Dear friends,

I have just rounded the corner on my 10th year of blogging. A decade literally flew by in a blur of having babies and raising children, recording albums, making thousands of meals, filling hundreds of journals, waking up at 4 a.m. to write and find my peace in the midst of all the questions that don’t have answers.

Life is complex. It is hard and it is beautiful. It is both bittersweet and breathtaking. I am learning this day by sacred day.

In my heart, I feel a need to take a slow, quiet breath, enter into a place of peace, and retreat from the heaviness of everyday life. At the same time, I feel a growing need for community. For people who want to keep searching for the beauty in everyday life and keep hoping on every inhale. I want to have living conversations about how we can keep our eyes alight in a dark world.

In thinking of what I can offer up in this season, I have wanted to open up a room in the house of my blog where we can sit and talk about these ideas. To find a quite place, share a cup of tea, and slow down long enough to look into our hearts and see what is there.

And so, for the next three months, I will be hosting a little series called The Sacred Everyday Retreats. These will be video events that I hope will call us out of the busy mechanics of our lives and help us to enter more fully into the sacred experience of finding meaning in the everyday. Each month I will be building an informal talk around the following themes:

November: Grief and Beauty
December: Relentless Hope
January: Entering a Year With Vision

These retreats are an invitation to find a few quiet moments and join me for a time of conversation, reading, prayer, and reflection. I will share some of my own thoughts and writing as well as ideas from some of my favorite authors, artists, and musicians. I will also leave you with a printable full of notes, quotes, journal prompts, and some resources for further reflection.

I will be hosting these little retreats inside of my Patreon, and you can access them by simply becoming a Patron at any level for the next three months. Videos will be pre-recorded so you can retreat at any time after they are posted at the beginning of the month. I will have some response questions and a space for discussion on each event page for those who want to go further into dialouge, although this is a completely optional component of the retreat. I do hope to make a space for kindred conversations here.

I truly hope that these retreats will inspire and infuse a sense of wonder and beauty into the lives of all who come through the doors. I hope to meet you inside.

A word about Patreon: When you join, you will also have immediate access to two-years-worth of posts, updates, photos, and sneak-peeks at my personal journals that cannot be found anywhere else online. This is the inside scoop if you want to learn more about me, my creative process, and my ideas in-progress.

And a word about my Patrons: I cannot express to you how much these wonderful friends are changing my life with their support. If you love my blog and want to know how you can help me open up more space in my life to create, Patreon is the way your love can make a tangible impact on my daily life. The truth is this: I could not devote nearly as much time to The Sacred Everyday blog and podcast without the generous support of my Patrons.

Sending love and hope for a place of peace,

Mackenzie