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Category: Abbess love notes

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Honoring the Equinox + Embrace Mystery ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The spring equinox has arrived (either last night or this morning depending on where you are in the world). I offer an excerpt from my reflection for Sacred Seasons, which is our yearlong self-study retreat which invites you through the 8 Celtic thresholds of seasonal wisdom. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. —Isaiah 35:1-2 I believe deeply that the seasons have a great deal of spiritual wisdom to offer us if we make

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Celebrate the Feast of St Patrick ~ A love note from your online abbess

Holy Mountain I want to climb the holy mountain ascend over weight of stone and force of gravity, follow the rise of a wide and cracked earth toward eternal sky, measured steps across the sharp path, rest often to catch my heavy breath. I want to hear the silence of stone and stars, lie back on granite’s steep rise face to silver sky’s glittering points where I can taste the galaxies on my tongue, communion of fire, then stand on the summit and look out at the laboring world. I want to witness earth’s slow turning with early light brushing

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Embrace Attention and Presence for Lent ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I continue my Lenten series at Patheos this week on A Different Kind of Fast. This week I explore fasting from multitasking and embracing attention to a single thing at a time. It can be so tempting to think, that in our busy lives multitasking will somehow make us more efficient and productive. We bemoan not having more hours in the day, but the hours we do have our attention is scattered, always trying to keep up. We spread our gaze between so many demands that we may get many things done, but none of it is

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Embrace a Mindful Slowness ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I continue my Lenten series at Patheos this week on A Different Kind of Fast. This week I explore fasting from speeding through life on the surface and embracing a mindful slowness: Modern life seems to move at full speed and many of us can hardly catch our breath between the demands of earning a living, nurturing family and friendships, and the hundreds of small daily details like paying our bills, cleaning, grocery shopping. More and more we feel stretched thin by commitments and lament our busyness, but without a clear sense of the alternative.

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Fasting from Anxiety + Radical Hospitality ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I have two reflections and two poems for you this week. Read on for more goodness from the Abbey. . . I continue my Lenten series at Patheos this week on A Different Kind of Fast. This week I explore fasting from anxiety and entering into a radical stance of trust through the practice of Sabbath-keeping. Click here to read the article>> I also have a guest post this week at the wonderful website Monasteries of the Heart on the practice of radical hospitality and inviting in holy disruption. Click here read the article>> I

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Feast of St Gobnait and a Celebration of Love ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, On the 11th of February this past week was the Feast of St. Gobnait.  I only learned about St. Gobnait after moving to Ireland. She is a 5th-6th century monk who fled her home in County Clare and headed first for the island of Insheer. It is not clear why she fled, only that she was seeking refuge on the Aran Islands. Click here to read my reflection on her at Patheos>> I am delighted to have a poem about St. Gobnait published in the online journal Headstuff here.  Gobnait features in our upcoming online

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Grow in intimacy with the Earth Monastery this Lent ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The season of Lent begins this Wednesday and we are offering an online retreat experience for this holy time which extends through the first week of Easter. We invite you into a contemplation of the Earth as Original Monastery and to nourish an earth-cherishing consciousness. Jesus begins his own ministry with a time out in the wilderness, seeking the ways that creation can challenge us and nourish us and reveal new directions. Imagine spending 40 days yourself listening for the wisdom of wilderness. The monk here and now is supposed to be living the life

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