just a brief meditation on the dogma of the trinity today in light of the upcoming birthday of swami abhishiktananda/dom henri le saux in august.
another longer essay in the ongoing saga of generative software/decomputing and higher ed coming soon!
Benedictine
a belated post on a new(ish) essay in _spirit & life_
in the thick part of the term amid other family stuff going on too, apparently i completely forgot to announce that i had an essay published in the benedictine magazine spirit & life back in march.
it’s on mortification, which isn’t a terribly popular topic of essay writing these days, but i find it fascinating. it comes out of my ongoing research on and reading of the 17th-century benedictine dame gertrude more. especially the talks i gave at dame gertrude’s foundation of stanbrook abbey back in october.
a little light reading!
and, a closing to the trilogy of essays on chatbots and education, or “on vanity”
hi folks! back to short poems and close-up pictures of flowers and rocks and stuff soon, but here’s the final installment of the trilogy of essays i wrote this spring as the term wound up and we all handled the situation with chatbots in the educational space we inhabit with our students.
thanks to the plough team for getting this last salvo out into the world!
pax inter spinas.
new short essay (with audio option) on earth as mother, earth day, our extractive capitalist mode, conversion to the earth, etc.
hey all. if you’ve gotten updates from me long enough, you’ll know that, in the midst of lots of hikes and plants and scholarly musings on medieval monasticism, sometimes things get theological/spiritual here.
if you’re game for that, i’ve got a new “eco-theological” essay out on focolare media’s website today. you can read it there or listen to me read it as there’s an audio option.
i’ve been looking for a place to use st. gregory the great’s observation that “the earth has given birth to us all; we are right to call her our mother,” and this is it!
celebrating the 50th anniversary of swami abhishiktananda’s mahaprasthana
swami abhishiktananda (1910-1973; aka dom henri le saux) was a french benedictine monk and priest who felt called to live in india in order to set up contemplative monasteries there. he ended up staying the rest of his life and discovering more than he had bargained for in the general life of india and particularly in advaita vedanta. he never renounced his vocation as a monk or a priest, and he is said to have achieved final awakening right near the end of his life. i was introduced to swami abhishiktananda by my amma sr. pascaline coff and had the great privilege of collecting and translating his french poems a few years back.
this year on december 7th marks the 50th anniversary of swami abhishiktananda’s mahaprasthana (great departure). several of us who admire swamiji and his message of awakening and interreligious respect and affection will celebrate on december 6th at 10.00 am central standard time.
prior cyprian consiglio, fr. adam bucko, jon sweeney, and others will be gathering on zoom to share meditation, song, and talk on swamiji. if you’d like to attend as well, you can email jonmsweeney@gmail.com to receive the zoom link.
pax/shanti
alive and well, also a page found out in the wild
hi everyone who gets updates from my blog: it’s been a bit.
as anyone who knows me personally will know, not only am i not a “digital native,” it’s hard for me to visit for too long too. computering burns me out, and i was (for me) very online there for a while. so, i backed away but am starting to feel able to come back some. not to mention that b/c of a variety of factors (including recently buying a house in my beloved city of milwaukee), we haven’t been out to sna’s regularly for a few months. hoping that will change soon.
but, i’ve been finishing up my new collection of poems, be radiant, with my publisher fernwood press and been drafting a new book on contemplation in our current moment. so stay tuned on that.
i’ll have another post later today or tomorrow for an event i’m co-organizing, but in the meantime, thought i’d throw out there that i recently discovered thru twitter (just can’t call it ‘x’) that i’ve got an author page on paul deane’s website that explains and documents modern alliterative verse. so that’s pretty cool. you can take a look around the site for other alliterative-interested folks if you’re into that kind of thing. 🙂
thanks, paul, for keeping the alliterative lamp burning!
new essay on swami abhishiktananda
this year is the 50th anniversary of the passing of swami abhishiktananda, benedictine monk and sannyasi. and i was invited by dimmid to write an essay on how/why swamiji’s life and message are still important and instructive for their journal dilitato corde.
swami abhsihiktananda was, it’s said plenty but bears repeating, a pioneer of interreligious dialogue, leaving his native france in 1948 for india and never returning. his embrace of advaita and his struggle to articulate his spiritual message in terms honest to the reality of his “double belonging” to the church and to the vedantic tradition make him an immensely compelling figure.
as i did with fr. bede griffiths a few months ago, rather than focusing on the more outgoing aspects of swami abhishiktananda’s thought and life, i turned to the foundations of his formation in monasticism. in this essay i look at his close and at times fraught relationship with the psalms.
it was good fun to write, requested as more of a reflection than a scholarly essay, so i placed myself in this one more than i usually do. other interesting takes are being added as the issue fills up in celebration.
requiescat in pace et lux perpetua luceat ei.
belated notice of an essay on fr. bede griffiths, osbcam
a bit back i had an essay on fr. bede griffiths, osbcam appear in new camaldoli’s newsletter. the new camaldoli hermitage is a community of camaldolese hermit-monks who trace their spiritual heritage back to st. romuald and st. benedict. i’ve visited a few times now, and i’m never disappointed in the monks’ welcome, community atmosphere, and the tremendous land the hermitage sits upon overlooking the pacific ocean in the santa lucia mountains.
folks who write on bede usually focus on his more speculative and experimental views, his interreligious models, etc. given my own proclivities, i took the chance to write about bede as a simple monk, who was, despite all the changes in his life and spirituality, devoted to the divine office (liturgy of the hours), the public prayer of the church that’s been sung throughout the day every day in all sorts of communities since the early years.
other solid stuff in here too.
sna poems, series anthropocenum #17: veteran’s park, milwaukee
veteran’s park is a parcel of land that used to be lake michigan, until landfill was put in. now we have nice museums and trails and marinas and whatnot.
the birds love it too, and so does the ice.
a.
a riprap morning
ice heaving
on milwaukee bay
b.
a beak silhouette
liquid dive
merganser on lake
c.
common goldeneyes
thrusting heads
paddling along
lenten essay (about jokes) in _spirit & life_
for all those who keep the season of holy fasting we call “lent” in english (or those who are interested in world religions for whatever reason), i’ve got a new essay out in the benedictine magazine spirit & life.
it’s based on an interaction i had with some other guys here in milwaukee last year as well as some studying of the nature of christian atonement i did years and years ago now (when i first read william langland’s tremendous poem, piers plowman—read piers if you haven’t!).
all i’ll say here is that the essay involves the devil as a monstrous fish and the holy cross as a tricky hook. enjoy!
Jacob Riyeff 