Happy Birthday Dame Gertrude More!

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

The sisters at Stanbrook Abbey reminded me this morning that it’s Dame Gertrude More’s birthday today–March 25, 1606!

Though she was a totally enclosed, contemplative nun, her friends and her spiritual father all said that she was a very personable, energetic, and friendly woman. Always wanting to talk and joke–even with her great respect for silence in the Benedictine tradition too. Reminds me of many monastics I know!

If you’re on the hunt for down to earth but still intensely profound writing on the mystical life, Dame Gertrude is a good bet. Here‘s a link to my new book of her shorter works.

A “PSA for Catholics”: No Public Masses? Don’t Forget the Liturgy of the Hours

March 24, 2020 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

This is a sort of “PSA” for Catholics who are unable to attend Mass right now…

These are strange times indeed, and we’re all being affected. Not having the daily comforts of casual social interaction are trying on their own, but for Catholics the present inability all over the globe to attend Mass is surely an unprecedented sacrifice for so many of us. Especially in this holy season of Lent and the coming culmination of the Liturgical Year at Easter, the lack of public celebration is and will be difficult to say the least. While priests, deacons, and lay ministers are reaching out all over the land, one ready support I haven’t seen many Catholics publicly recommending is the daily praying of the Liturgy of the Hours, which is a key way to participate actively in the common celebration of the Church’s public prayer.

Certainly, nothing takes the place of the Sacrifice of the Mass and Communion, but many don’t realize that the Liturgy of the Hours (the weekly and yearly rounds of prayers said at set times throughout the entire day and night) is also the Church’s liturgical action—the leitourgia or “work of the people” in Greek. The Liturgy of the Hours is a rich tapestry of meditations on the Scriptures and the whole drama of salvation history. Just as much as the Eucharistic Liturgy, the Liturgy of the Hours is the public prayer of the Church.

For lay Catholics right now, the Liturgy of the Hours is a tremendously important resource. Not only is it the public prayer of the Church, but, more specific to our current situation, the Liturgy of the Hours can also be celebrated fully and efficaciously by all the faithful (no need for Holy Orders!). And it is a common act even when celebrated “alone.”

The “The General Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours” describes the essentially communal nature of this prayer: “In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church exercises the priestly office of its head and offers to God ‘unceasingly’ a sacrifice of praise . . . this prayer is ‘the voice of the bride herself as she addresses the bridegroom; indeed, it is also the prayer of Christ and his body to the Father.’ ‘All therefore who offer this prayer are fulfilling a duty of the Church, and also sharing in the highest honor given to Christ’s bride, because as they render praise to God they are standing before God’s throne in the name of Mother Church'” (§15). In this way, the Liturgy of the Hours enables us all to perform the liturgy even in our present state.

Admittedly, for many the psalms and canticles can be hard to “make their own” prayer. What if the Hours present me with a psalm of exultation and I’m worried or depressed? What if they offer me one of the penitential psalms but I’m actually in a joyful mood?

Interestingly, this hurdle is one of its finest virtues in our socially distanced times. For, as the Instruction says, “The person who prays the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours prays not so much in his own person as in the name of the Church, and, in fact, in the person of Christ himself. If one bears this in mind difficulties disappear when one notices in prayer that the feelings of the heart in prayer are different from the emotions expressed in the psalm . . . [In the Liturgy of the Hours] the public cycle of psalms is gone through, not as a private exercise but in the name of the Church, even by someone saying an Hour by himself. The person who prays the psalms in the name of the Church can always find a reason for joy or sadness, for the saying of the Apostle applies in this case also: ‘Rejoice with the joyful and weep with those who weep’ (Romans 12:15). In this way human frailty, wounded by self-love, is healed in that degree of love in which the mind and voice of one praying the psalms are in harmony” (§108). In being difficult to think of as exclusively “my” prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours opens us to the larger reality of the Church, to the common nature we all share in Christ, and the ways in which each individual member contributes to the Body of Christ and complements the other members.

In the season of Lent and into the season of Easter especially, the prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours offer us much to chew on, to form minds and hearts as we enter more deeply into the holy seasons. If we know the Hours and have fallen away, maybe it’s time to come back. If we’ve never prayed them before, maybe we can use this strange time as a surprising invitation to a whole new way of prayer. In the absence of Mass, I can’t think of a better means to feel like a vital member of the Church, celebrating and offering up the “sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15) even in these difficult circumstances.

If you don’t have a copy of the Liturgy of the Hours available, Universalis has an online version and Laudate makes an app.

state natural area poems #1: Cudahy Woods

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

shagbark hickory up the rise

skunk cabbage strains its spathe–

early risers awash in sun

A beautiful example of old forest strangely right next to Mitchell Airport–dry-mesic, mesic, and lowland forest. Here’s the skunk cabbage we found!

Thank you, Milwaukee County Parks for tending this patch of earth for us.

New Project for the Pandemic Era…

March 23, 2020 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

To maintain sanity, encounter the natural world in my area, and keep the literary instincts moving if not honed, I’m going to start a new project here and on Twitter. (Yes, I’m on Twitter now at @riyeff–those who know me personally will be shocked, I’m sure!)

I’m going to visit the State Natural Areas of Milwaukee County and the four adjacent counties to practice social distancing but also maintain an intimate connection to the natural spaces around my neck of the woods. Then to try to forge some kind of virtual connection with anyone who’s interested, I’ll take a photo and make an impromptu three-line poem (not a haiku unless by accident), posting them here and on Twitter. Maybe other folks will share theirs from other natural areas?

That’s the idea; we’ll see where it goes…

Dame Gertrude More Book Now Available!

March 20, 2020 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

In this very strange time in the world, I’d like to offer at least a small bit of good news: my new book, an edition of the poems and shorter prose works on prayer and contemplation of Dame Gertrude More, is now available!

Dame Gertrude was a seventeenth-century Benedictine. A great-great-granddaughter of Saint Thomas More, she left home at 17 to co-found the Abbey of Our Lady of Comfort in what is today Cambrai, France. This monastery was part of a movement to revive monastic life among English Catholics after the Reformations and was so successful that the community continues today as Stanbrook Abbey back in England.

Dame Gertrude More was a strong, talkative, and likable woman who, under the tutelage of Dom Augustine Baker, also became a great lover of contemplation. She wrote poems, several shorter prose works, and a longer work sometimes called her “Confessions,” all of which were published in 1658, years after her early death. This book made her one of the earliest women published in the English language.

Her works celebrate and describe the nature of contemplation and divine union. With a plain style that was unconcerned with technicalities and intellectual hair-splitting, Dame Gertrude’s teachings on prayer and contemplation are beautiful testaments to the value of pursuing, as she puts it, “the one thing necessary” (experiential intimacy between the soul and its Maker).

She, Dom Augustine Baker, and the community at Cambrai more generally were instrumental in passing on the ancient and medieval teachings on contemplation in the Christian west, and I am delighted that both the community at Stanbrook Abbey and Gracewing have helped me to make Dame Gertrude’s works more readily accessible to a new generation.

I hope that in this uncertain time, we might find some solace in the kind of unwavering attention Dame Gertrude gives to what is most pressing and important in this earthly life.

You can find a copy on Gracewing’s website and on Amazon. I hope you enjoy!

New Advent Reflection at Commonweal

December 15, 2019 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

The good folks at Commonweal just published a short reflection piece I wrote up for the Advent season on their website.

It speaks to the expectant waiting encouraged by the liturgy during Advent, with help from the western monastic tradition’s central practice of rumination.

A big thank you to the editors and readers of Commonweal, and a happy Advent to everyone!

Translation Night at Boswell Book Company! Nov 26th at 7 pm

November 20, 2019November 20, 2019 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

This coming Tuesday, November 26th at 7 pm, anyone in the Milwaukee area who wants to support translators and/or the literary arts in general should come on down to Boswell Book Company on Downer Ave. (more details on their homepage).

I’ll be talking about and reading from my translation of Swami Abhishiktananda’s French poems (In the Bosom of the Father), along with Dr. Lorena Terando of UW-Milwaukee and former Boswellian Caroline Froh.

After brief readings from each of us, we’ll have a Q&A about translation in general and the works themselves.

Hope to see folks there!

Poetry Reading at Haggerty Museum of Art October 24th, 2.00 pm

September 30, 2019December 21, 2019 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

If you’re in the Milwaukee area and want to support the arts, please attend a reading that Dr. Tyler Farrell and I will be offering at the Haggerty Museum of Art on Marquette University’s campus. It’s a great space, and free and open to the public! I’m particularly excited about this reading as I’ll be reading from my translation of Dom John Lydgate’s Troy Book (the great and massive fifteenth-century poem about the Trojan War) for the first time in public.

Here are the bios, plans, and contact info for the venue:

Tyler Farrell is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the English department at Marquette University and teaches writing, poetry, drama, Irish and British Literature and film. He also leads two study abroad programs, one to London in J-session and the other to Ireland in Summer. He has published three books of poetry with Salmon: Tethered to the Earth(2008), The Land of Give and Take (2012) and will be reading primarily from his most recent collection, Stichomythia(2018). Farrell is a fan of poetry and art and always feels the wonders that art forms can bring to us. Go poetry!

Jacob Riyeff is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the English department at Marquette University. In addition to teaching, he is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval literature. Jacob’s publishing projects mainly center on the poetry of the Benedictine monastic community down thru the ages, and his books include a translation of the tenth-centuryOld English Rule of Saint Benedict (Cistercian Publications); a translation of the collected poems of Dom Henri Le Saux (aka Swami Abhishiktananda), In the Bosom of the Father (Resource); and his own poetry collection, Sunk in Your Shipwreck (Resource). He will be reading from his collection and a couple new poems.

For more information, contact Lynne Shumow at lynne.shumow@mu.edu

New Peer-reviewed Essay/Edition/Translation: a Fourteenth-Century Benedictine Novice Treatise on Contemplation

September 10, 2019 / jriyeff / 1 Comment

After several years and help from a number of scholars and monks, I am very happy to announce that my edition, translation, and study of an anonymous fourteenth-century Latin treatise for novice Benedictines, De modo meditandi vel contemplandi (“On the method of meditation or contemplation”), was published last month by the good folks at The Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures. The treatise comes to us from the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, the monastery (dissolved in the sixteenth-century) that was home to the most prolific Middle English poet, Dom John Lydgate.

My thanks to the editors, Christine Cooper-Rompato and Sherri Olson; everyone who offered their help along the way; and to my anonymous reader at JMRC for all their assistance in presenting this work to the world.

Here is the article’s abstract:

This article presents the first study, edition, and modern English translation of a Latin treatise for novice Benedictine monks copied at the English monastery of Bury St. Edmunds in the fourteenth century in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 240. The treatise is comprised of two primary parts, the first describing a monastic program of meditation or contemplation to be followed throughout the day, the second discussing the benefits and nature of “the discipline” (the practice of flagellation) for curing a lack of devotion to monastic practice. The introduction and notes place the treatise within the larger context of the manuscript, of religious life and history in England and the West more generally, and of the treatise author’s sources, monastic heritage, and a variety of traditional and innovative medieval genres. The text is finally placed in the context of newer historiography on late medieval English monasticism and the relationship of monastics to their lay associates.

Arcane work, I know, but fascinating material!

Tea Poems (from “Sunk” Collection)

August 30, 2019 / jriyeff / Leave a comment

A short poem for the weekend from my collection, Sunk in Your Shipwreck. Good tea has been one of the most constant companions thru-out my life, from early days going to the Teachery up in Madison, WI on Willie Street, to the long days and evenings I spent sipping at Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder, CO over two years, to the visits to Red Blossom Tea in San Francisco, to everywhere else I’ve been. Good loose-leaf tea is it: the texture of its leaves, the color of its liquor against white clay, the smells that just don’t stop, the copious array of flavors is like nothing else. Black’s all right, but Dragon Well, Big Red Robe, Cloud Mist—that’s where it’s at.

Here’s a tiny suite of poems on tea culled from two lonely but beautiful nights from years past. (The text follows the audio file.) Happy long weekend—drink some tea!