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Lay Cistercians of Gethemani Communities

The availability of local LCG communities allow LCG members to receive additional support and experience fellowship among like-minded spiritual travelers. Local groups meet regularly for prayer, discussion, formation, and other activities that build community.

The existing local LCG communites are listed by location (city/area) and contain information about the group and contact persons. If you are interested in becoming a MEMBER of LCG, please contact the local coordinator who is nearest to the city in which you live: (Please click on the name of the city to get a description of the LCG group in that area.)

 

CHICAGO, IL

GREATER CINCINNATI, OH

COLUMBUS, OH

INDIANA

KENTUCKY

MICHIGAN

TENNESSEE

NORTH EAST

 

Bob Johnson is the facilitator for the Chicago Community. He can be reached at rvjatty@ameritech.net

The Cistercian Lay Contemplatives community was formed in 1989 as the original lay program affiliated with the Abbey of Gethsemani. We were a group that strived to support and to provide resources for members in living the Plan of Life, a guide for laypersons who desire to integrate the values and practices of the Cistercian charism. Local communities began to meet in Louisville and Cincinnati. In 2002 we became known as Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani Abbey (LCG). The Greater Cincinnati LCG community currently has twenty members.

Our community meets on the second Saturday of each month alternating between a day of prayer or a community formation day. We meet at the Poor Clare’ Monastery of St. Clare for days of prayer, and at Mercy Winton Center both located in Mt. Healthy, Ohio, a few miles north of Cincinnati. In the Spring we have an annual community retreat either at the Moye Spiritual Life Center in Melbourne, Kentucky or at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

We have formed a four member leadership team who coordinates screening and orientation of applicants for our community, initial formation for candidates, and planning for our yearly schedule of events. The team engages the participation of all community members in various functions that support our community’s growth as Lay Cistercians. For more information about our community visit our web site: www.gclcg.org

Gatherings are held the second Saturday of each month from 11am to 1pm.
The group was formed in November, 2004. They meet for prayer, sharing and discussion of various spiritual writings. We have time for sharing, centering prayer, exploring the cistercians charism and time to eat! The community gathers from 16 to 24 folks at each gathering.

The Indianapolis Lay Cistercian community has recently formed. Our group began meeting in November 2005. At the present time, the group consists of two members plus two candidates in formation. We are meeting monthly for now at 7:00AM on a Tuesday morning at a local Starbucks.

Indiana has only a few LCG members and we are attempting to organize ourselves as a state grouping as well as a local Indianapolis community We hope to have a state mailing in the next few weeks and perhaps attract more LCG members to our Indianapolis community. As more members are added, we will have to change our meeting location.

Since we are so new, we have been discussing our thoughts about Cistercian spirituality and what has brought us to this change in our lives. We are sharing ideas on what we are reading and experiencing.

The Kentucky Lay Cistercians originally started meeting in Louisville in 1990 at the Merton Center located on the campus of Bellarmine University. Several years ago they began meeting at the Abbey of Gethsemani on the first Sunday of every month due to the changing demographics of the group membership.

We will also be having a meeting on the 3rd Saturday of the month to meet the needs of those members unable to meet on Sundays due to ministry commitments or other reasons. There are about 25 individuals on our email distribution lists and most months approximately 8-10 people are able to attend the Sunday meeting.


Currently, we have two local communities that meet separately due to the geography of our state. One group in West Tennessee meets in Memphis, and one group in Middle Tennessee, meeting in Nashville. The TN LCG formed in 2004 with two members, Juli Gallup (Nashville) and Gray Matthews (Memphis). Both groups now have 5-10 members (either full members, currently “in formation”). There have been a few individuals who have expressed interests in LCG from East Tennessee but have not yet formed a local community or regular meetings (some have lived closer to groups in Kentucky and have met with them). We have recently started what we hope will be an annual event of spending a day of reflection with each other at one of our state parks as a way to sustain communion in addition to annual retreats at Gethsemani.
The coordinator of the Memphis group is Gray Matthews (matthews@memphis.edu) and the coordinator for the Nashville group is John Duckett jackduck@hotmail.com. Feel free to contact either of them if you have particular questions or a desire to meet with either group. As coordinators for the Tennessee community, John and Gray serve as our representatives on the LCG Advisory Council. Memphis and Nashville are partners in seeking to cheer each other on, offer encouragement to stay the course, and exhort each other to greater discipline and commitment in learning what our cells teach us. We strive to support each other’s efforts to live a deeper contemplative life by sharing a life of mutual prayer, as well as our journeys and ourselves in humility. We have found the Cistercian tradition, in particular, to speak to all of us. We pray for the monks at Gethsemani, and we try to live in solidarity with Gethsemani. These efforts, we find, anchor us as we respond to the calls and recalls to remain committed, not to an organization or a single activity, but to God Alone.

The Midland Michigan LCG; is a community which began with 3 people in mid 1990’s and became an official LCG community in June of 2001, we continue to be blessed with growth. We meet monthly for prayer, centering, sharing and development in the Cistercian way. It is in the sharing of our lives and how we each live our Plan of Life in ‘our world’ that we encourage and learn from one another and grow in the Cistercian Way.

We study various books or Cistercian documents together, in order to grow in our knowledge of the Cistercian way. We have studied the Exordium, “Monastic Practices” as well as other books and documents on Centering Prayer, Lectio and other Cistercian tools.

We also share our lives deeply with one another at our meetings at various member homes, community work projects and as we get together two or three times a year for a social evening with our spouses. The current facilitator is Larry Wilson, kjjwilson@yahoo.com We are always interested in new members in Michigan.

Jane Endriss: JEndr@aol.com
Dan Erwin: nanandanerwin.nj@netzero.com

Our community is composed of a group of members who live at quite a distance from one another in northeastern USA. We have monthly meetings via conference call, and are currently using computer web pages for online discussion, exchange of resources, and exchange of ideas. We are a new group, and growing. We hope to also have semi-annual retreats.

E-mail: info@laycisterciansofgethsemani.org