Jan XVII is another word for ‘incarnation in progress’. Better yet: for research into Incarnation in progress. Or, to put it even more precisely: for practical research into Incarnation in progress. Because just as we are more a journey than a destination, it is above all our reflection of our actions that informs our thinking. And not the other way around.
In other words, we also call Jan XVII a ‘Monastic Laboratory’. Because we explore new words and avenues for the contemplative monastic tradition. That teaches us to “coincide,” “become one,” with the meaning that life has in us, has in store for us, and wants to bring to light through us.
Being human how do you do that?
Our example human being: Jesus the Christ. Because we believe we recognize in him the first and best personification of Christ consciousness: the experience and expression that everything and everyone is created from and to the same love. Is part of one big Family of Love.
Classical vows reinterpreted
Detachment
The key to this consciousness: to learn to relinquish what we think we want, and instead learn to follow the will of the Source of Life. In which the contempative monastic tradition serves as a guideline and school. Its backbone shaped by the classical vows of obedientia, stabilitas and conversio morum.
Distinctiveness
Unity is added diversity. That’s why our practice is different. Of its own kind. We orientate ourselves less on the calibrated monastic forms than on their sources. We ‘search as the fathers sought’, but do not necessarily do it as they did.
Relational stillness
For example, we have our own practice method: Liber. An approach that shifts the center of gravity of our sense of identity: from our thinking about it, to the possibility of maintaining a detached relationship with it. This way we develop an intra-relational awareness of life that makes us aware of the inter-relational character of things and of our place within them.
Order the Liber reading book here , or let yourself be taken here in three guided Liber meditations .
Transitium ZeeVELD
A monk ‘lives from the work of his hands’, which in our case comes down to the management of Transitium ZeeVELD , a residence in the dunes near Castricum. It facilitates guests and residents to set steps; to make a personal or professional ‘transition’.
Verbum Caro Factum est
Listen:
‘Speaking has become flesh-and-blood
and pitched his tent with us;
we have beheld his glory,
a glory of an only begotten
from a Father,
full of grace and truth.’ John 1:14
