A Diamond in the Rough

We found one! We found a diamond in the rough! With great joy we recently visited the Holy Transfiguration Skete up on the shores of Lake Superior and the Keweenaw Penninsula. It's amazing what a little Google search with the word "Byzantine" can pull up for you. In all our decades of coming "up north" for bits of the summer, we never knew we were just a few easy hours from a Byzantine Monastery! This places bustles with the lives of 7 concecrated men, some of which are young. Let's hear a hooray for vocations!

Being Byzantine or Eastern Catholics canonically who practice Roman Rite at home, we find this more rare Eastern presence so refreshing. It's like an oasis in the desert. The places where this truly "Ancient Faith" is stored are like a mystical experience for my soul.

This place towers over the shore and yet exists dwarfed in the majestic Michigan woods along the famed Covered Highway. The Skete supports itself with its Jampot which is well known for its jam, aged organic fruit cakes and confectionary delights which are shipped anywhere year round. The monks themselves live by the very work of their hands and have done so in this place for 32 years. The heavily bearded, black cassock wearing monks are cheerily welcoming and inspirational in their dedication to love, labor and savor a life completely hidden for God, in Christ.

During our short visit there weren't any "Great Vespers" or "Divine Liturgies" happening, so we will definetly have to return. I cannot wait to see in their chapel and receive some spiritual food, wade in nearby Jacob's Falls, and take a dip in expansive Lake Superior.

May Our Lord be forever honored in this holy and living place on the shore up north!

In His Grip,

Rebecca