I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World Guest Post series from the community. Read on for Hillel Brandes’s reflection, “Sound of Snowfall”. ” . . . The only other sounds the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep . . .”Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost Stopping by woods on a snowy evening…well, not evening at the moment, but late afternoon. The silence of the winter woods is real, is grounding, and is wondrous. I could call it magical, and so it is. But

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sheila Carroll’s reflection, “Stories as Gifts—A Contemplative Practice.” If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. —Barry Lopez, Crow and Weasel As contemplatives we look for ways to deepen our own spiritual lives and make ourselves more available to others. Story is one pathway to deepening our own pilgrimage and blessing the path of others

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for CJ Shelton’s reflection “Stitches in Time.” As a working artist and monk-in-the-world, solitude and quiet are essential and over the past year, multiple pandemic lockdowns have provided plenty of both. Such an unexpected gift of time has allowed me to wrap myself in a self-made cocoon of reflection, to paint more and embark on art projects that might not otherwise have had room to grow. Along with tending my creative “seeds”, another activity that has provided considerable

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for John Spiesman’s reflection “A Threshold Journey.” I have been thinking a lot about thresholds in this challenging and uncertain time of global pandemic. A threshold is the space between — something old and new, between an end and a beginning, between something known and unknown.  This time for me has been a time between old and new, between an end and a beginning, and between something known and unknown. This time has encouraged me to wonder what

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kathleen Deyer Buldoc’s reflection “Window of Hope.” I soften my gaze as I stare out my study window, looking beyond what is to what was and what is yet to come. My mother is dead, lost with hundreds of thousands of others to Covid19. She fought her way to the end, as stubborn in dying as she was in living. Dementia stole most of her memory, but it didn’t steal her will to live. This window frames

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Bart Brenner’s reflection on filling the cup. You are the wine, / I am the cup. I can yield nothing till I am filled up. (O Sun, Earth Our Original Monastery Prayer Cycle: Morning Prayer, Day Six) The pandemic brought illness and death, and a strange way of living—lock down, masking, and social distancing. Living in a cloistered community was was not welcomed by many. As an octogenarian, living alone since the death of my wife six