Word: westons
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From the start, Weston was not a traditional monastery. With the encouragement of the Benedictine abbot primate in Rome, the brothers updated rituals while keeping faithful to the spirit of Benedictine monasticism. When several monks failed to appear for matins at 4 a.m., for example, the brothers examined the need to make the prayer more their own. What had been an hour and a half of psalm singing and Scripture reading is now a third as long and much more contemporary. Among the readings are excerpts from modern theologians like Edward Schillebeeckx and Henri Nouwen and from Third World proponents...
...hours a day are given to priory work. Back in the 1950s, this usually meant looking after the cows on the priory farm. Today the brothers sustain Weston with more creative labors. One brother is a potter whose work is on permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian. Another, a bookbinder, specializes in restoring antique volumes. Several others are graphic artists. Environmental concerns have led some brothers to turn most of the priory's 300 acres into a tree farm...
...scriptural themes and nature metaphors. His music echoes the Gregorian chant sung by Benedictines for more than 1,000 years. Since 1971 about 100 of Brother Gregory's songs have found their way, through the priory's songbooks and records, into Catholic congregational singing across the nation. Weston's music is one reason that crowds as large as 1,300 are drawn to weekend liturgies in the summer...
Today the monastery has five workshops, a monks' dormitory, four guest houses, a visitors' center and a gallery shop. But even when it was only a converted 19th century farmhouse and hay barn, Weston welcomed outsiders. These visitors have led the brothers to worlds unexpectedly far from the priory's hill. In 1974 two papal volunteers, a native Vermonter and his Chilean-born wife, stopped at the priory en route to Mexico, where they established a farm cooperative. That acquaintance eventually took the entire Weston community to Mexico on two extended retreats. First the monks spent...
...monks to dance about ten years ago. Doing dances of folk origin was first a bad-weather recreation, then a way to make visitors feel at home. On days of celebration, the monks might incorporate a Yemeni desert dance or a Serbian wedding step into their Mass. Brother John, Weston's prior since 1964, explains how recreation entered the liturgy: "For us, dance is a prophetic community sign, a way to express our hopes, our fears, our faith. It is a sign that contradicts the cynicism and despair that are celebrated today in consumerism and the arms race...