I’ve been at work making early modern Benedictine nun Dame Gertrude More’s writings and spirituality more available since I taught a summer seminar on women mystics and visionaries at Marquette University back in 2017. I’d reached out to her community to see if I could edit and publish her shorter works, and her Poems and Counsels on Prayer and Contemplation came out around the time the pandemic started. Then a couple years later, I wrote a chapter on her for A Benedictine Reader 1530-1930. I’m also at work with a colleague editing her more sustained work, a spiritual diary known as her Confessions.

And so it was with great joy that I visited the community at Stanbrook Abbey for their fourth-centenary celebration this year by offering a couple talks on Dame Gertrude’s teaching on mortification and contemplation last weekend for their community study day. All the sisters made me very welcome, and it was a pleasure getting to walk the Yorkshire gills and hear the offices chanted while getting to know them, some of their oblates, and a variety of visitors. The sandstone outcroppings in the gills were gorgeous. My heartfelt thanks to the whole community at Stanbrook!

Can’t wait to get her bigger work out; will be working on it this winter break. Stay tuned!