To my students:

When I last visited my friend, "Abba Jacob," a Catholic priest who spent seven years in a Benedictine monastery and who has for many years followed the Rule of St. Benedict, I asked him if he had any thought sabout the course I was planning to teach. He thought about it for several days, then suggested I tell my students a story he'd heard long ago, about two monks on Mt. Athos.

We will spend approximately two weeks practicing each of the meditation exercises suggested in Abba Jacob's story, beginning with, beginning with "like the breeze," and proceeding through "a question." After a week of each meditiation, you will go back and practice for two weeks each of the three exercises you found most fruitful. Only at the end of the semester should you go on to the "final" meditation."

Marilyn Nelson