Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Homecoming (a love note from your online Abbess)

My final question, ‘How will I know when I have reached the destination?’ brings me full circle, and I face the Mystery again. Perhaps the truth is that we never arrive, not because the journey is too long and too difficult but because we have been there all along. I am coming to believe that […]

Orchard and Forest (a love note)

Dearest monks and artists, This is proving to be a powerful Advent season for me.  My husband and I have made the discernment to move to the west coast of Ireland at the end of December and so this threshold time left here in Vienna has become a profound opportunity for retreat, turning inward, savoring […]

Life Impulse and Death Impulse

To receive this love note from your online Abbess direct to your in-box, click here: “And how would God be known as the Eternal One if brilliance did not emerge from God?  For there is no creature without some kind of radiance–whether it be greenness, seeds, buds, or another kind of beauty.” —St. Hildegard of […]

Following the Thread

There is a thread I have been following these last few months while living in Vienna which I haven’t yet shared with you, mostly because of my own amazement and wanting to respect the call without putting too many words and explanations to it. It began in late summer when two different online monk friends […]

The “great hands of your heart”

Excerpt I am praying again, Awesome One. You hear me again, as words from the depths of me rush toward you in the wind. . . It’s here in all the pieces of my shame that now I find myself again. I yearn to belong to something, to be contained in an all-embracing mind that […]

Invitation to Poetry: Silence

Welcome to the Abbey’s Poetry Party No. 60! I select an image and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you […]

This is Not Photography (by Joanna Paterson)

This is not photography. This is flower watching in sweet, soft September sunshine. This is the smell of the lavender filling my senses. This is the sound of the river rushing past, and the buzz of the bees going mad with abundance in the herbs. This is earth time before office time. This is stolen […]