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Join us for Honoring Saints and Ancestors (starts October 29th)

If you have been following the Abbey for a while, you know that I consider ancestral work vital to the healing and vibrancy of our souls.  I believe that the stories of our mothers and fathers, and the generations before them, live on in our blood and shape our own gifts and wounds. I have experienced profound healing on this path.  I have even moved to the city of Vienna because of an ancestral call, and here each day I discover new dimensions to my father’s story, and so my own as well.  I consider my journey an essential dimension

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The winner of this week’s Poetry Party is. . .

. . . Alizabeth Rasmusen.  Liz will receive a space in my upcoming online retreat – Honoring Saints and Ancestors: Peering through the Veil. Deep bows of gratitude to each of you who participated in the Poetry Party.  Truly it is one of the great joys of leading this community to have such generous and creative souls be a part of it.

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Hospitality, Trust Tending, and Soul Nourishment

This month’s theme at the Abbey is hospitality. You can find more reflections here, here and here. There are lots of wondrous resources to share and upcoming classes to consider in support of your own journey of inner hospitality: Live it to Give it If you are a soul care practitioner in need of some support in practicing generous hospitality to your own beautiful self, please consider joining Kayce Stevens Hughlett for her upcoming online Soul Care Institute class Live it to Give it: Essential Practices of Soul Nourishment and Self-Care which begins November 5th and offers a wise and generous space for you

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Practicing Generous Hospitality

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

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Invitation to Poetry: Hospitality

Welcome to the Abbey’s 61st Poetry Party! 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. 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 others to join us). Each month we have a new theme

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Photo Party drawing winner is . . .

. . . Nancy Flowers!  Congratulations Nancy – you won a space in my upcoming online retreat – Honoring Saints and Ancestors: Peering through the Veil. Thank you to eveyone who shared images of hospitality at the Photo Party.   Some beautiful images over at Flickr, stop by to take a look. Our next Poetry Party will start on Monday, October 15th!

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Holy Hildegard: A Spiritual Director Across Time

I have a guest post at the Spiritual Directors International blog on St. Hildegard: Last May, the process of canonizing Hildegard of Bingen, which began soon after her death, was finally completed. On October 7 she will be made a Doctor of the Church, one of only four women in the Catholic Church given such an honor. I fell in love with Hildegard while in graduate school. Her creative heart dazzled me. I wanted to know more about this monastic tradition that nurtured her and from which she drew so much wisdom. She was my doorway into becoming a Benedictine

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Peace Prayer of St. Francis (Happy Feast Day!)

Today is the feast day of beloved St. Francis of Assisi! Roy DeLeon is a fellow Benedictine oblate from St. Placid Priory in Lacey, WA and also a yoga teacher.  He offers this beautiful experience of embodied prayer with St. Francis’ “Peace Prayer.”  Let these words and images enter the depths of your own body and see what you discover about not just thinking peace, but being peace.  Let this be an act of gracious hospitality to love, joy, hope, and light. BMPS – Peace Prayer from Roy DeLeon, OblSB. Make sure to stop by this week’s Photo Party on

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Radical Hospitality and Holy Disruption (new Patheos column)

I have a new Seasons of the Soul column up at Patheos: Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for he is going to say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Mt 25:35). ~ Rule of St Benedict 53:1-2 This quote from Benedict’s Rule is a foundational expression of the principle of hospitality at work: I am called to welcome in every stranger who comes to the door as the face of the divine. I love this invitation of the Rule. I consider what this means at its foundation: that everything that seems strange, foreign, or

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Invitation to Photography: Hospitality

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

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