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Invitation to Poetry: Call to Newness

Welcome to Poetry Party #70! I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below or join our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group and post there. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party!  (If you repost the photo, please make sure to include the credit link below it and link back to this post inviting

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“Lovingly Fitted” (a love note from your online Abbess)

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) King Solomon made himself an enclosed litter of wood from Lebanon. He made its columns of silver, its roof of gold, Its seat of purple cloth, its interior lovingly fitted. —Song of Songs 3:9-10 Dearest monks and artists, I have mentioned before that my husband and I practice lectio divina together and we have slowly been working our way through the Song of Songs together, praying with just a couple of verses at a time in a practice of lectio continua. Several weeks

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Monk in the World guest post: Tara Owens

This summer I invited the 12 members of the Wisdom Council to each write a reflection on being a monk in the world. They were so well-received by the Abbey community, I decided to continue the series this fall by asking some fellow authors and bloggers I know to also write about living contemplatively in daily life. I am delighted to have such a lovely line up for you, beginning with Tara Owens, who I got to know initially through Spiritual Directors International and have grown to love her spirit and perspective on things. So I bring you some of her wisdom: To

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Invitation to Photography: Call to Newness

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice (stop by to read the beautiful responses).  As I prayed with the Isaiah text, this phrase kept shimmering for me:  See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. I love this image of God seeing the newness of things to come before we do, God’s imagination so much wider than we can see, and the possibilities just on the

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Join us for Community Lectio Divina!

There are a couple more days left for our Community Lectio Divina practice this month with Isaiah 42:6-10.  Reading your responses has been very powerful for me, to listen to the Spirit at work weaving through our shared prayers.  Sunday we will post this month’s Photo Party which will continue breaking open the themes explored in the passage.

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Come to Ireland next spring. . . (new dates added!)

We have added a fourth and final set of dates for the Monk in the World: Pilgrimage to the Sacred Edge of Ireland in 2014. We love the poetry of now having one pilgrimage in each of the four Celtic seasons. There are only a couple of spaces left for March 18-26, 2014, so please contact me to register (or to be added to the waiting list for the other dates or advance notice of 2015 dates). Join your fellow pilgrims and monks in the world for an intimate and transformative journey to a sacred landscape. If Ireland calls to

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Exile and Belonging (a love note from your online Abbess)

Dearest monks and artists, This coming Tuesday represents two significant relationships in my life.  September 3rd is my mother’s birthday, she would have been 71 and it is also my 19th wedding anniversary with my beloved, and your online Prior, John. My mother’s death 10 years ago was unexpected and wrenching.  I was blessed to be by her side at the moment of her last breath. Truly it was one of the holiest moments of my life and one of the most terrible, as this woman I loved so dearly was torn from me too soon.  Her death plunged me into a depression for the

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Community Lectio Divina: Isaiah 42:6-10

With autumn we return to a fuller rhythm here at the Abbey blog after the quieter time of summer.  I know many of you will welcome the Poetry and Photo Parties back. In addition, we are adding in an invitation to practice lectio divina as a community and there will also be a Dance Party at the end of the month to nourish all my dancing monks. You can see the fall calendar of invitations here>> Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group here>> How Community Lectio Divina works: Each month there will be a passage selected from scripture or

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Join me in Chicago on October 19th!

Eyes of the Heart: Conference in Chicago with Christine Valters Paintner Saturday, October 19, 2013 at Mundelein Seminary Join Benedictine Oblate, retreat leader, and widely acclaimed author, Christine Valters Paintner, as she invites us to consider how viewing the world through the lens of a camera (even a humble cell phone camera!) can become a means of “seeing” the Sacred all around us in a fresh, new way. Participants are encouraged to bring their cameras so that they, too, may capture the beauty of God in the world around us. (register at this link and scroll down to October 19th).

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Wisdom Council: Guest Post from Betsey Beckman

This week brings us to our final guest post from Wisdom Council members!  And a wonderful way to finish is with my dear friend and teaching partner Betsey Beckman. Betsey and I met soon after I moved to Seattle over ten years ago. We discovered we made a beautiful partnership in bringing the gifts of the arts to others and created Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education in the Expressive Arts together, our 5-day residential intensive for soul care practitioners which is now in its 8th year (and later wrote a book together as well)!  Over the years we have partnered in

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