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Category: Abbess love notes

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A Blessing for the Underworld Journey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for the Underworld Journey*Holy One who is ever-present,even in our darkest nights anddescents to the underworld, bless us with a felt sense of your abidingas life strips away all our comfortsand securities, everything we thought we needed. Help us to build our enduranceand strengthen our vision to see you shimmering in the night. It is so hard to stay here,we want to run to brighter fields, to numb ourselves to the anguish,bless us even in the running and numbing,and help to guide us back to presence,to the call of this journey, which is to move through,to let it

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January 12, 2025

Kinship with Creation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Warm New Year blessings to you! We are delighted to return after a time of rest and begin the year with our Contemplative Prayer Service tomorrow, January 6th. We will continue our exploration of the principles of the Monk Manifesto with this month’s theme of Kinship with Creation. Principle 4: I commit to cultivating awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish. These prayers of concern are excerpted from Day 1 Morning Prayer from the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle. Help us, O Creator God,

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January 5, 2025

Christmas and New Year Blessings ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Christmas Blessing*This blessing dances at the doorwayof light and dark, knows both as sacred:fertile womb space, miracle of blooming.This blessing breathesthrough those moments of laborwhen you too birth the holyinto this fragile, luminous, hurting worldas Mary did two thousand years ago,eyes wide, hands gripping,waters breaking like crashing wavesof the primordial seasending a prayer through timethat echoes still,pulsing like starlightin an enormous sky.This blessing rests a handon the back of the lonely disoriented lost hungry despairing persecutedto say your humanity is not an obstaclebut a threshold, to remind youthat the wound is a portalthrough which your gifts pour forth,that raw

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December 22, 2024

Winter Solstice Blessing ~ A Love from Your Online Abbess

Winter Solstice*Holy One of the turning earth,we watch the daily pilgrimage of the sunas its journey grows shorter and shorter.Bears, bats, and hedgehogs restwhile swallows and swifts have already migrated south again. Cold air, bare branches, blankets and shawls,the growing quiet calls us to our own retreat. Then a bell rings out across the hemisphere,the diminishment pauses, then slowly shiftsand we imagine our ancestors standingin the heart of winter’s cold darknesswith faces upward in awe each year as your brilliance begins to brighten the sky for longer each day, gold beams tumbling like treasure. We know on this day the

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December 15, 2024

End of Year Giving

Your donations help us make what we do fully accessible to all who desire to be a part of this virtual monastery and gathering of kindred spirits. It is because of your generosity that we are able to offer many free resources – such as our prayer cycles, book club, and scholarship fund – to nourish everyone, regardless of financial capacity. Your donations to Abbey of the Arts also help fund free and reduced fee options on our sliding scale for programs, as well as offer additional scholarships to all who are in need of greater financial support.  Read about our commitment to

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December 13, 2024

Community + Give Me a Word ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Friendship and Community*God of friendshipI come to know your love and carethrough the embodied presence of others.Weave me together with kindred spirits,knit me more closely with friends of the soul,cultivate in me a kinship with humanityso that I recognize my struggles and joys in others.In my loneliness reveal to me this communionand may I be a solace to others who ache for connection.Transform me through conversation and loving presence.Help me to see how I am part of a great circleof pilgrims, witnesses, ancestors, and mysticswho guide me to true connection with You.Gather me into your great wide

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December 8, 2024

Gratitude Blessing + The Love of Thousands Prayer Cycle Day 7~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Gratitude Blessing*Spirit of Generosity,we come to you with hearts overflowing with gratitudefor your abundant creation.As we awaken each morning, help us to remember this day is a gift,this breath is grace,this life a wonder. Remind us with every flower we see,every act of kindness,every moment of connection to 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 thanks we offer expand our heartsuntil delight inhabits usand we know loveas our sustenance. Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, The 5th century monk and mystic Benedict of

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November 24, 2024

Upcoming Programs

Seven Gates of Mystical Wisdom: A Pilgrimage to the Heart’s Deep Core Lent Retreat
Seven Gates of Mystical Wisdom: A Pilgrimage to the Heart’s Deep Core Lent Retreat
5 Mar 25
Contemplative Prayer Service: Sabbath
Contemplative Prayer Service: Sabbath
10 Mar 25
Earth Psalter
Earth Psalter
21 Mar 25

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