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Reflections

Category: Art and Spirituality

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Please Help Us Sustain this Work ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists, One of my heart’s great joys is the global nature of this community. To know that there are monks and artists spread all over the world who commit to this way of life brings me tremendous comfort and encouragement.  I feel grateful daily for this vibrant and meaningful work and the amazing people I get to collaborate with to help create our programs and offerings. I am thankful every day for you and for the many notes of encouragement I receive about what our work means to you.  We will be adding a fourth week to

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The Sacred Art of Doll Making + New Dancing Monk Icon ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Saturday, September 10th, Wisdom Council Member Polly Paton-Brown is leading a retreat on Praying with Poppets: Rediscovering the Sacred Art of Doll Making. Polly worked for many years as a psychotherapist and trainer in the field of trauma. More recently, her focus has been on helping people explore their spirituality and prayer using creativity and connection with nature. Polly has a particular passion for creating healing dolls as a portal to transformation. Read on for Polly’s reflection on the art of doll making. Creativity, nature and spirituality have always been interwoven for me. As a child I loved the

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More from Christine Around the Web This Week

Christine was featured on the Ave Explores podcast this week to talk about “The Soul of the Artist” Christine has a new poem titled “Spring Ephemerals” in Bearings journal online which celebrates spring’s arrival and our intimacy with the more-than-human world. You can read it here>> St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, VA is having an online art exhibition in response to the pandemic – here is a collection of poems shared including mine on p. 27 “Always” under the theme of Solace. This poem comes from her second poetry collection The Wisdom of Wild Grace, being published by Paraclete

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More Reflections from the Wild Edges

In early September 2015 we had 13 pilgrims join us for a very special pilgrimage and writing retreat on the wild edges of the world. We stayed on the islands of Inismor and Inisbofin, off the coast of Connemara and let the landscape inspire our creative process. I am grateful to these dancing monks for sharing their inspiration so freely with the community. Pour a cup of tea and then savor these reflections from Randy Pierce and Eileen Harakal. A Desert Owl I am like a desert owl, like an owl among ruins. —Psalm 102:6 Reading Psalm 102 brings to mind

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Awakening to our creative, sacred hearts

I am most honored to have a post featured over at Tess Giles Marshall’s beautiful site Pilgrim’s Moon (her site is subtitled “growing older on our own terms, a counter-cultural path for woman” and she offers great wisdom there regularly, so be sure to bookmark her) on Awakening to our creative sacred hearts: I teach a five-day workshop called Awakening the Creative Spirit, designed for soul care practitioners to kindle their own creativity and bring the arts to their work with others.  I love the metaphor of “awakening” because there is a gentleness to it, a soft transition from slumber

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Moment by Moment

I have been thinking about moments a lot lately – those holy doorways where I am lifted out of time and I encounter the sacred in the most ordinary acts – and then a friend emailed me this video.  It has me contemplating what it is I am here to do as an artist and as a monk. Mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade says the word “moment” comes from the Latin root momentus, which means to move.  We are moved when we touch the eternal and timeless which is available to us in each moment we are fully present.  There is a

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Mandalas

My newest article at Patheos on Mandalas (Part 1 of 2): (photo of rose window at Notre Dame © Kayce Hughlett) Mandala is the Sanskrit word for circle and the great psychologist Carl Jung called it an “archetype of wholeness.” Archetypes are those basic patterns and symbols which repeat across cultures and traditions, emerging from a collective unconscious or shared well of images.  Jung saw mandalas as expressions of the deep self’s longing for integration and a visual map toward our own spiritual centers.  He would spend time each morning creating mandalas in response to his dreams and advised his patients

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