Image above: sunrise on Skellig Michael
Find out more about the Skelligs here.
Find out more about the Skelligs here.
Highlights from New Pilgrim Path
In this section we bring you some of our Websites of the Week which have proved particularly popular with our visitors over the past nine years of our existence.
If we have omitted any that you would like to see featured, please let us know!
In this section we bring you some of our Websites of the Week which have proved particularly popular with our visitors over the past nine years of our existence.
If we have omitted any that you would like to see featured, please let us know!
“Every moment is a gift. … Whatever life gives to you, you can respond with joy. Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It is the grateful response to the opportunity that life offers you at this moment.” Now approaching his 100th birthday, Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast was formed by 20th-century catastrophes. In 2000, he co-founded A Network for Grateful Living, an organisation dedicated to gratefulness as a transformative influence for individuals and society.
Brother David Steindl-Rast's 15-minute TED* Talk, “Want to be happy? Be grateful!” has been viewed in the region of 9.64 million times to date on the TED website.
* TED (originally standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit organization best known for its short, influential presentations called TED Talks. It began as a conference in 1984 and has grown into a global platform for sharing ideas on topics ranging from science and technology to education, business, health, and social issues.
Brother David Steindl-Rast's 15-minute TED* Talk, “Want to be happy? Be grateful!” has been viewed in the region of 9.64 million times to date on the TED website.
* TED (originally standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit organization best known for its short, influential presentations called TED Talks. It began as a conference in 1984 and has grown into a global platform for sharing ideas on topics ranging from science and technology to education, business, health, and social issues.
If you want to understand the modern intersection of ethics and artificial intelligence, read Magnifica Humanitas. This seminal document is an urgent wake-up call, a brilliant, urgent blueprint for protecting our souls, our work, and our shared future from becoming mere data points. Pope Leo has just redefined what it means to be human in a world run by code. At 42,000 words, it is not a quick read, but you can listen to the Pope introducing it at its recent launch in a ten minute address.
Click on the image to watch his ten minute address.
Click on the image to watch his ten minute address.
"The greatest sin is the unlived life" - John O'Donohue on aging.
The late, great Irish poet, author and philosopher, John O’ Donohue, wrote that “The greatest sin is the unlived life”. In a powerful one-hour talk on "Imagination as the Path of Spirit", he urges the need to enter fully into our own lives, becoming all that we are capable of becoming – so that “when the time comes for us to lie down and die, we will be able to look back on a life that took honourable risks, that pushed its own frontiers, that tried to look after its own healing...that was compassionate, that didn’t judge, and that tried to look after the poor and neglected, and the unspoken for.”
Click on the image to listen to this inspiring 45 minute talk.
Click on the image to listen to this inspiring 45 minute talk.
“Every moment is a gift. … Whatever life gives to you, you can respond with joy. Joy is the happiness that does not depend on what happens. It is the grateful response to the opportunity that life offers you at this moment.” Now approaching his 100th birthday, Benedictine Brother David Steindl-Rast was formed by 20th-century catastrophes. In 2000, he co-founded A Network for Grateful Living, an organisation dedicated to gratefulness as a transformative influence for individuals and society.
Brother David Steindl-Rast's 15-minute TED* Talk, “Want to be happy? Be grateful!” has been viewed in the region of 9.64 million times to date on the TED website.
* TED (originally standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit organization best known for its short, influential presentations called TED Talks. It began as a conference in 1984 and has grown into a global platform for sharing ideas on topics ranging from science and technology to education, business, health, and social issues.
Brother David Steindl-Rast's 15-minute TED* Talk, “Want to be happy? Be grateful!” has been viewed in the region of 9.64 million times to date on the TED website.
* TED (originally standing for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is a nonprofit organization best known for its short, influential presentations called TED Talks. It began as a conference in 1984 and has grown into a global platform for sharing ideas on topics ranging from science and technology to education, business, health, and social issues.
Karen Armstrong, religious historian and former Catholic nun, is a provocative, original thinker on the role of religion in the modern world. Her "Charter for Compassion" promotes a new kind of religious discourse that goes back to the core values of religion: every single religion is based on compassion and on the golden rule, first propounded by Confucius 500 years before Christ, “Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you. Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain, and then refuse under any circumstance to inflict that pain on anybody else... This is civilization”.
Listen here to her fascinating TED talk.
Listen here to her fascinating TED talk.
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel...Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.” Jer 18:2.
These words from the Book of Jeremiah inspired Donagh O’Shea, a Dominican friar, a highly regarded retreat leader, an authority on the mediaeval mystics, and a potter. 30 years ago, he began a series of workshops (which continue to this day) on meditative work with clay. His book, "Go Down to the Potter's House" has become a spiritual classic. In it, he draws practical spiritual lessons from every stage of the process of throwing a pot. "Throwing a pot upon a wheel", he says in the 5th video, "is like a parable of human change and transformation. It is endlessly engrossing".
He has now distilled his spiritual journey with pottery in a series of short videos. His aim is to overcome the effects of centuries of introspection and individualism and to help people discover in themselves and in the Gospel a straightforward simplicity.
Click on the image to watch the first of 10 fascinating episodes.
You can access the full series here.
These words from the Book of Jeremiah inspired Donagh O’Shea, a Dominican friar, a highly regarded retreat leader, an authority on the mediaeval mystics, and a potter. 30 years ago, he began a series of workshops (which continue to this day) on meditative work with clay. His book, "Go Down to the Potter's House" has become a spiritual classic. In it, he draws practical spiritual lessons from every stage of the process of throwing a pot. "Throwing a pot upon a wheel", he says in the 5th video, "is like a parable of human change and transformation. It is endlessly engrossing".
He has now distilled his spiritual journey with pottery in a series of short videos. His aim is to overcome the effects of centuries of introspection and individualism and to help people discover in themselves and in the Gospel a straightforward simplicity.
Click on the image to watch the first of 10 fascinating episodes.
You can access the full series here.
It is absurd to think we can enter heaven without first entering our own souls, without getting to know ourselves. How important it is to recognise this truth that the Lord is within us and that we should be there with him! How is it, Lord, that we do not look at your face, when it is so near us? All our trouble comes to us from not having our eyes fixed upon the Divine.
A 14-minute video features some gentle and practical advice for meditative prayer, drawn from the teachings of the great 16th century mystic and reformer, St Teresa of Avila. A prolific writer, she sought to demystify the mystical experience and make it accessible.
Click on the image to listen.
A 14-minute video features some gentle and practical advice for meditative prayer, drawn from the teachings of the great 16th century mystic and reformer, St Teresa of Avila. A prolific writer, she sought to demystify the mystical experience and make it accessible.
Click on the image to listen.
The ‘Christian Art’ website is the brainchild of a former director of Sotheby’s, London, Patrick van der Vorst, now a Catholic priest in the diocese of Westminster. He describes his offering as "Simple: one newsletter a day where we simply send you the Gospel reading of the day, alongside a work of art that we believe is poignant, reflective and appropriate to that reading. We offer a short reflection on the artwork and the reading. We simply give you the tools for you to meditate on the daily Gospel alongside a work of art."
Simple, it may be, but the results are sometimes astonishing. The frequently surprising art choices and thought-provoking commentary at times achieve the nearly impossible - casting a new light on scripture passages, long blunted by familiarity.
Visit this inspiring website and sign up for the daily reflection here.
Click here for an example of one of Patrick's daily emails (scroll down to 'About the painting').
The Four Gospels for a Visual Age
For the first time, the entire Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been brought to life in a compelling cinematic portrayal of the life of Jesus – accompanied by a complete and unabridged narration (using the New International Version of the New Testament, and also available in the King James Version). The narrations are accessible in a wide range of languages. This ground-breaking Biblical resource, the Lumo Project, has been created to transform the way in which people engage with, discover, and study the life of Jesus through the Gospels. It is also a wonderful pastoral resource.
Click on the image above to watch the Gospel of John.
Click on the image above to watch the Gospel of John.