Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Thank you for the very moving notes so many of you sent me from my reflection last week on chronic illness as pilgrimage experience. I am continuing to break my heart open to you here and offer another difficult journey, that of the grief of losing a loved one. I am grateful to Tara Owens at Anam Cara for sharing my guest post at her blog as part of the Soul of a Pilgrim summer blog book tour. Here is an excerpt: My heart sank when I stepped tentatively into my mother’s room. She lay

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I continue my blog book tour this summer and am delighted that Judy Smoot of Always We Begin Again is hosting a guest post from me as well as an interview (see interview details below). Here is an excerpt of my reflection on living with chronic illness as an experience of pilgrimage: I was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was 21 years old. The only other person I knew at the time with this disease was my mother and her body had been ravaged by the effects of deterioration, with multiple joint replacements

Now it is time to sit quiet alone with You and to Sing a re-dedication of my life in this Silent and overflowing joy. —Rabindranath Tagore, “A Moment’s Indulgence” Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I offer you this excerpt from my new book The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Inner Journey. These are words which have been coming back to me as I begin my summer sabbatical and offering me consolation and refreshment. May they offer the same to you: I received the poem above when I attended a silent retreat a couple of years ago at

Dearest monks and artists, We have had an amazing spring full of travel and teaching. In March we led a group of young adults on a pilgrimage to Glendalough. In April, I went back to the Northwest U.S. for three weeks of leading retreats and trainings. May brought us to Vienna to lead a monastic pilgrimage there, and in June we led a group of pilgrims here in Galway. The season has felt richly blessed. This work is at heart about relationship, and to spend time with so many beautiful souls in such amazing places feels abundant beyond measure. Summer

Dearest monks, artists and pilgrims, 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. There is no space left to consider other options and the idea of heading off on a retreat to ponder new possibilities may be beyond our reach. But there are opportunities for

John and I are leading a pilgrimage in Ireland this week, so we offer another jewel for you from the Abbey Archives: Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I was sitting in St. Ephrem, a small Orthodox stone church near the Sorbonne in Paris, listening to the sublime solo suites for cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. The young man playing did not have sheet music; he knew this entire piece by heart. His eyes were closed as he stretched the bow back and forth in a kind of dance, his whole body was alert and engaged in this act of offering