Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice with words from the ancient Hebrew text of the Song of Songs. While the northern hemisphere begins to turn to spring through the arrival of birdsong and blossoms, we are all invited to tend to our inner flowering. In my own prayer with the text, the word “arise” shimmered strongly, which is an invitation to awaken from slumber, to take action in the world, to bring more beauty to life. I invite you

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice with words from the prophet Joel, read every year on Ash Wednesday. “Return to me with your whole heart” are a powerful words to begin the sacred season of Lent. What if we were to imagine Lent as less about sacrifice, and more about making the great return to God. I invite you for this month’s Photo Party to hold these words in your heart as you go out in the world to receive images

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice with wisdom from St. Brigid.  As I prayed with this passage, I was moved by how essential Brigid considers the role of companions on the journey. She urges us to make finding those with whom we can share a deep kinship of the heart’s longings. With our overall theme of the year at the Abbey as discernment, I love the idea of listening for how we might build a soulful community to support us

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice where you were invited to pray with one of the stories of the desert fathers and mothers where one monk asks another “give me a word.” You were invited to share your word for 2014 here (you can still share it, although prize winners have been announced). I invite you for this month’s Photo Party to hold your word for 2014 in your heart as you walk in the world and see which

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio (Visio) Divina practice (stop by to pray with this beautiful image from Mary Southard).  As I prayed with Mary’s art I felt held in this womb of waiting and watchfulness, attentiveness and presence, of sinking into the gift of stillness and knowing this is necessary before the birth can come. With our overall theme of the year at the Abbey as discernment, I love the idea of exploring the gifts of waiting, being fallow, embracing rest, as essential

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice (stop by to read the beautiful responses).  As I prayed with the reading from Thomas Merton, this image of what it means to become a saint kept shimmering for me, and the image of creation as witness to this call to be myself. What if we could receive the trees and rivers and creatures as wise guides about what it means to truly embrace ourselves? What can they teach us about not refusing

Welcome to this month’s Abbey Photo Party! I select a theme and invite you to respond with images. We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice (stop by to read the beautiful responses).  As I prayed with the poem by Yehuda Amichai, this phrase kept shimmering for me:  But doubts and loves / Dig up the world. These last few months I have been called more deeply into a journey of softening and yielding, of discovering the profound grace that comes with embracing my own earthiness and the layers beneath all of the armoring I have in my body, my