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Category: Abbess love notes

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Easter and the Journey to Joy! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Easter blessings my friends! We are in the midst of extraordinarily difficult and cruel times and it is essential we do not bypass the profound sacred grief and holy rage we feel. Easter is not about denying these realities. Easter also celebrates how in the midst of our struggles and losses, sometimes life has a way of breaking us open to something new. It calls us to hold fast to life in the midst of so much death.  Easter invites us to cling tightly to kindness and empathy in the midst of cruelty, to inhabit

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Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today we begin Holy Week and observe the transformative journey toward Easter and Resurrection. Before we jump to Resurrection it is important to sit with the landscape of grief and holy pause. On Friday, April 18th, Wisdom Council Member, psychospiritual therapist, and interfaith spiritual companion Melissa Layer will lead us in the mini-retreat Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation for Exploration of Grief, Loss & Mortality in Our Wisdom Years. Good Friday’s potent themes of death and resurrection are compelling portals holding symbolic metaphors that offer an expanded opportunity for wisdom in our eldering years. Melissa offers us this reflection.

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Conversion, Wonder, and Being Surprised by God ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow, April 7th, Simon and I will be joined by guest musician Richard Bruxvoort Colligan for our monthly Contemplative Prayer Service. Our theme this month is the 7th principle of the Monk Manifesto, Conversion. Here is an excerpt from our Monk in the World self-study retreat. Principle 7: I commit to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations. Conversion is one of the central commitments which Benedictine monks make. The other two are obedience and stability which have to do with listening deeply for God’s voice in the world and committing

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Feast of Sister Thea Bowman ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today is the feast day of Sister Thea Bowman, an amazing woman whose vibrancy still radiates to us today, calling us to shine our lights in a world that is often hard to bear. Even in the midst of a slow and painful death from cancer, she embodied joyful living, knowing that joy and delight must be cultivated in the midst of injustice and suffering.  These last few months we have been creating a resource and sharing it with our Sustainers Circle. For each of our dancing monk icons (created by the wonderful Marcy

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Blessing for Theotokos (God-Bearer) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Note: Click cc turn closed captions on or off. Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Tuesday is the Feast of the Annunciation and I want to share an adapted excerpt from my book Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal. My book explores 31 archetypes of Mary and this one is on the Greek image of Theotokos. During these difficult days with uncertainty and suffering everywhere, we can call upon Mary as God-bearer to remind us that we too are called to birth the holy.  Theotokos: She Who Gave Birth to God  Theotokos means God-bearer. There is a beautiful

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Sabbath as a Way of Being in the World ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow Simon and I will be joined by guest musician Will Boesl for our monthly Contemplative Prayer Service. Our theme this month is the 6th principle of the Monk Manifesto, Sabbath. Here is an excerpt from our Monk in the World self-study retreat. Principle 6: I commit to rhythms of rest and renewal through the regular practice of Sabbath and resist a culture of busyness that measures my worth by what I do. The work of the monk is important, but equally important are rhythms of rest and restoration. The Rule of Benedict is exquisitely balanced in this way. In a world which

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Seven Gates of Mystical Wisdom for Lent ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,  As someone with chronic illness, I became entranced when I discovered that many of the medieval women mystics also dealt with their own experiences of serious illness. Hildegard of Bingen is thought to have suffered from migraines, Clare of Assisi possibly from multiple sclerosis, Julian of Norwich was brought to the brink of death from illness, among many others.  While there are many portals to the liminal realm, including dreams and creative expression, illness remains one of the most powerful. I want to make clear from the start that there is a significant difference

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