A monastery in rural France

I am currently in France to visit family and today we were in one of the most beautiful parts of the country: Auvergne. We were there to visit my dear grandfather’s grave and on the way back, we stopped by a well-known monastery in the region: the Notre-Dame-de-l’Hermitage nunnery and sanctuary. Here are some photos:

The Monk Life: Can you be a Pagan and a monk?

In a previous post, I mentioned that I lead a life I call ‘semi-monastic’. That is: I don’t live in a monastery but the way I live incorporates a lot of aspects of a traditional monastic life. Things like daily rituals and contemplation, simplicity and having few material possessions. I’ll get more in depth on

Contemplative living in the world

I recently started reading The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living and in the preface I highlighted this passage because I find it captures the essence of what spiritual living can and should be: I haven’t come very far into the book yet but I love what I’ve been reading so far and