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Thursday, February 05, 2009

The Monastery


- Worth Abbey

I've always wondered what it would be like to live in a monastery .... now I can find out! :) I came across YouTube videos of a BBC tv series called The Monastery - the whole thing is there in 18 bits, and the first part is here below. I'd heard of the series but never saw it, if it did indeed end up on US tv. Here's what Wikipedia says of the show .....

The Monastery was a documentary television series made by Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC Two which aired in the UK in May 2005. The program follows five modern lay men as they embark into a 40 day and night introduction into Roman Catholic monastic life at Worth Abbey, West Sussex, England under the guidance of Abbott Christopher Jamison and the community of 22 Benedictine monks .....




7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wish I had the ability to watch/listen. Hoping to get my headset capability back but it's low on the list of priorities lately...

I was really impressed by the profound sanity to monastic life as I got to closely observe/partially participate in it one long weekend in Spencer Mass at St. Joseph's Abbey. In my memory it seems like so much longer than three days and two nights.

8:16 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Hi Paul,

I spent 3 weeks once at a zendo - that's the closest I've come to a real-life retreat. There is something really attractive about religious life.

11:11 PM  
Blogger Liam said...

Crystal,

Have you seen "Into Great Silence"? Very beautiful.

6:07 AM  
Blogger crystal said...

Hi Liam,

No, I haven't seen that. I totally forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder :)

10:40 AM  
Blogger victor said...

I thought that I would check on some of your post that I’ve missed and when I saw this clip, I said to myself, let’s see what this group has to offer and I listened attentively to what was going on and I was prepared to listen to “IT” all but I started having second thought when they showed the pass time of these chosen guess. I was able to put up with the dancing of the first man with girls which I found not really fitting for any Monastery to indirectly imply support but when I heard the next man who was also telling us that he was taking sexual pictures for a living,and then they showed a few so called clean performance of the girls.

What’s wrong with me Crystal cause I could not click it off fast enough, the thoughts that came to me were thoughts that these people wanted God but they wanted Jesus to accept their behavior otherwise they were not prepared to join Him. I don’t know if this Monastery knew this before hand but if they did, forgive me but I’ve got a feeling that all their prayers will have been corrupted.

I understand now why God can’t bless anger as some would want “IT” to be. To make a long story short it would be like saying, “Come on let us crucify you again because of all the suffering we’ve gone through and don’t try to blame “IT” all on “Satan” cause what chance did You even give him?

I better stop now cause I know that this one is not going to be easy to forgive but with God’s Love nothing is impossible for usual sinners.

For The Love of God please continue to pray for sinner vic and also try to forgive Victor.

God Bless,

Peace

6:15 PM  
Blogger crystal said...

Victor,

I think BBC advertized for volunteers to go to the monastery and those are the guys who won. I don't think they were screened by the monastery. I think they were more or less average guys, and having watched the whole thing to the end, I can tell you that they changed quite a bit by their stay at the monastery. For instance, the one man who worked in the porn industry ended up quitting his job.

6:34 PM  
Blogger victor said...

Thank you for replying Crystal! A priest once told me that there's something good out of everything if we just search long and hard enough.

I guess every one will just have to pray for God to send me more patience.

Thank Again

6:41 PM  

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