Our LCG community was founded in 1989 as Cistercian Lay Contemplatives by a group of eight laypersons who individually were exploring a framework in which to live lives as ordinary Christians according to the Cistercian tradition. Some members of the original group independently had been expressing to the Guestmaster at Gethsemani their desire to adopt a way of life that allowed an integration of Cistercian monastic practices into their lives as laypersons.
Eventually, the Guestmaster, Fr. Michael Casagram, invited the group to meet at Gethsemani beginning in 1986 to collectively explore how they might more formally develop a structure that would guide them to actualize a "lay expression" of Cistercian values and practices. The group met regularly for three years and developed a rule or guide for living the Cistercian way of life as laypersons. The document that emerged was the Plan of Life.
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Michael Brown, |
In August 2001, Fr. Michael Casagram drafted a document entitled, "Toward the Formation of LCG Members," that along with the Plan of Life provides specific guidelines for being formed as Lay Cistercians.