#Trappist monks

[dramoor]

A Litany of the Person

“image of God born of God’s breath vessel of divine Love after his likeness dwelling of God home of the Infinite Majesty abiding in the Son called from eternity life in the Lord temple of the Holy Spirit branch of Christ receptacle of the Most High wellspring of Living Water heir of the kingdom the glory of God abode of the Trinity. God sings this litany eternally in his Word. This is who you are.”

~From the Abbey of Gethsemani

[robertbrancatelli]

Andy Reid, Monks, and Mission

by Vic Brown Long before his Super Bowl championship days with the Kansas City Chiefs, Andy Reid spent a number of years coaching my hometown Philadelphia Eagles. He had some success in those years but could never manage to win that Big Game. The Philly sports writers and fans were a tough lot, and quite a bit of tension began to surface by the year 2003.   I was a season ticket holder and…

[redmyeyes]

Dear Hawk, (chapter 4, on ao3)

                                   Jan 21, 1969

Skippy,

What did you write me? What does Lucy know, and how long has she known it? At least tell me that, before I humiliate myself confronting her.

Are you blackmailing me into honesty? I’ve never lied to you. Omitted maybe, but never lied. Not about anything important.

Here’s a truth. I turn 50 this year. The last time we saw each other (before the last), I was the same age as you are now, which is unsettling to think about. It feels like an eon has passed, and yet I'm frozen in place.

I keep waiting… for things to start making sense. My life. The choices I’ve made and what they’ve led to. Always in pursuit of that “goal”, and now… not only do I not know what the goal is anymore, but it feels like every single day is a step in the wrong direction. I am treading water. Barely. Seeing you again made that painfully clear.

You asked me once if I liked my life this way, and I thought I had it all figured out. The goal, the plan, the path to freedom. How is it that I'm eleven years ahead of you and still running to catch up?

Skippy. This is the fifth letter I've started. The others were full of misdirection, innuendo and half-truths. Let this be honest enough. You already have me stripped to the bone.

You do know me. I wonder if I ever knew you, or just the person I wanted to see. So much about you surprised me, when we saw each other in November. My memory of you has stayed frozen in my mind. Instead, you’ve changed, you’ve lived, and I’ve found myself cursing those lost years. We've missed so much. We don't have to keep missing it.

Tell me about — anything. Your mentor. How you met. Your time in Seminary. Your life now. What you eat for breakfast and what time you sleep and what you’re reading. I don’t have faith in the prison library, so name something and I’ll send it. I want to know you. Everything about you. I miss you telling me about your family, even if I was too distracted sometimes to listen.

Yours.

p.s. I’m sending this along with the book you “loaned” me ages ago. Consider this a loan in return. Keep it safe, I expect it back.

[rossodimarte]

Horace Vernet, Le zouave trappiste, 1856

[sheltiechicago]

six_senses_travels

Don Justo’s Cathedral: The Dedication of A Lifetime

Justo Gallego Martinez, also known by his honorific name Don Justo, was born in the town of Mejorada del Campo in 1925. He was a Spaniard monk who dedicated his life to constructing a cathedral on his own as an act of faith. He was a member of the Trappist order but had to leave before he could take his final vows because of tuberculosis. He promised to build a shrine if he recovered, and after his recovery, he started to build a cathedral. He began laying foundations for a cathedral with his own hands on a plot of land given to him by his parents in Mejorada del Campo without an official permit or permission.

fizrivero

dianacalabazacosmica

danimcgis

manueljcus

mskldan

[jinyuwintravels]

📍Trappist Monastery, Jordan, Guimaras

🗓️January 16, 2023

❓Dipping keychained sinukuan tree branches in holy water inside Our Lady of the Philippines Monastery.

The sinukuan tree is found in the province of Guimaras, Philippines and nearby provinces. It is said to be a miracle tree because its branches have a natural cross inside of them, no matter how they are cut. The cross is said to represent the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the sinukuan tree is therefore considered to be a sacred tree. There are crucifixes made out of sinukuan for this reason.

It is believed to give good luck when carried or if placed inside a wallet.

More absurd beliefs say they help the owner gain the respect of other people and make them give in to his request.

⁉️There was an ongoing mass when I filmed this video and the best word that describes that moment was “solemn”, very solemn almost reflective. Not really sure if it is a mass or simply a prayer, but there are monks on the left side (not seen in the video) and a few churchgoers. It looks very simple and austere, there’s music like some kinda chant but still very quiet overall.

[liberationtheology]

I’ve found that malleability over the years where I once found hate, cobbling a faith together from a variety of sources: affect theorist Lauren Berlant; sci-fi author Octavia Butler (and her emergent religion of Earthseed); Episcopalian priest Pauli Murray, Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Quaker Bayard Rustin, Zen Buddhist Rev. angel Kyodo williams, and Dorothy Day. I have spent the last decade moving between faith spaces, queer spaces, and organizing spaces, watching the divisions between them melt away. What I once saw as contradictions that could never be resolved now look more like a modern theology for and by LGBTQ+ people pushing for a different world. Long before Javelin, Sufjan Stevens embodied that very promise: that queerness and divinity could coexist and thrive. Being gay and being into God never had to be a binary choice. [...] In Sufjan’s essayistic liner notes for Javelin, he beautifully, confoundingly explores his own faith crises, the experience of sight, and his understanding of God. “I was once again myself waiting to happen again and again and again and again and again … until the end,” he writes. This latest batch of words from the artist, both written and sung, feel very much like an outpouring from someone who is still here, despite it all, trying to reconcile a heart full of love with an often cruel world. As we try to continue living past the initial shock of how badly a bigoted world want us dead, we will keep losing the good ones, again and again. But there is more for us who are still here in the struggle. As Berlant wrote just before their passing, “Once you let in the deaths, all that follows is life. A thing to be used.”

[havendance]

You know what, I want to get in on these Jean-Paul Valley lives AUs. Building off ideas from @captainragtag and @tallochar in this post.

The way I'd do this is we start by still having Jean-Paul die of Azrael disease or whatever at the end of his solo. Idk, I’ve never gotten all the way to the end.

We then bring him back like three months later in a wild Robin arc written by John Lewis probably in which Tim stumbles across a secret Order of St Dumas lair where they have just resurrected JPV using a St Dumas themed knock-off lazarus pit that they stole from Ra’s al Ghul.

After beating up the Order of St Dumas with Azrael, Tim dumps him at, hmmm, idk, let’s go with the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemane over in Kentucky where he can recover from the system among a bunch of old monks who spend their days in prayerful silence and make fudge.

JPV can also impress/horrify them with all of the absolutely wild fringe theology of the Order! Does the Order of St Dumas even have the Eucharist?

(I mean probably, since I think their origin was from the crusades, but I don’t think this has ever come up in comics…)

Anyway we proceed through War Games and Identity Crisis up until the point where Tim’s dad dies and he’s like, clearly I need a fake uncle instead of being adopted by Bruce.

Only instead of hiring an actor, he’s like, I know a guy who owes me a favor and is also in on the secret so I don’t need to hide being Robin from him

So he grabs JPV from the Abbey and rechristens him as his Uncle JP Drake.

(Jean-Paul probably comes back from the abbey being drawn with a tonsure because even though that’s not really a thing anymore because that’s how you know he’s been hanging out with monks.)

(Also I think he deserves a stupid hair style)

Bruce is like, man, who know Tim had this Uncle who looks vaguely familiar. Well, must be the family resemblance.

Jean-Paul looks exactly the same except with a stupid haircut and also possibly an eye color change from the knock-off lazarus pit.

Bruce also doesn’t know that Jean-Paul got resurrected because Tim didn’t tell him.

And then, you know, eventually he figures it out and can brood over the fact that Tim chose Jean-Paul Valley over him.

And that way Tim and Jean-Paul have built up a kind of positive relationship that we can then use to lead into the Battle for the Cowl and Brucequest AUs that other people have proposed.

[theabbeyofgethsemani]

The Abbey of Gethsemani is a school of the Lord’s service, a training ground for brotherly love. Following Christ under a rule and an abbot, we Trappist monks lead lives of prayer, work and sacred reading, steeped in the heart and mystery of the Church. The Abbey is a monastery in the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO), part of the body of the Roman Catholic Church

[transgenderer]

While on approach to Heathrow, about five minutes before the flight was due to land, a 55-year-old Australian named Laurence James Downey went into the toilet and doused himself in petrol.[1] He then went to the cockpit and demanded that the plane continue on to Le Touquet – Côte d'Opale Airport in France, and refuel there for a flight to Tehran, Iran.[2][3] Upon landing at Le Touquet, Downey further demanded the publication in the Irish press of a nine-page statement which he had the captain throw from the cockpit window.[4]

After an eight-hour standoff (during which time Downey released 11 of his 108 hostages),[5] French special forces stormed the plane and apprehended Downey. No shots were fired and nobody was injured.[6] It was later found out that Downey was being sought by police in Perth, Australia, in connection with a $70,000 land fraud incident,[7] and was also wanted in Shannon, Ireland, for alleged assault.[6] He was sentenced in February 1983, in Saint-Omer, France, to five years' imprisonment for air piracy.[8]

In his statement, Downey claimed to have been a Trappist monk in residence at Tre Fontane Abbey in the 1950s (this was later confirmed by monastery officials),[2] before he was expelled from the order for punching a superior in the face.[3] He then took a job as a tour guide in central Portugal, at a shrine devoted to Our Lady of Fátima, the reported origin of the Three Secrets of Fátima.[2] At the time of the hijacking, the third secret was known only to the Pope and other senior figures in the Catholic Church; Downey's statement called on the Vatican to release this secret to the public.[3]

on the third secret:

Sister Lúcia chose not to disclose the third secret in her memoir of August 1941. In 1943, Lúcia fell seriously ill with influenza and pleurisy. Bishop Silva, visiting her on 15 September 1943, suggested that she write the third secret down to ensure that it would be recorded in the event of her death. However, Lúcia was hesitant to do so as, upon receiving the secret, she had heard Mary say not to reveal it. Because Carmelite obedience requires that orders from superiors be regarded as coming directly from God, she was in a quandary as to whose orders took precedence. Finally, in mid-October, Bishop Silva sent her a letter containing a direct order to record the secret. Lúcia continued to struggle, even after this direct order. According to Lúcia, she overcame it after the Virgin Mary appeared to her in early January 1944 and said, "Write that which they command you, but not that which is given to you to understand of its meaning."[18]

The text of the third secret, according to the Vatican, was published on 26 June 2000:

The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fátima, on 13 July 1917. I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: 'Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God, something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it, a Bishop dressed in White. We had the impression that it was the Holy Father. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Thanks to you I recognized San Rafael Arnaiz’s name in a book.

*tearful smile*

I just love him so much.

For those who don't know him, St Rafael Arnáiz was a trappist, from Spain, who died at a relatively young age, of diabetes, around the time of the Spanish Civil War.

I found him -or he found me- at a very sad time in my life, that because of [PERSONAL BACKSTORY I'M NOT COMFORTABLE SHARING HERE], had me very desperate and despondent thinking I was "nothing" and that my life was "broken", that everyone had a neat little path and place in the world, and that I had missed my train to my own.

I did find some consolation in St Benedict Joseph Labré, but then, he was also somewhat a figure of legend: desiring for long the monastic life, being assaulted by scruples every time he tried it (probably also OCD and anxiety), he then dedicated most of his life to being a pilgrim, constantly going back and forth to places of pilgrimage, begging, taking letters from one monastery to another, etc, etc. But I could never become that.

The thing with St Rafael is that his journey is so real, so small, so humble, and above all so honest and raw, reading his notebooks is a very cathartic experience. His story starts like so many saints stories, with loving family and miraculous recovery from illness in childhood, a brilliant career in the world as an architect being left behind for the austere and secluded life of a trappist monk... and then he gets sick. And his whole life crumbles around him. He's handed a death sentence, left without direction, in the middle of a war-torn country. And so he goes through these harrowing experiences of having to tear himself from the trappa and then from the world and back again, while feeling at home nowhere, carrying the fatigue and the thirst and the irritability of his (then) chronic, terminal illness... and then he returns to the trappa one last time, and he live a little while, and then dies.

In appearance his life is a tragedy and a failure... and yet there's such a light in it. Not in terms of a forced cheerfulness and grand declarations of deserving pain and embracing expiation... when he suffers he suffers and he complains, and he tries again, and he finds joy in small things, and his mood changes several times in one day, from feeling the most miserable idiot, peeling turnips in the cold, to the mental image of turning Heaven into a farmer's market and laughing when thinking of seeing Christ and the saints and himself surrounded by baskets and baskets of prepared fruits and roots and veggies.

Bottom line: his life mattered, obscure and "failed" as it was. A life doesn't need to be triumphant to matter, and a person doesn't have to reach or perform the extraordinary or the expected to be lovable and loved and mourned and remembered.

Some of his art:

The man himself:

And that's why I picked him for my Confirmation saint, because I felt understood, and I understood that my life was worth it, wherever it led me in the end.

[triviareads]

What is your favourite "oops, I banged my brothers best friend and caught feelings" book?

I am looking for a fun read.

Here are my favorites and they're all fun :D

Historical:

Bed Me, Earl by Felicity Niven: Phineas is Caroline's brother's Edmund best friend (Edmund is a future hero with a worryingly large dick apparently); Caro shows up in Phin's bedroom in the middle of the night and wordlessly conveys that she'd like to have sex with him (and by wordlessly i mean she lets him grope a tit), and the way Phineas is so down and ready..... he's one of the true rake heroes I've recently read. ALSO the funny thing is he doesn't recognize her??? She's a recluse and she just lets him believe she's a maid or something when he deflowers her lolol.

Sold to the Duke by Joanna Shupe: Actually so underrated because how many historicals do you know begin with VIRGINITY AUCTIONS? Eliza has always had a crush on her dead brother's friend Lucien and he ends up "buying" her but refuses to sleep with her and obviously the logical thing for Eliza to do is to reject his charity and be very pissy about him not banging her until he agrees.

When The Viscount Wanted Me by Lydia Lloyd: In which former slutty hero's best friend is *horrified* that his friend's sister has apparently lost her v-card and is all "HOW COULD YOU" but then when Henrietta asks Trem to sleep with her he hesitates for another half-second before agreeing. Guiltily.

The Good Girl's Guide to Rakes by Eva Leigh: Biiiiig huuuuge enormous Dom Kilburn's sister Celeste agrees to help Dom's friend Kieran find a wife in exchange for him showing her the *scandalous* side of London and obviously witnessing borderline sex parties leads to fucking around, which leads to Feelings.

A Rogue's Rules for Seduction by Eva Leigh: Dom may be Willa's brothers' best friend but the dumbass brothers in question helped Dom jilt Willa on their wedding day for Reasons and now Dom's sooooo cut up about it and finds himself accidentally stranded on an island with Willa...... whatever will they do.......... So I guess the banging comes after feeling here but it's too good to not include.

In Which Margo Halifax Earns Her Shocking Reputation by Alexandra Vasti: Henry is a starchy lawyer who's always been in love with Margo, his friend's sister, and they're stuck on a road trip together to "rescue" Margo's fellow disaster twin Matilda. There's some erotic cherry stem knotting with one's tongue in this.

All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue by Sophie Jordan: Aurelia was actually friendly with her older broher's friend Max until she sees him with another girl at a party and now she's upset and draws a revenge cartoon that insinuates he has a small dick, making Max, uh, kind of unpopular for a minute. It's a light, zany enemies-to-lovers situation.

Sidenote I met Sophie Jordan the other week!?!?!? I was not expecting to but she was sitting like 2 rows behind me at a book event.

Contemporary:

Sinner by Sierra Simone: Sean is Zenny's MUCH OLDER brother's BFF :D; she's training to be a nun and asks him for sex lessons before she fully becomes a bride of Christ. So many "teach me daddy" moments it's so great.

Saint by Sierra Simone: And in an ironic twist of fate, Sean's brother Aiden dates, then breaks up with Sean's friend Elijah... who is also Zenny's brother. Now it's 5 years later, Aiden is a MONK and Elijah shows up engaged to a other man, ostensibly to write about trappist beer and they go on a European beer tour, together. Spoiler, cock cages and chastity are involved.

Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey: Georgie has always been in love with her older brother's friend Travis but he always saw her as an annoying little sister type. Now he's a washed up baseball player trying to get a commentating job that involves them fake dating to make him look "respectable" and to signal to the world Georgie is a big girl now lol.

The good thing about these books is that none of them do that obnoxious thing where they're all "your brother's gonna kill me" very much, but the age-gap ones lean into the taboo-ness more or less which is appreciated.

[leadoutlap]

being into motorsport rpf while not liking omegaverse makes me feel like some kind of trappist monk

[einarbaldvin]

Trappist monks of Mariawald Monastery, 1959. Ink on paper.

[mysticbeaver]

Trappist monk Rolf

[sunsoak]

Shoutout to the Trappist monks of St Joseph’s Abbey. You make some good ass blueberry preserves.