of the vine keeper pruning back the vine is a painful image. The process of being pruned back is not comfortable. But it is done so we might come through to a new place where new fruit is born. Are we there? That is a hard place to be...
We can feel very inadequate and perhaps threatened by that. That is a great danger - the sense of risk to re-discover something far more simple, real, honest and transparent can become too much; the sense of challenge can become a bit overwhelming. In a moment like this we might actually withdraw back into that domesticated version of what it means to be a person of who trusts in a good and well-lived life and lose the call of the Spirit to go out and permit the Spirit to be the wind within our sails!.
So, this is where we now begin. 'Two or three gathered in his name' who are connected intentionally to many far wide who search through similar questions as ourselves, and through connections of the heart, which transcend time and distance.
So to those people out there foolish enough, radical enough to enter into a new way of conencting as human beings, not really new just the old earlier way come back to challenge and affirm us, where we enter into a wisdom, where the foolish confound the wise; where the captives have been set free; where because of the experience of the suffering... we wish you well on yoru journey. If this website can of any assistance to you on that journey - the abbey is glad to have helped... We are the all part of a a 'Team Humanity' caught up in the embrace of the Divine Presence...a place where Love casts out all fear.
The Christian apostle to the new world, Paul of Tarsus exhorts that we have been given every spiritual gift in the heavenly places. This is not waiting till Christmas, it isn't waiting till we die to receive our inheritance...It's NOW...it's yours and it’s ours – and in this the Abbey supports and encourages you to welcome the adventure into your 'Monastery of the Heart.'