Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Say Yes (3)

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.
Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe.

-Rumi

** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme — see this past Sunday here **

You might also enjoy

Sacred Time ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Our featured self-study retreat this month is Sacred Time, the companion retreat to my book of the same title.  Here is an excerpt from the introduction to the book: We live in a breathless world. Everything around us seems to move

Read More »

New Interview with Christine Valters Paintner

Christine was featured in an interview with AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast on the intersection of creativity and monastic spirituality. In addition to being a Benedictine Oblate, Christine is Jesuit educated, with degrees from Fordham and Santa Clara Universities, and has written a library of books

Read More »

Monk in the World Guest Post: Krissy Kludt

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Krissy Kludt’s reflection and poem Of Dust and Water. Several years ago, I texted my father from a snowbound house in Tahoe,

Read More »

5 Responses

  1. The above is from notes I took while reading Weil, paraphrasing in my own words – Here’s an exact quote, from the French-to-English translation:

    “For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”

    Simone Weil, Letters IV, Spiritual Autobiography, p.27, in
    Waiting for God (Harper Perennial Classics) (Paperback), 2000

  2. On doubt and fidelity, in WAITING FOR GOD, the Jewish-Christian French mystic, Simone Weil said that if you feel you must turn away from God in search of truth, don’t be afraid, because you’ll soon find yourself swept up into the loving arms of God who is truth.