To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a gift!) Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, “Return to me with your whole heart.”  This is the image and invitation with which we are resting for Lent at the Abbey (see our community lectio divina and this week’s invitation to photography). Lent is an invitation toward whole-heartedness.  The heart is an ancient metaphor for the seat of our whole being – to be whole-hearted means to bring our entire selves before God, our intellect, our emotional life, our dreams and intuitions, our deepest longings. Many of us feel divided, in

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) In Praise of Circles “I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world.” – Rainer Maria Rilke Friends around the dinner table their mouths making “o”s of delight and laughter, plates piled with new potatoes, pearl onions, and pork loin. Time softens the edges of river stones, the arc of waves reach for shore, celestial orbiting spheres keep cosmic time. There is the saffron yolk, blood oranges and blueberries, the coins in my purse that let me buy fresh

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The 8th principle of the Monk Manifesto reads: I commit to being a dancing monk, cultivating creative joy and letting my body and “heart overflow with the inexpressible delights of love.” I share some of the reflection here this week as a reminder for each of us to practice gratitude, contentment, good zeal, and cultivate the creative joy, freedom, and love which we are called to embrace as part of being a monk in the world. “What is more delightful than this voice of the Holy One calling to us? See how God’s love shows us the

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Please can I have a God (after Selima Hill) not fossilized, hardened, stiff, unshaken, not contained in creeds and testimonies, judgments and stone tablets, but in the wound breaking open. Please can I have a God who asks me to worship at the altar of mystery, to lay aside certainty, and curl up in the hollow of a great stone down by the river, to hear the force of it rushing past. Please can I have a God with questions rather than answers, who

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims, A few days ago I received an email from a woman who is writing her dissertation and asked me to respond to the question: “If you had to choose one spiritual practice that is a non-negotiable for spiritual growth in the 21st century, what would it be and why?” My answer was supposed to be short and succinct. Here was my reply: “I would choose hospitality, both inner and outer, because I believe the welcoming in all of the

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims, I have been feeling a bit weary these last few days, fighting something off I think, and offering myself generous hospitality by resting and nourishing myself well with good food and the gift of herbs. I think it might be the transition of seasons, but I am listening in for the invitation and being gentle with my body and soul. I received a book of poems in the mail today, Small Bird by Elizabeth Cunningham, and the poem below

Dearest Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims, I love revealing each of the newest dancing monk icons (created by Marcy Hall of Rabbit Room Arts). This week we welcome in Saint Brigid to our dancing circle. She is one of the most revered saints of Ireland, second only to St. Patrick.  Born in the middle of the 5th century, and carrying the name of one of the ancient goddesses, Brigid performed miracles from an early age and was a founder of many monastic communities, the most influential of which was in Kildare (meaning “Church of the Oak”) and was a double monastery