Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 6 Morning Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Click here to listen to the audio podcast  Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 6, Morning Prayer So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression,

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 5 Morning Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Click here to listen to the audio version of the prayer cycle Day 5 Morning Prayer: Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle I came here to study hard things – rock mountain and salt sea – and to temper my spirit on their edges.  “Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend.  These mountains — Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula — are surely the

Earth as Original Monastery: Day 4 Evening Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Click here to listen to the Audio Podcast Day 4 Evening Prayer: Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle God will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. —Isaiah 58:11 Dearest monks and artists, There are many places on this beautiful Earth where springs bubble up from beneath the surface and are considered to be sacred sites of healing.  One such place out

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 4 Morning Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Click here to listen to the audio version of the prayer cycle Day 4 Morning Prayer: Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 3 Evening Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Day 3: Evening Prayer Audio Recording Day 3 Evening Prayer: Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” —Gospel of St. John 3:8 Dearest monks and artists, One of my favorite images from St. Hildegard of Bingen, the prolific Benedictine Abbess of the 12th century, is to become like “a feather on

Click here to listen to the audio podcast. Dearest monks and artists, We share this week the morning prayer from Day 3 of our Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle. In Day 3 we explore Earth as the original saints. Thomas Merton wrote that the bass and the mountain, the sea and the trees are the original saints. “To be a saint means to be myself,” and we can learn a great deal about sainthood by being in the presence of creatures and the natural world who cannot be other than who they were created to be. With us it is more

Listen to the Audio Podcast of Day 2 Evening Prayer Here >> Dearest monks and artists, We offer you the audio and video podcast for Day 2 Evening Prayer on the theme of Earth, our original scriptures. In the Celtic way of seeing the world, Earth was one of the two books of revelation alongside the holy text. The seasons beckon to us with their continual unfolding and wisdom about what it means to be fully human in this world and embrace rhythms of flowering, fruitfulness, release, and rest. Last week I talked about how dawn and dusk are threshold