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Category: Abbess love notes

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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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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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Ignatian Contemplation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

“For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.” ~St. Ignatius of Loyola Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, August 28th we are delighted to welcome Wisdom Council member Dena Jennings who will lead us in a retreat on Ignatian Contemplation—a means of seeking deeper understanding of the scriptures through our senses. Dena offers this reflection. Imagine that you are in the stories of the Gospels— not reading or hearing the Gospels, but actually imagine yourself in the stories. As the life of Jesus of Nazareth, from his birth to his ascension, unfold in

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For Trust in Abundance ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

For Trust in Abundance*Spirit of Generous Abundance,remind us there is always more than enough—enough food, enough love, enough time, enough resources.Help us to see how our disconnected patterns of livingamplify our scarcity.Bring us into the joy and challenge of communitywhere bread divided multiplies, where laughter shared overflows.Empower us to share freely from our own abundancewith others in need. Slow us down to see how time expandswhen we breathe and pay attention.Bless us in our efforts to trustin your goodness and love pulsing through the world,sustaining it moment by moment.Give us the courage to speak outwhen resources are distributed unfairlyso that

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For Deeper Gratitude ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

For Deeper Gratitude*Spirit of Generosity,we come to you with heartsoverflowing with gratitudefor your abundant creation.As we awaken each morning,help us to rememberthis day is a gift,this breath is a grace,this life a wonder.Remind uswith every flower we see,every act of kindness,every moment of connectionto something so much biggerthan ourselves,to whisper, “Thank you.”Cultivate in us a sense of aweand trust in your lavish grace.Let each word of thankswe offer expand our heartsuntil delight inhabits usand we know loveas our sustenance. Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, One of the things that makes contemplative life so counter-cultural is the active resistance against

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Lughnasa + New Program Year ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Blessings at this time of Lughnasa which is the Celtic festival to mark the beginning of harvest and time of gathering in.  Lughnasa is a time to gather in and to reap what has been sown. The other side of the wheel from Lughnasa is Imbolc, February 1st, when the very first signs of spring started to rumble awake on the earth. In these last six months, we have seen a cycle of flourishing and fecundity, both around us and perhaps also within.  It is sometimes thought of as the time of “first fruits”

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Sabbatical + Self-Study Sale ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

For Rest on the Sabbath*Sanctifier of holy rest,on the seventh day you paused,laying down the work of creation,and entered into sacred stillness.Let us remember we were freed from slaveryin Egypt and you continue to call usto be people of liberation.Kindle in us the strength to say noto a world of perpetual busyness.Inspire us to set aside our plansand goals to receive the lavish giftof rest for ourselves,to rediscover the paradise within.Let the Sabbath be a time of profound renewal,a gushing forth of the holy well,a time of intimate connection with you,and a rekindling of our sacred desires to be of

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