Weekend Pause: Still, another dawn.
A November photo meditation — and two warm invitations for the season ahead
Dear friend,
November is ceasing and I want to greet you one more time before we enter into the week of Thanksgiving.
This is Cloister Notes, a letter for dancing monks and weary pilgrims, and all who long for a deeper way.
Yesterday I stumbled over some photos from last November. A foggy daybreak accompanied by heartbreak.
Do you remember the morning of Nov 6, 2024?
It was the day after the American election and if you are like me, you have woken up shaken. Shaken by another nightmare unfolding, one that has become our political reality since then.
Now many ask: How can we celebrate Thanksgiving in a time like this, after a year like this?
I hear you, dear one. Sometimes giving thanks needs to first acknowledge the messiness of our life, the pain and tensions we feel. The exhaustion and the flickering hope. The witness of daily cruelty and the courage of the awakening people.
And as November is that threshold month between All Hallows Eve and the Advent journey this letter invites you into two threshold moments also: to look back and to look forward.
The first part of this letter will offer a moment of remembrance, of looking back to the rawness of that November morning burned into our shared memory. Accompanied by soothing pictures, psalmic words and song I hope it will soothe your aching heart also.
The second part invites you to look forward to journeying together with us through the season. We have two events for you coming up at The Cloister:
Our next Moral Monday circle meeting on Dec 8. A small, intimate gathering where we read, reflect, and speak truth together in the spirit of the old East German Friedensgebete — and of the American Moral Mondays movement calling the nation back to justice and courage.
This time we will read and discuss a piece by Anne Applebaum, one of the leading journalist on autocracy. More…Our 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations are coming into their 8th year. We invite you into a contemplative journey to the deeper self. Just like the wise women and men, we will follow the star, from Christmas Day all the way to Epiphany in the new year. This offering especially reaches out to those who carry others through the season — clergy, mamas, counselors, helpers — and to all who long for a deeper, quieter Christmas path. More…
Where ever you are, do enjoy these last November days.
With great love,
Almut with Chuck and Hannah
🍂 Still, another Dawn: November-ness & Remembrance
I woke early on Nov 6, 2024 with a heavy and confused heart.
I went on a long walk into the dawn.
Apparently the world was still standing. Tender light was wanly flickering over the misty waters like the first dawning.
Quiet enveloped my heart, which had run out of words.
Thin, slowly drifting fog was hanging from the trees which had emptied themselves of their leaves just some days ago.
A few ducks were going about their day.
The soft daybreak caressed my anxious heart and filled it with calm.
I am still here, I heard a tender voice whisper. I am still here, right by your side.
“Lord, remember…” is how Psalm 137 starts.
It is a psalm of mourning the loss of the homeland.
It captures the feelings of anger and displacement the Hebrew people felt in the Babylonian exile, but also the hope that God would remember them in their grief and tend to their wounds.
There is a haunting and comforting recording of this psalm by Psalms for the Spirit which you can listen to right here.
“Set during the Babylonian exile,” Kiran Young Wimberly writes in her introduction, “this Psalm mourns what was left behind in the homeland. The refrain, inspired by the traditional song ‘The Emigrant’s Farewell,’ echoes the request that God remember those who grieve and those whose wounds have not yet been healed:”
Don’t forget Lord,
how I grieve,
for my heart has wounds
that have not been healed.
Do not forget, Lord,
remember me.
Take away the grief
that fills my thoughts.
Do remember…
…
Do remember me.
— after Psalm 137
So to all who grieve for a loved one or for their beloved country, and to all who are anxious about the time to come, let us grieve and sigh and hope together.
Let us hold our hearts together, let us cry out together to the one who holds us all.
Do not forget, Lord,
Do remember us.
May it be so,
and may you find comfort,
in your sorrows and in your hopes,
on this way
toward Thanksgiving and the Christmas light.
—Almut
🍁 To Ponder
Where were you on Nov 6, 2024?
How was your heart back then, and how is it today?What gives you hope — and thanksgiving — this November?
🙏
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🕯️ Join Us at The Cloister
» Moral Monday Circle
A small, intimate zoom gathering where we read, reflect, and speak truth together in the spirit of the old East German Friedensgebete — the moral prayers that sustained people through difficult times — and in the spirit of the American Moral Mondays movement calling the nation back to justice and courage.
Next meeting: Monday, December 8, 6:30 pm CT via zoom
Topic: Anne Applebaum’s “History Will Judge the Complicit” (The Atlantic, 2020)
We’ll explore the many ways people become co-opted into supporting systems they privately oppose — and how small accommodations quietly accumulate.
Come whether you’ve read the piece or not. (Reading time is about an hour — it’s beautifully written and gripping — but even if you don’t get to the whole thing, you’ll still be able to join the conversation.)
→ This circle is a small, protected space, so we hold it for paid subscribers who are walking this journey with us more closely. If you’re already a paid subscriber, you’ll see the checkmark — and you’re welcome to register below. If not, you can upgrade first and then join us.
» The 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations
For all who have waited: Yes, we will venture again.
Join us for a contemplative online pilgrimage to the deeper self — from Christmas to Epiphany. Each year we follow the star through these twelve sacred days, opening ourselves to the quiet, the mystery, and the deeper heart of Christmas.
Beware: this is not a pre-packaged retreat. These contemplations arrive one day at a time — sometimes brief, sometimes longer — written fresh as I walk alongside you.
Raw and dusty like the road to Bethlehem, they unfold step by step, never quite knowing the ending, except that it leads us toward the Divine dwelling place.
This offering especially reaches out to those who carry others through the season — clergy, mamas, counselors, helpers — and to all who long for a deeper, quieter Christmas path.
→ To walk the 12 Days with us, and to get on the list, simply become a paid subscriber to Cloister Notes here.
If you’re already on our list (yay!), you’re warmly invited to bring someone along who needs this kind of journey.
And if you’d like to look back, you can (re)visit our 12 Days Archive here.
I am so looking forward to be on the way with you again!
The Saviour Christ, He did't come
to Calvary from humble birth
to set up some grand kingdom
that would stand upon this Earth,
and that has sometimes been forgotten
by the left and by the right
in their spiteful misbegotten
efforts to outshine His light.
We have example to obey
the temporal who rule above,
and our greatest part to play
is that we react with love
to those with whom we disagree,
for they mirror you and me.
Almut, thank you for sharing these beautiful photos. For me, as a caregiver, somtimes even your lovely words cannot weave their way through the chatter going on in my brain about who needs what and when. But these photos, oh my goodness. They invite me into peace, with the sure knowledge that, even if some details have changed, the place on earth in the photos is still there. That holy ground can still be walked today and again tomorrow. God is still there.
Thank you again, Almut, you are a blessing.