How do we live out of our most authentic selves?  The self that Thomas Merton described as the True Self, the one that was created by God and dwells in God.  He said it is like a wave in the ocean of God, or a flame in God’s fire.  We are distinct from God, but also a part of the sacred presence in the world. We live in challenging times.  Of course, I often think that life itself is challenging whenever you live it.  But these times we live with so many choices and possibilities it can be paralyzing.  At

As I get older, I am slowly learning to take myself and my work less seriously. It is the fruit of embracing humility–that monastic virtue whose root is humus, meaning “of the earth.” At the same time, the more I let go of plans that don’t feed me, and the more I allow myself to go out to bloom, the more I experience a deep sense of peace within myself.  I am becoming the peace I want to see bloom in the world. In a world of busyness and productivity, we need a lot more uselessness, more being, more poets, artists, and monks

I love poetry that speaks of the holiness of the ordinary, the sacredness of all things. We make artificial divisions between sacred and secular, between what is worthy of our awe and gratitude and what is not. This is one of the elements I love most about Benedictine spirituality. In the Rule, Benedict wrote that “all utensils and goods of the monastery” are to be treated as “sacred vessels of the altar.” (RB 31:10-11) Esther DeWaal writes that Benedictine life “simply consists in doing the ordinary things of daily life carefully and lovingly, with the attention and reverence that can