Dearest monks and artists, We are approaching the Celtic feast of Samhain, the great doorway into the dark half of the year in the northern hemisphere and a time when the veil is considered especially thin. This is my favorite time of year, when I feel the most energized and my heart comes alive to the wisdom of those who have walked before me. I share with you a short excerpt from our Honoring Saints and Ancestors online self-study retreat: Psychologist Carl Jung wrote extensively about the collective unconscious which is this vast pool of ancestral memory within each of

Dearest monks and artists, Our upcoming online retreat for women Coming Home to Your Body  starts on Monday, September 21st. I have been offering you very brief excerpts to ponder your own ways of contemplative embodiment. Here is the last installment: Only by welcoming uncertainty from the get-go can we acclimate ourselves to the shattering wonder that enfolds us. This animal body, for all its susceptibility and vertigo, remains the primary instrument of all our knowing, as the capricious earth remains our primary cosmos. —David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology One of my favorite poets is Rainer Maria Rilke. 

Dearest monks and artists, I offer you a brief excerpt from our upcoming online retreat for women Coming Home to Your Body: Every breath is a resurrection. —Gregory Orr (excerpt from poem “Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved”) In the Benedictine tradition there is a monastic practice called statio, which is the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another.  Imagine, instead of rushing from one appointment to the next, that between each one you pause, you breathe just five long slow breaths. Imagine how this might transform your movement from one activity to another. Or even