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Category: Angels, Saints, and Ancestors

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What I Know + Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 5 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, There is much uncertainty and unknown right now. Many of us are in deep grief and I encourage you to bestow lavish hospitality on all of your feelings – let your rage, sadness, despair, confusion, and more have space in you. Move your body, let her speak its wisdom, and give yourself the gift of as much rest as possible. What I do know is that our commitment to a contemplative path does make a difference. Keep showing up with presence to what is real and true. Cherish what is beautiful and kind. Commit to the slowness

November 10, 2024

Hospitality + The Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 4 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Hospitality* Holy Presence of God,you shimmer in every stranger I encounterwhether in the world or in my heart.When you came in human formyou sat at table with all those who walked the edgesof life and knew their presence as sacred.Create in me a space to welcome inall that is hard and disorienting,those moments when I feel lost, angry,heartbroken, overwhelmed, ashamed,joyful, grieving, or in love with life.Help me to honor the guests who arrive at the door,to usher in the grace that newness offersand find Christ’s compassionate presence there.May your infinite compassion grow in methe way sunlight spills across a field,and

November 3, 2024

Samhain Retreat + Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 3 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Blessing of the Saints* May the communion of saintsshower you with blessings,may you seek their guidancein moments of illness, confusion, gratitude.We remember their own struggles,living their humanity, enfleshed and tender.We ask those across the threshold to pray for usknowing what it is to be wounded.Call on the canonized saints,Benedict, Francis, Ignatius, Hildegard,Thea Bowman, Oscar Romero,and the saints of spirit,Howard Thurman, Dorothy Day,and thousands of otherswho witnessed to another way of being,who helped to build a community of love.Let them tether us to their earthiness,and remind us of the holinessof bone and blood, the grace of our bodiesin bringing love to

October 27, 2024

Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 2 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Wrestling with Angels*You have knownthe long nights of wrestlingwith mysterious beings,your breath hard and fast,your heart poundinglike furious wings. The dark seems to stretch foreverand you wonder how longyou will be in the gripof this powerful stranger,how long you will have to hold on. Then slowly the black pool above yougives way to violet, fuchsia, tangerineand you feel your hip wounded,throbbing, pulsing with pain,know you will be limpingfor many years to come,but before letting goyou make your demand: Bless me, your voice thundersand the being erupts into golden lightso glad that you had finally asked.A new name

October 20, 2024

Everyday Pilgrimage to Honor Saints and Ancestors ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists, Tomorrow we begin our 14-week online companion journey through my book The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness. This journey together in community with kindred spirits will be a kind of pilgrimage you make from home. We can also go on pilgrimage to sacred sites connected to saints or our ancestors, but sometimes the transformative path is woven into the everyday of our lives. I wanted to share a couple of examples of how we might go on a physical pilgrimage in our own neighborhoods, which can also connect us

January 14, 2024

The Heart of Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or [s]he will not exist at all.” —Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Dearest monks and artists, In a week we begin our 14-week online companion journey through my book The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness. When we speak of the saints, we do not refer to people inaccessible to us and our lives, but to friends of the heart who dwell beyond the veil between worlds. They call us to our own paths of holiness. This is an adapted excerpted from the book: At the heart

January 7, 2024

Preparing for Advent + Prayer Cycle Day 7

Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today we share the final two audio podcasts of our 7-day prayer cycle on the theme of The Love of Thousands. The theme for morning is on ancestral earth and deep time, honoring that our ancestors are not just our human kin, but the mountains whose minerals form our bones and the seas that swim in our blood. We are connected to all of life. The evening theme is the love of thousands, bringing the whole journey through honoring angels, saints, and ancestors together. Advent begins in a week! Every year before Christmas since 2008 we have

November 26, 2023

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Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Reflections

Category: Angels, Saints, and Ancestors

Filter

What I Know + Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 5 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Hospitality + The Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 4 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Samhain Retreat + Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 3 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 2 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Everyday Pilgrimage to Honor Saints and Ancestors ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

The Heart of Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Preparing for Advent + Prayer Cycle Day 7

Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

Monk in the World Guest Post: Janeen Adil

Spirituality of Blessings and The Love of Thousands Prayer Cycle Day 6 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Monk in the World Guest Post: Michael Moore

What I Know + Love of Thousands Video Prayer Cycle Day 5 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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