Poetry and the Sacred (new videos and featured poet series) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, In celebration of publishing my new collection of poems, Dreaming of Stones, we are delighted to be working with local video production company Morgan Creative to launch a series of poetry videos. I have two to share with you today: First, enjoy this one-minute book trailer they created with gorgeous images from […]
Love and Radical Hospitality ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Valentine’s Day is coming, which for many of us is a holiday that only serves to make us feel inadequate, as all highly commercialized things do. And yet the message of love is worth repeating if we can look beneath the chocolate hearts and flowers and the expectation that we all […]
The Feast of Brigid and Imbolc ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
St. Brigid at the Market I saw her in the market backlit in the doorway from the evening sun, blue cloak ripples like water dandelions and primrose in her hand. Passersby brush past this moment of light and song in a rush to get shoes off and dinner on, just another day of traffic, bills, […]
8 Practices of a Good Pilgrimage ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, The value of travel was ingrained in me from a young age. When I was growing up in New York City my father worked for the United Nations, and we had the privilege of traveling back to Austria, where he was from, as well as other European countries and once […]
The Sacred Gifts of Poetry ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dreaming of Stones In the world before waking I meet a winged one, feathered, untethered, who presses in my palm three precious stones, like St. Ita in her dream, but similarities end there, her with saintliness and certainty, me asking questions in the dark. All I know is I am not crafted from patience of […]
New Year Blessings ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Stop by this link to read W.S. Merwin’s poem “To the New Year” Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I offer you a reprise of my reflection on Embracing Mystery in the New Year: Ten Essential Practices. Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of […]
Christmas Blessings from the Abbey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, All of us here at the Abbey – John, Christine, and the Abbey Wisdom Council – wish you a most wondrous Christmas feast. This is the time for holy birthing to happen in unlikely places, a time to listen to what rises in the stillness, a time to trust in […]