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Monk in the World Guest Post: Paula Hogue

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Paula Hogue’s visual art reflection. Drawing and painting have always been an important part of my contemplative practice. When I go into my studio, my breath slows down, my shoulders release and my mind quiets. As I enter into the project I lose all sense of time and space and I feel that I go deep inside myself. My imagery often relates ideas and themes that I have been exploring and working to heal within myself. Art

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September 23, 2026
Abbess love notes

The Handless Maiden ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, On Monday, September 28th we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale “The Handless Maiden.”  You may or may not be familiar with it. There are over a hundred versions of this story which have appeared throughout Europe and other parts of the world, so it is an important story, one that can speak to our experience on many levels.  It is a story that first found me when I was living in Seattle, about 20 years ago. I participated in a workshop with a Jungian analyst where we spent the week embodying this story through

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September 20, 2026

Monk in the World Guest Post: PattiJoy Posan

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for PattiJoy’s reflection and poem Introduction to Stillness. The poems in my Book of Hours trace the subtle movements of the day — not by clock or ritual, but by breath, presence, and the shifting of light across the natural world. I call these Hours Before Dawn, Early Morning, Night Watch, and First Light, for they mark the soul’s quiet thresholds. Stillness belongs among them as a meditation on the ways nature teaches without effort: moonlight, fireflies, the stirring of the

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September 16, 2026
Abbess love notes

Mourning Pages: The Write Way to Grieve

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, September 18th, we are pleased to welcome Wisdom Council member and Lift Every Voice Book Club conversation partner Claudia Love Mair to lead us in the retreat Mourning Pages: The Write Way to Grieve. Below is a note from Claudia Love and an adapted excerpt from her forthcoming book. Adapted Excerpt It started with a simple announcement of his death on social media. I met my carefully curated community of creatives, spiritual folks, ride-or-die friends, and family on Facebook. . . . After that, I wrote very little. Those first seventy-two hours were

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September 13, 2026

Monk in the World Guest Post: Richard Bruxvoort Colligan

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for an excerpt from Wisdom Council member Richard Bruxvoort Colligan’s book Dangerous Songs: The Psalms and a Gloriously Disrupted Life. Ready or Not: A Riff on Psalm 78 In the Hebrew Bible, Exodus 16 tells the story of the people of Israel being led by Moses through the wilderness. The group had been liberated from slavery about a month and a half before. Still, they were anxious. They complained to Moses that they were starving and hopeless; if

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September 9, 2026
Abbess love notes

Creation’s Call to Praise ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Our featured self-study this month is Earth, Our Original Monastery. This retreat companions my book and we updated this retreat last spring, adding all new content from Cassidhe Hart on writing your own earth psalter and Polly Paton-Brown on the spirituality of trees. There are also wonderful songs that go with each week’s theme and a dance prayer led by Betsey Beckman.  Here is an adapted excerpt from the book: Earth and her creatures teach us how to pray, how to worship and praise, but only if we listen and pay attention to their rhythms in

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September 6, 2026

Monk in the World Guest Post: Martha Van Vactor

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read one for Martha Van Vactor’s reflection That Night. That night as predicted, there was the beautiful huge, very larger-than-life moon lighting up the night in an ever-so-peaceful and quiet time. I felt an instant, overwhelming rejuvenation in the sight of that large moon seemingly close enough to reach out and fearlessly grab!   Then I looked around at my surroundings, so well-lit for a change in the darkness of normal nights in the desert. Just a short time ago here was a

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September 2, 2026
Abbess love notes

I Will Live as a Monk in the World ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

I Will Live as a Monk in the World I awaken early as usual,have my little pot of breakfast and feed the dog,then she makes circles and squeals,knowing what is next. Morning prayer, walking the canal and river,quiet before the city hums,she stops every few feet to sniffmessages left for her on blades of grassand tree trunks,and I wonder at the messages imprinted here for me too,a feather floating,a leaf on my path,an acorn fallen.I pray with my feet, smell dawn’s freshness,the possibility of here and now,the swan glides up the waterand the duck quacks a warning to his companions, the blackbird does what he must

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August 30, 2026

Monk in the World Guest Post: Dena Jennings

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wisdom Council Member Dena Jennings’ reflection and poem Just a Taste. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. — Letter to the Corinthians  These are troubling times. Uncertainty emerges in ways I never expected. I am sure this

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August 26, 2026
Abbess love notes

Ignatian Contemplation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

“For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.” ~St. Ignatius of Loyola Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, August 28th we are delighted to welcome Wisdom Council member Dena Jennings who will lead us in a retreat on Ignatian Contemplation—a means of seeking deeper understanding of the scriptures through our senses. Dena offers this reflection. Imagine that you are in the stories of the Gospels— not reading or hearing the Gospels, but actually imagine yourself in the stories. As the life of Jesus of Nazareth, from his birth to his ascension, unfold in

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August 23, 2026