Advent ‘24
This month, Jelle and I celebrate the first time we started dating, 25 years ago. It is the 19th of December. Now, on that very night, we take with most of our family members the night train to celebrate the mystery of the birth of baby Jesus, hidden in the mountains.
But I like to take you first back to two years ago:
Advent 2022 (and read the postscript below, you might love it;-)
A room in which a birth takes place is often not easily forgotten. Most of you readers who have given birth might remember the rooms vividly, those rooms where our children saw the light for the first time.
I know I do. It was an old farmhouse near Utrecht for our firstborn. And there were two other home births for the girls, a bike ride away from the place where my mom gave birth to me and four of my siblings.
It’s a room full of emotions. The weight of time is in the air. It is a new beginning with a lot of effort for those present: the mom, the dad, the nurse – the whole atmosphere must be prepared for this huge moment in time.
This time, I will take you along to a different kind of birth room – the room where my workbook was born.
It was Advent 2022, and I took the night train and travelled for 16 hours to the mountains of Austria. One week of writing was ahead of me. I’ll take you along on this journey that I will not easily forget.
For years, I had carried the idea of a Rule of Life with me. I had been living with it since 2018. The time was ripe to share it. I had reduced the thick file with sheets full of scribbles, notes, and ideas that I had collected over the years to one slim folder. Without the internet and with a work file on a tablet purchased especially for this purpose, I started at the beginning.
High in the mountains of Central Europe, Advent 2022
On a beautiful summer day in July 1985, seven sisters climbed a mountain and moved into a former alms house, where children with lung problems used to recover, and began a monastic life of silence and contemplation. From their luggage came a bunch of sunflowers, a Bible, and an icon, and three days after their arrival, there was a simple chapel.
Life continued for these seven sisters, who have now grown into a community of 30 sisters who have something in common: They live in the vicinity of the Lord, in their hermitages, measuring four by four or less meters, without possessions, in simplicity and silence. The silence is broken only by the three times of prayer. People communicate the most necessary things via notes in a common room.
It’s misty in the valley, but here, we are closer to heaven.
Without words, the treetops remind me of the direction from which my help comes. Ps.121
A sister comes quietly towards me through the wooden gate. She shows me the way to my vault and says cheerfully: “Shall we first greet the Lord?” as if she spends hours with Him every day. And she does, because I am a guest in a Carthusian monastery where silence and adoration are the only things that count. Together, we bow before the icon of the Trinity that is so dear to me. It hangs life-size in the wooden chapel, and you can sit down at the table with the Lord.
That is my language, and I go down on my knees.
I slide gently into the rhythm of silence and prayer times that prevail here. It is freezing outside, -10 degrees, and there is 40 cm of snow packed in around us.
The icicles hang almost a meter from the gutter, the sun shines high in the sky during the day, and the stars twinkle at night.
H: (Holy ground, the best foundation).
Welcome to my vault: I am not alone here. Jesus is at the centre.
The nurse shows me my vault with the prayer corner as the central point.
O: (Organize your space)
The pray and write corner; what more could I wish for?
L: (Let’s get some work done)
I write and enjoy. I got a special spacious room to write and organize.
It doesn’t go without a hitch, but slowly, order is coming.
D: (Dear ones around you)
In a hermitage (like this monastery), you eat with your Lord and Savior. A feast for your senses.
O: (Oh, my body)
Three times a day, I climb another 400 meters up for prayer in the chapel. The pure singing of the sisters in the chapel is like balm for my soul.
I sled down again: O JOY!
N: (Nurture your senses)
The simplicity and beauty are fully combined in this place.
Full stop.
Finally, after five days, I close the door behind me. The workbook is born; it is not finished, but most of the writing is done. Tomorrow is another day. Even if there is a 16 hour-long train journey in between. Let’s see how this will unfold in the future.
Rule of life for outside the monastery
It is not difficult to live in this contemplative monastery with rhythm and peace. Being here is a feast for your senses! The church bells and prayer times determine the rhythm of everyone who has chosen to live here, like a heartbeat.
How do I
From my journal
*hold on*
to something of this
when I am again taken up
by the worries and obligations
of everyday life?
Now the workbook is finished, I can say: this workbook will help you to implement some of the elements that you find here and translate them into your daily life.
(Let me know if you like a copy: Theworldaroundmytable.com/contact)
What is new in this workbook
Theworldsaroundmytable.com
comparing to the earlier one:
This time I make explicite the change
from inside the monastery to the demanding life outside of it.
And of course: it is beatifully typeset.
It was such a good week that Advent in 2022. Our daughters, Marijke and Judith also decided to come. We had a lot of time for ourselves but also lovely bonding time together in the cosy wooden rooms, while outside, everything was covered with snow.
The three of us walked down the mountain again. It was a four-hour walk to the station. We want to feel this. Well, we did that with a few days of muscle pain. In the backpack are, among other things, the socks from the mountains of Serbia, hand-knitted by Slobodan’s grandma – but that’s another story.
Postscript
A while ago, Marijke and I decided to go again. Guess what? Nearly the whole family wanted to join!
Here we are:
How I felt like Mary those 25 years ago. What would our relationship bring us? Next to love, there was also confusion, but a deep sense that something good was ahead of us. And it was.
As the nuns climbed the mountain with not more than a Bible, an icon, and a bunch of sunflowers, they were starting an adventure, not knowing where it would lead them. A new young monastery was born. It stood in a long tradition and yet was new again.
This journey for me, to go as a family, is a rich confirmation for me that something can start with a small thing and have a great outcome.
Enough to celebrate this year!
Hope that you also have a wonderful Christmas celebration and are able to spend some time in His Birth Room.
May simplicity and communion
be
at the heart of
your celebrations.
Kind regards from all of us, and wish us luck in that nighttrain half across Europe at this very moment;-)
I’d like to order your workbook with the stories from this adventure in it.