I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Gina Marie Mammano‘s reflection “Mount Shasta Monk.” I was in the Mount Shasta area, at the tip top of California at a place called McCloud Falls. I have sailed by Mount Shasta many times as I venture from my current home here on Whidbey Island to my longtime childhood home in California. Through thick panes of tempered glass, I always acknowledge the towering sacred site, called “Acu Tek” by one of the native populations there. I always, as someone once

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series. This is from Polly Burns, the newest member of our Wisdom Council. When Christine asked me to introduce myself through this post, it was hard to know where to start. If you are a regular at the Abbey of the Arts, you will have heard the phrase ‘Go to your cell, it will teach you’. It was this phrase that floated into my mind as I tried to decide what to write. Although often taken as a metaphor for the inner cell of the

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Monette Chilson’s reflection “Monk in the Darkness.” It is hard to be a monk in the dark. Our old ways don’t work. We bump, flail and wail in our blindness. We can easily get stuck in the disorienting fog. I want to usher in the light. Celebrate the joyful. Be grateful for the blessings. That’s the kind of monk I want to be in this world. The serene, meditating variety with a bemused half smile upon my face. But that’s

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sibyl Reynolds’ reflection Gifts from Mary and Martha: Sacred Practices for a Recollected Life. Many people today are experiencing a call to live a contemplative life. The human spirit longs for peace, serenity, connection with the Holy One, and a return to the Self. In the midst of the tsunami of countless daily demands and the immediacy of email, social media, and information overwhelm, the contemplative heart awaits nourishment and intimacy with the Divine. Myriad responsibilities and life’s frenetic pace, fragment

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Anne Buck’s reflection on “In Between Light and Dark.” It was the middle of the night and I was asleep. But maybe, just possibly I was awake. Maybe it was the pain medication or the muscle relaxant. It could have been exhaustion or chemotherapy or my imagination. In the fuzzy dark, I heard a trapped and caught animal, screeching for life and I could not open my eyes, I couldn’t move, even though I felt the life draining out of my bones

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jane Tomaine’s reflection on Little Dresses for Africa. Sometimes it is just hard for me to get going.  Tasks mill around my head like my cats before meal times, walking between my legs, mewing impatiently, rubbing on my ankles to make sure that I don’t forget them.   But unlike the cats, there are tasks that I just can’t seem to get to.  Have you experienced this dilemma?  What is it that we cannot seem to begin?   Is it a phone call that

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Lacy Clark Ellman’s reflection on pilgrimage.  I first learned about Iona while in graduate school. Even though I’d spent six months studying abroad in the UK in college, I never made it up to Scotland. Instead I savored my season as a small-town-girl-turned-city-dweller, fully immersing myself in the wonders of London and the community I found there. It was a season of autonomy for me, and I enthusiastically shed what was old like a snake leaving dead skin behind. As it