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Reflections

Category: Lenten Online Retreat

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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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February 7, 2016

Creativity and Social Transformation

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Last week I shared that 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of Abbey of the Arts’ existence as a virtual monastery. I will be reflecting back on some of my reflections from the Archives and tracing the development of the Abbey this year.  From the beginning, my heart has been sparked by the conversation between contemplative practice and creative expression and how it might be a force for transformation in the world. Here is a reflection I wrote in the first month of creating the blog on Creativity and Social Transformation: If in the Judeo-Christian tradition

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January 24, 2016

Stirring in the Belly: Listening for New Life

My latest Seasons of the Soul column for Patheos is now available here: The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood.

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January 26, 2011

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky

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February 11, 2010

Ancient Wisdom of the Heart – A Practice for Lent

Listen to the long stillness: New life is stirring New dreams are on the wing New hopes are being readied: Humankind is fashioning a new heart Humankind is forging a new mind God is at work. This is the season of Promise. -Howard Thurman A week from Wednesday the Lenten journey begins. On Ash Wednesday we always hear the words of the prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” Lent is an invitation toward whole-heartedness.  The heart is an ancient metaphor for the seat of our whole being – to be whole-hearted means to bring our entire selves

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February 8, 2010

Visual Meditation: Gathering Flock

Creation tells me a story – this is what beauty is for – it whispers, to soothe your wearied spirit, to enliven you, to invite you into dancing once again, to imagine gathering with a whole flock of kindred spirits who journey alongside you in grief and delight, who don’t ask you to be anywhere other than where your pulsing heart carries you right now. Sabbath begins for me this evening, a time when I can surrender into the restoration this time offers, a time to simply be and delight in my flock. Shabbat Shalom to all of the kindred

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January 29, 2010