Mystical Order of the White Rose Newsletter -- August 2008

This newsletter is a publication of the Mystical Order of the White Rose, an emerging multi-faith, monastic cyber-community. We support and share information about mystical, monastic, contemplative and creative ways of living. We encourage prayer, meditation, lectio divina, journaling, fasting, hospitality, worship, spiritual and religious communities, simple living, creativity and service to others (including humans, animals, the environment and the planet).You can view past issues here and you can subscribe here if you are not already a subscriber.

Table of Contents

-- Update from editor Cynthia Lee

-- Monasticism As Counterculture? by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

-- What Is Empire and What Can We Do About It? by Arundhati Roy

-- Everything In Creation Speaks (with comments on roses; their role, Influence & extraterrestrial origin) by Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

-- Our Lives Are Already Sacred by Maggie Ross

-- Native American Prayers & Blessings -- a website of interest

-- Heron Dance Art Studio -- community, publications and philosophy of interest

-- Multi-Faith, Multi-Media Daily Devotionals for August 1-31

Update

from editor Cynthia Kiteley Lee

The wee hours are upon me (August 3) as I put the finishing touches to this month's Mystical Order of the White Rose Newsletter. I had a brief bout of euphoria when I completed almost all of the newsletter (except the Daily Devotionals) on the day before the first day of the month of August. Wow, I said to myself, this issue is going to actually be finished and sent out on time for a change. All I have to do is slap together those 31 daily devotionals, and I've already got several quotations picked out, and -- hey presto, it will be done. Alas, this was not to be.

The Daily Devotionals took far more time and involved far more work than I, ever the optimist, anticipated. Being extremely optimistic by nature is, on the whole, a good and life-enhancing thing. Researchers say optimism has a very positive effect on mental and physical health and achievement levels, but they have also noted that optimists' expectations are not as realistic as those of pessimists and less positive people.

The monthly publication schedule and monthly issue format is working out much better than the every two weeks publication schedule, continuing lateness notwithstanding. While my own health has been good for four months now, my husband's health breakdowns, which began more than three months ago, have plunged us into a radically different (and much less Cynthia's-projects-friendly) lifestyle, a time of continuing health crises, and disruption from traveling out of state for medical tests and consultations with medical specialists.

While a sensible, practical person might suggest that I eliminate the Daily Devotions from the newsletter because they are so time and labor intensive and make it harder for me to manage newsletter production and publication deadlines effectively, I have chosen to slog on, take my (lateness) lumps, and keep on keeping on. This is because I strongly feel, and have strongly felt all along that the Daily Devotionals are central and important to the identity and member resources of the Mystical Order of the White Rose (MOWR). So please read them!

The bigger, longer-term plan is for the daily devotionals to become the Daily Office for MOWR members. The MOWR Daily Office may supplement traditional Daily Office readings for our more traditional members; for others they would be the primary Daily Office resource. Once a full year of Daily Devotionals is complete, I will recycle them to some extent and will tweak on, refine and expand them. Having a corpus of material to work on and work with is a lot less time and labor intensive than creating that corpus of material from scratch, as I am now doing.

MOWR Daily Devotionals are the nucleus of what will become an online devotional mIssal or prayer book (although PDF versions for printing out hard copies will be available) for 21st century mystics and contemplatives who like the multi-faith and multi-media nature of our devotional resources and feel drawn to our vision and distinctively modern (or post-modern :O) expression of mystical and contemplative living.

An online Daily Office (or devotional manual), as opposed to an offline Daily Office or devotional manual, can be easily modified and kept current with information about lunar cycles and other astrological data, movable holy days, and additional or updated website links and information. A year's worth of Daily Devotionals will be gathered into one volume, along with other multi-faith, multi-media prayer and liturgical resources. These will include sections on Morning and Evening Prayer, Prayers for Special Times and Occasions and (probably) Prayers, Quotes and Liturgies Relating to the Four Seasons and the Four Directions.

This compilation of devotional and liturgical materials will help individual members of the Mystical Order of the White Rose to forge and maintain a sense of spiritual connection and community that extends through the time-space-season continuum. If and when "chapters" of the order form, those groups can use these devotional and liturgical materials for group rituals and celebrations.

At this exact point in my putting the "finishing touches" on this newsletter (the morning after my wee hours night alluded to above) my husband decided that he needed to go to the emergency room of a hospital in another state to address some new and disturbing physical symptoms and dysfunctions with medical staff and facilities that he knows and trusts (unlike our local facilities). That translated into a couple of additional days of falling behind schedule with this newsletter. Still, it seems to me, most of the time anyway, that "everything is in divine order" and that I can be at peace with and grateful for this "higher" level of organization in my life, even when my own goals and expectations regarding order and achievement are not always met.

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Monasticism As Counterculture?

by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Monasticism goes back almost to the beginning of church history. In his book The Monastic Impulse, theologian Walter Capps summarizes the legacy of monastic history in a pretty strong statement. "Monasticism," he says, is the West's "most powerful and enduring instance of counter-culture."

I don't know about you, but when I think countercultural, I usually think punk rocker with a nose ring, not nun in a cloister. I've seen enough teenagers with long hair grown up to understand that what we usually call "counterculture" isn't very enduring. But I think this is a pretty incredible claim that Capps makes: not only does monasticism last longer, but is is more powerful than any olther form of resistance we've seen to mainstream society in the West.

If that's true, then the real radicals aren't quoting Che Guevara of listening to Rage Against the Machine on their iPods. The true revolutionaries are learning to pray. If Capps is right, they always have been.

p. 42 New Monasticism - What It Has To Say To Today's Church

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What Is Empire and What Can We Do About It?

by Arundhati Roy

"Does 'Empire' mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that? In many countries Empire has sprouted . . . some dangerous byproducts --- nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course, terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalization."

What can we do in the face such force?

We can "come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass. Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubborness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness---and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

"The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling---their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

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- Remarks made by Arundhati Roy at the World Social Forum in Brazil courtesy of Ode magazine.

http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/arundhati/

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Everything In Creation Speaks

(with comments on Roses; their role, Influence & extraterrestrial origin)

by Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

Everything in creation speaks, but human beings have never learned to listen; they don't know how to listen to the sun or the trees, the rocks or lakes or mountains; they don't know how to listen to the birds or, even, to their own inner voice which is constantly speaking to them. . . .

Look at this rose: it is very small, but it is very big within me, because it reveals a great many things to me; that is why I love it. It is happy; it is smiling at me and I return its smile and look at it with love so that it may enter into me and awaken other roses in my heart and soul....

The spirits of roses are entities from the planet Venus, who have agreed to incarnate on earth in order to help human beintgs. But people know nothing about the mission of roses; they use them simply to ornament their gardens or their houses, to attract a man or seduce a woman.

The truth is that roses are on earth to reveal to men the way to a higher perfection, the way of true love, of love which, instead of being a prison for man, liberates him. This is the role and message of the rose. If it is the queen of flowers, it is because it teaches us what true love is. When human beings understand, at last, what a tremendous sacrifice the rose has made in coming amongst them and begin to open themselves to its message, perhaps they will also begin to resemble it: wherever they go they will perfume the air with a sweet fragrance.

- Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

1900-1986 Bulgarian Philosopher and Spritual Teacher

www.prosveta.com

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Our Lives Are Already Sacred

by Maggie Ross

It is not the liturgy that sanctifies our lives; our lives are already sacred, and liturgy tries to remind us of that. The hours of the Divine Office do not sanctify the day; they bring us to remembrance that the day is already holy and we have the privilege of living it, that we have the choice at every moment either to be whole, to be holy, or to fragment our selves and others by focusing on one of our fantasy-generated power trips for anxieties.

-- from the article "Liturgy in Truth: Transfiguring the Mind and the Heart" on page 33 of the magazine Weavings, a journal of the Christian Spiritual Life Volume XXI, number 3 May/June 2006

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Native American Prayers & Blessings

Songs, photographs, prayers and blessings can be found in this diverse and eclectic website, along with some prayers from non-Native traditions.

Click here to access it.

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Heron Dance Art Studio

community, publications and philosophy of interest

The brightly colored postcard arrived in the mail as a result of me getting put on who knows what mailing list. It turned out to be a three-panel postcard with lush, lovely watercolor paintings on both sides.

Even more arresting was the text: "Heron Dance is about our connection with:

Ourselves, with our quiet interior.

Our resourcefulness.

Nature, with beauty and mystery.

Our creativity."

Another quote, from a list of beliefs that underlie their work:

"There are levels of consciousness deeper and wiser than the day-to-day surface consciousness we use to get through life. These can be accessed through quiet, meditation and journaling."

You can subscribe their free weekly e-newsletter. . The Heron Dance magazine is published twice a year and costs $30. wwww.herondance.org

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I love the truth of lightning. I love the beauty of rain clouds and thunder. I love how their nearness makes my heart pound. Leben ist loben, say the Germans; to live is to praise.

- Rose Marie Berger, article The Hungry Spirit on p. 43 Sojourners magazine Sept.-Oct. 2007

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Multi-Faith, Multi-Media Daily Devotionals

for August 1-31

A quick look at the August 1-31 listing below will show you major multi-faith holy days, lunar cycle information and some Christian/Gnostic liturgical notations --- BUT -- these sketchy notations ARE NOT the multi-faith, multi-media Daily Devotionals. To access those, you need to click on the actual day. Example: August 6. Click on these links to access each day's devotional reading.

The daily devotionals make especially good "jumping off points" for meditative reading and reflection and/or journaling prompts. Please read them---whether all in one gulp or daily or both.....

August Quotations for Gardeners, Walkers, and Lovers of the Green Way. These include: Poems, Quotes, Folklore, Myths, Customs, Holidays, TraditionsCelebrations, Sayings, Poetry, Quips, References, Links. Odeas, Gardening Chores

August 1 - Total Solar Eclipse 6:21 a.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) New Moon

Article & Images Re: Solar Eclipse

Lughnasa (Pagan/Wiccan)

Lammas (Christian)

Fast in honor of Holy Mother of Lord Jesus (Orthodox Christian)

August 2

August 3 Eleventh Sundy After Trinity

August 4

August 5

August 6 Transfiguration of the Lord

August 7

August 8

August 9

August 10 Sunday After the Transfiguration of the Lord

Tisha B'Av (Jewish)

August 15 Assumption of the Holy Sophia (Gnostic)

Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic Christian)

Dormition of the Thotokos (Orthodox Christian)

Lailat al Bara'ah (Islam)

August 16 Full Moon -- Partial Lunar Eclipse 5:10 p.m. EDT

August 17 Sunday after Assumption of the Holy Sophia (Gnostic)

Sunday after Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Catholic Christian)

August 23 Last Quarter Moon

August 24 Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

Krishna Janmashtami - Birthday of Krishna; one of the most importan Hindu holy days

August 25

August 26

August 27

August 28 Paryushana (Jain)

August 29 Beheading of John the Baptist (Christian)

August 30 New Moon (3:58 p.m. EDT)

August 31 Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity

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Like the musician, the painter, the poet, and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made. And he is born to happiness in this vale of tears, to a certain amount of the purest joy that earth can give her children, joy that is tranquil, innocent, uplifting, unfailing. Given a little patch fo ground, with time to take care of it, with tools to work it and seeds to plant in it, he has all he needs.

- Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

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