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Icon Workshop in Seattle April 26-29 with Peter Pearson

The Center at St. Andrew’s here in Seattle is sponsoring an icon workshop with Peter Pearson April 26-29 which sounds wonderful!  I encourage my Seattle area friends to go if you have any interest at all.  You can find more information at their website here. Sponsored by The Center at St. Andrew’s with help from the Little Sisters of St. Clare Study with Iconographer Peter Pearson at An Icon Workshop A Brush with God April 26-29, 2012 The Round in Lake City 2212 NE 125th, Seattle, WA 98125 (formerly St. George’s Episcopal Church) Workshop-Studio     Schedule Thursday,     7:00-9:30pm Friday,     7:00-9:30pm

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Body-Words of Love

Over the last several months I have been training to teach yoga. I began the program because I have practiced yoga for many years and longed to dive more deeply into it. I expected to fall in love with my own body even more in the process; what I didn’t expect was how much I would fall in love with other people’s bodies as well. As I walk around the studio and students are in their various poses I see the incredible variety in body types, shapes, sizes, flexibility, and bone structure. My training involves hands-on adjustments, which are less

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Invitation to Poetry: Love Letters to the World

Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party #55! 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! (permission is granted to reprint the image if a link is provided back to this post) On Sunday, February 19th, I will draw a name at random from the participants and the winner

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New Review of Lectio Divina — The Transforming Art

As with The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom, reviewed on StoryCircleBookReviews, I savoured Christine Valters Paintner’s Lectio Divina as my morning reading practice. Lectio divina essentially means “divine reading” of sacred texts, during which we “enter into an encounter with God.” While the ancient practice has its roots in Judaism, Valters Paintner refers to the scriptures of different religious traditions, including Hebrew, Christian and the Qur’an, throughout the book. There are many passages from which to choose for your own practice. Paintner invites an exploration of lectio divina in Part One of the book. “Listen with

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Welcoming in Tenderness

Last fall I participated in a two-week yoga teacher training retreat through the Samarya Center, a wonderful non-profit yoga studio here in Seattle that is committed to making yoga accessible to everyone.  In addition to their regular offering of classes to the general public, they also offer yoga to those in hospice, to veterans, to those suffering with addiction, and many others. Yoga is not just a physical practice at Samarya, the whole rich tradition of yoga philosophy is woven into everthing they do. I have been practicing yoga for about 15 years and while I have long felt drawn

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The Sacred Art of Living

My latest article at Patheos: I was sitting in St. Ephrem, a small Orthodox stone church near the Sorbonne in Paris, listening to the sublime solo suites for cello by Johann Sebastian Bach.  The young man playing did not have sheet music, he knew this entire piece by heart.  His eyes were closed as he stretched the bow back and forth in a kind of dance, his whole body was alert and engaged in this act of offering to the gathered crowd. I was struck there in the middle of the piece by the awareness that he had spent likely

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Stirring in the Belly: Listening for New Life

I am reposting my Seasons of the Soul column for Patheos from last year to honor this sacred day: The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and

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THE MONASTERY retreats

I am posting this information to support the Sisters who lead these retreats.  I am not personally involved in the programs, so if you have questions, please visit their website and contact them directly: Deep in Iowa farming country, stands Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey. Abiding by the centuries-old Rule of St. Benedict, this contemplative community of Cistercian nuns has left behind the clamor of the 21st century for a cloistered life of prayer based on the monastic values of silence, obedience and humility. But in 2006 the Sisters allowed television cameras inside their abbey along with five women

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More praise for The Artist’s Rule (from Benedictines to Baptists)

The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration publish a bi-monthly journal called Spirit and Life.  In the January/February 2012 issue they had this to say about  The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom: This author’s work is firmly rooted in Benedictine spirituality, making special note of the “ladder of humility” and Lectio Divina. Moving through the twelve weeks of experimentation with deepening artistic experiences, readers are guided into deeper and broader insights into many aspects of their work and life. They may find that the contemplative aspect of their lives, too, is blossoming. Rather than stressing “how to,” Paintner gives

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Visual Meditation: Winter Stillness and Delight

Seattle had another snowstorm today.  These images are from the one we enjoyed on Sunday.  Lots of play and frolicking happening here at the Abbey today.  And our dog Winter loves to play in the snow, who would have guessed?

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