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Reflections

Category: Abbess love notes

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New Poetry Book Launch + Prayer Cycle ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

St. Hildegard Has a VisionFirst came the whirl of colorand the cosmic song intensified,a symphony of music and imagerevealing the heart of the holy.You were often ill between visions,drinking tea as medicine.Your visions showed you the worldis so much more expansivethan what we see with dulled eyes.You saw the universe as an egg,full of potential, greening life forcepulsing through everything,knew this wonderdespite your ill health, knew it in your limbs, your heart, your eyes. Hours spent in bed, prone, vulnerable,prepared you to receive this gift.Is this what can happenwhen we surrender fully?What can enter through the open heart?–Christine Valters Paintner, What Enters Through the

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October 18, 2026

New Prayer Cycle Video Podcast! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, We are absolutely thrilled and delighted to release the first day of our new video podcasts for the Cultivating Seeds of Liberation prayer cycle! We are so grateful to Wisdom Council member and dear friend Betsey Beckman for all her video work and editing in putting these together. She invited many guest dancers to be a part of this project and helps us to bring the dance of liberation alive for all beings! She also provided generous financial support, which along with many other donations and wonderful Sustainers, which help us to continue to offer

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October 4, 2026

Nourishment in the Orchard ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow, we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale The Handless Maiden! I mentioned in last week’s love note that I first fell in love with this story about 20 years ago and it continues to speak to me. It became woven into a profound series of synchronicities that led me into a deeper relationship with Mary and the sacred feminine.  In 2012, soon after John and I had first moved to Vienna, Austria on our grand midlife adventure and pilgrimage, I was co-teaching a class called Women on the Threshold where we told

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September 27, 2026

The Handless Maiden ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, On Monday, September 28th we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale “The Handless Maiden.”  You may or may not be familiar with it. There are over a hundred versions of this story which have appeared throughout Europe and other parts of the world, so it is an important story, one that can speak to our experience on many levels.  It is a story that first found me when I was living in Seattle, about 20 years ago. I participated in a workshop with a Jungian analyst where we spent the week embodying this story through

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September 20, 2026

Mourning Pages: The Write Way to Grieve

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, September 18th, we are pleased to welcome Wisdom Council member and Lift Every Voice Book Club conversation partner Claudia Love Mair to lead us in the retreat Mourning Pages: The Write Way to Grieve. Below is a note from Claudia Love and an adapted excerpt from her forthcoming book. Adapted Excerpt It started with a simple announcement of his death on social media. I met my carefully curated community of creatives, spiritual folks, ride-or-die friends, and family on Facebook. . . . After that, I wrote very little. Those first seventy-two hours were

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September 13, 2026

Creation’s Call to Praise ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Our featured self-study this month is Earth, Our Original Monastery. This retreat companions my book and we updated this retreat last spring, adding all new content from Cassidhe Hart on writing your own earth psalter and Polly Paton-Brown on the spirituality of trees. There are also wonderful songs that go with each week’s theme and a dance prayer led by Betsey Beckman.  Here is an adapted excerpt from the book: Earth and her creatures teach us how to pray, how to worship and praise, but only if we listen and pay attention to their rhythms in

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September 6, 2026

I Will Live as a Monk in the World ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

I Will Live as a Monk in the World I awaken early as usual,have my little pot of breakfast and feed the dog,then she makes circles and squeals,knowing what is next. Morning prayer, walking the canal and river,quiet before the city hums,she stops every few feet to sniffmessages left for her on blades of grassand tree trunks,and I wonder at the messages imprinted here for me too,a feather floating,a leaf on my path,an acorn fallen.I pray with my feet, smell dawn’s freshness,the possibility of here and now,the swan glides up the waterand the duck quacks a warning to his companions, the blackbird does what he must

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August 30, 2026