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Hildegard of Bingen and Viriditas ~ A love note from your online abbess

St. Hildegard Strolls through the Garden Luminous morning, Hildegard gazes at the array of blooms, holding in her heart the young boy with a mysterious rash, the woman reaching menopause, the newly minted widower, and the black Abbey cat with digestive issues who wandered in one night and stayed.  New complaints arrive each day. She gathers bunches of dandelions, their yellow profusion a welcome sight in the monastery garden, red clover, nettle, fennel, sprigs of parsley to boil later in wine. She glances to make sure none of her sisters are peering around pillars, slips off her worn leather shoes

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Florence Heyhoe

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Florence Heyhoe’s reflection on contemplation and trauma. contemplation the silence fell into me as the sun went down and held me in expectant quiet in your presence and in your absence. tripping and tumbling and bumping into YOU and finding me deeper and deeper. long lost shadows remembered to be forgotten. looking and seeing as never before tearing and restoring and making new colour and stitch and torrents of tears in the sunshine and the dark. looking and seeing anew.

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The Unraveling Toward Love ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, We live in an era of unraveling: wars, financial breakdown, gun violence, unemployment, mass migration, racial discrimination, gender inequality, poverty rising, and the poisoning of our ecosystems. Even as I write this litany, I am sure I have forgotten others, and certainly there are the smaller issues of daily life wherever we live—the uncertainties of money, health, and love; trust broken; decisions based on the bottom line rather than human dignity. If your spirits aren’t being challenged, undone, or unraveled, then you are not paying attention. Sometimes I click on my Facebook newsfeed, and there, sitting

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Jean Wise

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jean Wise’s reflection Living in the Shade of Mystery. I don’t understand fishing. I don’t fish. I didn’t grow up in a family who fishes. All those hooks, worms, and slimy flip-floppy critters baffle me. Perhaps the biggest hindrance for fishing for me is the idea of “wasting” a full day, with a pole dipped in the water, waiting. Lingering in the muddy space of not knowing if and when the bait will work and supper caught. In my second half

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Mystical Hope and the New Thing ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, Our website issues have all been fully resolved and security strengthened. We also welcomed a new group of pilgrims to Galway and are journeying together this week. Like many of you, global events lately feel quite overwhelming at times and I ponder and pray about my response. One thing I keep coming back to is a sense of deep certainty that the way of the monk and path of the artist make a difference in the world. What distinguishes these two ways of being is that each are called to live deliberately on the edges of

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Bridgette Goldstein

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Bridgette Goldstein’s reflection “Stillpoint & My Sacred Story.” As a spiritual director, it is my gift to spend time with fellow souls on their journey of life.  Sometimes, it will be a moving forward with the next step on their path.  Other times, it will be sitting with them in the pain and questions of a struggle or trauma.  Still other times, it will be exploring the patterns and finding the Divine (or higher self, or whatever word works for

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Welcoming in All of the Selves as Beloved ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, One of my favorite lines from the Rule of Benedict is “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (RB 53:1). The heart of hospitality is to welcome in that which is most unknown, most strange, most discomfiting, as the very face of the divine into our lives. To take this invitation even a step further, it isn’t just the strangers that arrive at our outer doors who call us to this hospitality. Perhaps an even greater call is to welcome in the parts of ourselves we

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Gina Marie Mammano

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Gina Marie Mammano‘s reflection “Mount Shasta Monk.” I was in the Mount Shasta area, at the tip top of California at a place called McCloud Falls. I have sailed by Mount Shasta many times as I venture from my current home here on Whidbey Island to my longtime childhood home in California. Through thick panes of tempered glass, I always acknowledge the towering sacred site, called “Acu Tek” by one of the native populations there. I always, as someone once

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Join us on Pilgrimage in 2018 – Updates

We are delighted to share that our Soul’s Slow Ripening pilgrimage in Ireland next May and our Hildegard of Bingen pilgrimage in Germany next September are both FULL! If you want to be added to the waiting list for either just get in touch with us. If you still want to join us in Ireland next spring, there are just a few spaces left for our Monk in the World pilgrimage May 1-9, 2018 (also space in October) or perhaps you want to be creatively inspired by Writing on the Wild Edges August 26-September 1, 2018. We won’t be adding any further dates to these offerings and would love to welcome you

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Polly Burns

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series. This is from Polly Burns, the newest member of our Wisdom Council. When Christine asked me to introduce myself through this post, it was hard to know where to start. If you are a regular at the Abbey of the Arts, you will have heard the phrase ‘Go to your cell, it will teach you’. It was this phrase that floated into my mind as I tried to decide what to write. Although often taken as a metaphor for the inner cell of the

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