I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Katharine Weinmann’s reflection and poem “A Holy Balance.” Grieving the loss of my professional vocation due to Covid and needing to find my footing with the world’s unravelling, I enrolled in the Abbey of the Arts Fall 2020 intensive online retreat, “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist.” During a session of Lectio Divina in which Christine read Ecclesiastes 3, A Time for Everything, I reflected in my journal: “… Humming to the Byrd’s musical interpretation,

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Katharine Donovan Kane’s reflection In Search of the Ordinary Mystic. I’m a mystic. It sounds right to say but none-the-less it feels uncomfortable. In my family’s Catholic heritage, I learned that only special people are mystics. And they are almost always saints. My mother used to read an old text called Lives of the Saints to my siblings and me when we were little. Does anyone else remember that book? It was filled with the challenges of men and

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jill Ore’s reflection and poem on the contemplative practice of restoring a lighthouse. An offshore lighthouse provides the perfect place, space, and atmosphere for cultivating a contemplative practice. Set apart from the world, this century-old structure echoes timeless monasterial themes. Silence and solitude supply the fertile ground for exploring and tending the light within. Daily housekeeping chores and the physical labor of restoration work, accomplished by climbing endless flights of endless stairs, could be viewed as drudgery. Instead, these duties offer a glimpse