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I am doing a little housekeeping and unpacking of more boxes here at the Abbey: I have updated my Resource List to include blog friends (scroll to the bottom of the page).  One of the reasons I have never done this before is I am afraid of forgetting someone, so if I have done so, please do not take offense.  Just send me a gentle email or leave a comment.  I love the diversity of people I have gotten to know in the Blogosphere and value the variety of ideas I have encountered.  I have added a number of spirituality and

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Honoring the Greater Body

I am very touched by the response to my post yesterday both in comments and in email.  I knew opening up this vulnerable place would begin to shift things in me again, move me again to that place where honoring my body is a gift rather than a burden.  I am always struggling in some way with the tension between the limits of my body and the calling of my creative inspiration, but it occurred to me that this tension sets up an antagonism between the two which I don’t at all mean to build.  I believe deeply that caring for

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Listening Deeply to the Body

We had our fifth Awakening the Creative Spirit session on Friday and Saturday.  The focus this time was on movement led primarily by my teaching partner Betsey.  I was eager to see our group of wonderful women participating as always, but also wondered how I would do during this session since my body hasn’t been feeling very well lately.  I deal with chronic illness and it has been rearing its ugly head these last couple of weeks again.  I have dealt with this my whole adult life, and it doesn’t get any easier to confront the limitations of the body. 

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More Offerings Added. . .

Greetings again dear readers, I have added two different sets of photo notecards (trees and flowers) to my Offerings page, so head on over and take a peek (and better yet, order yourself a set or two!).  They are packaged with love and care and always a little extra treat.   More reflections to come later in the day. . .

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Groundhog Day

Celebrate this unlikely oracle, this ball of fat and fur, whom we so mysteriously endow with the power to predict spring. Let’s hear it for the improbable heroes who, frightened at their own shadows, nonetheless unwittingly work miracles. Why shouldn’t we believe this peculiar rodent holds power over sun and seasons in his stubby paw? Who says that God is all grandeur and glory? Unnoticed in the earth, worms are busily, brainlessly, tilling the soil. Field mice, all unthinking, have scattered seeds that will take root and grow. Grape hyacinths, against all reason, have been holding up green shoots beneath

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Quickening

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear the gentle quickening beneath the earth? Tomorrow on February 2nd is the feast of Imbolc, Candlemas, the feast of St. Bridget, and Groundhog Day.  It is a cross-quarter day meaning it is the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox.  The sun marks the four Quarter Days of the year (the Solstices and Equinoxes) and the midpoints are the cross-quarter days.  In some cultures this is the official beginning of spring. As the days slowly lengthen and the sun makes her way higher in the sky, the ground beneath our

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Rise Up Rooted

  Book of Hours II, 16  How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they

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Essential Flow

      I shared a couple of months ago dreams I was having about playing the cello.  After my third dream in about a month, I woke up and went for a walk to pray with the images that kept repeating themselves to me to pay attenton.  Toward the end of my walk I went by Cornish college and was amazed to find a woman playing the cello outdoors on their lawn.  This was synchronicity at work.  I have continued to pray with that image, letting itself play within me. Then, a couple of weeks ago I received some feedback on the lectio

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Body-Words of Love

I am fashioned as a galaxy, Not as a solid substance but a mesh Of atoms in their far complexity Forming the pattern of my bone and flesh.  Small solar systems are my eyes, Muscle and sinew are composed of air. Like comets flashing through the evening skies My blood runs, ordered, arrogant, and fair. Ten lifetimes distant is the nearest star, And yet within my body, firm as wood, Proton and electron separate are. Bone is more fluid than my coursing blood. What plan had God, so strict and empassioned When He an island universe my body fashioned? -Madeleine

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Bare Branches

Top two photos taken at Greenlake in Seattle, bottom four on Granville Island in Vancouver I find winter trees achingly beautiful, even more so this winter than any previous one I can remember. I see the black branches spread across the darkening sky and my heart swells with longing, as though there is something in the meeting of essence and horizon that speaks to a part of me that has gone unnamed thus far. Only questions rise up asking me to live into them: What is my essence? When everything is stripped away, who am I beneath all the roles

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