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Deep Calls Unto Deep: Exploring the Psalms ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, We are very excited to be welcoming Simon de Voil and David Wallace to teach a four-week series on the psalms starting this week. I hope you will consider joining them for an exploration of these ancient texts and their spiritual meaning for us today.  _______ My dear fellow seekers, I’m writing from the Atlantic coast of New England, watching the cadence of waves soothe and splash as over and over they act out their universal destiny.  I’ve come to Maine to attend the memorial of a beloved cousin felled young by pancreatic cancer, and the

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Visionary, Healer, Warrior, Sage ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims, One of my favorite ways to do inner work is through the archetypes which are patterns or energies we find inside ourselves and appear across the globe in different traditions. They come to us as dreams, longings, synchronicities. I’ve written about them more extensively in Illuminating the Way where I connect archetypes like Mother, Prophet, Healer, Sovereign to the monks and mystics of the Christian and Jewish traditions. I also explored them in my book Birthing the Holy where I explored 31 names of Mary, each representing a different archetype like Virgin, Mother of Sorrows, Our Lady of the

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Does Your Heart Long to Journey to Celtic Lands? ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, These northern hemisphere days when the nights grow longer and the sun lower in the sky is my favorite time of year. I especially love that the sun rises later and later so I am able to get up on calm mornings and stand at the threshold of sea and shoreline to witness the beauty that unfolds. (The photo above is from a recent October morning walk).  This is the time of year when the ancient ones honored the growing darkness as the season of mystery, rest, and incubation. It is the time when the

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The Mystical Heart: Love as a Creative Force ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

The soul is made of love and must ever strive to return to love. Therefore, it can never find rest nor happiness in other things. By its very nature it must seek God, who is love. –Mechthild of Magdeburg (1208-1282) Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. About how I believe it is at the foundation of everything. This deep knowing is what helps sustain me in dark times. Even as we are bombarded by news of violence and destruction daily, Love also helps me to remember the tremendous beauty to be found in

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St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Contemplative Path ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I am excited that we have been adding to our dancing monk icon series! We had paused for a while but now the creative juices and inspiration is flowing again and Marcy is hard at work. I am not sure when or if cards will be available (we are doing a special limited set of the 10 new cards for our Sustainers Circle supporters), but Marcy will make these available as prints as always.  I wanted to introduce Ignatius of Loyola first because his spirituality had a significant impact on me in my early years of

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Presence: Cultivating Embodiment with Christine Valters Paintner

Christine Valters Paintner will guide us as we explore the true meaning of the Incarnation—God became flesh—and points to the spiritual importance of appreciating the bodies God gave us.The invitation to be truly present to our own body is now louder and more relevant as we face divisions and disconnections. We are invited to cultivate a deeper and more grounded presence to our body so we can be more present to others and nature. We hope to learn how to become more comfortable in our own skin and more aware of our internalized trauma. Who is this for? Those who

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