Reflections

Dearest monks and artists, This has been an incredible couple of weeks with our renewal of vows for our 20th anniversary where American friends and Irish friends gathered with us together to celebrate. It felt like our worlds were coming together in a beautiful way. Then, just before the pilgrimage began, a shipment of our things from Seattle which had been in storage for the last two and a half years, arrived. This included two pieces of furniture from my father’s family in Austria, an oil painting of my grandmother, lots and lots of family photos, and some other mementos from

St. Brendan and the Songbirds Imagine the hubris, searching for the Saint-promised island, the stubbornness to continue for seven journeys around the sun. Each day on the rolling sea, his fellow monks jostled and tossed by waves. Brendan asks late one evening: How will I know when I find what I seek? Easter Sunday brings liturgy on the back of a whale, but as if that weren’t miracle enough, they travel onward. The ship is tossed onto sand and stone. they look up to behold a broad and magnificent oak frosted with white birds hiding the branches entirely, downy tree