Exploring Monastic Wisdom for Day to Day Living

Are you tired of bucket lists and New Year's resolutions? We would like to invite you for a time of recollection instead. You can do this by walking in silence, by looking back on the reflections of this journey so far, or by taking some time to look with kindness on your life using the practice we provide.

Dec 29
Dec 29 The Fifth Day of Christmas. A Day of Rest

Little babies rest a lot. They do not care where they are or what is appropriate etiquette. They sleep when they need to. As it belongs to our human condition to rest in order to grow, the same is true for our spiritual life.

Dec 28
Dec 28 The Fourth Day of Christmas: Walking into the Christmas Story

12 Days of Christmas

What if you, like the shepherds, kings, and other visitors long ago, were able to be there at the manger in Bethlehem? Today we invite you to walk into the story with child like curiosity…

Dec 27
Dec 27 The Third Day of Christmas. Seeing through the Eyes of a Child

What if Christmas isn’t a fuzzy feeling but a birthing process we must give in to? Today we invite you to see things with a “beginners mind,” like a child, like you see them for the first time.

Dec 26

Dec 26 The Second Day of Christmas: Practicing the Presence of God

On this Second Day of Christmas we invite you to become present to “God with us” and “within” us.

Dec 25

Dec 25 The First Day of Christmas. A Blessing for the Journey

Dec 24

Dec 24 Christmas Eve: Entering Silence

12 Days of Christmas

What I most long for at Christmas is silence. When the hustle and bustle fades, the people go home and the lights go off. Left alone before the flicker of a last candle, wondering, even doubting, what this is all about…

May 10
May 10 Giving Life: On the Poignancy of Motherhood.

Hildegard of Bingen

For some, mother's day comes with a bittersweet undertone. No happy children posting happy messages. Some have lost their children before they could birth them, some lost them later, to death or to life. All mothers are also daughters, some cherishing, some mourning, some still struggling with their own mothers.

Apr 16
Apr 16 What to do with Passion Week? Or: Blessed are those who mourn

Spring break is a good time for doing all sorts of things: cleaning up, writing articles, having a vacation. For many it is also just work as usual. But being called to mourning is an existential task. No religion can do it for us. It cannot be mere theater that we watch. But religion can help us to be reminded and can provide for us an occasion. There is no resurrection, no new beginning without the deep mourning of the old, without letting go what we loved so dearly, without mourning our losses.

Jan 5
Jan 5 The Twelfth Day of Christmas. Making Room

What if Christmas is not about building walls but creating space, sacred space where the Divine can dwell? We all are called to be Mary, to conceive the Divine, to walk pregnant with it and to birth it into our night.

Jan 4
Jan 4 The Eleventh Day of Christmas: Transforming our work

Work is sanctified in the light of Christmas, and is judged to be of worth, on a shockingly different scale than how economists value it. The work that we often value least, service work, women’s work, is valuable because it is done for others. If we see our work this way, we can bring Christmas into our lives all year.

Jan 3
Jan 3 The Tenth Day of Christmas. Becoming vulnerable

Tending to our weaknesses isn’t what we learned at school. Still it is part and parcel of our spiritual journey. From the monastic infirmary we learn that weakness needs its room, that we must come to terms with, and even welcome, our vulnerabilities, our brokenness and our need for healing.

Jan 1
Jan 1 The Ninth Day of Christmas: Welcoming the Holy

This is the lesson one draws from the Abbey guesthouse: that we should welcome guests in our lives as we would welcome Christ. But today, after our walk, and the evening prayer, I have become aware of so many more levels to this hospitality.

Jan 1
Jan 1 The Eighth Day of Christmas: Beginning Anew