Reflections

Holdfasts. Such a lovely name; such an unglamorous appearance. By the time a holdfast shows up on the beach, it is dead: brittle and broken, a woody knot no longer holding fast to anything. Nothing to play with...

By Therese DesCamp – photo by George Meier Our hands imbibe like roots, So I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, And they draw from the heavens light. – St. Francis of Assisi, as interpreted by David Ladinsky As the forest fires burned a few kilometres away last summer, as dams broke around the world, wars escalated and political rhetoric sharpened, I struggled to find a quiet heart. My practice — reading, scripture, meditation, prayer — was hard to...

The Church has begun the Great Fast of Lent, our Forty Days of preparation for the Mysteries of Holy Week, for our entering with Jesus into the journey of death and resurrection. Our participation includes an outer fast – putting less food into our bodies, if our health allows – to help us listen for the Divine...

Bringing together silence and sound, chant offers a contemplative path that leads us through Advent’s winter shadows.  Chants, ancient or contemporary, draw us across a threshold into deeper quiet and give us courage, so that like the shepherds who rose out of fear to peer up at shining angels, we dare to step from familiar dark into unknown light.  Here, Susan J. Latimer, an Episcopal priest and musician, tells us how chant can give us courage, heal us, and help us become more present to the...

“Silence is God’s first language” ~ St. John of the Cross Snowmass recedes. We in the Centering Prayer community are mourning this month’s closure of St. Benedict’s guesthouse, and the apparent dissolution of the monastery. The universe found a vital heart at Snowmass during her few decades among us. Like a sheltering mother, she gathered us in. She encouraged us to see with wonder, find our centre, and give ourselves back to the world. There, we were nurtured and challenged by Fr. Thomas...