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Category: Abbess love notes

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The Sacred Art of Doll Making + New Dancing Monk Icon ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Saturday, September 10th, Wisdom Council Member Polly Paton-Brown is leading a retreat on Praying with Poppets: Rediscovering the Sacred Art of Doll Making. Polly worked for many years as a psychotherapist and trainer in the field of trauma. More recently, her focus has been on helping people explore their spirituality and prayer using creativity and connection with nature. Polly has a particular passion for creating healing dolls as a portal to transformation. Read on for Polly’s reflection on the art of doll making. Creativity, nature and spirituality have always been interwoven for me. As a child I loved the

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September 4, 2022

Hildy Tails: Jesus Curses the Fig Tree + New Dancing Monk Icon ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess & Prior

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, This week we are featuring one of our Hildy Tails. This series of essays were composed last year for our Sustainers Circle. They were dictated to John by the Abbey’s mascot, Hildy the Monk-ey. Hildy is a bit of a free spirit who likes to entertain and doesn’t normally feel constrained by conventional story structure . . . or grammar, in general. She lives by the motto that “all stories are true; some actually happened.” We wanted to share them with you, our wider Abbey community, to give you a small monkey-sized, humorous perspective on

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August 28, 2022

The Mystical Heart: Love as a Creative Force ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love. –Mechthild of Magdeburg (1208-1282) Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. About how I believe it is at the foundation of everything. This deep knowing is what helps sustain me in dark times. Even as we are bombarded by news of violence and destruction daily, Love also helps me to remember the tremendous beauty to be found in

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August 21, 2022

Healing the Wounds of Spiritual Abuse + New Dancing Monk Icon ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Saturday, August 20th, Wisdom Council member and friend Dr. Jamie Marich is leading a retreat on Healing the Wounds of Spiritual Abuse. Jamie is the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness, the practice of Dancing Mindfulness, and has presented this creative movement in many of our programs. For this retreat Jamie combines faith and scholarship with her expertise in trauma therapy and creative mindfulness as a modality for healing. Read on for Jamie’s reflection on healing the wounds of spiritual abuse. *** On the very week in 2015 when marriage equality for LGBTQ+ individuals became the

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August 14, 2022

St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Contemplative Path ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I am excited that we have been adding to our dancing monk icon series! We had paused for a while but now the creative juices and inspiration is flowing again and Marcy is hard at work. I am not sure when or if cards will be available (we are doing a special limited set of the 10 new cards for our Sustainers Circle supporters), but Marcy will make these available as prints as always.  I wanted to introduce Ignatius of Loyola first because his spirituality had a significant impact on me in my early years of

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August 7, 2022

Sabbath Rest for Abbey of the Arts ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Every summer we try to step back from this wonderful work and take a bit of time off for planning, dreaming, and resting. Sabbath is one of the profound gifts of a generous and abundant divine presence who says that work is good and rest is necessary. We are so grateful for all the ways this community supports our work in the world and we are eager to listen more deeply in the coming weeks to what new things want to be birthed through the Abbey in the coming year. We will be taking a

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June 26, 2022

Prayer Cycle Day 7 Morning and Evening Prayer ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, We conclude our release of the Birthing the Holy Prayer Cycle with an excerpt from Day 7 Evening Prayer honoring Mary, as Mirror of Justice. The video above is for the beautiful song Magnificat which we commissioned from our dear friend Simon de Voil. He created such a moving sung prayer. You are invited to pray with it in the audio podcast of the Prayer Cycle or with the images in the video above. Let this be a time of meditation on Mary’s desire and longing for justice in the world and how we might be empowered

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June 19, 2022

Upcoming Programs

Contemplative Prayer Service: Conversion
Contemplative Prayer Service: Conversion
7 Apr 25
Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation for Exploration of Grief, Loss & Mortality in Our Wisdom Years
Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation for Exploration of Grief, Loss & Mortality in Our Wisdom Years
18 Apr 25
Ancestors & Archetypes: A Journey Through the Expressive Arts (Pacific Northwest, U.S.)
Ancestors & Archetypes: A Journey Through the Expressive Arts (Pacific Northwest, U.S.)
21 Apr 25

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