Our Lady Of The Resurrection Monastery Inc C O Benedictine Monk

Mission:

Our mission as a faith community is to empower people of all backgrounds and ages to embark on a journey of engaged spirituality, fostering healing within themselves through contemplation, study, nurturing harmonious relationships within the beloved community, and deepening their connection to all beings and the Earth. Drawing from the wisdom of contemplative Christianity and Buddhism, and worldwide monastic traditions, we seek healing at all levels to contribute to the wellbeing of all life and our precious planet.

To achieve our mission, we commit to:

1. Cultivating Integrity: We live by and transmit ethical and earth-based precepts or guidelines that are the foundation for living with integrity and purpose on behalf of all life.
2. Providing Spiritual Guidance: We offer ongoing spiritual training, including religious instruction, one-on-one and small-group spiritual direction and guidance, solo and group residential silent and contemplative retreats, grounded in nature. 
3. Facilitating Spiritual Growth in Community: We lead communal worship and spiritual practice, providing a sacred space for contemplative and earth-based practices, meditation, prayer, service, and opportunities for spiritual growth within a healthy and nurturing community that offers mutual accountability and support. 
4. Maintaining Sacred Spaces: We establish and maintain a congregation, a house of worship, and a retreat space. These spaces--which all lie within a larger natural space of forest, sky, earth, rock and living beings, and that we relate to as our kin, as sacred, and as our teacher--provide sanctuary for those seeking spiritual maturity.
5. Engaging for Change: We actively engage with the pressing social and ecological crises of our times, based in our contemplative experience which leads to the wisdom of non-discrimination. We avoid othering by not getting caught in ideology. We look deeply to understand the harms caused by systemic racism and white supremacy, patriarchy, materialism, capitalism and its resulting inequalities, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and religious nationalism. Through informed action and engagement, we work towards personal, social, and ecological healing and transformation, actively contributing to the betterment of our world. 
6. Offering Radical Welcome: Our community is inclusive and welcoming to all peoples. We are especially attentive to the needs of younger adults and youth and orient our community with future generations in mind. We offer radical welcome to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, as well as Queer and trans folks and their experiences, co-creating brave and affirming space.  

In pursuing these six core principles, we seek to embody the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, and the worldwide monastic contemplative traditions, working wholeheartedly to create a beloved community that empowers people to be beacons of compassion and agents of just and ecological living in the world. In the deepening of engaged spiritual fellowship as well as the ecological focus of a more earth-centered spirituality and living, we transcend boundaries, embrace compassion, and nurture the interconnectedness of all life through the principles of reciprocity and interbeing. We seek to uproot and transform all forms of injustice and oppression into love.

About Adam Bucko and Kaira Jewel Lingo

Father Adam Bucko, an Episcopal priest, and Rev. Kaira Jewel Lingo, a Buddhist Dharma teacher in the Plum Village Zen and Vipassana lineages, were appointed as directors and board members of Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery, Inc., a religious nonprofit organization. In this capacity, they became guardians of the monastery and its mission. They seek to revitalize and develop the 22-acre site to continue its original mission of contemplation and renewed forms of monastic living while also establishing it as a Christian-Buddhist Retreat and Training Center. It will host spiritual retreats and serve as a sanctuary dedicated to peace and reconciliation. You can read a little bit about our life as a Buddhist-Christian couple here: https://www.lionsroar.com/navigating-marriage-as-a-buddhist-christian-couple/

The History of Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery

Our Lady of the Resurrection is nestled on a secluded hilltop in Dutchess County. The monastery was founded by Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, a French monk who lived there as a hermit monk for more than 40 years. His daily life was rooted in and dictated by the natural rhythms of the earth as he followed the monastic Rule of St. Benedict and listened to God "with the ear of the heart" while tending the gardens, growing food, feeding the animals, offering spiritual guidance to visitors, and sanctifying his days with the prayers of the liturgy of the hours.

One media outlet said of Brother Victor in 2001, "He has a terminal case of serenity, and he wants to pass it on" to those who come to the monastery for prayer and guidance. "To live fully in the present," Brother Victor said, "we must be aware that reality is physical and spiritual, immediate and eternal, all at the same time." "People imagine monks praying, chanting, and reading," he said, "not scrubbing floors and milking cows. They are often astonished to discover that for us, prayer and work are the same thing."

Brother Victor suffered a debilitating stroke in the summer of 2014 and died February 28, 2023, at the age of 83. We are grateful to have him as our spiritual ancestor now.