I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jean Wise’s reflection entitled Living With the Tension of Routines and Adventures. Paradox. Deep within me live two longings that I used to believe contradicted each other. I assumed you thrived more within the blessings of routines or within the advantages of adventures. One or another, not both, worked better for me, so I thought. “You can’t enjoy both,” lying voices whispered to my heart.  I am learning now to hold the predictable and the impulsive times equally, knowing they both

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Nancy L. Agneberg’s reflection on entitled Winter Spirituality. I love winter. I prefer winter to summer and spring. When it is fall, I think fall is my favorite season, but then winter comes, and I know, for sure, winter is my favorite season. Oh, I am willing to join in with the usual February and March conversations about winter being far too long and will spring ever arrive? As I listen to the whining about the cold, the snow, the dark, I

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Pat Butler’s reflection on entitled Abba Ice. “Out of whose womb came the ice?”—Job 38:29 January A monastery forms in this plane of all places, over New Jersey, as I fly north in the dead of a Northeast winter, in the grip of an historic deep freeze.  I am returning home from a short trip South, contemplating the icy lunar landscape below, pocked by crows, bridges, and ice-encased riggings. I’m startled to discover how much I’ve missed this purgatory, how eager

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Elaine Breckenridge’s reflection on Saint Brigid. I went to Ireland last year and met Saint Brigid: monastic leader and pastor, protector and companion, soul friend and healer. Oh, I had known about Brigid as there are no shortage of books detailing her life as a person in history and her tradition as a goddess of the land of Ireland. But on this sacred journey, experience expanded knowledge as throughout my two week journey, time and again I met Brigid. My visit to

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Erin Marie Clark’s reflection on conversing with the wisdom of the tarot. It was towards the end of my time training to be ordained as an Anglican priest that I was tackled by a mischievous and confounding spiritual practice: namely, reading the images and stories in tarot. Five months before I was due to be ordained, I stumbled on a blog post written by a tarot card reader. The warm, generous, pastoral tone of the post surprised me. It echoed the tone

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Keren Dibbens-Wyatt’s reflection Shining for God. I may not be a Catholic, but I have had the honour, once or twice, of adoring the Christ as he is held within the monstrance. One particular time, sitting in the Cloister Chapel at Aylesford Priory, this was quite overwhelming. It was heart-warming and awe-inspiring, and my soul sang inside me even as I kept silence and held gaze with the moon-wafer in the golden sun. It felt for those precious minutes like everything in the

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Teresa Blythe’s reflection on finding God in desire. Desire is not something I was brought up to respect. To insist on fulfilling one’s own desires was seen as selfish, petty and certainly not Christian. Still somewhere deep within me from the earliest of times I can recall I knew that if I operated out of desire, I was joyful, and if I did something because someone made me or pressured me—I was miserable. This is important information for spiritual discernment, but I