Hill Abbey Hall

Hill Abbey Hall is a one year resident study program in which a small group of students read contemplatively, write thoughtfully, discuss ideas leisurely, and work with their hands - all in the quiet, rural atmosphere of Hill Abbey. The Hall is designed for unmarried high school or college graduates, or those taking a year off from college studies, who want a slower-paced, non-graded, meditative study experience with little pressure and more space and time in which to pray, sit and think, read great books, and reflect on the great ideas of Old Western Culture (a phrase coined by C. S. Lewis in his essay "De Description Temporum") before the greater pressures and high-speed demands of college, career, or family life. The program presumes a good high school level liberal arts or great books program, such as Schola Classical Tutorials.

Hill Abbey is not a college except in the original sense of that word - a company, or fellowship of colleagues associated for a particular purpose, in this case study and reflection on Old Western Culture. The program is really more like a short-term monastery. The daily time is devoted to slow reading individually and aloud together, periods of private contemplation, studying language and music, gathering together over good food and around bonfires and under stars, and conversation and fellowship. There are times set aside each afternoon where all have solitude for contemplation and reflection on the reading or anything else (we call this the "Trappist Hour" - it's a bit like the ancient Christian practice of lectio divina), and we hold Morning and Evening Prayers (Matins and Vespers) in communion with the majority of the Christians in history who framed their days this way. Students work in the kitchen or yards and gardens in the afternoons, and have time for daily walks in the nearby woods and fields. Students read with pencils in their hands and journals in their laps; they read in the library, on the deck, out on the lawns, under the trees, or in the living or dining rooms of the Hall. There is plenty of time for evaluation and questions of application later as we walk, eat, stare into the fire, and gaze at the stars.

We have a Friday Seminar every Friday morning for two to three hours during which we discuss the week's work and the students read their weekly essays aloud for discussion. This Friday Seminar also includes several others from outside Hill Abbey who are doing some of the reading while maintaining a work or family schedule and do not live at the Abbey but join us Friday mornings. At noon on Fridays all the participants share a meal.

What will it do for me?

Hill Abbey Hall is dedicated to the idea that wisdom and happiness require periodic times of withdrawal from the hectic pace and numerous distractions of "normal" life for the sake of reflection and meditation on great books and ideas - such as wisdom, worship, virtue, purpose, beauty - in the rhythm of a simple, daily routine. There are usually far too many things to do in life, and though we try to do them all, we can't. So we have to choose. But instead of choosing well we choose the immediate, the urgent, what's directly in front of us, what's in our face, what shouts loudest for our attention. Hill Abbey Hall offers at least three things that very few of the other things demanding attention do.

The first is peace. Real peace of soul comes of course from an ordered relationship with God. But an extended period of deliberately ignoring the urgent, tyrannical, frenetic daily demands that modern culture seems to impose on us illustrates how unimportant those things often are and how much more we can focus on inner peace when external peace is enjoyed.

And with this comes the second thing - perspective. The tree or hill that rises above the surrounding terrain gives a better view, and a extended period of time without the tyranny of the urgent is like climbing to that height. Then we begin to see how trivial and foolishly wasteful are many of the things that clutter our daily lives. This is not to say that everything should be momentous - but without perspective we can't even enjoy the merely pleasant, the delightful, the fun. We waste our lives with shallow, trashy busy-ness when we could be doing something truly important - like staring at the sky, listening to a friend's voice while he speaks, and thinking. Really thinking. Long, slow, leisurely thinking.

And this leads to the third thing which Hill Abbey offers: wisdom. Not that Hill Abbey embodies wisdom but rather that we offer a place to find it where it really resides - in the voices of the past, and especially in those of the historic Christian church. The program is primarily about reading the very great books that make up what C. S. Lewis calls Old Western Culture, but in a slow, contemplative manner, at the human pace at which it was written, and with long periods specifically set aside for reflection - all so that the wisdom of the great book can sink deeply into our thoughts and souls. We all need, and want, wisdom. Wisdom sees the big pictures, judges the priorities of things and orders them rightly, and chooses and acts well. But without peace and perspective there can be no wisdom. Hill Abbey Hall attempts to create the circumstances where that peace, perspective, and wisdom can be heard and flourish.

Flannel Day - studying Medieval Latin

Why is it called "Hill Abbey"?

We are situated on a low, lovely hill on a neck of land surrounded on three sides by a river and a creek - thus the "Hill". And the program is as much like a temporary monastery (a fellowship with an "abbot", which just means "father", at their head) as it is like a college. We're following, in our own limited but appreciative way, a very old Christian tradition of learning (traceable from the early catechetical schools of Egypt and Syria through the medieval monastic and cathedral schools and great colleges and universities of Europe up through Lewis's "St. Anne's" in That Hideous Strength) which has at its heart the idea that all truly good education is about reading good books and thinking and talking about them with like-minded people, in a structured and peaceful environment, anchored in a disciplined attempt to order the soul to God.

Latin class on the deck

Medieval studies

The Rise of Western Christendom, Brown

The Mind of the Middle Ages, Artz
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, Colish
The Making of the Middle Ages, Southern
The Evolution of Medieval Thought, Knowles
The Gateway to the Middle Ages: Monasticism, Duckett
The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, LeClerq
The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages, Wagner
The Figure of Beatrice, Williams
The Elizabethan World Picture, Tillyard
The Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk
The Discarded Image, C. S. Lewis*

Great Literature

Iliad, Homer
Histories, Herodotus
Phaedrus, Plato
Metaphysics, Aristotle
Aeneid, Vergil
On the Sublime, Longinus
The City of God, Augustine
Beowulf
Rule of St. Benedict
Lives of the Saints
Etymologies, Isidore of Seville
Life of Charlemagne, Einhard
The Romance of the Rose
Divine Comedy, Dante
Canterbury Tales (selections), Chaucer
The Life of Johnson, Boswell
Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke

Christian history, practice, and culture

The Roots of American Order, Kirk
History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff
The Principle of Protestantism, Schaff
Leisure, the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper*
Christianity and Culture, T. S. Eliot
For the Life of the World, Schmemann
Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright
Rallying the Really Human Things, Guroian
The Intellectual Life, Sertillanges
Against Christianity, Leithart
Mother Kirk, Wilson
Reformed is Not Enough, Wilson
Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer, Michael Casey
Sacred Reading: The Ancient Art of Lectio Divina, Michael Casey
Church History, Bruce Shelley
Sermons on the Psalms, Augustine
Letter to Marcellinus on the Psalms, Athanasius
Institutes, Calvin
Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis
A History of the Church in England; Moorman

An Introduction to the Episcopal Church; Bernardin

The Orthodox Church, Ware
Eastern Orthodoxy, Donald Fairbairn

Essays by Seneca, Montaigne, Bacon, Johnson, Lamb, Lewis, Sayers, etc.

Poetry by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Gray, Scott, Tennyson, Chesterton, Lewis, Sayer, Williams, etc.

Novels by Lewis, Sayers, Buchan, Williams, Chesterton, Wodehouse, etc.

Field Trip to Seattle