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

Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – May Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available


Join Abbey of the Arts for a monthly conversation on how increasing our diversity of perspectives on contemplative practice can enrich our understanding and experience of the Christian mystical tradition. 

Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Each month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation. 

Click here to view this month’s video discussion along with questions for reflection.

This month’s selection is Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth by Randy Woodley. Becoming Rooted invites us to live out a deeply spiritual relationship with the whole community of creation and with Creator.

Through meditations and ideas for reflection and action, Randy Woodley, an activist, author, scholar, and Cherokee descendant, recognized by the Keetoowah Band, guides us on a one-hundred-day journey to reconnect with the Earth. Woodley invites us to come away from the American dream–otherwise known as an Indigenous nightmare–and get in touch with the water, land, plants, and creatures around us, with the people who lived on that land for thousands of years prior to Europeans’ arrival, and with ourselves. In walking toward the harmony way, we honor balance, wholeness, and connection.

Creation is always teaching us. Our task is to look, and to listen, and to live well. She is teaching us now.

Join our Lift Every Voice Facebook Group for more engagement and discussion.

You might also enjoy

Holiness of Work ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow Simon and I will be joined by guest musician and Wisdom Council member Jamie Marich for our monthly Contemplative Prayer Service. Our theme this month is the 5th principle of the Monk Manifesto. Here is an excerpt from our Monk in the World self-study retreat.

Read More »

Monk in the World Guest Post: Judith Jessop

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Judith Jessop’s reflection on solitude and community. A sabbatical is a precious gift. In my tradition it arrives like clockwork every 7

Read More »