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Category: Abbess love notes

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Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 2 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Wrestling with Angels*You have knownthe long nights of wrestlingwith mysterious beings,your breath hard and fast,your heart poundinglike furious wings. The dark seems to stretch foreverand you wonder how longyou will be in the gripof this powerful stranger,how long you will have to hold on. Then slowly the black pool above yougives way to violet, fuchsia, tangerineand you feel your hip wounded,throbbing, pulsing with pain,know you will be limpingfor many years to come,but before letting goyou make your demand: Bless me, your voice thundersand the being erupts into golden lightso glad that you had finally asked.A new name

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October 20, 2024

A Blessing for Silence & Solitude ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Blessing for Silence and Solitude*Holy Source of Silence,beneath the clatter and din of the everydayyou offer your mysteries to our hearts.You call us to pause,to slow down and listen to the true longingplanted in each of us by you, a seed of holy desire.Support us in letting go of the inner and outer noise.Open wide in us a sacred cave for stillnesswhere we can attune to your presence.Enliven us with the gift of your sweet musicand allow us to encounter your holy presenceflaming in each of our hearts.Help us to catch a note of your songin the wind or in

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October 6, 2024

Journey to Joy ~ A New Project from Christine

Hello dear ones, I continue to feel better on this new medication thankfully. I am far from pain-free, but better than I have felt in perhaps two years or more. I continue to take things slowly as I am keenly aware my health is often fragile and tenuous, so gently I go with gratitude and cherishing. I wanted to share a project that emerged out of this long season of my body flaring and sometimes feeling like my joy was being stolen from me. I turned to one of the things that has always served me well—writing. Specifically the writing

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October 1, 2024

Creating New Beginnings in Times of Unravelling ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Hope*Dreamkeeper,bless me with vision to see the possibilities for this hurting and broken world. Help me to remember that hope is not a thingbut an action, I cannot know that what I do is of any consequence, but I must do something. I must walk in trustthat I plant seeds for others,that my kindness ripples out into the world, that justice is necessary, that my joy mattersthat love is at the foundation of everything. On those days when hope feels so far away, surround me with kindred soulswho can help sustain hope when I must let go.

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September 22, 2024

A Midwinter God is Published! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

God is not simply in the light, in the intelligible world, in the rational order. God is in the darkness, in the womb, in the Mother, in the chaos from which order comes . . . darkness is the womb of life. —Dom Bede Griffiths Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, I am thrilled to share that my newest book A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness has been published by Ave Maria Press and is available to order from your favorite booksellers! To celebrate we have two gifts for you: First, is a reflection guide with questions to companion

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September 15, 2024

New Abbey Team Member ~ Welcome Delaney Hart!

We are delighted to introduce the newest member to our Abbey of the Arts team. Delaney Hart (she/her), sister to Wisdom Council member Cassidhe Hart, is joining us from Illinois. To begin, her work will focus on increasing the accessibility of our self-study retreats through transcripts and closed captions for select videos, and creating reflection guides for some of Christine’s books. The guide for A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness is available now. Meet Delaney Squirrels and trees, music and dance, curiosity and tears — these are Delaney’s teachers and guides. While listening for the inherent

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September 11, 2024

Writing Your Spiritual Memoir ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, September 13th, we are pleased to welcome Wisdom Council member, clinical trauma specialist and expressive arts therapist Dr. Jamie Marich to lead us in a mini-retreat on Writing Your Spiritual Memoir. In this mini-retreat experience, Jamie will use several expressive arts facilitation strategies to help us start or continue the process of writing our own spiritual memoir.  Fresh off the experience of writing her own memoir You Lied to Me About God about her experience of growing up in a mixed Catholic-Protestant home and experiencing spiritual abuse in other settings, Jamie has a great deal

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September 8, 2024

Upcoming Programs

Honoring the Love of Thousands at Samhain
Honoring the Love of Thousands at Samhain
1 Nov 24
Contemplative Prayer Service: Hospitality
Contemplative Prayer Service: Hospitality
4 Nov 24
Centering Prayer
Centering Prayer
20 Nov 24

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