Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, There are many ways to practice pilgrimage. You can journey far away to a sacred site, but there are also options within reach of a walk or drive from home, or even within your own imagination. Keep in mind these three essential aspects to create your own pilgrimage experience: Begin with an intention and prayer or blessing for this time. Stay open to the ways God might break in through the unexpected. When you return, spend time in reflection on how this experience has touched you. What new discoveries or invitations did you hear? Walking

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, In celebration of publishing my new collection of poems, Dreaming of Stones, we are delighted to be working with local video production company Morgan Creative to launch a series of poetry videos. I have two to share with you today: First, enjoy this one-minute book trailer they created with gorgeous images from Ireland. Wings I wake from a dream, reach towards day as it hatches, its tiny beak presses against the delicate shell of sky. Today I might learn to fly. —Christine Valters Paintner, poem appears in Dreaming of Stones: Poems Dreaming of Stones book trailer from

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Valentine’s Day is coming, which for many of us is a holiday that only serves to make us feel inadequate, as all highly commercialized things do. And yet the message of love is worth repeating if we can look beneath the chocolate hearts and flowers and the expectation that we all be in a significant relationship or be lacking. Hospitality is the heart of our work – creating a safe space where we can begin welcoming back in the stranger within and in the process discover the hidden wholeness of which Thomas Merton wrote. This kind of

St. Brigid at the Market I saw her in the market backlit in the doorway from the evening sun, blue cloak ripples like water dandelions and primrose in her hand. Passersby brush past this moment of light and song in a rush to get shoes off and dinner on, just another day of traffic, bills, and angry bosses. I stood, mouth open, holding three lemons, a pile of sunlight, a miracle in yellow, tiny halos a little girl stops next to me, giggles, points to the door, her mother’s yank drags her back to the world of lists. I fear

Dreaming of Stones In the world before waking I meet a winged one, feathered, untethered, who presses in my palm three precious stones, like St. Ita in her dream, but similarities end there, her with saintliness and certainty, me asking questions in the dark. All I know is I am not crafted from patience of rock or gravity of earth, nor flow of river, I am not otter with her hours devoted to play. I am none of these. At least not yet. The stones will still be singing centuries from now, made smooth by all kinds of weather. If