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Celebrate the Celtic Feast of Beltane ~ A love note from your online abbess

This is how to feel the sap rising Walk as slowly as possible, all the while imagining yourself moving through pools of honey and dancing with snails, turtles, and caterpillars. Turn your body in a clockwise direction to inspire your dreams to flow upward. Imagine the trees are your own wise ancestors offering their emerald leaves to you as a sacred text. Lay yourself down across earth and stones.  Feel the vibration of dirt and moss, sparking a tiny (or tremendous) revolution in your heart with their own great longing. Close your eyes and forget this border of skin. Imagine

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Monette Chilson

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Monette Chilson’s reflection Back to the Garden. I’d like to take you back to the garden. Back to Eden. There’s someone there you need to meet. Someone who has something to teach us all. Her name is Lilith. I tell her story, in her own words, in my new book, My Name is Lilith, but I want to introduce her here. Why? Because her time has come. This world needs her now. We need to remember that the first God-created spark

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Practicing the Resurrection of the Body for Easter ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, Lent is a powerful season of transformation. Forty days in the desert, stripped of our comforts, and buoyed by our commitment to daily practice so that we might arrive at the celebration of Easter deepened and renewed. But often, we arrive at the glorious season of resurrection and celebrate for that one day, forgetting it is a span of 50 days, even longer than the Lenten season through which we just traveled.  Easter is not just the day when the tomb was discovered empty, but a span of time when days grow longer in the northern

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Barb Morris

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Barb Morris’ reflection emptiness. “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” So says the Chinese prophet Lao Tzu, writing 500 years before Jesus. Maybe it’s my advancing middle age, but the spiritual practice of welcoming emptiness has become more and more necessary to me. As Lao Tzu prescribes, I find myself, after decades of adding things to my life, subtracting in order to find Wisdom. I’m especially drawn to emptiness this Advent – this

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Thomas Merton and the archetype of the Monk ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, Our final webinar in the Illuminating the Way series will be happening on Monday, April 17th on Thomas Merton and the archetype of the monk. See details below for how to register. All the previous webinars are available by recording. For me, one of the gifts of contemplative practice is the reminder that my own grasping at what I think is most essential is so often not. Being a monk is, of course, one of the archetypes with which I most deeply identify, I think because I need it so much. My desire to always live

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A Different Kind of Fast: Part Seven – Embrace Mystery

Dearest monks and artists, 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. — from Amiel’s Journal, translated by Mrs. Humphrey Ward John Cassian, one of the ancient desert fathers, describes three renunciations he says are required of all of us on the spiritual journey. The

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Monk in the World Guest Post: John Paul Lichon

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for John Paul Lichon’s reflection entitled, Discipline. Let’s be honest, I am not a very disciplined person.  Pulling all-nighters to write papers in college was a regular ritual, it took several unfortunate cavities to convince me it was essential to floss every day, and anyone close to me can tell you that I often have insatiable cravings for McDonald’s double cheeseburgers.  Thankfully, over the years all three of these unhealthy tendencies have drastically declined in frequency, but I think these habits illustrate

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A Different Kind of Fast: Part Six – Embrace Organic Unfolding

Dearest monks and artists, It was said of Abba Agathon that for three years he lived with a stone in his mouth, until he had learnt to keep silence. (Agathon 15) The silence of the desert elders is called hesychia, which means stillness, silence, inner quiet. However, it is much deeper than just an external quiet. A person can live alone and still experience much noise within and a person can live in the midst of a crowd and have a true sense of stillness in their heart. There is always a shadow side to silence—the kind of silence that keeps hidden

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Jessica Curtis

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jessica Curtis’ reflection Metaphors as Messages. Poetry has long been part of my spiritual practice. I especially love metaphors and have begun noticing places where they show up in my life other than poetry. At church recently, the minister was talking about the idea that we come into this world with an inheritance. He referred to this inheritance as taking the form of a “blessing bundle” and a “burden bundle.” The goal over the course of a lifetime is to

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Chronic Illness and the Body’s Journey ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists, I was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was 21 years old. The only other person I knew at the time with this disease was my mother and her body had been ravaged by the effects of deterioration, with multiple joint replacements and eventually use of an electric wheelchair for mobility. I first dealt with my diagnosis through denial. I had just graduated from college and travelled across the country to begin a year of volunteer work. I managed to push my way through fatigue and pain for about six years before I was forced

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