Reflections

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for David Ford’s wisdom on the journey of becoming a monk in the world: How do I live as a monk in the world? Labels are so necessary but can also be misleading, so I usually try to avoid them. Am I really a ‘monk in the world’? It is a label that does have some resonance, so perhaps you will bear with me while I wear it for a few minutes. Admittedly, I have always felt drawn to the monastic. Having a

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kate Kennington Steer’s wisdom about photography as a portal to presence: Whenever I can, I am to be found with a camera in my hand, but living with chronic illness means my day revolves around how much energy I have, and whether I am mobile enough to leave the house.  Most days I am a very quiet ‘monk’, and ‘the world’ is rather distant, reached only by what is out of the window, and what threads of community I can conjure through

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melinda Thomas Hansen’s wisdom about the dance of becoming a monk in the world: It is all too easy to fill my hours with tasks – things that need doing. There are classes to plan, lectures to prepare, websites to build; bills to pay, emails to answer, and products – necessary and unnecessary – to search for on Amazon. The tasks have a way of making themselves seem to be of utmost importance. They arrange themselves in lists on notepads and in

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jim Cyr’s wisdom about the grace of stories: “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours… it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose