Longing for wholeness, or: Letters from with-in.

(Re)Introducing Cloister Notes on Substack.

Welcome to The Cloister.

A place where heart and mind can mingle. Where words create meaning and deepening takes time. Thus The Cloister refers to an interior space, nothing religious really, but still inspired by monastic wisdom, contemplative practice and the Benedictine motto to hold together the love of learning and the desire for God. The latter becomes more and more mysterious to me every day.

I have been always fascinated by monastic places, their sacred architecture, which quietens the soul and sustains the spirit, by their ability to cherish intellectually inquiry as much as spiritual practice and soul care.

“Monastery Stillife.” A view into the city cloister chapel in Berlin, Germany, home to an interdenominational intentional community.

Being trained both a psychologist and a philosopher at German universities I could not get myself to understand how psychology could do without philosophy, and philosophy without theology and theology without therapy.

Bringing together what has been fragmented and splintered and broken in order to heal the divide has been my passion since.

And friends, this divide is a very personal, too. Our mind often says what our heart does not feel and our body feels what the mind does not want to see. We all long for wholeness, when the walls we built around our heart are not needed any longer.

The Cloister is also the extension of www.cloisterseminars.org, where I have been writing the last years, offering retreats and seminars, and also our 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations, our Passion Consolations, the Hildegard Seminar and some more.

With Cloister Notes I hope to create a sanctuary in a loud world, a retreat space for all who need some consolation, and a gathering space for body, soul and spirit.

Thanks for stopping by in this construction zone :-)

With love, Almut

Almut Furchert, Dr. phil., Dipl. Psych. is a German American scholar and practitioner, a psychologist turned philosopher turned writer, traveler, photographer, retreat leader and mother of a toddler. She is also a Benedictine Oblate and lives with her family in a college town in MN.