Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I hope you have enjoyed the series of poetry videos we have produced in collaboration with Morgan Creative. One of our great joys here at the Abbey is bringing artists together whether through these videos, the albums we are creating, or the icon series we commissioned. When time and resources allow we hope to continue these video offerings. For now, I thought I’d share links to all eight of the poems in case you have missed any of them over the last few months: How to Be a Pilgrim Requiem for Myself Take My Hand

How to Be a Pilgrim Air travel is like ancient pilgrims walking on their knees, flight delays and narrow seats offer their own kind of penance. You jettison excess baggage, leaving behind the heavy makeup case, knowing the rain will wash you free of artifice. Books you wanted to carry left too, no more outside words needed, then go old beliefs which keep you taut and twisted inside. Blistered feet stumble over rocky fields covered with wildflowers and you realize this is your life, full of sharp stones and color. Red-breasted robins call forth the song already inside, a hundred

Requiem for Myself When I die plant a pinwheel in an open field where winter’s wind and rain march forcefully across in battalions, and you can stumble out there to meet me one late afternoon when you feel the world must surely be ending. You, soaked from tears and storms, kinship with dark sky. Me, rainbow axis whirling, an orbit of joyful defiance. You then, inspired, tumble gleefully across grass, pirouette, forgetting for a moment grief’s burden, knowing the world will be with you for many years to come. Never think this brief sojourn wasted as you head back to

Vespers The sun slides down the gap between houses its amber reach crosses the grass toward me, shadow of the elder tree has grown long and I remember under the mulberry spectacle of sky how everything I love must end: this cup of tea with steam ascending, the dog curled right against me, your warm hands over mine, how this sweet leaving of day makes me draw the world as close as possible. —Christine Valters Paintner (*originally published in U.S. Catholic magazine) Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The poem above is part of a series of poems I wrote to