Forgive my delay in posting the winner of the drawing from this past week’s Poetry Party on the theme of silence. . . I have been teaching in Ireland all weekend and arrived back yesterday trying to catch up with myself. I just spent some reflective time with the beautiful poems offered and my heart is, as always, full of gratitude for all my fellow monks and poets willing to share their heart’s expression with this community.  Pour some tea and linger there for a while and really experience the depth of silence’s gifts. The name I pulled in my

. . . Gayle Sommerfeld!  Congratulations Gayle!  Send me your snail mail address and I will get a copy of Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings — Annotated & Explained sent to you straight from SkyLight Paths. If you haven’t yet had a chance to stop by the Photo Party, you can see the photo pool here.  Thank you to everyone who participated, what a gift it was to receive everyone’s images and be immersed in a visual ode to silence.  This was such a delightful experience we will definitely be continuing them monthly. A week from Monday,

Desert Fathers and Mothers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings — Annotated & Explained will be available by late August.  In the meantime it is available for pre-ordering at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and SkyLight Paths. When you pre-order your copy, I have a special gift for you: a retreat and reflection guide to accompany your reading.  Just forward me your online receipt for pre-order and I will send that to you as a thank you for your support.  Or if you have a copy of the actual book, you can just send me a photo of you holding the book up

Amber Andreasen!   Amber, let me know your choice of self-study/on-demand classes for your prize (which you can also give as a gift). Thank you to everyone who participated in this week’s Poetry Party celebrating summer.  Pour yourself a cup of tea (maybe iced!) and go linger for a while with the words offered there. Abbey Poetry Parties will be on a break for July but will return again as a monthly feature in August.

I have the tremendous privilege of working with several beautiful souls in this Abbey work, each of whom has their own flourishing body of work.  Here are some recommendations for other resources to explore to support your own deepening journey: The lovely Kayce Stevens Hughlettt is a Soul Care Institute core faculty member, with whom I teach the powerful live retreat Exploring Archetypes through the Expressive Arts (offered next in 2013) and who is also the solo facilitator for the online class Live it to Give it: Essential Practices of Soul Nourishment and Self-Care (offered next this fall). She is also the author of

My four-week online class on the Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers has begun over at Spirituality and Practice, if you want to join us it is not too late.  You can still register and once you log on you will be able to read any emails from the first couple of days you might have missed at the website.  Then you can dive right in and continute the journey. . .   If you love becoming a monk in the world, the wisdom of the desert elders is really foundation to this practice.    Consider joining me!

For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance. Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! –Song of Songs 2:11-13 Dearest kindred souls, I am finally starting to catch up with myself after a few very full weeks. You mean, your online Abbess gets busy and overwhelmed too? Yes, indeed. Sometimes it is impossible to avoid