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Visual Meditation: Winter Solstice (in Vienna)

Today in the Northern hemisphere we celebrate the Winter Solstice, that day of the great turning toward the light.  Winter is my favorite season with her achingly beautiful spareness.  I offer you some images from my time away below.  Blessings on your own journey through holy darkness toward illumination. More photos to come later in the week including a reflection about how to listen for the Word which might be calling to you for the coming year.  Make sure to stop by “Give me a Word” and share yours for a chance to win an online class and to read

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December 21, 2010

Give Me a Word (and second annual Abbey New Year Giveaway)

Last year I offered the invitation to my readers to consider a word shimmering for them that might carry them throughout the year.  There were 140 beautiful postings and I later created a Wordle from the entries as a celebration of the prayers gathered.  I offer the same invitation this year and again some prizes to give away: In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to God and to their own inner struggles at work within them.  The desert became a place to enter into

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December 17, 2010

Advent Practices: Considering Our Earthiness (Week Four)

This is the fourth reflection in a weely series I am writing for Patheos on practices for Advent to nurture our intimacy with creation: When despair for the world grows in me . . . I come into the peace of wild things . . . I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. -Wendell Berry, excerpted from “The Peace of Wild Things” If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, / You are surely lost. -David Wagoner, excerpted from “Lost” In the scriptures for this fourth week of Advent we hear in the

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December 17, 2010

Advent Practices: Water’s Wisdom (Week Three)

This is the third reflection in a weely series I am writing for Patheos on practices for Advent to nurture our intimacy with creation: The bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength. The lakes hidden among the hills are saints, and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance. ~ Thomas Merton For this third week of Advent I invite you to consider the element of water as an inspiration for your prayer and a way to grow in intimacy with creation.

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December 9, 2010

Advent Practices: Following the Fire (Week Two)

This is the second reflection in a weely series I am writing for Patheos on practices for Advent to nurture our intimacy with creation: Every being is praising God The fire has its flame and praises God. The wind blows the flame and praises God. In the voice we hear the word which praises God. And the word, when heard, praises God. So all of creation is a song of praise to God.   -Hildegard of Bingen In the first week of our Advent series we focused on the scriptural image of awakening and the gift of breath as our connection

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December 1, 2010

Advent Practices: Tending to Creation (Week One)

For the season of Advent I will be offering a weekly column at Patheos on practices for Advent to nurture our intimacy with creation: As we enter these four weeks of Advent, we cross into a holy time when the scriptures are filled with images of expectancy as we await the coming of a God who enters into the heart of this world. I invite you during these next four weeks to embrace this season as a time to tend to your relationship to creation. As we anticipate the way holiness becomes enfleshed, we are called to reflect on the

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November 25, 2010

Winter Wisdom

 A major obstacle to creativity is wanting to be in the peak season of growth and generation at all times . . . but if we see the soul’s journey as cyclical, like the seasons. . . then we can accept the reality that periods of despair or fallowness are like winter – a resting time that offers us a period of creative hibernation, purification, and regeneration that prepare us for the births of spring. -Linda Leonard, from Call to Create : Celebrating Acts of Imagination One of the greatest gifts of the seasons to me as a writer and

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November 18, 2010

Luminous Wisdom of Night

The darkness embraces everything, It lets me imagine a great presence stirring beside me. I believe in the night. -Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours The Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls on November 1st and 2nd honor the profound legacy of wisdom our ancestors have left to us and continue to offer. In some denominations, we celebrate and honor the dead for the whole month of November. In the Northern hemisphere the world is entering the dark half of the year. The ancient Celtic people believed this time was a thin space, where heaven and earth whispered to

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October 26, 2010

Embraced by the Divine Mother

After writing this post yesterday morning about honoring the anniversary of my mother’s death I stepped into the day releasing expectations of what the hours ahead would hold and opened myself to how my mother might whisper to me across worlds.  I arrived at my yoga class ten minutes early as is my habit to settle into a few moments of silence to begin this sacred time of entering the body’s wisdom.  As I moved into the room there was an ethereal woman’s voice singing.  Another student asked the teacher what music this was.  “Hymns to the Divine Mother” she replied. I smiled and let the rise

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October 20, 2010

Re-membering

I practice yoga at a beautiful place, it is a non-profit studio in Seattle thoroughly committed to making yoga accessible for everyone.  They do amazing work bringing yoga to persons dying of AIDS, to veterans and refugees, to persons with disabilities.  They also are wonderful at integrating yoga philosophy into their regular classes.  Each month has a specific theme and instructors talk a bit about it at the start of class and then weave it throughout our practice together.  I find that the principles of yoga consistently deepen my practice of Christian contemplative and monastic spirituality, opening new doors for me into the

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October 19, 2010