A Word from Mary Oliver

The Society of Saint John the Evangelist is housed in a building of stone and light.  The stone is patient, the light which enters is transcendent, partly because it is the nature of light to be so and partly because of the attention with which it is greeted by the brothers who live here and their many visitors.  It gives, as is also its nature, both repose and energy.  The brothers who live here have active lives, both in their patterned hours of devotion and in their gifts to this nearly broken world, offering an abundant program of lectures, retreats, spiritual advisement – whatever is asked for, whatever is needed, the brothers will seek to respond.  It is just as well, then, that the roof does not leak, that there be places where private conversations can be held and offices where the work can be done that reaches from the Word to the world.  This is not, for any of us, an easy financial time.  All the more satisfying, then, to give – the pinch of it makes it a more real and earnest gift.

Stone, and Light.


                                                   Mary Oliver