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New Year Blessings ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Stop by this link to read W.S. Merwin’s poem “To the New Year” Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I offer you a reprise of my reflection on Embracing Mystery in the New Year: Ten Essential Practices. Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for an unknown God. -Henri-Frederic

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Christmas Blessings from the Abbey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, All of us here at the Abbey – John, Christine, and the Abbey Wisdom Council – wish you a most wondrous Christmas feast. This is the time for holy birthing to happen in unlikely places, a time to listen to what rises in the stillness, a time to trust in the darkness that seeds are sprouting deep beneath the fertile earth. We live in a world hungry for such truths. What a gift you each are to be a bearer of this wisdom. To support this knowing in your own heart, I offer you a

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Monk in the World Guest Post: LeAnne Nesbitt

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for LeAnne Nesbitt’s reflection “A Circuitous Journey:  Reflections on Two Years of Mandala Making.” A little over two years ago I was facilitating a SoulCollage® workshop at a women’s retreat and serving as event photographer when I made my way over to take pictures of a mandala workshop also being offered that weekend.  After some basic instruction on the mandala form, participants were asked to go out on the grounds in pairs and work together in silence to

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Feast Day of Thomas Merton ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today is the feast day of Thomas Merton and I share with you this excerpt from my book Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics: “The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.” (Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) I first read

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Melinda Thomas

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melinda Thomas’ reflection “The Season of Many Hats.” The other day I was reading through Christine’s latest book The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred and pulling quotes for the daily emails when I came across this gem. “Out of all the many things calling for attention: Which one is it the season for?” In the season before I had a child my days were long, open spaces for contemplative practice. I journaled and

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Writing on the Wild Edges:
Participant Poem from Linda Courage

At the end of August, 17 creative souls gathered with us for our retreat on Inismor – Writing on the Wild Edges of the World. We had a wonderful group with participants from all over the U.S., Canada, Singapore, and Australia. I am delighted to share some of their poems over these next few weeks. Pour a cup of tea, imagine yourself on a windswept limestone island in the Atlantic, and savor for a while. From Linda Courage: Back yard spaces With buckets and overturned containers Diggers and trailers Useful and necessary at certain moments But left to befriend passing

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Give me a word

Give Me a Word 2019: Celebrating 10 Years!

SHARE YOUR WORD FOR 2019 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 the refiner’s fire and be stripped down to one’s holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered. Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word –  this word or phrase would be something on

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Order Dancing Monk Icon Prints by December 15th

Did you know that you can order high-quality print reproductions of all the dancing monks in our icon series by artist Marcy Hall? The prints are 5×10 inches mounted on an 11×14 matte ready for framing. Imagine inviting St. Hildegard, St. Benedict, St. Brigid, St. Francis, Mary, or one of the 20 other monks and mystics we have images for into your sacred space or as a wonderful gift for a loved one. Plus we’d like to introduce the newest addition to the dancing monk series, St. Melangell from Powys in Wales, the patron saint of hares. I have recently

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Tara Shepersky

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Tara Shepersky’s reflection “Anxiety & Radical Hospitality.” I’m alone this weekend, on retreat above the Pacific. Sitting beneath a fuchsia hedge, the loudest sound is the vrzzzzz! of the bright-green hummingbirds, who’ve grown used to my presence. I heard something very faint half a minute ago, and it took me these thirty seconds to parse it as the musical approach of geese. If you value silence, as I do – cultivating it within, and breathing relief at

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Writing on the Wild Edges:
Participant Poem from Francine E. Walls

At the end of August, 17 creative souls gathered with us for our retreat on Inismor – Writing on the Wild Edges of the World. We had a wonderful group with participants from all over the U.S., Canada, Singapore, and Australia. I am delighted to share some of their poems over these next few weeks. Pour a cup of tea, imagine yourself on a windswept limestone island in the Atlantic, and savor for a while. From Francine E. Walls: The Abbot of Inis Mor turns to his Flock Pow!  Waves stomp on sand, a fringe of lace spreads out, rooted

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