Today is the Autumn Equinox and we enter my favorite half of the year.  These days have been marked by a heaviness here at the Abbey though.  My mother-in-law who has Alzheimer’s has been declining rapidly as of late.  And in the last couple of weeks our sweet old dog Tune has developed canine cognitive dysfunction, which essentially leads to increased confusion, anxiety, and distress, similar to Alzheimer’s in humans.  She is on medication now which is helping, but still the signs are there.  The anniversary of my own mother’s death is less than a month away.  As fall begins its brilliant journey I am being thrust

Monastic practice offers me the gift of paying attention to the seasons of the day and the year.  February 1st is a potent time.  On the Celtic wheel of the year it is Imbolc (meaning “stirring in the belly”) which is one of the cross-quarter days falling between the Solstice and the Equinox.  Imbolc marks the first day of spring, the time when the very beginning of earth’s stirrings and awakenings from winter can be seen.  In Christian tradition it is the Feast of St. Brigid (an Irish Saint who is associated with fire) and on February 2nd is Candlemas

In the dead of night he suddenly beheld a flood of light shining down from above more brilliant than the sun, and . . . the whole world was gathered up before his eyes in what appeared to be a single ray of light. –The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict by Pope St. Gregory the Great, If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances . . . The whole

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” -Theodore Roethke “Wisdom comes with winter.” -Oscar Wilde I love the bare branches of winter trees spread across the muted sky.  Those aching arms that have been stripped of encumbrance to reveal the bones. When autumn comes I am dizzy with delight at the release of fluttering jeweled prayer flags settling to the ground to become the compost for next spring’s flowers.  There is an excitement I experience at the change of each day’s landscape, a parade of colors, always something new revealed.  It can be easy to forget that this is