I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sharon Dawn Johnson’s reflection Finding My Song, Finding Its Colour. My heart’s deep-down hunger urges me: Enroll in this skincare formulating course! Signing up honours my wild self and her contours—as organic as that of the skincare organization’s eco-sustainability ethos. Lesson by tasty lesson, my heart and mind are nourished and at peace.  Even so, self-doubt’s entangling flip-flops set up creative struggles in me—to keep exercising the sign-up trust that’s digestively sustained and strengthened by each formulating lesson. For

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abbey Program Coordinator Melinda Thomas’s reflection on her new book Elements of Being: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse. The poems started out of necessity. I wanted to write and had a story to tell but very little time. While I could not sustain the energy needed to write a prose novel, I could write poetry. Inspired by Nikita Gill’s The Girl and the Goddess, the project began as fiction in verse but quickly evolved into a spiritual memoir blending imaginal

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Rick Diehl’s reflection From the Forest to the Desert. For over fifty years I lived in the US Northeast. Taking countless walks in the Thoreauan woods  of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Then, almost a decade ago, my wife and I  moved to the high desert of Arizona. Maybe this new landscape would give me revelation on the lives of the Ammas and Abbas of the Desert – you would have thought? Well it did, but not the

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Anne Montgomery Schmid’s reflection Behold. “Come and see,” she said to me. These were powerful words that called to me like a beacon from a lighthouse. I was sitting in Bible Study one morning, wearing grief like a heavy cloak, when this wise woman spoke these words of invitation to me. Noticing my weary posture, she suggested I walk the labyrinth. Not knowing what a labyrinth was, but trusting this soon to be beloved friend, I did

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Rachel Grandey’s reflection on bringing the heart of contemplative practice to research and opening to the questions. In 2023 I left my job of ten years as a teacher in South East Asia, to start the new adventure of a PhD back in my passport country. As I reflect on the past two years, I realise that the practice of persevering in being present to my studies is teaching me just as much about vocation as being