To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest Monks and Artists, Springtime seems to be breaking out slowly in the northern hemisphere, with its promise of renewal and new beginnings.  Here in Galway it has been quite cold and windy these last several days as we await the weather to begin to turn, to open toward the season of growing light. But springtime is as much an inner experience as it is an outer one. I am feeling this sense of opening within me.  My husband and I have been

My newest Seasons of the Soul column at Patheos is now available with suggestions for how to practice resurrection of the body for the 50 days of the Easter season: Lent is a powerful season of transformation. Forty days in the desert, stripped of our comforts, and buoyed by our commitment to daily practice so that we might arrive at the celebration of Easter deepened and renewed. But often, we arrive at the glorious season of resurrection and celebrate for that one day, forgetting it is a span of 50 days, even longer than the Lenten season through which we

Beyond bunnies, baskets, chocolate, and jelly beans, Easter calls us to the profound practice of resurrection of the body. Resurrection is about entering the fire of our passion and letting it burn brightly.  It is about what enlivens us and makes us feel vital.  It is about feeling the full weight and lightness of our physical being.  What would it mean for you to open yourself fully to the sacred breath moving through and sustaining you moment by moment?  How might you let your dreams and passion be resurrected this season?

My latest Seasons of the Soul column at Patheos: Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you as few human Or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft, My voice so tender, My need of God Absolutely clear. ~ Hafiz Holy Week invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, mockery, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing. Holy Saturday is

I recently went out to the desert for a week of retreat.  Last Christmas I had a pulmonary embolism while in Vienna.  Coming so close to the reality of my own death demanded more reflection, more time to be present to what this experience was opening up in my heart.  I knew the desert was the place of fierceness calling to me. In my first few days I found myself deeply drawn to images of death.  In New Mexico there are these wonderful figures everywhere of skeletons dressed in various clothing.  They are in celebration of Day of the Dead

Ash Wednesday marks a threshold when we leave ordinary time to enter into the journey of Lent through the desert. The desert is that uncharted terrain beyond the edges of our seemingly secure and structured world, where things begin to crack. We begin this desert journey marked with ashes, the sign of our mortality. There is wisdom in these ashes. If you have ever been near death or had a loved one die, you know the clarity that an awareness of our bodily limits can bring. How suddenly what is most important in life rises to the surface. This is