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Reflections

Category: Lent Easter

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Embrace a Mindful Slowness ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I continue my Lenten series at Patheos this week on A Different Kind of Fast. This week I explore fasting from speeding through life on the surface and embracing a mindful slowness: Modern life seems to move at full speed and many of us can hardly catch our breath between the demands of earning a living, nurturing family and friendships, and the hundreds of small daily details like paying our bills, cleaning, grocery shopping. More and more we feel stretched thin by commitments and lament our busyness, but without a clear sense of the alternative.

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Fasting from Anxiety + Radical Hospitality ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I have two reflections and two poems for you this week. Read on for more goodness from the Abbey. . . I continue my Lenten series at Patheos this week on A Different Kind of Fast. This week I explore fasting from anxiety and entering into a radical stance of trust through the practice of Sabbath-keeping. Click here to read the article>> I also have a guest post this week at the wonderful website Monasteries of the Heart on the practice of radical hospitality and inviting in holy disruption. Click here read the article>> I

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Grow in intimacy with the Earth Monastery this Lent ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The season of Lent begins this Wednesday and we are offering an online retreat experience for this holy time which extends through the first week of Easter. We invite you into a contemplation of the Earth as Original Monastery and to nourish an earth-cherishing consciousness. Jesus begins his own ministry with a time out in the wilderness, seeking the ways that creation can challenge us and nourish us and reveal new directions. Imagine spending 40 days yourself listening for the wisdom of wilderness. The monk here and now is supposed to be living the life

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May 23: Transformation – Pilgrimage of Resurrection
(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Transformation If entered into mindfully and with a whole heart, each encounter on the road has the potential to transform. The pilgrim returns home not with all the answers. Instead, they receive better questions; questions that bring the pilgrimage experience into daily life and reveal depth in all they see around them. —Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within Reflective Question: Can you stay open to the divine presence which is always in the midst of whatever life presents to you right here, right now, even if it is not what you were

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May 22: Home – Pilgrimage of Resurrection
(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Home Ultimately the pilgrimage leads us back home again. We always return bearing gifts for the community. We are always called back to share what we have been given with others. —Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within Reflective Question: What gifts are you bearing back from your pilgrimage? Who will you share them with?     Next steps: Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media. Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing

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May 21: Relationship – Pilgrimage of Resurrection
(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Relationship God is never a set of concepts to be understood but a relationship to encounter. In this way, the spiritual life is always a journey. We do not let go once and for all. —Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within Reflective Question: Can you allow yourself the time and space to move through the layers of your life until you are living more from your heart than your mind? Next steps: Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social

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May 20: Holy Disruption – Pilgrimage of Resurrection
(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Holy Disruption The divine is that power which disrupts everything; it is at heart a great mystery at work. —Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within Reflective Question: What if our pilgrimage practice courted holy disruption? What if we embraced the unknown as sacred wisdom for the unfolding of our lives?     Next steps: Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media. Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others. Name your

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