Received William's response to the Chapter Talk of Br. Barry. As Columba Marmion wrote ‘when in choir, we bear a twofold personality, that of our misery, our frailty, our faults but also that of members of Christ’s Mystical Body’.

COMMENT from William - appreciated

                                                 Br. Barry

On Thursday, 30 October 2014, 14:40, 

William ....> wrote:

Dear Father Donald,

What an amazing homily at Chapter, and a privilege for me to share! Br Barry is a deep thinker, and expresses himself with honesty and with remarkable perspicacity. Is it not the case that the silent ones are the wise ones! When he has given me a lift as I leave Nunraw, I consider it a privilege to share that time with him.

To say 'look at our Nunraw misjudgements as an example' in illustration of the Rule, is stunning in its honesty and its humility! I hope it may have been taken in good part by all present. It seems to me that Nunraw must be a personally deeply centred community in order to fulfil its vocation AND to be a beacon of the Church to the surrounding neighbourhood, "a local or particular or individual church". The monastery of Atlas was just that, exceptionally: whilst you are not constrained by such physical hostility, you [we all] are surrounded by the negativism of disaffection. As an expression, as Nature's beautiful sunrises of this season towards Advent, one day will be revealed the wonder of the eternal dawn...

I recognize Br Barry's point of 'monasticism' being often misconstrued as a way of expressing one's religion regardless of one's religion. As I often speak to those to whom I may of Nunraw, describing it in the first place as being a monastery 'towards Scotland', I am often asked 'is that the Buddhist monastery on the border?' One like another, "a part of a wider inter religious monastic culture"? It is often of Zen that they first imagine that I speak, but then they react (excuse the pun) in quite a xenophobic way!

"When the monastery is seen as an individual church, the Divine Office.. is carried out not just on behalf of the Church but as a means, second only to the Eucharist, to deeper communion with the Church"...and "in Lectio these two, monk and Church, coincide.." It is as I quite recently read in the introduction to 'The Cloud' by William Johnston SJ, using an expression of Teilhard de Chardin (a writer whose thinking I understand has influenced Br Barry) of the 'cosmic Christ', the thrust of contemplative consciousness towards 'Omega' leaves no corner of the universe untouched, resulting in the great paradox that in monasticism you should help people precisely by 'forgetting' (being removed from) them... something that is known only to the experience of faith. Nunraw as a community is a unique Church, part of the universal Church, but distinct in its cosmic and social dimension of contemplation.

What a delight for me to enter into these thoughts, thank you - and please, thank you to Br Barry. How greatly I am missing this autumn his lift back to Haddington.

From my own little cell of appreciation,

with my love in Our Lord,

William

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----Original message----
From : nunrawdonald   ....
Date : 30/10/2014 - 12:58 (GMTST)
Subject : IPad of Br. Barry at Chapter

Br.Barry - Wednesday Chapter Talks 29 October 2014

Fw: Chapter Sixty Four - Rule of St. Benedict

On Thursday, 30 October 2014, 

Br.Barry ...

Chapter Sixty Four.

Chap. 64 of the Rule is entitled ‘The Election of an Abbot’. Verses 3 -6 give an indication of how St. Benedict viewed the monastery’s relation to the local Christian community.  .....