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Reflections

Category: Family Systems

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A Letter to My Adolescent Self ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I am delighted to share I have a third poetry collection being published on May 9th from Paraclete Press titled Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions for Times of Uncertainty.  In reading one of Kim Addonizio’s poems, her last line was “listen I love you joy is coming” and something about it shimmered for me in the moment. The poem was addressing her younger self, I suddenly felt connected to the young girl I once was. Like many of you, I had wounded parents and was in a very dysfunctional family system. I often marvel at my life now,

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March 5, 2023

The Great Migration

It is the time of the great migrations; wild winged ones fly in ragged formations away from the summer fields of plenty, down from the tundra, up from the tropics, ordinary hearts beating against the winds, resisting the updrafts, into the storms, through the autumnal fogs that hide the hunters and the seductions of rest; wild finned ones turn against the familiar ocean currents to slip through narrow stony channels, leaping against the steepness of the grade, following an ancient invocation of leave and return. Fin and feather, flesh, blood and bone: the earth calls its creatures to leave the

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May 1, 2012

Instructions for Traveling Lightly

In my last post I wrote to you about the big decision my husband and I have made to move to Vienna this summer. We are going for a year and then will decide whether to stay there longer, perhaps move to Ireland, perhaps come back to the States. We are truly entering this as a time of listening and discovery. We are in the midst of many preparations for that journey.  There is much letting go that needs to happen.  We are selling our home in Seattle and so have been working hard to release everything we don’t absolutely need

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March 19, 2012

Go in peace, you are loved

Go in peace, you are loved, you are loved Go in peace, you are loved Go with God, you are loved, you are loved Go with God, you are loved The God who wove you in the dark the one whose rough hands made your heart had you in mind before the dawn of time The one who gazed with gentle eyes at all the colors of your life– Before the threads were dyed, the artist saw your life (chorus) Back at the house you started from your God has left the porch light on however late the hour, you’ll

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November 13, 2011

Love has come for you

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Los Angeles for the day.  Actually I was only in the “city of angels” for a total of six hours, long enough to get from the airport to the office of the Austrian Consulate where I could submit the paperwork I have been gathering for months now and apply for dual citizenship.  My father was an Austrian citizen and remained so until he died in 1996.  He is now buried in Vienna in the central cemetery with his parents. These last few years my husband and I have been returning to Vienna more frequently, it is

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October 24, 2011

What Came to Me

I am still away on retreat so I offer another re-post of a past reflection on the healing journey I have taken with my father.  If this speaks to your heart at all, consider joining us for our upcoming online retreat Honoring Saints & Ancestors: Peering through the Veil (October 30-November 19, 2011)  Register before October 10th and receive a free gift! What Came to Me I took the last dusty piece of china out of the barrel. It was your gravy boat, with a hard, brown drop of gravy still on the porcelain lip. I grieved for you then as I

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October 3, 2011

“The Curves of My Longing”

This is a repost of a reflection I wrote for Bliss Chick in the fall of 2009.  I have been studying German again in preparation for a possible sabbatical time in Vienna next year and these words have been shimmering for me: O die Kurven meiner Sehnsucht durch das Weltall” / “O the curves of my longing through the cosmos” -Rainer Maria Rilke, from Uncollected Poems (translated by Edward Snow) My husband and I had been on a five-week ancestral pilgrimage, visiting the landscapes of our genetic roots. We were on the train from Munich to Brussels, after nearly a month

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September 26, 2011

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