Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today is the feast day of Thomas Merton and I share with you this excerpt from my book Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics: “The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.” (Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander) I first read

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims, On Thursday is the feast of Dorothy Day, so I share with you this excerpt from my book Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics about her: In an editorial, she described the mission of the Catholic Worker she helped to found: “For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight. For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain. For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work. For those who think that there is no hope for

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims, The United States celebrates the feast of Thanksgiving this week. I have always loved this time of gratefulness and sharing with loved ones. My heart overflows with gratitude for this beautiful community we have created together. I delight daily in knowing there are dancing monks all over the world. The 5th century monk and mystic Benedict of Nursia counsels in his Rule for monastic life an attitude of contentment among his community. Whatever the circumstances they find themselves in, they are to find some satisfaction with what is in the moment. In a world of

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims, I have been going back through the Abbey archives and found this sweet post written almost six years ago when John and I were living in Vienna and making plans to move to Ireland. It was a very sweet and vulnerable time of our lives. So I am offering these words to you once again, several years on, from a different place in my life: John and I have made the discernment to move to the west coast of Ireland at the end of December and so this threshold time left here in Vienna has

Inheritance I take down the generic white jug from the shelf, the one made with ten thousand others in a factory in Taiwan. I wish it were the Meissen porcelain one with the blue onion pattern that survived two world wars, but not my need for funds to finish graduate school. I long, too, for the cut crystal bowl, etched with delicate flowers in which you served ripe, sweet berries but was later sold to pay for books. Or the silver set with your initials engraved on the handles, I imagine a stranger now running her fingers along the grooves