Reflections

Below is the love note from this week’s Abbey newsletter.  If you don’t already get it in your in-box you can subscribe here. Also, there is a beautiful gathering of poems at this week’s Poetry Party on the theme of hospitality.  Stop by and linger for a while, then share your own by Sunday for a chance to win a  a space in my upcoming online retreat – Honoring Saints and Ancestors: Peering through the Veil. I find myself in this humbling, yet rich, place. After arriving in Vienna to begin our new adventure, I was pulled between the tinge of homesickness

Welcome to the Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. Our theme here at Abbey of the Arts for October is hospitality, so I invite you to reflect visually on what either inner or outer hospitality – that radical act of welcoming in what feels most strange as the face of the holy – looks like for you.  You can share images you already have, but I encourage you also to go for a walk with the theme in mind and see what you discover. How to participate: 1. Go to the Flickr Group I have created (when you go

Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for he is going to say:  I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt. 25:35). —Rule of St Benedict 53:1-2 For the month of October, we turn our attention to the principle of hospitality, as found in the Monk Manifesto: 2. I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others. The Abbey will be hosting a monthly