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Category: Abbess love notes

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Finding Fruitfulness in the Resurrection of the Body: Fruit – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

This is the fifth in a series of eight reflections over the season of Easter on making a pilgrimage of resurrection.  Word for Today: Fruit In the gospel reading for this fifth Sunday of Easter, Jesus offers us the image of the vine and the branches. When we abide in what is life-giving we will bear much fruit. This season is a beautiful opportunity to reflect on what is most life-giving for us and embark on a pilgrimage toward our own growing fruitfulness. Ultimately, pilgrimage is meant to lead us back home again with renewed vision. Resurrection is about discovering

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Wandering for the Love of God: Shepherd – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

This is the fourth in a series of eight reflections over the season of Easter on making a pilgrimage of resurrection. Word for Today: Shepherd In the gospel reading for this fourth Sunday of Easter, Jesus offers us the image of the good shepherd. Living in Ireland, flocks of sheep are very much a part of the landscape and integral to the farming economy. The “good shepherd” is described as the one who cares deeply for the flock, who is personally invested in the thriving of each and every one. The shepherd is the one who guides to safe pastures.

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Seeing the World Anew: Peace – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

This is the third in a series of eight reflections over the season of Easter on making a pilgrimage of resurrection. Word for Today: Peace In the gospel reading this Sunday, Jesus invites his disciples to see with new eyes. They are frightened and uncertain, because something so radically new is happening. They have grown accustomed to viewing the world in a certain way, but they are called to open their minds and their eyes in new ways. The Gospels are filled with stories about seeing, or not seeing, as the case may be. On the road to Emmaus, a

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The Holy Call of Doubt: See – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

This is the second in a series of eight reflections over the season of Easter on making a pilgrimage of resurrection. Word for today: See “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”  — John 20:24-25 “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. We joyfully announce it. [And yet] I realize that my faith and unbelief are never far from each other. Maybe it is exactly at the place where they touch each other that the growing edge

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Easter Sunday: Rise – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

Word for today: Rise Dearest monks and artists, Lent is such a powerful season of pilgrimage through the desert, calling us to return to God with our whole hearts. We arrive at Easter eager to celebrate the reality of new life out of death, but sometimes forget this is another, even longer season, rather than a single day of celebration. What does 50 days of practicing resurrection look like? What would it mean to embark upon another pilgrimage to the heart of our own creativity in collaboration with the Great Artist at work, the one who brings newness from the

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Holy Saturday: The Space Between

Holy Week invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, mockery, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing. Holy Saturday is an invitation to make a conscious passage through the liminal realm of in-between. I love the wide space of Holy Saturday that lingers between the suffering and death of Jesus on Friday and the vigil Saturday night proclaiming the return of the Easter fire. For me, Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition—the ways we are called to

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The Holy Pause: Spiritual Practices for a Time-Obsessed Culture

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) For the next few weeks I will be offering you some gems from the Abbey archives as I create the space I need to finish several writing projects and prepare for spring’s teaching: Time is the measure of things that come to an end, but where time itself ends, eternity begins . . . . In the end, there is no end. The ends of time are near the roots of eternity, and the ends of the Earth touch on the other world or

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