Sunday, July 11, 2010

Welcome to the Abby


Mt. Angel Abby is a seminary school of theology and philosophy. They have a guest and retreat house which people can rent. It consists of a Monastery, Seminary and world class Library.

Mount Angel Abbey is a community of Benedictine Monks founded in 1882 from the Abbey of Engelberg in Switzerland. We maintain a monastic tradition that has been a vital part of the Roman Catholic Church for more than 1500 years. Responding to God's call to holiness and preferring nothing whatever to Christ, we dedicate ourselves, under a Rule and an abbot to a life of prayer and work. We strive to support one another in community, to serve God, the Church, and the larger society. We do this as we celebrate the Holy Eucharist together, pray the Liturgy of the Hours five times daily in choir, and devote ourselves to reading and silence.


The Purpose of a Monastery


A monastery should be a place on earth that points to heaven. Saint Benedict established his monastery as a "school of the Lord's service" so that its monks could learn the life of Christian charity, for nothing points to God more eloquently than love. The good order of the monastery is meant to reflect the obedience of God's creation. Its chanting of psalms is an echo of the heavenly choirs of angels and saints, and the hospitality it offers the guest becomes an invitation to come away for a while and set one's heart on God alone.

"We must run and do now what will profit us for eternity. Therefore we intend to establish a school of the Lord's service."


Prologue of the Holy Rule, v. 44-45

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mount Angel Seminary


Five years after establishing their community, the Monks of Mount Angel Abbey opened Mount Angel College. Two years later, Archbishop William Gross of Oregon City asked them to attach a seminary to the College. Over the years, with the increasing costs and complexity of school operations, the College and its associated high school have closed. The Seminary, however, has maintained continuous operation. Today it is home to 114 seminarians from approximately 30 dioceses, plus 40 candidates for priestly formation from religious orders. Counting 25 lay students working toward advanced degrees in theology, the Seminary maintains a total enrollment of just under 200.

 
As a photographer I fell in love the strong dynamic light, the tones and colors and the overall beauty of the site. As a man who loves peace and quite I fell in love with the atmosphere.
 
If ever you need a break from civilization, this is the place to come. The hustle and bustle work of man is long gone from here.
 
The light really makes this location ripe for all kinds of HDR options. From cooked to realistic; HDR is a must due to the high contrasting lights and shadows.
 
This is a "cooked" HDR processing. Do you notice the surreal, painterly feel to the shot? Fake, yet enticing.
 
 
This is the exact same shot and HDR file, processed to be a natrual representation of the scene and then converted to the black and white, which is a natural presentation of how I truly saw the scene in my head.
 
This photo of the Organ in the main sanctuary and the man playing it is a great example of one of the many options for somewhere between cooked and natural looking HDR.
 
The man being blurred was a natural result of the long exposures being blended with the shorter exposures. But in this photo, the moving person adds to the scene. But that is just my opinion.
 
This is the same scene with a darker black and white conversion to it. I did this to change the mood of the scene. It is the same scene, from the same HDR file, but now the blurred man  has an eerie feeling about it, like a phantom.
 
This statue, and I apologize but I do not know catholic symbolism so I assume this is of Mary, is a great example of high contrasting light sources. Without HDR, either the windows would have blown/burned out or the interior would have been under exposed.
 

The Library was has so much to offer, but it was vault, which we had access to, that was simply stunning. Mount Angel Abbey was founded in 1882 by Benedictine monks from the Abbey of Engelberg in Switzerland. The monks quickly became involved in pastoral work and in education, and in 1889 opened the Mount Angel Abbey Seminary. The Swiss monks brought a sizable library with them to Oregon. Unfortunately, only a few books survived a disastrous fire in 1926, which destroyed the library as well as the rest of the abbey. The few volumes which survived reminded later generations of monks of their roots and of the generosity of the founding monastery.
 
All of the book in this shot are older than our nation, some even older than the 1492 sailing of Columbus to the Americas.
 
1676 is the actual date of the printing of the book making it 100 years older than our nation.
 
The nucleus of the current library collection was secured in 1932, when the contents of a used bookstore were purchased in Aachen, Germany. For the next twenty years, as the monks worked to rebuild the abbey and the seminary, the library's collection grew slowly.
 
Just to let you understand how well preserved these books are, the Expo of the Creed book is the book that was made in 1676. True story there.
 
This is the man, Joseph. His knowledge of all of these amazing books comes from his 20+ years of experience in developing, researching and managing the library. He hs since retired, but continues to work as a voulnteer. I won't go as far to say that this amazing man knows everything, but I will say he could answer all of my questions and talk intelligently about every book I asked about.
 
 
I have a dream to work with the Mt. Angel Abby library to digitally record and preserve all of the these magnificent books. The photo above is not the way to do that, but rather was used to capture and present the fine details of the print and to point out that in the time of this book's development, there were no printing presses. In some cases, the book were mass produced using hand pressed plates, but for the most part, most books were hand written.
 
 
Now, don't think this is just some pretty art. This is the opening art for the Book of Genesis to a copy of the bible that was literally hand written and illustrated in 1480. Yes, that is right, I said 1480.
 
This is the last shot from the Abby for now, but I wanted to again focus on the man with all of the knowlege.
 
In this shot he is thumbing through one of the oldest books he showed us, I loved how this turned out. The sense of motion combined with the stillness and calm the man portrayed in his manners and voice.
 
I want to thank him for his knowledge, dedication and passion for sharing with others. Thank you Joseph.

Monday, July 5, 2010

A Fourth of July Wish on the Fifth of July...

My wish is that all Americans, and non-Americans, read and understand the Declaration of Independence. So here it goes...

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.


He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
 
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.


He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.


He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.


He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.


We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.


New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Samples from my last outing at a reinactment

Here is a preview of my latest set from the Mission State Park Civil War Reinactment...