10 years in the United States

Tonight is the tenth anniversary of my immigration to the United States of America.

In 1998, as my cab pulled up the curb near the apartment of my dear friend Véronique in NYC's Upper West Side, I remember looking at all those witches and wizards who seemed to walk unnoticed on the streets of Manhattan . If I had known of Diagon Alley then, I would have wondered if I hadn't walked through the back of the Leaky Cauldron.

I arrived in New York as a church-less career-driven investment banker. I metamorphosed into a church-going purpose-seeking life and business coach. And now I am an Anglican Benedictine monk in the palm of God to learn to love.

And all of it along the banks of the deeply beautiful Hudson river, the water-that-flows-both-ways. Who would have thought...? What else do you have up your sleeve, Beloved?

Tonight, we sang the beautiful First Vespers of All Saints. I am the reader this week so I had a pleasant surprise as I discovered the second reading was an excerpt from a sermon on All Saints by my saint patron, Bernard of Clairvaux. What a joy, on this auspicious day, to be a mouthpiece for a saint who has watched over me for over 47 years now.

St Bernard - statue at Gethsemani Abbey, TN
Originally uploaded by PedroBlanco

And another anniversary is approaching; that of my initial profession of the Benedictine vow to God on the 3rd of November 2006.

I am full of gratitude to all those (so many of you, so many) in this country (and beyond) who have contributed to my American journey. May we develop and share the heritage of freedom, generosity and audacity we have all received from our forebears.

Thank You, Beloved God, for the life I live.

Worldchanging

I sometimes get asked if I watch television. When I answer "nearly never" (as in less than an hour a month), people ask how I keep myself informed of what's going on.

To be fair, I probably know very little of popular culture as provided by the broadcast media and the press. I usually delight in my 15 minute wait at the dentist because I get to check out magazines I never see otherwise. I haven't yet felt the urge to go on and buy one of them though.

I probably spend upwards of a half hour each day keeping myself informed on the world. I see it as part of my life of faith to know where my planet is at and where it is headed. The body of Christ is all-encompassing and knowing what's going on with the neighbors might help me to love them as instructed.

A long while ago, I decided not to be culled into anxiety and fear by alarmist and attention-grabbing news coverage. In my news and information collection I look for novel ideas, different perspectives, constructive concepts and insightful analysis.

I am so grateful for the internet. It is a wonderful medium to take responsibility for what news I look at. So here is a look at my news menu (web sites, blogs, podcasts and print media):

a. NPR's Hourly News Summary Podcast. It's a 5 minute overview of the last hour's news; a great place to start.

b. When I have more time, I listen to parts of BBC's NewsPod. It's over 30 minutes, but I listen to specific stories within the podcast. I always delight in news stories I find nothing about elsewhere. And I relish hearing again all those various British accents that once featured more prominently in my life. The "Beeb" has gotten quite more diverse about that in the last few years.

c. Then I scan the international press. I find it important to keep informed on my native country and continent (Belgium, Europe); it also provides me another perspective on the world news. I look at the on-line editions of the New York Times, Le Monde (France), La Libre Belgique (Belgium, French language), De Standaard (Belgium, Flemish language). I often surprise my Dad on our weekly phone chats with news bits about Belgium that he's amused I know about in my far-flung monastery or that he missed himself in his voracious news pursuit.

d. A few times a week, I check the most excellent WorldChanging blog for ideas and analyses that inspire my optimism; it speaks to me of humanity's ingenuity and hope in the face of our many environmental and social challenges. This week, I liked Alex Steffen's report from his trip in Sweden where one of my godsons lives.

e. My Mom and Dad offered me a subscription to The Economist news weekly magazine. I also listen to their podcast and check out their web site. They give me the more conservative and market-oriented part of my news diet but in an intellectual and irreverent flavor that I can appreciate.

f. Most often, I'll read in silence, but on longer sessions, I might open my aural horizons by listening to Hearts of Space, as I am doing now while writing this post for you.

Often, I can only give my sources a perfunctory scan. But more often than not, it keeps me engaged with the struggles and joys of humanity. A lot of it filters into my intercessory prayer and it keeps me current with the flow of our common adventure on Earth and in God.

And amidst the choppy waters of these days, here's a collect for Peace from the Book of Common Prayer (thank you Archbishop Cranmer) to send us on our ways of the world:

Almighty God, kindle, we pray, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with your wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquillity your dominion may increase until the earth is filled with the knowledge of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

More pictures from the Building Hope retreat

I have received more pictures from the Building Hope, Building Homes retreat from Ulster County Habitat for Humanity board member Bill Bizovi.

Hope-Building Volunteers,
if you have more digital pix from our retreat,
e-mail them to me and I'll post them to
the Flickr photo set of our work.
Click on the link to see the set.

The Hope-Building Gang
Originally uploaded by bdelcourt

Thanks again to everyone involved! It was fun and we made a heck of a difference.

Holy Cross Monastery will continue to organize retreats for volunteers on Habitat build sites in the mid-Hudson Valley. Watch our Scheduled Programs web page for upcoming retreats.

The week that was

Some weeks are fuller than others. The one that just finished was rich in important events. Luckily, not all weeks are this busy at the monastery. Here is my account of it.

On Monday, as promised I picked up Brother Cecil at his nursing home to go see a movie together. Cecil is extremely fond of Chihuahuas; he has mugs, calendars and t-shirts featuring them. Apparently, he now sees a few of these dogs when a lady with Chihuahuas visits one of her friends at the nursing home. Getting Cecil out of there was like checking out a rare medieval book out of a university library. The nursing home certainly keeps an eye on its residents; good for them!

So of course, we went to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Without saying it, I was snooty about the prospect. But I have to admit I had a jolly good time. It's not a great film but my expectations had been so low that they were exceeded. And what's more, seeing the pleasure my Brother had at having this good fun together made it all the more worthwhile. Cecil is having better health and greater quality of life now and he is courageously adapting to his new life.

When I came back home, I discovered that our Brother William had been taken to the hospital with what seemed to be congestive heart disease and/or pneumonia. We had had a similar incident with Brother Sam the week before and this has happened to other elderly brothers in the past. So, I must admit that I didn't overly worry about William thinking he'd be back home in a few days.

The next morning, most of the community discovered that William had died as they went to our St Augustine Church to say Matins. The sheet for the Office of the Departed lay in our choir stalls and we began singing the Office for William. William's general health was not good but his passing came at great speed. William had been a difficult personality to live with when he first came back to West Park a couple of years ago. But he'd eventually settled into a more constructive place in community. I found myself tearing up a the thought of no longer hearing him calling out "How 'you doing, Kid?"

That same day, our Deputy Bishop Visitor was arriving. I greeted Bishop Ann Tottenham that afternoon and led her to her quarters by the outside. We met a monarch butterfly on our way, whom she greeted pleasantly. I have known her from my time as a novice in our Priory in Toronto. She has since retired from her office in the diocese of Toronto and has a little bit more time on her hands than your average bishop. I told her about William who had lived in Toronto for several years before coming to us. I could see her sympathy at discovering the third death amongst our Holy Cross brethren since June (Bernard Van Waes, Michael Stonebraker and William Sibley).

That same afternoon, I was greeting guests arriving for the Fall "Building Homes, Building Hope retreat" which I would be leading with our Associate George Masters during the week. I was quite pleased that 6 guests joined us for this program.

On Wednesday, 8 of us left the Monastery after breakfast to go work on a new house put up by Ulster County Habitat for Humanity in Ellenville. We would return in mid-afternoon, in time for the vigil and requiem mass for William.

The 55 minute drive was a sheer joy of glorious fall colors as we passed New Paltz, drove up the ridge overlooking dozens of miles of the Hudson Valley and then dove into the next valley to take in more panoramic views, this time of the Catskills. This festival of colors would subtly evolve through our 6 trips back and forth as weather and colors varied.

Our group of volunteers met Bill and later Wally and Eric on the build site. They are the Habitat managers for this site. They had prepared several jobs for us and we promptly fell into a very productive groove even as we came to know each other a bit better. I'm glad (and just a wee bit proud) to say we made a very significant contribution to this "build". We mudded, primed, sheet-rocked, vinyl-sided, landscaped and set a few kitchen cabinets. Hopefully, we'll collect a few "before and after" pictures from participants. You can see the pictures I already have on my Flickr account. I'll keep adding the ones I receive from participants and Habitat folks as they come in.

William's vigil, requiem and departure in the hearse were powerful moments of community life. It's at moments like these that I take stock of just how close I have grown to all these men who are my Brothers regardless of their lovely or gritty personalities (sometimes both over time). May you rest in Peace, William, and may light perpetual shine upon you. So long, Ole Man!

Br. William, OHC
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

Over the week-end, my good friend, Sister Amy SSJD arrived with her friend Edy for the Sheep and Wool Festival at Rhinebeck. On Friday evening, after most guesthouse duties were behind me, we managed to go have a "dessert and bookshop date" in Poughkeepsie. We were in the same novitiate class at her convent during my few months in our Priory of Toronto.

In-between all of this, I also met with the Deputy Bishop Visitor for an hour as part of her Visitation. She met with the whole community again after mass on Sunday morning to report on her findings. She will submit a report to our Bishop Visitor, Mark Sisk, of New York in due time. But I can say she seemed well pleased with the vibrancy of our community, even though she is concerned with our well-being what with all the major stresses that have affected most of us over the last few months (3 deaths, many relocations and new job responsibilities). We will need to be good to ourselves and each other as we adapt and grow through it all. It was reassuring to hear from an outsider (privileged but nonetheless outsider) that she perceived what I hadn't put words on just yet.

The week-end was our Fall Foliage program and many guests were there to appreciate the beauty. On Saturday evening we had a wine and cheese party in their honor between Vespers and supper. A couple from Washington, DC, had been here all week and despite all that happened during that time, they had had a blessed quiet week of rest, relaxation and recreation. That's the miracle of our hospitality; it seems to often work well even when we may feel like we're unraveling at the edges. Grace!

The public grand finale to the week was the Choral Vespers sung by Kairos on Sunday evening. The Bach Cantata was beautiful and the Elegiac Song by Beethoven offered in memory of Br. William was soothing and moving at the same time.

But the more private capstone was a buffet supper at Huntington House, hosted by our companions the Caylesses for Bp. Ann Tottenham and our community. It's always a lovely way to unwind and enjoy each other's easygoing company after a busy week like this. Too bad for us, the Caylesses will soon move away to get closer to their son and his family. We will miss them too. But so it is and life goes on.

Thanks be to God for the many, many blessings of our common life here at Holy Cross Monastery. Thank You, Beloved!

What is needed? What is enough? What is nice?

Our Benedictine vow is threefold; obedience, stability and conversion of life.

Conversion of life is broadly speaking about continuously turning our life around towards God. This turnaround can also be called by the Greek word "metanoia" or by the word "repentance" which often gets bad press.

Conversion of life to the monastic way is often reduced to two important but not sufficient components of the conversion: simplicity of life (often shorthanded as "poverty") and celibate chastity (often shorthanded as "chastity"). I'd like to focus on simplicity of life for now.

We, Holy Cross Brothers, cannot claim to seek poverty. While I did have greater personal wealth and freedom as to how to spend it before I became a monk, I can not by any stretch of imagination claim to have become poor in the usual sense.

I often joke to friends and guests who inquire about poverty that never before in my life have I: (a) owned 23 acres of river-front land, a 100-year old mansion, four cars, (b) employed so much staff and contractors, (c) had thousands of benefactors support my life choices with prayer, treasury and friendship.

The joke, of course, is that none of the above is "mine" ("my precious" as Gollum, of Lord of the Rings fame, would have it). All of what I enjoy in my earthly journey technically belongs to my community. And theologically it all belongs to God. The latter was always true but I didn't quite see it that way before "monkhood".

I may have become poor in autonomous choices. Most of our choices are collective and those I make individually most often need to account for the needs and hopes of my whole community.

For example, when I wish to take out one of our vehicles for an errand, I have to check that one is available at the desired time and sign it out. If the errand can be consolidated with one that someone else is running, I should try to do that first.

And then again, a chosen poverty is quite different than one that befalls one unwillingly. Our simplicity of life is a life-giving choice. Hopefully, we can model that for others too.

To continue the example of our vehicle fleet, we can say that 12 religious living together in an exurban area do need transportation.

What is enough transportation? How many cars enable us to work out respective medical, pastoral, academic and ancillary schedules? Should one of us be the "chauffeur du jour" to maximize the use of a single vehicle? Should we hitch hikes up and down Route 9W? What is enough?

And then, what is nice? Do we need efficient, environmentally sound cars? Should I petition the community to satisfy my long-held dream of driving around in a red Lamborghini? Now, wouldn't that be Nice!

Simplicity of life does not mean that we should necessarily go for the cheapest and meanest possible alternative. As the fashionista quip goes: "I'm not wealthy enough to buy cheap shoes". Good Christian stewardship requires to take the greater common good into consideration when we make decisions about how to organize the material side of our lives.

A good example of balancing the greater common good and sobriety in our recent life is the purchase of a gasoline-electric hybrid Toyota Prius car this last summer. We had saved money towards car purchases over the life of our other vehicles and had cash on hand to replace one of them. A donor gave us his used car with the understanding that it did not suit our needs and we would trade it in.

We had discussed the need to reduce our transportation CO2 emissions. When the time came, we were able to trade in the donated car and only need pay two thirds of the sticker price. Our own old and much-used car was sold privately as the Toyota dealership would not give us a worthwhile amount for it.

And now, most of us gently compete to have the highest mileage per gallon on whatever trips we take with the Prius. We use it in priority to our other vehicles since it is the cheapest and most efficient to run.

Check these people's Prius' MPG... Nice!
Originally uploaded by kimncris

And as public transportation in the area improves, increasingly try to take advantage of those means of getting places. Instead of driving 12 miles to Poughkeepsie and back to drop someone off at the train station, we now drop them off at a bus shuttle 4 miles down the road that takes them to the train station. It takes a bit of planning and coordination but works well.

By the way, being environmentally virtuous, in my experience can often be delightful. And driving the Prius is certainly one of those delights for me. I got 53 mpg on the 180 miles driving to Yale Divinity School and back this week. And I was able to listen to my spiritual director's workshop on St Ignatius and Carl Jung by plugging my iPod in the car's sound system. Cool!

The New York times even has a running Prius Diary running on its Green, Inc. blog. Its entries so far reflect fairly well what our experience of it has been so far. I for one, can't wait to trade in more of our older cars for more Prius vehicles (or ones that match its sobriety and pleasure of driving).

Maybe my guardian angel will come and pick me up at the pearly gates in a red Lamborghini and give me the keys for the ride... Then again, the angel could be rolling in with a couple of bikes (Bianchi's, maybe...) to introduce me to my new digs.

Ok, Ok, so it's not red! Perfection is not of this world...

So many lovely opportunities...

Today was a day of contrasts. Last night, I woke up because of a painful sinus headache. I slept in after a painful insomnia but the sleep didn't seem to make the headache go away. During the morning, a brother of mine offered me a neck rub that seemed to ease the pain somewhat. The pressure on my sinuses persists but it's no longer painful, just uncomfortable. I had heard of sinus headaches but had never experienced one; nasty stuff!

I was eager to be up and about this morning because Anne-Marie was coming to visit. We hadn't seen each other in three years. We used to work in the same department at JPMorgan Brussels in the early nineties. We re-connected 10 years ago when I moved to NYC. Anne-Marie and her then husband would organize what we dubbed our Belgian-American Thanksgiving dinner each year. A dozen of us would congregate at their home in Short Hills NJ for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner amongst Belgians and Belgian-Americans.

Anne-Marie is educating two delightful children and has re-joined the labor force a couple of years ago. She had visited me at the monastery shortly after I had joined the Order of the Holy Cross and she had gone through a divorce. A lot has happened in both our lives since then and we did a lot of catch-up today.

In the afternoon, we drove in her car to Poets' Walk Park in Dutchess County. Anne-Marie loved it. She had taken her camera with her but the batteries died on us after a single shot but a good one. Here it is. I love the russet colored grass in the meadow.



Today was the feast of the dedication of St Augustine's Church, our monastic church. Although I missed matins and mass this morning, I enjoyed the rest of the office. And we have two parish groups staying with us who seemed to enjoy it as much as we did; St Mark's, Brooklyn, and St George, Hempstead.

Tonight, Br. Carl who lives in NYC and is visiting for the week-end, opened a bottle of wine for us in the Common Room after Compline and we enjoyed some pleasant banter together. Meanwhile, the St Mark's people had a hymns sing in the crypt as is their yearly tradition. I hadn't seen Carl in ages and quiet fancied a good glass of wine so I helped some elderly St Mark's parishioners down into the crypt and then retreated to the Common Room. There are so many lovely opportunities in the life of this monk... Thank You, Lord!

Celebrating Non-Violence

Today is the second International Non-Violence Day. The International Day of Non-Violence was introduced by the United Nations in 2007, hoping to encourage a joint effort in achieving a culture of peace through education and public awareness.

Its date was chosen in honor of Mahatma Gandhi who was born on October 2, 1869.

Today also happens to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A nice pairing of anniversaries.


It is with relief that I note that the US will not be executing any of its convicts this week. South Carolina's execution of Freddie E. Owens for the murder of Irene Grainger Graves has been stayed.

Here at the monastery, on execution days, we pray for all involved in capital executions. We pray for the person being executed, fro the person(s) for whose murder the execution is a punishment, for their respective families and for those persons carrying out the execution.

We mark our prayers by tolling our church bell for 2 minutes after the end of singing the office of Vespers. This is as part of a national campaign called "For Whom the Bells Toll".

I personally think capital punishment is morally wrong, socially ineffective and economically imprudent. I do understand anger and the desire for retribution in those who have been victimized. I don't understand why the state has to act those impulses out. The protection of society has been empirically demonstrated to be better served by imprisonment accompanied by rehabilitation.

More violence is not the cure for violence. How long will it take for this lesson of human experience to be more widely understood?

Lord Jesus, you have been the non-violent victim of capital punishment.
Teach our hearts not to give in to fear and revenge.
Teach our hearts to obstinately answer in love,
as you have asked us to do, and shown us by your example.
Amen.

Gratitude List

Beloved,

I thank You for the many blessings that come my way:

Red Tail Hawk - Originally uploaded by deegs

- A Red Tail Hawk landing on my window sill 2 feet away from me and looking at me for a couple of seconds,
- A friend lending me his comfy apartment for 2 nights in New York City,
- A friend's friend for inviting me to a Broadway show and dinner with her, her husband and our friend Lewis for his birthday,
- Jeffrey's family for inviting me to celebrate the first evening of Rosh Hashannah with them,
- Claire for making time to have lunch and catch-up with me.

For these and many untold (and, no doubt, some unnoticed) blessings, I thank you, Lord.