Reflections
Announcing tessabielecki.com
Tessa Bielecki is happy to announce tessabielecki.com, her new web site. “Such a fruitful harvest for me,” she says. The words from a song Tom Renaud wrote for her decades ago at Nova Nada in Nova Scotia set the tone for the new site: “The seasons surround me like a circle of friends.” Four seasons expressed in four...
Your People and a Place of Ease
After fifteen years in my beloved al-Hadiyah (the Gift) hermitage in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Tucson, Arizona. I knew the shift to city living would be a jolt, and it was a comfort to hang familiar art on the walls. You step into my living...
Welcome to Fire and Light
A Podcast from Tessa Bielecki and David Denny What sets you on fire and brings you light? How do you keep love alive and celebrate everyone in the great Circle of Life? How can you be deeply engaged in the suffering world and live sanely and contemplatively? What stories bring...
Caravans: New Vision and Women Mystics
We're delighted to present our Summer 2022 Caravans, which includes an invitation to join Tessa at The Women Mystics School. You'll also read a new expression of our...
Thich Nhat Hanh: A Cherry Tree Blossoms in Winter
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietmanese Buddhist monk and renowned author, visited Boulder, Colorado regularly when I lived in Colorado in the eighties. Exiled from Vietnam because he did not support the North or the South in the war, he traveled the world as an ambassador for peace. He spent...
Caravans: Vaccines and Touchstones
Our Summer 2021 Caravans includes reflections on poetry and the pandemic and introduces Fr. Dave’s recent posts on racial...
Good Trouble, Good Cliché, Goodbye, John Lewis
My life was relatively peaceful in winter 2020 as I savored the first months in my new Arizona home. But hermits aren’t islands, and the darkness of a pandemic, the pain of police brutality, mass shootings, racial unrest and injustice; deaths, deportations and incarcerations along...
A Slow Smile Widens
In our digital age, I am amazed at how much we have to say, and how quickly, about persons or events. Just as we have a slow-food movement to counter fast-food culture, we need a slow reaction movement. Sometimes speed is essential, and sometimes speed kills. We need discernment. That takes time and discipline. For...
Jerusalem Sky: Stars, Crosses, and Crescents
Simple children’s books are sometimes deep inspiration for adults. This is true of Jerusalem Sky, written and illustrated by Dr. Mark Podwal. This beautiful book begins, “With wonders and miracles, the sky over Jerusalem touches the world below.…...