The community of Benedictine monks at the Weston Priory in Weston, VT, gather for a predawn Vigil Prayer Service that officially starts their day. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some were up much earlier, given the extent of prayer in their lives.
A few of the photographs I took on this visit ended up in the book by the ethnomusicologist Maria S. Guarino, entitled “Listen With the Ear of the Heart“, on the music and monastery life at the Priory. She’s a great writer, and for anyone interested in engaging further with the rhythms and spirit of Priory life, the book is well worth a read.
Friends Neil and Kate keeping in touch with their daughter Ana, off somewhere in Italy at the time.
This photo, centered as it is on digital communication and modern life, seems worlds apart from the older, less technological one of the previous post. We might think the residents of that farmhouse – given their immersion in that natural world – might have have no time or inclination for Skype, but who knows? As a friend of mine said recently “..I learned something today, about not jumping to conclusions..”
This place – looking a little forlorn and needing some maintenance – is probably similar to how the many small family farms in VT looked a century ago. One of my first summer jobs when I was thirteen or so was on a place like this: 8-10 cows, 3 horses, many chickens, and a proverbial ton of hay to be baled every summer. I saw a mountain lion there, a surprising and incredibly beautiful sight, strolling along a treeline at the edge of a meadow behind the main farmhouse. There’s a nice article on whether they’re still around in the November issue of Yankee magazine here.
