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Abbess love notes

Community and A Change to Gather In Person ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, On Saturday, March 11th we will be hosting a live hybrid retreat (in-person in Ohio or via online streaming.) Our theme is Monk in the World: A Day of Contemplation, Creativity, and Connection. Many of you have asked when we might be hosting opportunities to gather in person again and this is our first attempt in a very long time to give you the chance to be with other dancing monks and kindred spirits.  An online community is a strange and remarkable thing. We connect with fellow contemplatives and artists from all over the world and gather

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January 15, 2023
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Carmen Acevedo Butcher

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Read on for acclaimed translator Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s reflection “Translatio Divina: Transformative Soul-Body-Self-Mind Practice.” Her book Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation is our featured book for June in the Lift Every Voice Book Club. Contemplative practices like lectio, scriptio, and visio divina help us slow down and, as Mary Oliver says, “Pay attention.” To these I’d like to add translatio divina or embodied mindfulness in translating. Recently translatio divina steeped me in the joyful spirituality of the soup-stirring, dish-washing, and sandal-mending contemplative I call the friar of amour: Brother Lawrence.

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January 11, 2023
Abbess love notes

Desert Wisdom and the Practice of Love ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Next Saturday we continue our pilgrimage through the mystics when I will be leading a retreat on desert father St. Anthony the Great and desert wisdom. St. Anthony, also known as Anthony the Great, is considered to be the founder of the Christian monastic movement.  He moved into the desert at the end of the third century to seek solitude and by the end of his life thousands had followed him there to imitate his way of life of extreme asceticism.   Paul of Thebes is recorded as the actual first monk in Christian tradition to live in

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January 8, 2023

Monk in the World Guest Post: Amy Oden

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Amy Oden’s reflection “Christian Mindfulness Practice.” It started with the hunger I heard around me for more authentic, rooted, present lives. Seminary students and church folks, directees and retreat participants, all longing to be present in their actual lives instead of rushing from one thing to the next. They were hungry for lives less curated and edited and more authentic and real. I began to trace two thousand years of Christian mindfulness practice as a doorway into

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January 4, 2023
Abbess love notes

New Year Blessings and Gratitude ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, For the last 14 years we have hosted our annual Give Me a Word mini-retreat and invitation for you to share your word for the year with our community. You can find out more about it at this post. Some years my word comes quickly and some years it demands a lot more listening and waiting until I receive it. Sometimes I feel certain the word is shimmering and other times I am uncertain and so hold whatever seems to come lightly and with openness.  As many of you know the first half of last year was a

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January 1, 2023
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A Christmas Blessing

This blessing dances at the doorwayof light and dark, knows both as sacred:fertile womb space, miracle of blooming. This blessing breathesthrough those moments of laborwhen you too birth the holyinto this fragile, luminous, hurting world as Mary did two thousand years ago,eyes wide, hands gripping,waters breaking like crashing wavesof the primordial seasending a prayer through timethat echoes still,pulsing like starlightin an enormous sky. This blessing rests a handon the back of the lonelydisorientedlosthungrydespairingpersecutedto say your humanity is not an obstaclebut a threshold, to remind youthat the wound is a portalthrough which your gifts pour forth,that raw ache you feelis the

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December 21, 2022

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kirk Byron Jones

We are delighted to offer this post by Kirk Byron Jones, author of Soul Talk: How to Have the Most Important Conversation of All and Holy Play: The Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose. Soul Talk is our featured book this December in our Lift Every Voice Book Club. Listen to our conversation with Kirk here.  We’d like to offer this poem by Kirk as an invitation into the holy pause of the season. It was originally published on his Facebook page Yes to Grace. Nothing is Something Going, going, going. Slowing, slowing, slowing. Stop. Being at ease is healing and

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December 21, 2022
Abbess love notes

Coming Home + Prayer Cycle Day 7

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, In November and December, we have been releasing our brand new 7-day prayer cycle of morning and evening prayers on the theme of The Soul of a Pilgrim. The audio podcasts for Day 7 morning and evening prayer (the final day!) are being released today on the theme of Coming Home. This is one of the many free resources we offer to our community to help support your contemplative practice and prayer. (If you are able to support this work financially in any way, we gratefully accept contributions at this link.)  This reflection on the practice of coming

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December 18, 2022

Spiritual Wanderlust Podcast Interview

Christine Valters Paintner was interview by Kelly Deutsch on the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. Together we dive into: 🔸 Why Mary has so many names🔹 Christine’s favorite name of Mary at this season in her life (it may surprise you!)🔸 How Christine ended up the abbess of an online monastery🔹How her love for Jungian thought intersects with her Catholic spirituality🔸 How the passing of her own mother birthed a book on Mary🔹Mary as warrior (an image in stark contrast to the placid woman in blue we usually see!)🔸 What was Hildegard’s favorite name for Mary, and what it has to do

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December 17, 2022

Hildy Tail: The Birth of the Messiah (Matthew 1:18-25)

This week we are featuring one of our Hildy Tails. This series of essays were composed last year for our Sustainers Circle. They were dictated to John by the Abbey’s mascot, Hildy the Monk-ey. Hildy is a bit of a free spirit who likes to entertain and doesn’t normally feel constrained by conventional story structure . . . or grammar, in general. She lives by the motto that “all stories are true; some actually happened.” We wanted to share them with you, our wider Abbey community, to give you a small monkey-sized, humorous perspective on some biblical passages and stories

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December 15, 2022

Upcoming Programs

To Be is a Blessing: An Online Retreat for Advent
To Be is a Blessing: An Online Retreat for Advent
1 Dec 24
Contemplative Prayer Service: Community
Contemplative Prayer Service: Community
9 Dec 24
Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer
18 Dec 24

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