Gregorian Chant repertoire recorded at monstery; chants to be posted online

From The Guardian, April 9, 2020:

Benedictine nuns release Gregorian chants to help ease coronavirus isolation

A monastery of Benedictine nuns living in seclusion in southern France has opened its doors to allow recordings of its Gregorian chants to be made available to the outside world.

In what is believed to be the largest recording project ever conducted, the US musician John Anderson followed the 45-strong order for three years. He installed microphones in the abbey church of Notre-Dame de Fidélité de Jouques near Aix-en-Provence in southern France and captured the nuns singing their eight daily “offices”. The result is thousands of chants, the entire Gregorian repertoire, about 7,000 hours long.

The Gregorian chant originated in the 8th century and spread throughout Europe. It accords to St Benedict’s “rule”, in which the day is divided into balanced divisions of manual and intellectual work, prayer and rest, starting at 5am with the chanting of matins, and concluding with compline at 8pm, followed by the “great silence” of night.

You can access the Holy Week chants at the link in this paragraph: 

They have ... allowed the release of a week’s worth of their chants https://www.neumz.com/ for the six days Christians refer to as holy week, preceding Easter Sunday, the highlight of the religious calendar, when the chants have a particular importance. The rest is to go live next month.

Quite a great thing.  More at the link above.

"Breviary Offices: The Night Hours, Volumes 1-2"

From Google Books, this is the companion volume to Breviary Offices, from Lauds to Compline Inclusive (Society of St. Margaret, Boston).    The book says "Catholic Church" on the cover, but that's wrong; the SSM is an Anglican religious order for women.  Publish date for this volume was 1899.

As noted, the book contains the "Night Hours" - AKA Mattins, or the Office of Readings.  St. Margaret's very likely doesn't pray Mattins today - few modern orders do - but this is certainly of historical interest.   John Mason Neale founded this order during the revitalization of Anglican Orders in the 19th Century.  Perhaps more on that interesting topic later.

I thought I'd include the whole Preface to this volume here; I have a great deal of respect for monastics and religious - and I find it fascinating to take a look back into the history of these orders and see things from the point of view of earlier generations.

The third instalment of Night Hours, now at last completed, must be prefaced by a few words in explanation of its variations from the two former volumes.

So difficult and so tentative is the whole work of preparing ancient offices for English use at the present day, that mistakes and imperfections could hardly be avoided, especially on the part of editors so inexperienced as those to whom the task, since Dr. Neale's death, has been committed; although much valuable help has most kindly been afforded them. But the history of the book is as follows.

On first founding his Sisterhood at East Grinsted, Dr. Neale felt it of the first importance to supply its members with offices of prayer. He considered the use of S. Osmund to be that alone, which, as English, it was our duty to adopt, but the Sarum Breviary was not within his reach, except in the partial reprint, by Mr. Leslie, which included the Psalter and ferial office, but not much more. He seems, therefore, to have translated the ferial day office from Mr. Leslie's book; but he took the Night Hours from the reformed Roman, inserting a Gallican office here and there when it pleased him better than the Roman. As long as the work was manuscript, and intended only for the use of one House, this eclecticism was, of course, perfectly allowable.

Not long before his death, he planned the publication of a translated Sarum Breviary, in which, however, the Lectionary was to be exchanged for that of the reformed Roman, on account of the revision undergone by the latter, to which the former, from the circumstances of the sixteenth century, never was subjected.

This plan, however, was not carried into effect. After our Founder was taken to rest, we were urged to publish the Matin offices he had given us; and we did so, filling up the blanks left by him with insertions from the same (Roman) book from which he had translated (as, for instance, the lessons of the third nocturns, which he had been wont to turn into English extempore, when saying the office). And thus we prepared the first and second volumes, and proposed, in a third, to print the offices for black-letter days.

After a time the Sarum Breviary was placed in our hands, and we were requested, on behalf of other Beligious Houses, to render its Day Offices into English, as exactly as might be practicable. Dr. Neale had laid the foundation for this by his abridged translation of the ferial and Sunday office over twenty years ago. Propers of Seasons and Saints were now added, and an office book was produced, essentially Sarum, though containing, as noted in its Preface, certain modifications which appeared desirable.

This being done, a considerable discrepancy became visible between our Night and Day Offices, and chiefly in the Services for Saints' Days. The Night Office for the Common of Seasons may be considered as nearly identical in the Roman and Sarum books, except that the responsories do not follow in the same order, that every Sarum office of nine lessons has nine responses, and that no office throughout Easter-tide has more than one nocturn of three psalms, three lessons and three responses: and as far as the Common of Seasons is concerned, the Roman Night Office can, quite practicably, be used together with the Sarum Day Office. But this cannot be done in the case of Saints' Days without producing a sense of dislocation. The present offices, therefore, are so arranged as to fit those for the day hours in our Breviary Offices, and have the same identity with Sarum and the same divergencies from it; the Lectionary being taken, in great measure, from the Boman Breviary, but supplemented from other sources and containing some of the old Sarum lessons, especially in the Octave of the Holy Name.

It will be a satisfaction to those who use this book if we set down in order the sources of the various offices.

From the Sarum, except usually the lessons, are: S. Andrew, Conversion of S. Paul, Annunciation, S. John Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, Commemoration of S. Paul, S. Peter's Chains (except Invitatory), Transfiguration, Holy Name, S. Laurence, Repose of the Blessed Virgin, (abridged), Beheading of S. John Baptist, SS. Matthew and Luke, S. Michael and All Angels and All Saints. In the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, Invitatory, Antiphon, and Responses are Gallican. S. Thomas of Canterbury has the Common of a Martyr, instead of his Proper: S. Agnes, the Common of a Virgin Martyr, instead of Proper: (lessons of the second nocturn, from the Roman office for her feast). Purification; Inv. and Ants., Gallican: Responses; Sarum, (last Response abridged). Invention of the Cross. first Nocturn, Sarum. This festival falling in Easter-tide, has but one nocturn according to Sarum; but ae this practice is not carried out in the Easter-tide offices of vols. 1 and 2, other two nocturns are added: the third from the office of the Exaltation of the Cross, on which feast the second nocturn is devoted to the commemoration of a martyr: the second nocturn is therefore here drawn from a Carmelite breviary assimilating strongly with the Sarum. Visitation: Ants. and some Responses and lessons, Sarum: the rest Roman and Gallican. S. Mary Magdalene: Hymn and Ants., Sarum: Responses, Gallican, except Response 9, which is Sarum. Nativity of the Blessed Virgin: Gallican: except Response 9, which is Sarum. Guardian Angels: Roman. The rest are of the Common.

The Rev. Gerard Moultrie has been good enough to translate several hymns for this book, in their original metre.

A suggestion respecting the Kalendar was made and carried out by our learned friend, the Rev. F. LI. Bagshawe. It was his idea that, without presuming beyond our province, a Kalendar might be introduced into these office books which should present to the mind some view of Church history, and more especially of the history of the British Church: containing the names of Saints of primitive times and universal celebrity, of those who most notably taught and upheld the faith in our own country; and of the founders and reformers of religious orders. These added names are commemorated, by memorial only, at Vespers and Lauds in the forthcoming edition of the Breviary Day Offices; in which also the black-letter days of the Prayer Book Kalendar are similarly commemorated, when their full office does not occur in this present volume. It has seemed desirable to prefix the Kalendar, as thus arranged, to this book as well as to the Breviary Offices, in order to assimilate them for the convenience of persons in the habit of using the latter. Matin offices are given in this volume for those festivals alone which are commemorated with full day office in the other.

When a second edition of the first and second volumes of Night Hours appears, a body of Sarum rubrics will, it is hoped, be inserted : meanwhile, those in the Breviary Offices may suffice for the use of persons desirous of following Sarum practice; while others will without difficulty continue to use the Roman rubrics as already set down in volumes 1 and 2.

A few points should be mentioned.

The Sarum hymn for Common of Apostles is Annue Christe. This is inserted here for optional use : the Roman hymn, Eterna Christi munera, is to be found in the Common Office, vols. 1 and 2.

A ninth Response is supplied throughout, also for optional use, and a note at end of Appendix points out that which belongs to the Common of Apostles.

Te Deum, said on festivals in Advent according to the Roman use, was wholly omitted in the Sarum book during that season.

S. Margaret's, East Grinsted.
Feast of S. Osmund, 1877.

Here's a link to the SSM's website.  Here's an image from their home page:

William Mathias: "As truly as God is our Father"

Sung by the Choir of St. Paul's, London.  The text comes from the writings of Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1416):

As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is he our Mother.
In our Father, God Almighty, we have our being;
In our merciful Mother we are remade and restored.
Our fragmented lives are knit together.
And by giving and yielding ourselves, through grace,
To the Holy Spirit we are made whole.
It is I, the strength and goodness of Fatherhood.
It is I, the wisdom of Motherhood.
It is I, the light and grace of holy love.
It is I, the Trinity.
I am the sovereign goodness in all things.
It is I who teach you to love.
It is I who teach you to desire.
It is I who am the reward of all true desiring.
All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Amen.

Chant from Solesmes, 1930

This is the "Monastic Choir of the Abbey of St. Pierre de Solesmes," singing a variety of chant from the liturgy (both the Mass and Office) - complete with scratchy-sounding vinyl.



This is from the YouTube page:

One LP of a two LP collection issued in the early 1960s on the RCA Victor Red Seal Collector's Issue label, catalogue number LCT-6011.

Images of the slipcase covers of what I believe are the original Decca recordings can be seen here: https://plus.google.com/108298623225603793041/posts/9bawRyCtPg8


Solesmes Abbey or St. Peter's Abbey, Solesmes (Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes) is a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes (Sarthe, France), famous as the source of the restoration of Benedictine monastic life in the country under Dom Prosper Guéranger after the French Revolution. It was originally founded in 1010 as a priory of the Benedictine Le Mans abbey. The abbey is noted for its crucial contribution to the advancement of the Roman Catholic liturgy and the revival of Gregorian chant. A documentary film on life at Solesmes was made in 2009 and focuses on the tradition of the chant at the monastery.

Here's Solesmes' website.

Clear Creek Monastery, 2013

This is a 52-minute version of a shorter video that's been around for a number of years now, I believe.   Clear Creek is a Benedictine Monastery in Oklahoma; the video addresses the topics of the order in general, and of Clear Creek in particular.  There are short segments about the Mass and the Offices, as well.

"The Anglican Franciscan Way"

Here's a video recently posted on the website of the Anglican Communion News Service:

Monastero San Benedetto, Norcia Italy: Requiem

Here's another monastic community - that's a link to their blog - that posts daily audio files of their masses and of the Divine Office; they are Benedictines in Norcia, Italy.  Here's a 2-minute video about their community; they talk about chant but unfortunately don't include any here. 





Today's Mass - "AD MISSAM DE FERIA II : 2 SEP 2013" - is a Requiem, apparently; here's the mp3 of that.  Beautiful.

In Assumptione Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, ad II vesperas

From the website of the Brazilian Benedictines, here are (mp3) recordings of Second Vespers of The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin (Assumption, August 15); I added the image.  You can follow along with the service at Divinum Officium; enter 8-15-2013 in the date box, hit "Enter," then click Vesperae.

In Assumptione Beatæ Mariæ Virginis
ad II vesperas

Our Lady of Vladimir, one of the holiest
medieval representations of the Theotokos

Introitus - organum (2m27.1s - 2012 kb)

Deus, in adiutorium (55.5s - 759 kb)

Hymnus: Ave, Maris stella (2m39.4s - 2181 kb)

Psalmus 109, antiphona Assumpta est Maria (2m42.3s - 2219 kb)

Psalmus 112, antiphona Maria Virgo assumpta est (2m29.6s - 2046 kb)

Psalmus 121, antiphona In odorem unguentorum (2m31.2s - 2068 kb)

Psalmus 126, antiphona Pulchra es et decora (2m31.8s - 2076 kb)

Lectio brevis (21.9s - 301 kb)

Responsorium: Assumpta est Maria (1m48.9s - 1490 kb)

Magnificat, antiphona Hodie Maria Virgo cælos ascendit (5m33.3s - 4558 kb)

Kyrie, eleison; Pater noster; Dominus vobiscum (2m46.5s - 2227 kb)

Benedicamus Dominum; Sit nomen (1m07.5s - 924 kb)

Ecce panis (1m35.6s - 1308 kb)

Tantum ergo VII (1m10.4s - 964 kb)

Panem de cælo, Deus qui nobis (1m15.4s - 1031 kb)

Te laudamus, Domine (1m31.3s - 1249 kb)

Finalem - organum (3m22.8s - 2774 kb)

Breviary Offices, from Lauds to Compline Inclusive (Society of St. Margaret, Boston)

This is a Google book I'm surprised I've never run across before.  Its full title is Breviary Offices, from Lauds to Compline Inclusive:  Translated and Arranged from the Sarum Book and Supplemented from Gallican and Monastic Uses. Printed for the Society of S. Margaret, Boston, U.S. (Google eBook). 

So, it's the St. Margaret Breviary, really - here's a link to the order's website - and apparently comes right from the Sarum Breviary (although with some differences, I'd imagine).  This edition is from 1885.

[EDIT:  Michael, in comments, notes that there's a separate book for Matins as well (which is oddly labeled "Catholic Church"!).  Also that the books are:

....*mostly* Sarum - at least in the Psalter and the Office of the Season. He does make use of some of the tridentine alterations, such as in the system of Mattins lessons. The Proper and Common of the Saints, however, is much more highly [neo?-]Gallican. He takes pains which later folks like G. H. Palmer do not to avoid any direct invocation of the saints. 

Thanks, Michael.]

The book's got a hyperlinked Table of Contents, and it seems to be complete, with the Psalter for the days of the week for all the offices, the Chapter for each office, the Collects, the Antiphons, and everything for all the Feast Days, both major and minor.  No music, though.

A good find!

"Marcella Pattyn, the world’s last Beguine, died on April 14th, aged 92"

Here's Marcella Pattyn's obituary from The Economist.  (HT Anglicans Online.)

I'm especially moved by the idea that "The beguinages had originally been famous for taking the 'spare' or 'surplus' women who crowded into 13th-century cities in search of jobs."   We are headed towards this kind of society today, if we're not already there; global poverty is rising, and unemployment among some sectors of the population is very high.  Decent jobs are becoming scarcer.  The world doesn't seem to care for its "surplus" people much these days, either.  And, of course:  it's easy to understand why Marcella Pattyn would have been attracted to the Beguines; "But she was blind, or almost so, and no other community would accept her. She wanted to work, too, and was not sure she could in an ordinary convent."

AT THE heart of several cities in Belgium lies an unexpected treasure. A gate in a high brick wall creaks open, to reveal a cluster of small, whitewashed, steep-roofed houses round a church. Cobbled alleyways run between them and tiny lawns, thickly planted with flowers, grow in front of them. The cosiness, the neatness and the quiet suggest a hortus conclusus, a medieval metaphor both for virginal women and the walled garden of paradise.

Any veiled women seen there now, however, processing to Mass or tying up hollyhocks in their dark habits and white wimples, are ghosts. Marcella Pattyn was the last of them, ending a way of life that had endured for 800 years.

These places were not convents, but beguinages, and the women in them were not nuns, but Beguines. In these communities, which sprang up spontaneously in and around the cities of the Low Countries from the early 13th century, women led lives of prayer, chastity and service, but were not bound by vows. They could leave; they made their own rules, without male guidance; they were encouraged to study and read, and they were expected to earn their keep by working, especially in the booming cloth trade. They existed somewhere between the world and the cloister, in a state of autonomy which was highly unusual for medieval women and highly disturbing to medieval men.

Nor, to be honest, was it the first thing Juffrouw Marcella thought of when, as a girl, she realised that her dearest wish was to serve her Lord. But she was blind, or almost so, and no other community would accept her. She wanted to work, too, and was not sure she could in an ordinary convent. The beguinages had originally been famous for taking the “spare” or “surplus” women who crowded into 13th-century cities in search of jobs. Even so, the first community she tried sent her back after a week, unable to find a use for her. (In old age she still wept at the thought of all the rejections, dabbing with a handkerchief at her blue unseeing eyes.) A rich aunt intervened with a donation to keep her there, and from the age of 21 she was a Beguine.

Contentedly, in the beguinage at Ghent from 1941 and at Courtrai from 1960, she spent her days in tasks unaltered from the Middle Ages. She knitted baby clothes and wove at a hand loom, her basket of wool beside her chair, chatting and laughing with the other women. At lunchtime, like the others, she ate her own food from her own cupboard (identified by the feel of the carvings under her hands), neatly stocked with plates, jugs, coffee and jam. Cooking she was spared, ever since on the first occasion she had failed to see the milk boiling over, but she washed up with a will.

A good part of the time she prayed, all the prayers she could remember, but especially her rosary whose bright white beads she could almost see. Most usefully, since she was musical, she played the organ in chapel; and she cheered up the sick, as she nursed them, by serenading them on banjo and accordion. Almost her only concession to modernity was the motorised wheelchair in which she would career around the alleyways at Courtrai in her later years, wrapped in a thick knitted cape against the cold, her white stick dangerously levelled like a lance.

Love’s light

In her energy and willpower she was typical of Beguines of the past. Their writings—in their own vernacular, Flemish or French, rather than men’s Latin—were free-spirited and breathed defiance. “Men try to dissuade me from everything Love bids me do,” wrote Hadewijch of Antwerp:

They don’t understand it, and I can’t explain it to them. I must live out what I am.

Prous Bonnet saw Christ, the mystical bridegroom of all Beguines, opening his heart to her like rays blazing from a lantern. But a Beguine who was blind could take comfort in knowing, with Marguerite Porète, that Love’s light also lay within her:

O deepest spring and fountain sealed, Where the sun is subtly hidden, You send your rays, says Truth, through divine knowledge; We know it through true Wisdom: Her splendour clothes us in light.

When she was known to be the last, Juffrouw Marcella became famous. The mayor and aldermen of Courtrai visited her, called her a piece of world heritage, and gave her Beguine-shaped chocolates and champagne, which she downed eagerly. A statue of her, looking uncharacteristically uncertain, was cast in bronze for the beguinage.

The story of the Beguines, she confessed, was very sad, one of swift success and long decline. They had caught the medieval longing for apostolic simplicity, lay involvement and mysticism that also fired St Francis; but the male clergy, unable to control them, attacked them as heretics and burned some alive. With the Protestant Reformation the order almost vanished; with the French revolution their property was lost, and they struggled to recover. In the high Middle Ages a city like Ghent could count its Beguines in thousands. At Courtrai in 1960 Sister Marcella was one of only nine scattered among 40 neat white houses, sleeping in snowy linen in their narrow serge-curtained beds. And then there were none.

"A Cloistered Life" (AKA, Regina Laudis and "that simplest of happiness")

Here's a great piece - a 1993 article written by one Simon Sebag Montefiore and published in Psychology Today.   (I added the images.)

 I have two images of a monastery: one is a sinister place of dank corridors, icy cells, and cold stone; the other a kind of medieval, Monty-Pythonesque farce. The Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, where I stayed for several days as a guest of the Benedictine Order, is neither. Entering this world is like stepping back into a quaint, rustic paradise that existed long ago-- in the age of oxen-yoked plows and horse-drawn carriages.

I visited the abbey--working with the nuns as they brought in their harvest--because it was the home of a romantic and true story of Hollywood, God, and Elvis that has mystified America for 30 years. In 1962, Dolores Hart was a 24-year-old movie star with Grace Kelly looks and 11 films already to her credit, including Where the Boys Are, Loving You, and King Creole. In the latter two she costarred with Elvis Presley. There were rumors of a love affair and, later, of a child born of the couple's supposed tryst. Then, in 1963, she gave it all up to become a nun--joining a cloistered monastery and disappearing from celebrityhood forever.

Ever since, Hart's exquisite beauty and her friendship with Elvis Presley in the fresh dawn of his fame have made her the subject of lurid legends. In a society that regards Hollywood fame as Heaven, we presume that someone who gives it all up must be either crazy, ungrateful, or tainted by some terrible scandal.

Her religious vows have prevented Mother Dolores (as she is now known) from answering such questions as: Did she have a love affair with Elvis? Did she bear the King's child--a Dauphin of rock 'n' roll? What kind of life does she lead today and does she ever regret giving up her star's crown for a nun's halo? More generally, why give up the routines of the rat race for the rigors of the monastery?

When an ex-lion tamer named Philip Stanic from Gary, Indiana, changed his name to Elvis Presley, Jr., in 1990, began a career as an Elvis impersonator, and claimed he was the fruit of Elvis's passionate affair with Dolores Hart in 1961, the press leapt on the story. Mother Dolores, banned from formal interviews by the Archbishop of Hertford, could not answer the accusations against her. Despite the attempts of a series of investigative journalists, they could not speak with her, nor even confirm that it was her they had seen while attending services at the monastery's quaint chapel. But as it seemed to me that she would want the truth told, I began a personal quest to speak with her that was almost as weird but ultimately as satisfying as Hart's own spiritual journey.

A combination of talent and looks--that cherubic innocence mixed with feline sensuality--made Hart a star almost overnight. She survived her turbulent family (her parents were alcoholics) by converting to Catholicism at the age of 10. At 18, in 1956, Paramount signed her to a seven-year contract.

Thirty-seven years later I called the abbey for the first time and asked to speak to her. The nun at the gate took a message but warned me that Mother Dolores was unlikely to return the call. Minutes later, my phone rang. It was a woman named Barbara Simon, who said she was calling "on behalf of the abbey" to say that Dolores Hart would not speak but that the allegations of the young man calling himself Elvis Presley, Jr., were lies. When I asked her where she was calling from, the phone went dead.

Now fully intrigued, I set out to enlist the help of another classic character of the silver screen: Patricia Neal, the stunning, Oscar-winning star of Hud and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Once Roald Dahl's wife, once Gary Cooper's lover, she had been felled in her prime by a near-fatal stroke. She recovered, I knew, with the help of...the Abbey of Regina Laudis.

THE FORMIDABLE MISS NEAL--charming, gravelly, and outrageous, met me in a New York City diner and told me that it was Maria Cooper, daughter of Gary Cooper, who introduced both her and Dolores Hart to Regina Laudis. She and Dolores spoke often and perhaps, if I was a good boy, she purred, she would mention me to Mother Dolores. "If you're lucky," the old screen siren added raffishly.

Days passed without a word. Just when it seemed my quest was over, the phone call came. I recognized the voice on the telephone the moment I picked it up. Even if I did not remember its distinctive trill from all those films, it was possibly the softest and most graceful voice I had ever heard:

"My name is Mother Dolores. I know that you called for me."

At once I asked if we could meet, but she reminded me that they were a closed order at the abbey: "The only reason I am talking to you is out of courtesy to your relationship with Patricia." Afraid that our conversation might end as abruptly as the mysterious Ms. Simon's, I wasted no time in asking her about Elvis Presley. Mother Dolores denied she ever had any love affair with him, quaintly calling him "Mr. Presley."

"I had a very good and sound and clean relationship with Mr. Presley; we were good friends. Mr. Presley was one of the finest persons I ever worked with in Hollywood. So no one can spoil our association. During the time we worked on it, we were good friends on the set and we had a good working relationship. We liked each other but we were not...we were never romantically linked. I was never in that kind of association with him."

I asked about the ex-lion tamer who claimed to be her son.

"There is no truth in what that young man has said," she answered. "He has abused both my name and Mr. Presley's. My name is not nearly as interesting to the press, but it does make a good story. So it is not right for this young man to try to create such an atmosphere in order to further his career."

There was no reason to disbelieve her, since many of the nuns happily admit love affairs before taking holy orders--as well as temptations afterward. I asked her what kind of life she led there? Did she work or just pray?

"I do all sorts of work here. In fact, I would like to invite you to visit and stay at the abbey because you have certainly been gracious and kind to me. I would like to extend our hospitality. Monastic life is very simple. You'd have to come up and see. But I cannot promise you we would ever meet. Would you like to stay?"

THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND THE CROTCHETY, BESPECTACLED SISTER Mary Elisabeth picked me up at the bus station in a big, scarred station wagon and drove me toward the aptly named Bethlehem. Only seven of the 47 nuns ever leave the estate to do chores--such as collecting me. The rest spend the remainder of their lives there.

"I hope your cell's not too hot," said the sister. "We have no air-conditioning, and it's almost 100 degrees today. Hot for haymaking."

I stayed at a cottage for male visitors. My cell was tiny, hot, austere: exactly like the nuns' cells in their quarters. As I stood peering at the "enclosure"--a wall surrounding the sisters' living area--I heard the roar of a tractor as it whizzed by, just missing me by a hair--a determined and somewhat ancient nun at the wheel, driving at top speed.

Later, I heard bells ringing and saw a nun driving a chariot pulled by two oxen--my introduction to the bucolic pleasures of Mother Dolores' life after Hollywood.

WANDERING around the 400 acres, I found the most active nuns I could have imagined: Mother Stephen, head of the farm (she bears one of the abbey's splendid array of medieval titles: Land Master), was feeding cows, supervising strawberry picking, haymaking, and milking. She called each cow by its nickname and fed it by hand. When I asked her about Mother Dolores, she shrugged as she poured out the hay: "Everyone here is blessed with some special gift."

In between all this muscular activity, the nuns have a praying routine that fills up most of their days. They must also rise at 1:15 A.M. to sing Matins for an hour and then again at 6:15 A.M. for Lauds. Bells ring to summon them to prayer.

At 8 the next morning I attended Mass. The nuns were huddled on the other side of the altar, behind a wooden grille, singing like celestial canaries in incomprehensible Latin. I could not see whether Mother Dolores was there or not--the grille was too dense, the curtain too opaque.

By a rather bizarre coincidence that Mother Dolores would most likely call the "Will of God," Father-Abbot Matthew Stark's "early morning homily" (as the nuns call his sermon) began: "in a time when the word 'awesome' is used to describe a slice of pizza and it is said that Elvis lives while God is dead, it is easy to see how out of touch we are with the glory of the Lord."

After Mass I was summoned by the Guest Master (another medieval title), Mother Placid, who has been at the abbey since 1949. I walked to the edge of the enclosure wall and around the back of it to a little door. I knocked. A voice said "Enter.' There was another door on which a sign read SAINT PLACID. I knocked again and entered. The jolly and energetic nun sat on the other side of a wooden grill to enlighten me about the lives of the saints. It was so hot that both Mother Placid, who was 66 and of course wearing her full habit, and I were sweating profusely in the little parlor of Saint Placid.

She asked if I would like to work that day, and I told her I would like to help with the harvest. "Mother Stephen will be delighted," she smiled.

"And will I able to meet Mother Dolores?" I asked.

Mother Placid shrugged gaily. "She's very busy, but maybe you'll be lucky...."

THE SUN WAS BEATING down on the rich, golden fields. It was the hottest day of a record-breaking heat wave. Mother Stephen was driving a bale-making machine behind her tractor while I worked with some nuns and volunteers piling up the bales, throwing them onto trucks, and then unloading them into bales near the dairy cows. It was hard work. Mother Stephen insisted we drink every five minutes, and the nuns prepared huge vats of iced lemon juice to prevent us from getting heat stroke.

The scene was surreal if idyllic--something from another century. But the strangest part was that the nuns were harvesting in their black habits as if they were in chapel. Yet they worked very hard, sweating and laboring in the dust and heat as if they were farmers.

But there was still no sign of Mother Dolores.

I must admit that I had expected long, cold, stone corridors and nuns lamenting in Latin behind iron grilles--not this sort of rural paradise. These nuns were so muscular that they could throw bales of hay 10 feet in the air, to the very top of the stack. When I tried the same feat, I almost dislocated my arm. The nuns, their habits covered in hay stubble and earth, hooted with laughter at my lack of strength.

When I was summoned by Mother Placid a second time, it was the end of the day. I was tanned and aching from the work, and I was becoming anxious: Would I ever meet the enigmatic Mother Dolores? I knew it was unlikely but still, I hoped....

THE CELIBATE LIFE OF THE NUNS IS THE source of the most misunderstandings and humor about monastic life. I asked Mother Placid about the Benedictine Order's attitude toward female sexuality.

"Is that your favorite subject?" she chuckled. I blushed. It was the third time I had asked her about it.

"For us in the outside world, the celibacy is the most inexplicable part of your life. I mean, what's wrong with pleasure?"

"Outsiders think we're shocked by sex," she said. "We're not opposed to sexuality here, except when it is soulless and empty. Don't you ever feel empty inside if you have sex without the community of love and creation?"

Strangely enough, I admitted this had sometimes happened to me.

"There you are," she answered.

"But I'm not about to give it up. Don't you ever feel sexual desire here?"

"Of course. We are human. We also see the animals on the farm. We know temptation and sometimes it is a good test. But we have given up all selfish personal appetites. We have no property of our own. We don't say anyone else should live this life. Just that we have been selected to do so. Our vocation is to serve the Lord and devote all our energy to Him."

"What happens if you join and then feel you're missing out on sex?"

"That has happened. We've had nuns leave. Of course, it is hurtful and difficult. It is a great challenge and discipline. That is why we prefer our recruits to be at least 25, because we like them to know enough about life to make the decision to join us."

"Do you want them to be virgins? Can they know about love?" I was only partly thinking about Dolores.

"Of course they can. I was in love several times as a young girl. Why not? Besides, a couple of the nuns here are widows who joined when their husbands died. That's fine, too."

Then she smiled and asked: "Have you ever been in love?"

Since she had been honest, I saw no reason to lie. "No. I thought I was a couple of times, but when I look back, I'm not so sure I ever was."

Now she was asking the questions.

"You are an intelligent young man and I feel you have a lot of love to give. Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Not exactly a girlfriend. She's more like a lover," I answered.

"Never been in love," she muttered, almost to herself.

Silence.

Then there was a knock at the door on her side of the grille. Was it Dolores Hart at last? Was this the end of the quest? The door opened....

MOTHER DOLORES'S full-lipped face with its high cheekbones and retrousse nose is unchanged by her 54 years. She also possesses an extraordinary calmness in her cherubic expression and that most lilting of voices. Certainly the face was redder than it bad been 30 years ago--she has worked out on the farm, haying and baling as I had that afternoon--but it is still a face of undeniable beauty. Her hair is covered by her wimple, but other nuns told me later that it is still a luscious blonde. Thirty years on, this is still undeniably the face to launch a thousand ships.

We shook hands through the old wooden grille as Mother Placid looked on beneficently.

"Welcome," Dolores said angelically, her face close to the grille. "I hope you are enjoying your stay and seeing how we live."

"I hope the trouble with the young man called Elvis Presley, Jr., is over," I said.

They both looked rather shocked at the mention of Elvis and the son he never had.

"It's gone quiet now, mercifully. The young man's real mother is looking for him and actually called here. It's unfortunate, but the mother said he won't respond to her because she knows Elvis was not the father. I feel sorry for him."

Our meeting, said Mother Placid, was almost over. Dolores said she was sorry we could not meet face-to-face, or for longer. She is busy. It is harvest. There is also the ban of the Archbishop.

"Obedience and stability," explained Mother Placid, "are the foundations of our Order."

Mother Dolores bowed to me again; when I peered through the grille that divided us, she was already gone.

She had only stayed a minute or two. But it reminded me of our earlier phone conversation, when I asked if she had enjoyed her fame.

"Oh, by all means," she'd replied without any hint of regret.

"But how and why did you decide to leave Hollywood?"

"Only soul-searching brings a knowledge of what your life will be. It only sounds sudden when you announce it because people don't know what has gone on before."

"Don't you ever want to go back to being an actress?"

"There's always continuity. In the dimension of monastic life, there is a role in prayer that certainly keeps me very much a part of it. You see for me being a nun is being an actress."

That was when I understood that the answer to the riddle of Mother Dolores is as simple as this: You only have to experience the richness of the austere life at the abbey to understand how Dolores Hart gave up Hollywood to come here.

THAT NIGHT was my last at the abbey. I felt absolutely rejuvenated and sorry to leave after so short a stay. I retired to bed early after dinner as is the way there. My prickly, driven tension had been massaged into a generous goodwill towards the world that surprised me more than any one. I felt an intense calm.

Mother Dolores had neither said much nor stayed long, yet the riddle of why she left Hollywood was suddenly selfevident: The happiness of the nuns speaks for itself.

Like many others, I could not imagine how anyone could give up the pleasures of being a movie star to live and work in a monastery. Yet when Mother Placid talked to me about love, which she said she felt all around her, I could see that she experienced it in its most austere yet warmest sense. And she could see that while I was bathed in sensualism, I had quite forgotten about love.

I HAD GONE TO THE ABBEY TO SEARCH FOR Dolores Hart. But I did not discover any lurid secret about Hollywood or Elvis Presley. Instead, I discovered a warm and neglected part of myself.

I did not become religious. No one tried to convert me to anything. Looking back, I realized that when I left I took something with me and left something behind. Somewhere amongst the golden fields and the flying bales, the giggling nuns and the relentless embrace of the sun, I had left a bit of myself that will always be there. And when the reservoir of that simplest of happiness gets low again, I might go back and visit them.

If I ever do return, I am sure I will find it there again, untouched, just where I left it.

It is late at night. My tiny cell in the cottage called "Saint Joseph's" is stiflingly hot. I cannot sleep. I wait for the bell to ring for Matins.

The old-fashioned telephone begins to ring in the very still night. It makes an archaic "dring-dring" sound like a phone in an old Dolores Hart film from the Fifties.

I pick it up.

It is Mother Placid.

"You touched my heart when you said you had never been in love," she says. "Please could you tell me what is the name of the girl who is your lover. I know your name already. All I need is her first name."

"Her name is Nicola. Why do you ask?"

"So I can pray for you both," she says. "Good night."

"Requiem Mass in Honor of Mary Berry"

From The Chant Café:

A Solemn Requiem Mass (in the Extraordinary Form) will be Offered for Dr. Mary Berry (Mother Thomas More, C.N.D.) on May 3, 2013 at 12.15 pm, and sung by the Choir & Choristers of St Stephen the First Martyr, Sacramento, California on the fifth anniversary of her death.

Dr. Mary Berry was an English Augustinian nun - and a musicologist and prominent scholar of chant.  Here's her Wikipedia entry:

Mary Berry, CBE (in religion Sister Thomas More 29 June 1917 – 1 May 2008) was an Augustinian canoness and noted choral conductor and musicologist. She was an authority on the performance of Gregorian chant.

Berry studied at Girton College, Cambridge with Thurston Dart as well going to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. In 1970 she received her doctorate from Cambridge after submitting a thesis on the performance of plainsong in the late Middle Ages and the 16th century, and afterwards became a Fellow at Newnham College.

In 1975 Berry founded the Schola Gregoriana of Cambridge for the study and performance of Gregorian chant. The Cantors of the Schola are a group of young, largely professional singers and have performed and recorded extensively under her direction, often working from primary sources. The Schola was one of the first ensembles to perform (and certainly the first to record) music from the Winchester troper after research by Mary Berry and others made the music accessible from the manuscripts.

Berry travelled widely to promote the teaching and singing of Gregorian chant, and organised and participated in many workshops and courses, including Spode Music Week, of which she was a patron. She was a particularly keen advocate for the use of Gregorian chant in its proper liturgical context. Her two introductory books, Plainchant for everyone and Cantors: A collection of Gregorian chants, encourage people to learn the chant, and are often recommended to beginners in the field.

In 2000 she was awarded the Papal Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, and in the 2002 New Year Honours she was appointed CBE.

New Liturgical Movement posted about her funeral five years ago, here.

"Dominican Friars Growing in Number"

By Doreen Carvajal at NYTimes.com today:

For Friars, Finding Renewal by Sticking to Tradition

Andrew Testa for the International Herald Tribune

Rev. Gerard Dunne, second from left, and new priests talked to members of the public interested in joining the order.

Published: April 3, 2013


CORK, Ireland — The Rev. Gerard Dunne has worked for 12 years essentially as a human-resources recruiter — albeit one in a habit cinched with a dangling wooden rosary — for the ancient order of the Dominican friars. Once, his medieval robes may have deterred some. But today he is convinced that the garment is his greatest selling point for enlisting new priests.

A view of the city of Cork in Ireland
Andrew Testa for the International Herald Tribune

Other religious orders largely stopped wearing their traditional garb in recent years, as they tried to attract new followers in secularizing societies. But the friars deliberately went on wearing the robes and promoting the spiritual benefits of shared prayer and a communal lifestyle — with a little help, too, from a chatty blog.

“We made a conscious decision a few years ago to wear the habit because we had no vocations and we were in a bad way,” said Father Dunne, 46, who estimates that he has traveled nearly a half-million miles along Ireland’s country lanes and highways in search of recruits. “If we didn’t present ourselves in an authentic manner, who would join us? And that meant going back to the fundamentals.”

Those fundamentals — which include the signature white tunic and black capuce of the Dominican friars, fashioned almost 800 years ago — have helped lead to an improbable revival of the Dominican order of preachers. Even as other orders close houses and parish priests in Ireland are vanishing at a time of clerical sexual abuse scandals, the Dominican order is growing, and not just in Ireland.

The friars are something of a hybrid between monks and diocesan priests. They live together in a priory, sharing prayers and meals. But unlike monks, they work in the broader community in preaching and teaching roles in churches, universities and secondary schools. It is a way of life that Pope Francis himself has chosen, shunning the papal palace for a guesthouse to “live in community” with bishops and priests at the Vatican.

In the United States, the largest northeastern branch is expecting 18 novices to enter its theology school in Washington, which was expanded three years ago. In the smaller southern region based in New Orleans, the Dominicans are scrambling to finance an influx of novices — six this year — with annual expenses of $30,000 for lodging and theology education over seven years.

“People see the habit in a much more positive light then clerical clothing, the black shirt, white collar and suit,” said Martin Ganeri, who is a Dominican vocations promoter for England, where five people entered the order this year. “The habit doesn’t have the negative image of the clergy, the child abuse issue.”

In fact the Dominicans have faced child abuse accusations in Ireland. But perhaps because of a garb that harks back to the more austere and disciplined traditions of the church, the Dominican friars have managed to flourish even in the Irish Republic, where surveys show Catholics are deserting the church pews faster than in almost any other country.

In tough economic times, the stability of community may also be appealing, and the resurgence for the Dominicans has coincided with Ireland’s economic crisis. But Father Dunne and others said most potential candidates were already prospering in existing jobs in professional fields, and came to the order because of a yearning for greater spirituality.

The revival of the order has been particularly striking in a country where diocesan parish priests have been disappearing. Just 12 men started theology studies for all of Ireland’s 26 dioceses last fall — a record low.

In contrast, in January a Dominican vocations retreat in Cork was oversubscribed at St. Mary’s Priory and two more were added in March and April. The early events drew a total of 20 men to whom the idea of a simple lifestyle and a clear identity appealed at a time of uncertainty in the lives of many.

In the fall, the Dublin-based order enrolled five men, joining 20 other Dominican theology students. They will become part of a community of 175 priests in 18 priories or communal houses across Ireland.

Their rising numbers in Ireland have made the Dominicans the envy of other orders, which have sought to copy their recruitment methods.

“They’re the most successful to the degree that they were online and on the Internet at an early age, and had a blog before the other orders were catching up,” said Terence Harrington, a vocations director for the Capuchin order in Ireland, which has taken to Facebook and Twitter. The Irish diocese now has an iPad app for people considering the priesthood.

Typically, it takes eight months to two years for prospective candidates to decide whether to join the order while working with a Dominican mentor, like Father Dunne. With that period to reflect, the attrition rate for new entrants has dropped to 15 percent, Father Dunne said.

Maurice Colgan, 41, a former social worker for drug addicts who was ordained as a Dominican priest in 2011, said he was still adopting to his lifestyle.

“My hat goes off to diocesan priests, but I don’t know how they do it without community life,” he said. “Today, you need the support of your brothers. Now, of course they may annoy you and you annoy them, but that’s natural in a community.”

At one recent retreat, prospective recruits were invited to imagine themselves as black friars, as the Dominicans are nicknamed, gathering for evening prayer at the 19th-century St. Mary’s Church in Cork, where the order first arrived in 1229.

The guests included a university student, a government lawyer and a schoolteacher drawn by the order’s Web site, which is stocked with videos, among them one of a friar snowball fight set to the song “Eye of the Tiger.” Later, the group crowded at a long wooden table for a traditional Irish fry dinner of potatoes and sausages.

Some of the Irish candidates said they were impressed by the order’s rising numbers and openness to newcomers.

Matthew Farrell, 38, a former bartender from County Offaly and a novice, said he had sampled other orders, like the Carmelites. “I’ve been searching a long time for a vocation,” he said. “I wanted to get married or wanted to do something else. I tried to visualize myself as a priest.”

But in the end, he said, the Dominicans won out. “The Dominicans have a lot of enthusiasm and energy,” he said, “and I liked the fact that they wore habits.”

SSJE: "Praying Our Lives: Judgment"

Here's a very good reflection from the Society of St. John Evangelist's Lent series:

"Praying Our Lives: Daily Videos for Lent 2013" from the SSJE

At their site.  Here's today's video:

"Living in Community With Integritry"

Today, Sr. Laura Katherine, of the Community of St. John Baptist, writes this article for The Angelus, the weekly newsletter published by St. Mary the Virigin in New York:

The three traditional vows, poverty, chastity, and obedience, are one aspect of the religious life that has attracted a good deal of attention down through the centuries. There are many studies of the three vows already in print, so I thought it might be useful to speak about the religious life by discussing three other facets of that life, facets which are not unrelated to the traditional vows, but which are nevertheless quite distinct. My thinking about these things - integrity, self-knowledge, and the forgetting of self - has been shaped in some new ways by my reading of a book by the late Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Hume, OSB (1923-1999). Cardinal Hume was a monk, and then the abbot, of the Roman Catholic Benedictine monastic house, Ampleforth Abbey, North Yorkshire, England, before he was elevated to the episcopate in 1976. His book, The Intentional Life: Making of a Spiritual Vocation (Paraclete Press, 2004), consists of talks and teachings given to various novices while he was abbot of Ampleforth (1963-1976).

The first aspect is integrity. This is a broad term with multiple connotations, such as honor, uprightness, probity, the ability to adhere to fundamental principles, trustworthiness, and, perhaps surprisingly, wholeness, soundness, and unity. Integrity may be regarded both as a personal and as a corporate virtue, since members of religious communities are distinct individuals who try to live together as one, in a body that has a distinct corporate identity. On the personal level, individual integrity involves an awareness of, as well as the attempt to live by, one's own principles, values, and sense of honor. To surrender any one of these things can mean relinquishing some essential part of one's self. Living with integrity means living up to, and into, one's core values and principles as fully as one is able. Of course, life is filled with challenges and it is not easy to live with integrity. Still, trying to do so is something that should not be dismissed. There are a number of ways a person can and will negate who they are, often without realizing it or the consequences of doing so.

Integrity is an important part of living in community as well. A community's core values and principles are usually spelled out in the community's constitutions and in other formal and legal documents; however, they are also part of a community's oral traditions, things that have been practiced, observed, handed down, taught, and imitated. However, tragically, corporate integrity can also be negated in a variety of ways as well. A community needs to be aware of the risks of violating its foundational principles and failing to preserve its integrity. Religious communities are institutions of which much is not only expected but also demanded. They are not islands unto themselves, for they exist within social, cultural, political and, indeed, ecclesiastical structures. They are visible, and how they live makes a difference. A community's internal integrity must be carefully guarded and upheld.

The second aspect, or facet, is that of self-knowledge, which can be summed up as the practice of learning about oneself. There are many masks and façades behind which we are tempted to hide and they are not easily removed. We are often invested in a self-image that we wish were real. This makes it difficult to discover who one really is. Self-knowledge is also self-discovery. Self-discovery is certainly possible, though it can be difficult to achieve. We learn from the reactions of others: what is appropriate and what is not, what behavior is pleasing and what is not. Self-knowledge is not easy and there are usually some hard knocks along the path to self-discovery as one begins to understand what is underlying the ego's response. All the members of a religious community must try to recognize their strengths and their weaknesses, their gifts as well as their faults. They must ask some difficult questions, naming and defining the problems one has with others and asking why such problems arise. However, the rewards of self-discovery are great. Confronting these hard questions is necessary if inner change and growth are to happen. We cannot really begin to know others if we avoid knowing ourselves. The members of many religious communities live together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They may dress the same way and share many things in common, but they do not necessarily think, react, or respond in the same way. Individuals who live in community have quite different personalities and may possess very different habits and have very different likes and dislikes. Self-knowledge helps to prevent insensitivity, indifference, self-indulgence and behaviors that are unfeeling or offensive. Self-knowledge promotes community by helping one to live with others peaceably and lovingly.

The third facet or aspect is self-forgetting. To be self-centered seems to be part of our human nature. "Self-forgetting" is an ambiguous term and can be misinterpreted. I am not talking here about a form of self-abnegation which can be seen as negative and destructive. On the contrary, I am talking about a form of "self-forgetting" that can be positive and quite productive. I believe that human beings need not be always and only selfish and self-centered. Human beings also seem to have an inherent capacity to let go of the ego's insistent demands, desires, and personal wishes and pleasures. This "letting go" involves surrendering self-will, the desire for self-aggrandizement and self-gratification, and the need for constant recognition and approval. The ability to "forget self" can make it possible for one to recognize and support others, to allow others to have their way, and to give others the opportunity to flourish by being themselves. This may be a matter of simple courtesy, as one realizes that "I am not the only pebble on the beach." It also means being aware of and awake to others, an awareness that is linked to the capacity to love and to care, and which also involves acknowledging and respecting others. This aspect of the religious life teaches us to go beyond self in order to meet others where they are. One learns that the more one is able to live in a way that is not self-centered, the more joy and love there is in one's life.

Though integrity, self-knowledge and self-forgetting are essential aspects of the religious life, I think that these things are important in the daily lives of all Christians, no matter what their vocation, no matter what their walk of life. Sister Laura Katharine, C.S.J.B.

A renovated Church of the Resurrection, Mirfield

From the YouTube page, this is:

A tour of the newly-refurbished Church of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, West Yorkshire.

Walter Frere was a co-founder of the monastic Community of the Resurrection in 1894, and became its superior in 1902.  There's a theological college at the same location.

The Community had been worshipping elsewhere - perhaps in a chapel - until this past December, when the refurbishing of their church was complete. 

Here's another video, "an excerpt from the Vigil of the Resurrection, sung on the Eve of Palm Sunday, 2012." Sounds very Orthodox-chant.



And here's a third, from this past spring, "Easter Day Solemn Mattins."



The blurb at YouTube says:

This is the beginning of Solemn Mattins on Easter Day 2012, as sung by the Community and College of the Resurrection, Mirfield. It begins with the entry of the Officiant, the Regina Coeli, the chanting of the opening response, the Easter Anthems, and finally the Haec Dies, which is sung in place of the Office Hymn from Easter Day until the First Evensong of Low Sunday.

“The Brothers of Clear Creek”

From the March issue of the magazine Oklahoma Today: 

“The Brothers of Clear Creek” portfolio by Tulsa photographer Shane Brown earns Oklahoma Today’s second Wilbur Award.

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (March 9, 2012) – Oklahoma Today magazine was named a winner of a 2012 Wilbur Award from the Religious Communicators Council for the portfolio “The Brothers of Clear Creek” in its November/December 2011 issue. Tulsa photographer Shane Brown shot the portfolio during several visits to the Clear Creek Monastery near Hulbert, Oklahoma. Additional awardees this year include Entertainment Weekly, CBS News Sunday Morning, and the feature film The Help.

“What appealed to me about shooting at the monastery is that I was exposed to so much different cultural practice,” said Brown. “I’m an observer, and the camera is the perfect tool for that.”

One of the challenges Brown faced in photographing the Benedictine monks who live at Clear Creek, which is the only traditional men’s contemplative Benedictine monastery in the United States, was the monks’ de-emphasis on the individual. Many of Brown’s photos show the men’s hands engaged in various acts of work and worship―feeding sheep, creating icons, and stringing beads together for a rosary.

“We are honored to receive the Wilbur Award for Shane Brown’s beautiful portfolio of life at Clear Creek Monastery,” said Oklahoma Today editor Steffie Corcoran. “Shane’s photos speak eloquently to the quiet universality of faith.”

Brown holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Oklahoma. He has been a professional photographer for more than twelve years and also has worked as a cinematographer. In addition to Oklahoma Today, Brown’s clients include The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and This Land Press.

The Wilbur Award is given to secular media outlets for excellence in communicating religious ideals, issues, and themes and is awarded by the Religious Communicators Council. Past magazine recipients of the award include The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and Playboy. This is Oklahoma Today’s second Wilbur Award; the first was in 1998. Copies of the issue and a .pdf of the article are available at oklahomatoday.com.

Oklahoma Today, the Magazine of Oklahoma since 1956, focuses on the people, places, and culture of Oklahoma. A paid circulation magazine, it has subscribers in every state and many foreign countries. It is published bimonthly by the Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department. For more information, visit www.oklahomatoday.com.

Clear Creek is a new monastery, and is still under construction.  I've written about the monks before; click the image on this page to see a video from about four years ago.  This is from the home page of their website:

Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine monastery located in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was founded in 1999 by Notre-Dame de Fontgombault, a French Abbey which belongs to the Solesmes Congregation, as does Clear Creek. The Patron Saint of Clear Creek Abbey is the Blessed Virgin Mary under the mystery of her Annunciation. See origins for a complete history.

Like the other monasteries of the Solesmes Congregation, Clear Creek Abbey belongs to those institutes of religious life entirely dedicated to contemplative prayer, without apostolic works. A particular emphasis is placed on the solemn celebration of the liturgy.

It is part of the Solesmes tradition to cultivate a solemn, public liturgical Office. The monks of Clear Creek Abbey celebrate God's glory in Latin, so appropriate to give an idea of God's majesty, a sense of the sacred. Thus the monks exploit the riches developed over centuries in the Church's liturgy and cultivate Gregorian chant.

Clear Creek, which attained Abbey status in 2010, is also offering a chant weekend this fall.  You can listen to some chant samples linked from this page, where some of the monks' recordings are available for purchase.

Here's an mp3 of the Christmas Responsory Quem Vidistis; here's the sequence hymn Ave Maria.

"Ox Carts and No Coffee: Building a Monastery the Medieval Way"

From SpiegelOnline:

What did a medieval stonemason do when heavy rainfall interrupted his work? Umbrellas are impractical at construction sites. Gore-Tex jackets weren't yet invented, nor were plastic rain jackets. "He donned a jacket made of felted loden cloth," says Bert Geurten, the man who plans to build an authentic monastery town the old-fashioned way.

Felted loden jackets will also be present on rainy days at Geurten's building site, which is located near Messkirch, in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, between the Danube River and Lake Constance. Beginning in 2013, a Carolingian monastery town will be built here using only the materials and techniques of the 9th century. From the mortar to the walls, the rain jackets to the menu, every aspect of the operation will be carried out as just as it was in the days of Charlemagne. "We want to work as authentically as possible," says Geurten.

The building contractor from the Rhineland region has long dreamt of carrying out his plan. When he was a teenager, the now 62-year-old was inspired by a model of the St. Gallen monastery plan in an exhibition in his home city of Aachen. The plan, dating from the beginning of the 9th century, shows the ideal monastery, as envisioned by Abbot Haito of Reichenau.

Haito dedicated his drawing to his colleague Abbot Gozbert of St. Gall, who presided over the monastery from 816 to 837. He meticulously recorded everything that he believed was necessary for a monastic city, from a chicken coop to a church for 2,000 worshipers. Altogether he envisaged 52 buildings -- but they were never built. That will change in spring 2013, though, when ox-pulled carts wil begin carrying the first stones to the building site in the forest near Messkirch. It won't be finished until about 2050, according to estimates.

A Glimpse of the Middle Ages

The lengthy time frame betrays the ambitious dimensions of the project, which is not just a tourist attraction, but also a meticulous scientific undertaking. Twelve experts, including historians, architects and archaeologists, form the scientific council that oversees the monastic town. Their job is to advise the artisans while simultaneously learning from their experiences.

Such experiments offer a rare glimpse into the everyday life of past centuries. Often there is only one way to find out how people once built their homes, prepared their food or sewed their clothes -- by recreating the historic experience. Experimental archeology researchers have discovered that antique linen armor offers as much protection as kevlar vests, how beer was brewed in the Bronze Age and how Stone Age people sharpened blades.

The 9th century -- the era which will be recreated by the Carolingian monastery town project -- is a particularly interesting focus for such experiments. There are few surviving documents from the period some 1,100 to 1,200 years ago. "Our goal is not to end up having a monastery town, but to build it," says Geurten.

The first building will be a small wooden church. "Of course, in the Middle Ages, they didn't build the large stone church first," says Geurten. The craftsmen at that time did not want to postpone their prayers until the stone church was finished, so they constructed a simple wooden church as an interim arrangement until they could move into the magnificent stone building decades later.

Harsh Conditions

Carts carrying building materials will be pulled by Hinterwald cows. With a height of around 115 to 125 centimeters (3' 9" to 4' 1")and weighing between 172 and 218 kilograms (380 and 480 pounds), these working animals come the closest to those used during the time of Charlemagne. "They are descended from the Celts' cattle," says Geurten.

Not just workers will have to adjust to medieval conditions, though. The plan also includes a special experience for visitors, who will walk a lengthy distance from the parking lot before reaching the construction site. "They should feel like they journey in time and leave the present behind them," says Geurten. If they get hungry, the monastery town will have a 9th-century menu. "The potato was unknown," says Geurten. "And there will be no coffee around to drink." Everything that the tradesmen and visitors will eat will be grown in the soil near the construction site.

The example of the French castle Guédelon proves that visitors will not be deterred by such a strict approach. In Burgundy, builders are constructing the 13th-century castle with medieval techniques. Every year the site attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. "A Guédelon visitors' survey has shown that people want to return on average every three years," explains Geurten. "They want to see the castle grow and follow its progress."
He hopes for similar success at his monastic town. The project has initial funding of around €1 million ($1.3 million) from city, state and European Union sources, but that will only sustain it for the first few years. After that, the project will have to fund itself.

A Flood of Volunteers

Given the tight budget, craftsmen salaries will remain low. "The net wage is about €1,200 (per month)," says Geurten. "I can't pay more." The working hours are also a long way from what German trade unions recommend these days. They will work from April 2 -- Charlemagne's birthday -- almost without break until St. Martin's Day, on Nov. 11. During those eight months, there will be one single weekend off. "In the Middle Ages, the rent for the year was always paid on St. Martin's Day," said Geurten. The winter break lasts until April when the temperatures are warm enough to work again.

Despite the difficult conditions, the project has been swamped with applications. "I've had 85 stone masons apply already," says Geurten. "They all dream of having the chance to work with their hands." This also applies to the blacksmith. "They won't be hammering kitschy horseshoes for tourists. The forge must supply the site with tools," he adds.

Overall, the construction site will have 20 to 30 permanent staff in addition to volunteers. There has already been a lot of interest. "From Lufthansa pilots to a teacher, all kinds of people have applied." One candidate even sent his application written in medieval German on a real roll of parchment. Meanwhile, schools will likely be allowed to join in with the site's work for as long as a week. "We are developing a plan that will enable the children to prepare for their experience in the classroom first," says Geurten.

It will take about 40 years until the final stone is laid in the monastery church. By then it is highly unlikely that Geurten will still be alive. But he doesn't mind. "I just want a founding father's tomb in the crypt. Then they could come and light candles for me," he says.

Here's a photo gallery.

Monastic Compline - Complete, in Latin with English Translation

No indication at the YouTube page as to where this is from; the video says the audio is from 1986. It's the whole service, 25 minutes long, and includes the Salve Regina.