To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest monks and artists, I am delighted to reveal the newest in the dancing monk icon series (by Marcy Hall of Rabbit Room Arts) above of Mary with the Christ child, inspired by the Black Madonna of Czestochowa in Poland. Mary was often depicted with a pear in medieval art, and the pear became significant for my own journey of learning to yield, to let go of my own striving and reaching. (You can read my poem I wrote last July about this

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) The Risk of Birth This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honour & truth were trampled by scorn- Yet here did the Saviour make his home. When is the time for love to be born? The

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Prayer Upon Awakening “The breezes at dawn Have secrets to tell you; Don’t go back to sleep.” -Rumi What force gently lifts back night’s inky black gown studded with shimmering stars, where soot turns to umber, seawater to crimson, rose to saffron, and then to that brilliant morning shade of blue, spilling forth like the seven silk scarves of Salome in a dance of revelation? What is being awakened in you in that threshold moment, when a thousand black crows scatter to the

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Thanksgiving I have been trying to read the script cut in these hills— a language carved in the shimmer of stubble and the solid lines of soil, spoken in the thud of apples falling and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare. The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak as they gather in the fallen grain, the blackbirds sing it over their shoulders in parting, and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript where it is written in the trees. Transcribed onto my human

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Wild Rosebush How it stands there against the dark of this late rainy hour, young and clean, swaying its generous branches yet absorbed in its essence as rose; with wide-open flowers already appearing, each unsought and each uncared-for…. So, endlessly exceeding itself and ineffably from itself come forth, it calls the wanderer, who in evening contemplation passes on the road: Oh see me standing here, see how unafraid I am and unprotected. I have all I need. —Rainer Maria Rilke Dearest monks and

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest monks and artists, The poem above has been shimmering for me, and at first I hesitated to share it here because we are entering the depths of winter in the northern hemisphere. But then I remembered my brother and sister monks in the southern hemisphere, who are experiencing this embrace of light and warmth.  I love that we have a global community and at any moment there is full spectrum of experience. This poem in praise of rose’s gifts shimmered because I

Dearest monks and artists, November is the month of remembrance of all the many saints of our lives.  It is a thin time in the Celtic imagination, when heaven and earth draw closer together. I spent the feasts of All Saints and All Souls at a small gathering at the monastery of  Clonmacnoise, once a great spiritual community and center of learning. During the Dark Ages, it was the Irish monks who brought inspiration and hope back to the continent of Europe. The question our gathering was exploring was whether this tradition of Celtic monasticism might today also offer light in