Reflections
The Miracle of the Oil
Two Prayers for Hanukkah Hanukkah focuses on the miracle of the oil, which allowed Jerusalem's Jewish community to keep the Temple candelabra burning for eight nights while having barely enough oil for one. The feast commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt against Greek oppression in the 2nd century BCE. During each evening of Hanukkah, a candle is added to the menorah. Here is the blessing over the...
Caravans: Advent Tidings
Our December 2022 Caravans newsletter is now available here. Catch up on our fruitful autumn and the vision behind our new web sites. We offer a lovely...
Advent Starlight and Stillness
When I think about the weeks preceding Christmas, I feel a swell of gratitude for the years I spent in wilderness monasteries, keeping still in Advent starlight or bundling up in Nova Scotia to venture out into the silent moonlit snow to walk beneath towering white pines and...
Vitality Out of Emptiness
Contemplify.com recently did an interview with Fr. Dave Denny and titled it “Vitality out of Emptiness.” I’ve heard Dave’s story many times and can almost tell it myself. But in this interview, I heard it as though for the first time. I was fascinated as Dave described moving contemplation out of the monastery into...
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...