I discovered KYO today, the Japanese author of The Unsaid Japan on Substack. I was moved by the first article that I read, and this inspired a binge session that included nearly all of the publication’s posts.

In KYO’s article “How You Move Is Who You Are,” I learned about shosa, “the Japanese understanding that the body is not separate from the mind, and that the way you do small things says everything about how you do everything.”

I have never felt so deeply seen.

Before I continue, did you know that I created an anthology of every article in this Sacred Paris publication? It’s called The Sacred Paris Companion and it can be found here for easy reference:

The Sacred Paris Companion

I’ve spent the last few days back in Paris, after guiding in Sainte Baume, prepping the little sanctuary apartment in the heart of the Marais for my next residency guest. This prep has become one of my new favorite joys of my work, and is reminding me why I loved wedding and event planning so much.

There is a new little silver and glass salière ancienne (salt dish) with a tiny salt spoon on the counter now, it is filled with pure cane sugar for coffee. Three little blue flowered Limoges pitchers have become the newest vases for Viburnum which I carefully selected yesterday at one of my favorite fleuristes (flower shops) - the pitchers my latest score at a brocante (neighborhood flea market). A crystal wine decanter with gold bands has become the perfect welcome water container with an accompanying mix-matched golden drinking glass.

The simple altar on the table holds stacked rocks from a California coast, a feather, rose salt, saffron, holy oil, a coin and a little bit of selenite - this paired with the Buddha sitting above, wrapped in prayer-filled beads and The Prayer of Light.

Today I delighted in a special trip to the Saint Paul marché aux fruit (fruit market) where they know me and offer me a cadeau (gift) of fresh basil or pressed juice when I shop. With my guest in mind I selected an assortment of cherries, peaches, a perfect avocado, Italian cherry tomatoes, the first ornithogale (wild asparagus) of the season, mini concombres (cucumbers), strawberries that I’m still swooning over and a little container of edible flowers.

Everything is careful here. Full of care and presence. On the surface one might think the care was made with extra effort, but today I learned that this depth of care has more to do with my own inner world - and the way I move in the outside one. Actions have resulted in a curated space that reflect my depth of presence as a hostess.

And nothing, absolutely nothing, brings me more joy than to be in my fullest most authentic expression, or shosa, as I prepare this space.

When the wind blows into the apartment you can smell the little herb garden from the terrace as the thyme and rosemary make their way into the space, along with the soft chiming of the Tibetan bells strung just outside the window. Guests are encouraged to gather a little harvest of herbs during their stay - a reminder that even six floors above the urban landscape a garden can thrive and nourish us.

Today I smiled when a bumble bee found the blooming lavender, and I thought to myself there is no better compliment than to attract the bees with your garden. Even in the center of Paris, maybe especially in the center of Paris.

The bookshelf is filled with goodness, enough inspiration to last lifetimes. And there are journals, many new journals, to capture and witness it all.

And hanging from the desk chair, one of the totes from my Ethos Collection that says, “The Art of Holy Wandering.”1

This is sacred hospitality.

This is shosa.

This is the beauty of tending small things well.

I call this four-day residency experience The Soul Residency, and it is for solo traveling women. This residency is available February through April and then again for June through August.

It is the perfect soft landing after a retreat or pilgrimage (especially for women traveling through Paris on their way back from the South exploring the sacred Mary Magdalene sites). It is also a perfect first stop in Paris before heading South.2

This space has held women in transition, women creating or birthing projects and writing books, and women in desire for inspiration and beauty.

My guest today is returning to Paris after a private pilgrimage with me for five days in Sainte Baume last week. She wanted a special place to land before traveling home to California, a place where she could begin to integrate and continue feeling care-fully held.

The Soul Residency is a three-tier offering.

I happily host women who want to stay on their own - this is a self-guided stay. And those who want to be lightly guided - this includes an itinerary and some light accompaniment or support. And women who want to be fully supported and guided with a full itinerary and one-on-one attention. This stay is a decadent, full-of-beauty-and-inspiration experience like no other.

It is a residency with soul, deep soul.

Or as I learned today, shosa.

Shosa is about being present.

To truly master the silence of your heart, you need a space that honors that silence.3

It is my hope that you will find your way to this residency experience, and sanctuary apartment in Paris, if this invitation has found your heart today. Applications are now open for the Summer of 2026 and for the open months in 2027. You can find everything here.

With full presence and a love for hosting,

There is a particular sadness that arrives at the end of every pilgrimage.

It’s not devastation, and it’s not despair.
It feels like something much quieter than that.

It’s a holy ache.

This weekend I left Sainte Baume and returned to Paris after guiding my first two pilgrimages of the season. The mountain is behind me now, the cave, and the tiny winding roads. The cold morning air scented with sweet pine and damp earth. The women, the phenomenal women. The prayers whispered in exhaustion after climbing the steps together. The long silences. The candles. The tears. The morning altar practices, and after dinner circles. The stories entrusted to me in confidence on this incredibly sacred land.

And suddenly I am back in the “top side world” as my teacher calls it, among traffic lights, grocery stores, train announcements, phone notifications, laundry, receipts, and the ordinary choreography of modern life.

Pilgrimage always asks something of us.

But what we speak of less often is what happens after the pilgrimage.

What happens when the sacred intensity softens.
What happens when the body returns before the soul fully does.
What happens when we realize the mountain followed us home.

Pilgrimage does not end when we leave the sacred site.

In many ways, it begins there.

The return home is part of the pilgrimage.
The integration is part of the pilgrimage.
The disorientation is part of the pilgrimage.

Even the strange tenderness we feel while standing in line at Monoprix after praying in a mountain cave devoted to Mary Magdalene is part of the pilgrimage.

Especially that.

Because the real question is never whether we can feel something sacred while walking through ancient forests, entering candlelit chapels, or sleeping beneath monastery bells.

The real question is whether we can carry even a small ember of that awareness back into ordinary life.

Whether the pilgrimage changed the way we touch the world.
Whether we move differently now.
Whether we listen differently now.
Whether we remember.

After pilgrimage, I always resist the urge to rush back into productivity.

The modern world wants immediate conclusions. Immediate transformation. Immediate clarity.

But sacred experiences rarely unfold that way.

Some pilgrimages take years to fully reveal themselves.

I am still integrating things today from pilgrimages I took a decade ago.

A memory returns to me.
A symbol suddenly makes sense.
A grief or other feeling finally surfaces.
A prayer begins quietly answering itself years later.

Pilgrimage works slowly.

Like water carving stone.
Like incense settling into fabric.
Like smoke lingering in our hair long after the fire is gone.

When I return from sacred journeys (especially ones that I have been guiding), I try to protect my nervous system from abrupt reentry.

I walk more slowly for a few days.
I keep music gentle or work in silence.
I avoid over scheduling myself.
I light candles at home in the evening.
I continue sitting in silence at the same hour in the morning that I sat in silence on pilgrimage.

I let the body know that the sacred has not disappeared simply because the geography changed - there is something deeply somatic about tending to the reentry in this way.

Each time I return, I create a small integration altar practice for a few weeks after returning. Today my altar has the following items:

A stone from the path.
And one I have made in the shape of a heart out of the mud from the cave.
A prayer card with Saint Mary Magdalene on it from the gift shop.
A sprig of wild thyme I picked on top of the mountain.
The abbey crypt ticket folded into a journal.
A crystal skull I purchased at the angel store in Saint Maximin.
A green candle burned all the way down.
My blessed Black Madonna on her new handmade wooden stand.

It is a tiny reliquary of remembrance.

This is not an invitation to cling to the experience, but to honor it - deeply.

There is wisdom in ceremony after pilgrimage.

I encourage pilgrims to resist explaining the experience too quickly.

The sacred can become fragile when over narrated too soon.

Some things need silence before we assign words to them. Some things deepen in privacy. Some encounters lose their charge when forced immediately into meaning. This is not a time to be rushed.

There are moments from pilgrimages that I still cannot fully explain, and I love the practice of allowing myself to sit with them rather than to feel any sense of urgency for sense-making.

And perhaps this is why pilgrimage matters so deeply in our modern age.

Because it reminds us that transformation is not always efficient.

That holiness is not measurable.

That the soul does not move at the speed of algorithms, schedules, or productivity culture.

The soul moves like an old river.

Slowly.
Patiently.
Quietly reshaping the land around it.

Tonight, as I return to Paris, I find myself thinking about the women I guided these past two weeks, and I will be thinking about each of them for weeks to come.

About all that was spoken.
And all that was not.

About the invisible interior movements already underway inside each of us.

Pilgrimage leaves traces, sometimes immediately, and sometimes years later.

Sometimes in ways so subtle we only recognize them when we realize we no longer react to life the way we once did.

The sacred rarely shouts, it lingers.

And perhaps this is the final lesson of pilgrimage.

You do not have to remain on the mountain to remain in relationship with the holy.

The cave becomes interior.
The sanctuary becomes interior.
The silence becomes interior.

Eventually, if we tend it gently enough, the pilgrimage itself becomes interior.

And from that moment forward, you carry it everywhere you go.

Some Practices for Deep Pilgrimage Integration

• Keep one small daily ritual from the pilgrimage alive for at least forty days
A candle. A prayer. A morning silence. A specific walk. Let the body remember.

• Create a (temporary) home altar
Include objects gathered or carried during the journey. Allow the pilgrimage to remain physically visible for a while.

• Resist immediate interpretation
You do not need to explain everything you experienced right away. Let mystery mature slowly.

• Protect your nervous system during reentry
Walk slowly. Limit noise. Avoid over scheduling. Drink water. Sleep deeply. Stay close to beauty.

• Journal before speaking
Write privately before sharing publicly. Some sacred experiences need intimacy before articulation.

• Return to one image or sentence each day
A symbol, quote, prayer, or encounter from the pilgrimage can become an anchor for continued transformation.

• Let the pilgrimage alter ordinary life
The true fruit of pilgrimage is not what happened there. It is how you live when you return.

• Revisit the experience seasonally
Some pilgrimages unfold over years. Read your journal again after six months. Then again after one year. Notice what has changed within you.

• Light a candle for the version of yourself who began the journey
Honor her courage. She brought you to the mountain.

• Remember that integration is sacred too
The slow unfolding after pilgrimage is not secondary to the experience. It is part of the path itself.

I will return to Sainte Baume again in September, it is a beautiful time to be on the mountain and walking this sacred land.

If you are feeling called to join me, I will co-create a writing experience called “Writing the Heroine’s Journey” with Catherine Connors the week of September 1-6 and we still have rooms available. You can find the details here.

And, I still have availability for my “Into the Heart of Mary Magdalene” pilgrimages for the weeks of September 8-12 and September 22-26. You can find all of the details for joining me here.

The deadline for joining is June 30th and the Early Bird rates have been extended. This pilgrimage is life-changing, and once-in-a-lifetime. It is deep work that I feel incredibly honored to guide, because the women who say yes are answering their heart callings to walk bravely into the heart of Mary and into the heart of it all.

If this is you, I invite you to take one of the last available rooms in September. If you have questions and would like to have a call or ZOOM, I am here for you.

Gentle re-entry dear ones. Grace to you for your integration. May you feel the charge from the pilgrimage for days to come, and may you carry the sacred within you for all of your days.

With love from the path,

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I’ve entered the season of life that is rarely talked about, outside of cliches and infomercials with anti-aging hacks and midlife crisis hooks. I’m suddenly midway through the decade that brings the enormous gift of wisdom: hard-earned, embodied, lived experience that comes with an incredible amount of confidence. The kind of confidence that stands on its own, for its own sake, a confidence so certain that it just is.

And for a girl who has spent most of her life on a healing journey, this season of confidence is deep medicine.

I am 55 today.

I was born in the early morning hours on a Friday, May 14th in 1971. My spirit chose a rocky entry, and just like Mirabai says so beautifully above: I did not come into this world to be comforted. I was a deep little girl from the beginning, I remember praying and being superstitious at a very young age. I had an altar and daily conversations with God, He was the father I did not have on earth. And…I was brilliant (and still am) at floating out of this human body, and connecting with the Spirit part of me in an instant. A lot of times this was a trauma response, a way to disassociate with a tough reality - I love this about my story.

At seven, in times of terror, I turned to God. Not because someone taught me, or told me this was the right thing to do, but because something in me knew, remembered, and felt this connection deeply.

I came to dance with God.

Over the years this ability to connect to Spirit easily, to be “out of my body,” has served me well in my practices and on my spiritual path. But as I’ve come to know in one of the biggest and most profound lessons in this lifetime: the body is the whole point of being here. I have my beloved teacher Meggan Watterson to thank for teaching me this, and our beloved text the Gospel of Mary.

God has pulled me back into the body over and over again in this lifetime, when I’ve wanted to be floating outside of it - above it, beyond it. This has happened in deep heartbreak, in a decade of loneliness, in the loss of my baby sister, in breast biopsies and surgeries, in the ache I have for my niece, in thyroid cancer…and most recently yet another round of medical surveillance.

Three weeks ago, on the day of my most recent biopsy, I picked the Dove card in Meggan’s deck. It says, “Spirit speaks through the body.”

The day before, I decided I would pick a card every day until the results came. I did this after a deep morning practice of promising that I would surrender all control and trust the outcome.

Just after making this promise I picked the Testimony card which says, “Love is stronger than death.”

The next day I added a bedtime practice of breathing into connecting to angel energy and asking for messages.

This is how my most recent mystical experiences began, with a promise of surrender and an opening to receive messages from angels.

Becoming the sanctuary.

The cards I pulled over the next 13 days (yes, 13) told me a clear story, directly from the angels, and so succinctly that it still has me in awe. On the night that I guided a small circle into Sacré Cœur for our overnight prayers I picked The Eye of the Heart card which reads, “We contain the treasure.” There I was, standing below this magnificent mosaic of Jesus, in the dark candlelit space at 4:30am with the basilica nearly to myself, feeling the truth of this as Jesus stared down at me from above.

On my way home, I took the way through Rue des Rosiers (roses); an ancient street in Le Marais near my apartment. Just as I was turning onto the street something caught my attention in front of a big dark gray door that I walk past a million times. Out on the street, with other discarded things was an old wooden prie dieu, a chair for kneeling in prayer.

I picked it up and carried it home.

The next day: the Angel card, “I have never been alone.”

The following day, I guided a circle of women through my Sacred Waters Walking Ritual and I took the long walk home from Luxembourg Garden back to Le Marais when we finished. As I slipped through one of my favorite little streets with a chanting church and the oldest good luck tree in Paris, I found myself passing a woman in a red dress who was placing the cover on her old typewriter. The typewriter was sitting on a custom wooden stand in front of her with a sign that read: “Ask me for a poem.”

I stopped.

“Are you just beginning? Or are you packing up?” I asked.

“Oh, I was packing up…would you like a poem?”

It was then that I noticed the typewriter case, which was also red. It had the words “May the daring step forward” painted on it.

Her name is Nina Sequoia, she was born in San Francisco to a French father. She lives in Paris and on this day, she typed a poem for me on the spot, in her red dress, on a Saturday in the center of Paris.

I told her she was the daring one.

I arrived in Sainte Baume on the ninth day of waiting for results, after a long day of travel. I settled into my room with a view of Mary Magdalene’s cave on a clear day but it was raining when I arrived. I laid the angel story out on the floor in front of the window, an altar of cards, and I pulled the card for the day.

The Cave, “The sanctuary exists within.”

I stood there, silent tears streaming as I looked at the message from beyond in my human hand. Just then the sunlight made its way through the thick clouds and a perfect rainbow could be seen out my window.

My pilgrimage guests arrived at the Saint Victor Abbey the following day, our first day rendezvous point. We descended to the crypt together and marveled at the light play in the basilica. Just before everyone was ready to leave I spotted a new replica of the precious Black Madonna in the gift shop and was swooning when one of my guests, a sister that has become a dear one to me, noticed. In an instant she offered to buy it for me as a thank you, and I felt my heart dilate to receive this perfect gift. This transaction caught the volunteers in charge of the gift shop at the time off guard, they anxiously searched for a box. We told them that we were in no rush and that we would return after lunch.

Post lunch we wandered back in to a change of the guard, but the volunteer now on duty had been informed and the boxed Madonna was waiting for us.

“Would you like the Madonna to be blessed,” he asked. “The priest is here if so,” he continued.

We looked at each other with a deep knowing of such divine timing and a felt sense of this grace, and we said yes - of course.

The priest arrived, charming and filled with humble but confident authority. He asked me for my name and then prayed over us, me and my new Madonna, asking her to protect me just before he placed his hands on my head with a final blessing.

He waved good-bye and slipped away, leaving us touched and a bit dazed in the ways humans are when grace smiles at them.

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On Friday the results arrived, and so did another perfect card. I pulled the Ascension card on the last day of our pilgrimage. This is the day we hike to the top of the mountain where the angels carried Mary seven times a day to pray. The card says, “Farther up is further in.”

Thirteen days of promised surrender and opening to the mystical. Fifty-five years of descending into the heart over and over and over again.

In this body that is the sanctuary.

The sanctuary that holds the most precious treasure of all, the Holy of the Holies.

I don’t know any better way to celebrate my birthday than with an absolute knowing that we are Love. I am knowing this with a full embrace of grace and humility in this human body that I am so grateful for. The fingers that allow me to type these words, the lips that allow me to speak love, and the heart…the very human, beating heart that can break into a million pieces and still beat, that has the capacity beyond my wildest imagination to love and be Love.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me…your with-ness is a beautiful gift today and always.

With all the Love that I am,

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This is Part VI of the Mary Magdalene in Paris series, you can find Part I here.

I’m typing today’s post from my room at the foot of Mary’s cave in Sainte Baume, there is an extra stillness today because my guests are on their way back home after a profound week together on this sacred land - walking the Magdalene path.

There is a moment when the path becomes personal, deeply personal.

You are no longer only reading about Mary Magdalene, or encountering her in churches and paintings across the city. Something begins to settle more quietly into your own rhythm of attention.

You notice that you are entering spaces differently.

You pause before stepping inside sacred places.
You sit longer than you once would have.
You return to certain churches without needing a reason.

The experience begins to move from observation into relationship.

This is where practice begins.

It is not something you are performing.
It is not ritual for its own sake.

It is repetition infused with pure presence. (And as my dear sister Sandy might say, a presence that has been “charged” with the energy of Mary herself.)

The Magdalene path reveals itself to you through returning again and again.

Through the willingness to remain with what continues to call you. (And oh my goodness do I adore witnessing this call embodied in each woman that I have the great honor of guiding into the heart of it all.)

Over time, the city itself begins to feel like a form of prayer.

In today’s post I’m sharing some of the practices that I return to over and over again as I walk and practice the Magdalene path in Paris.

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Today’s conversation is one I’ve been quietly preparing my heart for.

I’m sitting with someone who has walked closely with death, not as an idea, but as a living companion.

Lisa Goodwin is a writer, a seeker, and a mother. She is the creator of the Rise Well Being Center, a nature centered gathering place devoted to meditation, yoga, and community. After years of living what many would call a healthy life, she was shocked to receive a cancer diagnosis. And from that moment, something changed.

What began as a disruption became a path. A deep and ongoing inquiry into what it means to consciously die, and how to share that with others.

Lisa now leads conversations around death and dying, and writes the Substack In Pursuit of Conscious Living & Dying, where she documents this journey with honesty, clarity, and grace. She is also the mother of three young adults, and tends to a small flock of ducks and geese, which I find quietly perfect.

Lisa and I share a history. We walked together in Sainte Baume, and more recently, she completed the 112 Days of Radiance journey. So this is not just a conversation, it is a continuation of a shared path.

We are both, in different ways, in relationship with cancer. And what has emerged for each of us is not only a confrontation with mortality, but an invitation into presence, into practice, into what it means to live… and to die… well.

This is a conversation about death, yes.

But more than that, it is a conversation about love, attention, and the art of being here while we are here.

If you liked this episode please leave a comment for us, and if you are enjoying the podcast please consider leaving a 5-star review. Every listener matters to us, thank you for being here. If you feel inspired to share the podcast, it will help us to reach more seekers - thank you!

To Connect More Deeply with Lisa:

Lisa’s Substack: In Pursuit of Conscious Living & Dying

To Connect More Deeply with Patricia:

www.sacredparis.com

The Dying Well Journey - tentative details here

www.instagram.com/sacredparis

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sacredparis

Thank you for listening...until next time, may you find the sacred in everything you do.

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This is Part V of the Mary Magdalene in Paris series, you can find Part I here.

There is a particular kind of stillness in museums.

It is different from the stillness of a church. The rhythm changes, and rooms unfold one into another. You move more slowly without deciding to. At a certain point, you stop trying to see everything.

You begin to shift into sensing what is calling to you.

Mary Magdalene is not rare in the art of Paris.

She appears across collections, across centuries, across styles that interpret her in different ways and yet they return to the same essential presence. You begin to recognize her not only by name, but by posture, by gesture, by the quality of attention she holds.

She is often alone.

Seated.
Turned slightly inward.
A candle nearby.
A skull resting within reach.

These elements repeat themselves, they have become a language that has been carried forward through time.

And then, something else begins to happen.

You find yourself standing in front of a work longer than expected. The room fades slightly. Your attention gathers.

You are no longer moving through the museum in the same way.

I’m sharing a small collection of Mary Magdalene in art for the Sunday post today, if you would like the full Mary Magdalene in Paris digital guide you can order it here. All yearly paid subscribers will receive this guide for free in April and May - it’s a beautiful time to upgrade your subscription and join us at the Devotee Altar.

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Oh how I wish this was a secret…because I love this place so much and part of me wants to keep it close. But the truth is the experience is incredibly special, and I couldn’t claim to be sacred Paris without sharing this (their) story with everyone I meet.

There are places in Paris that ask nothing of us except our presence - many sacred places actually (I wrote about this here).

We enter without needing to understand them. Without needing to decide anything. Without needing to become anything other than attentive. And somehow, within moments, we feel the subtle shift of being received.

Received in a way that is increasingly rare.

This is the experience that lives inside Officine Universelle Buly.

There is always a line outside, though that is not what defines it. The line is only the visible edge of something less tangible. People gathering at the entrances, often without fully knowing why they are willing to wait - outside of the viral reels of Influencers telling them that they can get “the most unique Paris souviners here.”

It is only when you finally step inside, that the reason begins to reveal itself.

The light softens against marble and wood. The counters stretch like altars. Glass vessels rest in stillness. And behind them, the attendants move with a calm that feels practiced, almost devotional. They are not there to move you along. They are there to receive you, and this can be felt deeply.

You are looked at.
You are listened to.
You are given time.

And whether you arrive ready to purchase or simply to wander, it does not seem to matter.

This is what struck me most.

The level of investment made in each person who steps inside, without any guarantee of return.

It is rare to encounter a place that offers this level of attention so freely.

The house itself carries a long memory. Founded in 1803 by a perfumer named Jean Vincent Bully, it was once known for scented vinegars believed to purify the skin. The brand disappeared for generations before being brought back to life in 2014 by Ramdane Touhami and Victoire de Taillac, who chose not to modernize it in the expected way, but to deepen it.

They built a world instead of a store.

A world where time expands rather than contracts. Where every object feels considered. Where the smallest gesture carries weight. The handwritten calligraphy on each label, created in front of you, becomes a kind of ceremony. The marble basins evoke something older, something closer to ritual than to retail. Even the silence between exchanges feels intentional.

There is a philosophy beneath all of it, one that reveals itself slowly.

Luxury is experienced here as time.

Time to consider.
Time to feel.
Time to be with what you are choosing, or not choosing.

I have heard it said that if a client leaves with nothing but wonder, the experience has still succeeded.

Standing there, I understood.

I brought one of my residency guests here on an artist’s day, imagining it as a beautiful stop among others, a moment of inspiration in a city that offers so much. We both expected to be delighted.

We did not expect to be changed.

We moved slowly through the space, touching, smelling, watching the quiet choreography unfold around us. At some point, the awareness came that we were not being guided toward a purchase. We were being invited into presence.

It is difficult to describe how disarming that feels.

To be met without pressure.
To be given care without condition.
To be allowed to linger inside an experience that does not ask anything of you in return.

We stayed longer than we planned. We felt ourselves open. And something in the opening touched us deeply.

When we left, we carried more than what was wrapped in paper (the iconic packaging is worth the trip alone).

We carried a feeling.

And perhaps this is why people continue to gather outside.

They are not only waiting for a product. They are waiting for an experience of attention that has become increasingly rare. They are waiting for a place where they are not hurried, not processed, not reduced to a transaction.

They are waiting to be received.

There are places in Paris that still hold this frequency, where beauty is practiced with a kind of reverence, where time is offered rather than taken.

The most beautiful store in Paris is not a store at all.

It is a place where attention is given freely.
Where time is offered.
Where you are received.

And whether you leave with a small glass bottle, a bar of soap, or nothing at all, you do not leave unchanged by the experience.

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Invitation

If you are in Paris, go.

Not to buy anything. Not to check it off a list. Not even to understand it.

Go to feel what happens when attention is offered without urgency.

Go to remember what it is like to be received.

And if you are not in Paris, begin to notice where this quality exists in your own life.

The café that does not rush you. The conversation that lingers. The place where time softens and something in you settles.

These are not small experiences.

They are deeply sacred.

The Details

Because I’m always swooning over every detail, and because my residency guest and I are musing ways to add this level of receiving and care to our own brand experience, I want to share with you the list of details in the experience at Buly that feel very special:

• You are greeted by your own personal shopping assistant when you are ready, and this person stays with you from start to finish. This person is polished, bi-lingual, and incredibly knowledgable: it is here that you first feel the investment Buly has made in each visitor to their stores.

• Each Buly associate has the skill of on-the-spot penned calligraphy. When you make any purchase, they will ask you for your name and pen a personal label for your bag - if you are purchasing gifts these gifts will receive their own personalization.

• Each purchase is packaged by hand: carefully and thoughtfully - in front of you.

• The gold monogram engraving happens on the spot, and these items go into their own velvet envelopes before being packaged.

• Guests receive a scented postcard in the scent that they choose, as a little gift inside the package.

• Packages are not handed to you over the counter, the associate walks to meet you and hands them directly to you.

• You are led to the door when you leave and offered a gracious farewell from there.

Buly may seem like the best place to purchase “the most unique Paris souvenir,” on the surface, but the real souvenir is one that opens your heart to be received in a way that is incredibly rare these days - and deeply sacred.

If you’ve been to Buly, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you are planning a visit to Paris, I invite you to treat yourself with a visit.

With all that is sacred,

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Something happens just inside of a sacred space.

It is so subtle that it can be missed entirely, and yet the body always registers it. You step in from the street, from movement and noise and the quiet urgency of the day, and something begins to shift before you have even chosen a place to sit.

Your pace changes.
Your breath deepens, almost without effort.
Your voice lowers, or disappears.

Even the way you hold yourself softens, as though the space is asking less of you.

I have watched this happen countless times in Paris and in Sainte Baume. Women arrive carrying what cannot be seen, the accumulation of decisions, responsibilities, unspoken tensions, the steady rhythm of a life that rarely pauses. And then they cross a threshold, sometimes with intention, sometimes simply because the door is open, and their bodies begin to respond in ways they cannot quite explain.

This is not imagined.

Sacred spaces have always been designed to regulate the human system, whether or not we use that language to describe them.

The high ceilings draw the gaze upward, lengthening the spine and opening the chest. The softened light quiets the eyes and invites a different kind of seeing. The stillness offers a rare signal that nothing is required of you in this moment, that you are not being watched, measured, or asked to produce anything at all.

Something in the body recognizes this immediately.

And, it begins to release its grip.

Long before we spoke about the nervous system, we built places that could hold us. Places where sound carried differently, where silence was not empty but full, where time seemed to expand just enough for a person to arrive within themselves.

You do not need to believe in anything for this to work.

The body responds to space, to rhythm, to light, to the absence of constant stimulation. It responds to being given permission to stop.

And for many women, this permission feels unfamiliar at first.

There is often a restlessness in the beginning (I’ve seen this in countless yoga classes I’ve taught over the years too, when savasana arrives: that soft resistance to stillness). A subtle pull toward distraction, toward movement, toward doing something that justifies being there. The body, accustomed to constant input, does not immediately trust the stillness.

And yet, if you remain, something begins to unwind.

The breath settles into a slower rhythm.
The shoulders soften without being asked.

The mind, which was moving quickly only moments before, begins to quiet, or to stretch into longer, more spacious thoughts.

This is what regulation feels like when it is allowed rather than forced.

In a world that asks so much of our attention, sacred spaces offer something increasingly rare. They offer a place where nothing is required of you.

You do not need to perform.
You do not need to explain yourself.

You can simply sit, and in sitting, begin to feel what has been held beneath the surface of your life.

This is why people are drawn to these places, even if they would not call themselves religious, even if they are unsure what they believe.

They are responding to something deeper than belief.

They are responding to relief.

In Paris, this becomes part of the rhythm of the city, if you allow it. A church is never far. A chapel appears between shops, behind a quiet courtyard, at the end of a street you almost did not take. You can step inside for five minutes, or for longer, and the effect begins the same way. The world does not disappear, but it loosens its grip.

You begin to remember what it feels like to be inside your own body, rather than moving quickly through it.

This is not something reserved for a retreat or a distant journey.

It is available, in different forms, wherever you are.

A quiet room.

A place you return to.

A moment of stillness created intentionally in the middle of an ordinary day.

What matters is not the scale of the space, but the quality of your presence within it.

And yet, there is something undeniably powerful about places that have been held in devotion for centuries. Places where people have come again and again to pray, to grieve, to hope, to sit in silence when there were no answers. That accumulation of attention leaves a trace.

You can feel it, even if you cannot explain it.

When I guide women through Paris, I am not asking them to understand these spaces. I am asking them to experience them.

To notice what happens in their bodies.
To stay a few moments longer than they normally would.
To let the space do what it has always done.

And often, without effort, something begins to soften. Not because anything has been solved, but because the body has been given a brief return to safety.

This is what so many people are searching for, often without knowing it.

Not more information.

Not more stimulation.

But a place where the nervous system can exhale.

And once you feel this, even once, you begin to seek it differently.

You begin to choose spaces, rhythms, and moments that support this kind of presence.

You begin to understand that the way you move through the world is not fixed.

It can be softened.
It can be slowed.

It can be returned, again and again, to a place that feels steady and whole.

And over time, you may notice something even more subtle.

That the space you once needed to enter is beginning to form within you.

A quiet interior place you can return to, no matter where you are.

A place that feels, in the deepest sense, like home.

A Quiet Way to Begin

The next time you pass a church, or any space that feels set apart from the rhythm of the day, step inside for a few minutes.

Do not try to understand what you are feeling.

Simply sit.

Let your breath settle.

Let your body arrive.

Stay a little longer than is comfortable.

That is often where something begins…

Follow the curiosity.

Thank you for being here with me.

With all that is sacred,

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This is Part IV of the Mary Magdalene in Paris series, you can find Part I here.

Mary Magdalene is not hidden in Paris - she is everywhere.

She is named, depicted, and given space across the city. There are chapels dedicated to Sainte Madeleine. She appears in the Stations of the Cross in church after church, again and again at the foot of the crucifixion, witnessing, refusing to turn away. Her image is carried through sculpture, painting, stained glass, and side chapels, placed with intention across centuries.

It is impossible, especially as a devotee of the Magdalene, to visit Paris and not see her (and feel her) here.

And still, certain places draw you more closely.

There are churches you visit once.

And there are others you return to, because they call to your heart.

You step inside, and something in the space asks you to remain. The light falls in a particular way. A figure holds your attention longer than expected. The silence gathers and begins to feel inhabited.

Over time, a quieter map forms.

Not one you plan, but one you recognize through returning.

This is where the Magdalene begins to take form more distinctly in the city, and this is the map that I follow now and guide seekers with when they visit Paris.

I’m sharing some highlights from this map in the Sunday post today, if you would like the full Mary Magdalene in Paris digital guide you can order it here. All yearly paid subscribers will receive this guide for free in April and May - it’s a beautiful time to upgrade your subscription and join us at the Devotee Altar.

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There is a quiet movement happening (I’ve been calling it a “swell” for the last few years), it is not organized, not announced, not led from any pulpit or platform.

Yet it can be felt deeply in the hinterlands (I love this word, my teacher Gillian uses it all the time and each time she does I smile) of the feminine, and in the sacred spaces and places where the heart lives and serves.

It happens in side chapels and candlelit corners. It happens in the pause before a woman lights a votive and does not quite know why she feels moved to do so. It happens in the way she lingers before an image, not out of obligation, but because something in her recognizes something there.

It is happening in circles of women all over the world.

I see it often in my work.

A woman will enter a church with curiosity, or sometimes with hesitation (so many of the women I guide are healing from a church that no longer serves them), unsure of what she believes or whether she belongs. She will walk slowly, taking in the space, the architecture, the silence. And then, almost without fail, she will find her way to Mary.

She may not call her that, although most women I guide do.

She may not know the prayers, although most women I guide do.

She may not identify as religious in any formal sense.

But she will stand there, or sit, or soften in a way she did not expect.

And something opens - every single time.

This is not about doctrine or dogma.

It is not about returning to an institution, or reclaiming a set of beliefs handed down through authority. (If you know me, then you know I have a strong feeling about any authority outside of our own.)

It is something far more intimate than that.

It is a return to a presence.

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For many women, the Church has not felt like a place where they could fully see themselves. The language, the hierarchy, the history, all of it has created a distance that is difficult to bridge. Even for those who grew up within it, there can be a quiet dissonance, a sense that something essential was missing, or perhaps never spoken in a way that could be received.

And yet, within those same walls, Mary remains.

Not as an argument.

Not as a system.

But as a figure who is encountered rather than explained.

She is not asking to be understood.

She is felt.

In Paris, she appears again and again, sometimes in grand altars, sometimes in small, almost hidden spaces that feel more like a whisper than a declaration. You find her in the softness of a painted face, in the curve of a hand, in the way she is often slightly turned, as though listening as much as offering.

She does not rush.

She does not instruct.

She does not demand agreement.

There is a kind of spaciousness around her, a sense that you are allowed to arrive exactly as you are, without needing to resolve what you believe before you step closer.

This is part of what draws women back - radical acceptance.

Not to the structure that has been difficult to climb inside of for many of us, but to the space she holds (and has held from the beginning) within it.

There is something deeply regulating about her presence, something that the body recognizes even when the mind remains uncertain. A gentleness that does not feel weak, a strength that does not need to assert itself, a quiet authority that comes from within rather than above.

For women who have spent much of their lives navigating expectation, performance, and the subtle pressures of being seen or not seen, this can feel like a return to something long forgotten.

A way of being that is not defined by role or requirement.

A way of being that simply is.

Mary does not need you to believe in her in order to meet her.

She meets you in the act of pausing.

In the act of sitting.

In the act of allowing yourself, even briefly, to be held in a gaze that isn’t judgmental or distant.

This is not something that can be easily translated into language, and perhaps that is part of its power.

It remains experiential.

It remains personal.

It is deeply, deeply intimate.

It resists being turned into something that can be debated or categorized.

And so women return to her, quietly, often without speaking about it, often without fully understanding why.

They return because something in them feels seen.

They return because something in them feels soothed.

They return because something in them feels remembered.

There is also, beneath the surface, a deeper current moving through this return.

A longing for the feminine to be present in spiritual life in a way that is not symbolic or secondary, but embodied and accessible.

Mary offers this as a lived presence that has been carried, depicted, and returned to across centuries. She has been prayed to, wept before, confided in, and quietly trusted in moments when there were no words left.

That accumulation of devotion does not disappear.

It remains in the spaces where she is honored, creating a field that can be felt even by those who arrive without context.

You do not need to know the history to feel it.

You only need to stay long enough to notice what is happening within you.

When I guide women through Paris, I do not ask them to adopt anything or to step into a belief that is not their own. I simply invite them to notice where they feel something.

And more often than not, they feel something in her presence.

It may be subtle.

It may be immediate.

It may unfold slowly over the course of days.

But it is there.

And once it is felt, it is rarely forgotten.

This is why the return is happening in this way, outside of structures, outside of declarations, outside of anything that would make it easily visible.

It is happening through experience.

Through the body.

Through quiet moments that do not announce themselves as significant, and yet carry a depth that lingers.

You do not need to choose between belief and distance.

You do not need to resolve your relationship with the Church in order to encounter what still lives within it.

You can step inside, find your way to her, and sit.

You can light a candle without knowing the prayer.

You can remain in the presence of something that feels both ancient and immediate.

And in that moment, something may meet you.

Not as instruction.

Not as doctrine.

But as a quiet recognition.

A sense that the feminine has never been absent.

Only, at times, harder to see.

And now, perhaps, easier to feel.

If you are a woman returning to Mary, or feeling the call to return to your heart, to the knowing that you are Love, and to your own authority, I hope you can see yourself in this post today - and feel the truth of it resonating in your bones.

It has been the honor of my life to guide women into the heart of Mary and into the heart of it all. For many of us she is the embodiment of a love that only expands (as Meggan Watterson says), and of her gospel which teaches that YOU are this Love.

It would mean a lot to me if you would share this post with one sister whom you love and whom you know will see herself in this post too. Together we are expanding our circle and awareness in this great return and re-membering. It takes all sisters in their hearts to spread the message of Love.

And, I invite you to join the Sacred Paris Devotee Altar too. This is the circle of generous patrons who inspire me to keep writing and sharing my wisdom so generously - the monthly subscription is less than a coffee these days, and all Founding Members are gifted a tote from the Ethos Collection…which makes the perfect carry-all for your Mary things!

Thank you for being here with me. Tell me how this post landed for you in the comments below or send me a personal reply.

With a love that only expands,

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There is a difference between knowing what we believe and knowing how we live.

For several years now, Sacred Paris has been guided by a phrase that came to me not as a concept, but as a recognition: The Art of Holy Wandering. It has never referred to wandering as escape or consumption, but as a way of moving through the world with reverence, attention, and inner listening.

At first, it lived primarily as an ethos. It shaped how I approached travel, place, and pilgrimage. Over time, however, something began to shift. What once felt like a guiding philosophy started asking to become a lived rhythm, something practiced through the body rather than named through language. This feels like the work of 2026: a movement from ethos to embodiment.

Holy Wandering was never truly about Paris. Paris has simply been a willing teacher. Sacred places, when met with care, do not exist to entertain us. They orient us. They reveal how we move through life, where we rush, where we brace, where we soften, and where we resist being held.

What I have observed, both in myself and in those I walk with, is that most of us already know how to wander. What we do not always know is how to arrive, how to stay, and how to live afterwards. We move beautifully, and then we exhaust ourselves. We touch something sacred, and then we struggle to integrate it. We feel changed, but we do not always know how to carry that change back into ordinary life. This is not a failure of devotion; it is simply an incomplete arc.

Over time, a quiet rhythm began to reveal itself through the work. Not through strategic planning, but through repetition and listening, a pattern emerged with three distinct movements: movement, vigil, and embodiment.

Sacred Waters has always taught us how to move. Through walking, ritual, and flow, it shows the body how to arrive. It softens urgency, regulates the nervous system, and helps shift us from tourist consciousness into a pilgrim’s pace.

The Night of Adoration has taught us how to stay. It is a practice of stillness, of keeping vigil without performance, of allowing silence to work on us rather than rushing past it. Here, wandering becomes devotion.

What has been asking to be named now is a third movement. Not another experience, but an integration. A way of living after the walking and the vigil are complete.

Much spiritual travel ends at the peak moment, at beauty, silence, or awe. Life, however, always waits on the other side. Responsibilities return. Relationships resume. Grief, work, and ordinary choices reappear. The question that has stayed with me is simple: how do we live after we have touched something sacred?

Not how we remember it or speak about it, but how we embody it.

The answer that continues to emerge is that we must learn how to live with two inner capacities open at once. Strength and softness. Endurance and tenderness. Witnessing and receptivity. Most of us have learned one well and mistrust the other. We know how to endure, but struggle to soften without collapsing. Or we know how to feel deeply, but find it difficult to remain present under weight. Sacred places do not ask us to choose between these capacities. They invite us to integrate them.

This year feels less concerned with expansion and more devoted to deepening. It is less about adding offerings and more about naming what has already been true. The Art of Holy Wandering is no longer only a way of traveling through Paris; it is becoming a way of living.

If 2025 was a year of revelation, then 2026 feels like a year of embodiment, of allowing the body to catch up to what the soul already knows.

As the year unfolds, you may notice a subtle shift in the language here. There may be less explanation and more space, not because there is less to say, but because some things are better lived than taught.

If you are walking with Sacred Paris this year, know this: you are not here to collect experiences. You are here to remember how to live. That remembering happens slowly, quietly, and through the body.

This is the work now.

With an embodiment and deep reverence of and for the sacred,

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This is Part III of the Mary Magdalene in Paris series, you can find Part I here.

There is a way of moving through Paris that is shaped by the attention that you give to it. I’ve learned this very naturally living in the city for many years; when I arrived I didn’t give the same things that matter to me today the attention I walk with now.

It’s true that where you place your attention, you are met.

You can walk past a church and continue without entering. You can step inside, take in the space quickly, and leave again with little impression beyond what you have seen. The city allows for this, it offers itself generously, without asking anything in return.

Another way of moving begins more quietly - this is the true luxury I’ve been able to steep myself in over time.

It begins when you notice that not all spaces feel the same. Some places hold a different quality of presence. Some thresholds invite you to pause before crossing. You begin to sense that entering is not only physical. It asks for a shift in how you arrive. And it can be felt deeply

Paris, approached in this way, reveals itself as a landscape of interior experience.

Within that landscape, Mary Magdalene begins to emerge.

She is not difficult to find in Paris.

Her name appears in chapels dedicated to Sainte Madeleine. Her presence is woven into the Stations of the Cross in church after church, where she remains at the foot of the crucifixion, witnessing, refusing to turn away. She is painted, sculpted, and placed with intention across the city.

And still, there are moments where she is encountered before she is recognized.

There are gestures that begin to repeat themselves once you are attuned to them.

A hand resting near the heart.

A figure set slightly apart.

A face illuminated by a single source of light.

These gestures belong to a visual language carried through centuries of art and devotion.

What begins to unfold from here is less about locating her, and more about recognizing the spaces where her presence becomes perceptible.

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There is a kind of money that does not ask for a return.

It does not request metrics or ownership or proof of scalability. It does not need to be blessed by an institution or translated into tax language. It moves quietly, relationally, often without witnesses. It exists not to grow something fast, but to help something meaningful continue.

Historically, this money had a name.

Patronage.

Before philanthropy became institutional and before funding required frameworks and reporting cycles, patronage sustained the things a culture could not afford to lose. Artists. Writers. Mystics. Monasteries. Cathedrals. Schools of thought. Places of beauty. Places of prayer.

Patronage was not an investment.

It did not require ROI.

It was not transactional.

It was devotional.

A patron did not ask, “What do I get?”

They asked, “What must exist?”

And then they helped it exist.

This money moved through relationship, trust, and recognition. It was often discreet. Sometimes anonymous. Sometimes deeply personal. It flowed because the patron knew the work, knew the steward, or recognized the value of what was being protected.

Donation culture as we know it now, especially in the United States, is different. It is largely institutional. Structured. Codified. Administered. It often requires language of outcomes, impact, and justification. There is nothing wrong with this. Many important works depend on it.

But it is not the only economy available to us.

Patronage operates according to a different logic. It does not seek to steer or influence. It does not require visibility or recognition. It does not need to be optimized. It is not interested in extraction. It is interested in continuity.

It asks not whether something will scale, but whether it should endure.

Over time, I’ve come to recognize that this economy still exists, quietly, everywhere. In the way people support teachers whose work has shaped them. In the way cultural institutions are sustained not only by ticket sales, but by those who believe beauty and memory are worth protecting. In the way offerings are left in churches, not out of obligation, but out of reverence for what is being held there.

This is not naïve money.

It is not careless.

It is discerning.

It chooses carefully where it goes. It understands that some work cannot survive on commerce alone. That some cultural and spiritual labor must be protected from constant justification in order to remain true.

Devotional money does not want to manage or measure. It does not require influence. It does not demand proof beyond its own recognition.

It simply says, this matters.

In a world increasingly shaped by efficiency and extraction, this older economy can feel almost invisible. And yet it continues to surface wherever people feel responsibility for what they love, and for what they do not want to see disappear.

It is older than capitalism.

Older than philanthropy.

Older than the language we now use to justify care.

And it is still alive.

A Quiet Pause

Before moving on, it can be enough to stop here for a moment.

Not to decide anything.
Not to act.
Just to notice.

Sometimes naming an economy is enough to recognize that you have already been living inside it.

A Few Questions to Sit With

You might take these questions into a walk, a journal, a quiet café table, or simply let them hover.

• Where in my life have I given support without expecting anything in return?

• What work, place, or person do I already support devotionally, simply because it matters to me?

• When have I been held by someone else’s generosity without fully realizing it at the time?

• What do I believe should exist even if it never scales, optimizes, or proves itself?

• Which kinds of beauty, culture, or wisdom do I fear might disappear without quiet protection?

• How do I personally relate to money, as transaction, as gratitude, as responsibility, as care?

• What changes in me when money is offered as recognition rather than exchange?

• If I trusted my discernment completely, where would I choose to place my support?

• What does stewardship mean to me, not as ownership, but as attention and care?

• Is there a different economy already operating in my life that I’ve never named before?

I find myself having lived inside of this economy most of my life; both as a patron and as a recipient of beautiful patronage. This is often the story of writers, of teachers, of healers and of guides.

Since creating this Sacred Paris Substack space a little more than a year ago, I’ve been witnessing the way that my heart supports writers here: it is often a full body yes, an instant heart decision, an irrational pull to support their words and their deep work - and it lives in the realm of not needing any extrinsic return. The feeling of patroness is enough.

Nearly seventy of you in my community are patrons of my work.

Something inspired you to become a “paid subscriber” (the economy that Substack uses). Ten of you are Founding Members or “Devotees” of my work. I honor each one of you by name, energy and lighting of candles right here on our Devotee Altar.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. From the depths of my heart and the fullness of my practice as a writer that is inspired to keep writing because of you, thank you.

If you are here fully, inspired by what I share, and finding yourself inside this post in a resonate way, I humbly invite you to consider becoming a patron of my work. Not because of the list of things I promise to give you in return (although the list is indeed beautiful, I think), but because you are a patron and you care deeply about supporting work that aligns with your values and creates beauty and healing in the world. Because your patronage is the way you tend to your spirit and the sacred in all things…

Today is a beautiful day to join me in this deeper way.

Thank you for being here with me, I love that we are walking this path together.

With all that is sacred,

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Anaïs Nin did not sit at a desk waiting for life to arrive.

She moved.
She wandered.
She listened.
She lived.

And, Paris met her in motion, like it does for so many of us.

I spent last week fully immersed in guiding a private residency guest in the Sacred Paris sanctuary apartment that I offer to solo traveling women from April through August. Her intention for this fully guided visit and four-day stay was to experience beauty, and to be moved deeply to create beauty in all aspects of her own life, more deeply.

I’ve been thinking about how niched my work is, and about how beautifully Paris holds it. I walk deeply, and I notice everything which usually means that I walk with my heart wide open and I feel everything.

I am not the first one to inhabit Paris this way, as a matter of fact many muses that I look to for my own creativity have found a muse in Paris in the past - so many famous writers, poets and artists have walked the streets that I now walk deeply and heart wide open.

Anaïs Nin is one of these writers.

Born just beyond the city, and later returning as a young woman in the 1930s, Anaïs Nin found in Paris a place that did not demand conclusions. It offered rooms, streets, cafés, bridges, notebooks, and time. Time enough to feel. Time enough to follow sensation inward. Time enough to let the inner life become visible.

Paris was not her subject.
It was her container.

Paris understood this instinctively.

Anaïs Nin walked to write. She listened to conversations she was not meant to join. She crossed bridges without hurry. She allowed experience to shape language before language tried to shape experience.

Her days in Paris were not optimized. They were inhabited.

Ideas arrived while walking the Left Bank, while sitting in cafés in Saint Germain des Prés, while returning by train to her house in Louveciennes. Writing was not separate from living, it was an extension of it.

Paris gave her permission to let life speak first.

Paris became her mirror.

What Anaïs Nin saw in Paris was not objective beauty or history, but psychological truth. The city reflected her inner weather. Its rooms held her moods. Its streets absorbed her longings.

Paris did not correct her perception, it honored it.

This was crucial for a woman whose work insisted that subjectivity was not a flaw, but a form of wisdom.

Her diaries, written largely in and around Paris, were not records. They were rituals.

Anaïs Nin wrote not to document life, but to metabolize it. To feel it fully, then feel it again through reflection. Writing was not escape. It was intimacy.

Paris supported this doubling.

The city allowed her to live richly, then return to those moments in solitude, tasting them again in language. The cafés fed experience. The quiet rooms fed remembrance.

Paris was where blossoming became unavoidable.

Here, Anaïs Nin crossed thresholds that could not be uncrossed. Creative, erotic, psychological. Paris did not force these awakenings, but it made them possible.

The city did not flinch when she changed.

Paris has always been generous with those who dare to unfold.

Anaïs Nin went deep, and Paris did not ask her to surface too quickly.

Her work dove into the emotional, erotic, and symbolic depths at a time when women were expected to remain legible and contained. Paris held the waters steady.

This was not indulgence.
It was devotion to depth.

Paris offered her enough anonymity, enough permission, enough space to live beneath the surface.

Anaïs Nin’s Paris was not tourism. It was inner migration.

She traveled not to accumulate sights, but to encounter different selves. Paris became a passage between inner states, a city that allowed multiplicity without demand for resolution.

To walk Paris with Anaïs Nin is to understand travel as transformation, not escape.

This sentence feels earned.

Anaïs Nin lived deeply because she listened deeply. Because she refused to flatten experience. Because she trusted the inner life as something sacred.

Paris taught her how to live.

A Sacred Paris Walk with Anaïs Nin

Begin in Saint Germain des Prés.

Walk without agenda. Let the city touch you. Notice what stirs, what resists, what longs.

Cross the river slowly.

Sit somewhere quiet. Write one page without editing. Not what happened, but what moved beneath what happened.

This is not performance, there is no “doing” here.

This is presence: deep, full, and still presence.

Mantra

I choose depth.
My inner life is enough.

A Playlist for Anaïs Nin in Paris

Music for walking, writing, and listening inward.

A well-loved copy of Anaïs Nin’s diary sits on the shelf in the Sacred Paris sanctuary apartment. A space which has held me through many profound seasons of my life, in a city that helps us remember. I found this copy at Shakespeare and Company while hosting beloved Alexandra Roxo during her own residency in this space several years ago.

Anaïs Nin reminds us that Paris does not ask us to arrive fully formed. It invites us to walk, to feel, to risk blossoming in real time. (Which is often messy and requires incredible courage.)

She teaches us that living deeply is not dramatic. It is attentive. Courageous. Quietly radical.

Paris still welcomes those willing to live this way.

And she always will.

With the love of Anaïs Nin from Paris,

Are you feeling called to take time to tend to your soul in the City of Light? Applications are now open for private residency guests for May, June, July and August of 2026. These four-day stays can be self guided or fully guided - join me in Paris for The Soul Residency.

A question to ponder today: What am I doing to tend to the voice of my soul?

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“After the Ascension, Mary Magdalene, with Lazarus and Martha, was set adrift… and came at last to the shores of Provence.”- The Golden Legend

There are places in the world where a story settles into the land itself, the land becomes legendary.

The story is carried forward because it has been lived with, walked, and returned to for centuries. (Oh how I love this about the Mary story in France.)

The story of Mary Magdalene in France is this kind of remembering.

What follows is the landscape where her story took root, and where devotion to her has been carried forward across generations. Despite the recent swell in awareness and calling to visit these lands, the legend is an old one and the path and sites have been beloved pilgrimage to the French for centuries.

I’m sharing this original story and the history of Mary Magdalene in France in today’s Sunday series post, as well as a reading list to support further curiosity - this is the natural starting place in this series before we explore the Magdalene in Paris.

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My name is Patricia and I am an American from Sausalito, California, living in Paris with my French husband. My love affair with the City of Light began nearly twenty years ago, and I’ve been a Parisian for almost nine. Last year I created Sacred Paris, an official French company that holds all of the offerings that I feel honored to steward.

The truth is, I’ve been living in Paris as a pilgrim for many years. Walking lightly. In search of the deeper, more hidden stories. And it is an absolute delight to share my discoveries with you, and to guide you in person when you visit.

Today’s post is an example of one of these discoveries…

Paris hides many quiet lines. (If you are interested in learning more about ley lines, I invite you to listen to this Sacred Paris Podcast episode with Ani Williams.)

Some are streets.
Some are rivers.
Some are invisible.

And some run silently beneath our feet.

You may have stepped on one without noticing - a small bronze disk embedded in the pavement, stamped with a single word: ARAGO

A compass rose.

Two small letters: N and S.

These medallions trace an invisible axis running north to south across the city.

A line that once measured the world.

A line some now call The Rose Line.

When Paris Was the Center of the World

In the seventeenth century, France decided to measure the Earth.

In 1667, the Paris Observatory was built under the authority of Louis XIV. Astronomers there established a reference line running through the observatory from north to south.

This became the Paris Meridian.

From this axis, French scientists mapped the country and calculated longitude. For nearly two centuries, it functioned as the prime meridian of France.

The great astronomers of the Académie des Sciences used it to create the first precise map of the kingdom.

At that time, Paris quite literally sat at the center of the world’s measurements.

In 1884, an international conference chose Greenwich as the global prime meridian. France reluctantly adopted the change years later.

But the Paris line never disappeared.

It still runs through the city today.

Invisible.

Unmoving.

The Arago Medallions

In 1994, Dutch conceptual artist Jan Dibbets created a quiet memorial to the line.

He installed 135 bronze medallions across Paris marking the meridian’s path.

Each bears the name Arago, honoring the astronomer François Arago, former director of the Paris Observatory.

The disks are small and easy to miss.

But once you see one, you start noticing them everywhere.

They appear in unexpected places:

• near the Louvre

• in the Luxembourg Gardens

• beside the Palais Royal

• around the Paris Observatory

They form a quiet constellation across the city.

A breadcrumb trail for those who know how to look.

The Legend of the Rose Line

The name Rose Line is not historical.

It emerged in modern storytelling and esoteric speculation.

Yet the symbolism resonates deeply with older traditions.

The rose has long been a symbol of hidden knowledge.

In Christian mysticism it appears in cathedral rose windows. In medieval symbolism it represents unfolding divine mystery. In esoteric traditions it suggests secrecy - knowledge held sub rosa, beneath the rose.

Paris itself is filled with rose imagery.

The rose windows of Notre Dame Cathedral are among the most famous in the world.

And the rose has long been associated with the sacred feminine, devotion, and revelation.

It is not difficult to see why people began calling this hidden axis the Rose Line.

A meridian is a vertical spine.

An axis connecting heaven and earth.

And Paris has always been a city of hidden alignments.

Mary Magdalene and the Rose

For some pilgrims and seekers, the symbolism goes even further.

In modern Magdalene spirituality, the rose is often associated with Mary Magdalene - a symbol of divine love, wisdom, and the unfolding heart.

France itself carries many Magdalene traditions, especially in Provence, where medieval legends say she arrived after the resurrection.

While there is no historical evidence linking the Paris Meridian to Magdalene devotion, the symbolism feels strangely fitting.

A hidden line.
A quiet path.

A thread running through the city for those who walk with attention.

For modern pilgrims, the Rose Line becomes less about geography and more about attunement.

An invitation to notice what lies beneath the surface.

The Saint Sulpice Confusion

One place often associated with the Rose Line is Saint Sulpice Church.

Inside the church is a brass meridian line running across the floor toward a tall marble obelisk.

But this line has nothing to do with the Paris Meridian.

It is an eighteenth-century astronomical instrument called a gnomon, designed to track the sun and determine the exact date of Easter.

When sunlight enters through a small window, it travels along the brass line to the obelisk.

A beautiful scientific instrument.

But not the Rose Line.

Still, the confusion has added another layer of legend to the story.

And legends have always loved Paris.

Walking the Meridian

The full meridian line crosses Paris from north to south.

Roughly 10 kilometers.

From the hills near Montmartre to the parks of southern Paris.

If you trace the medallions, you pass through places like: Montmartre, the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Paris Observatory, and Parc Montsouris.

Some medallions have disappeared.

Others remain exactly where they were placed thirty years ago.

Together they form a quiet pilgrimage route.

One that most Parisians walk over without ever noticing.

A Sacred Paris Walk

If you want to experience the Rose Line for yourself, begin with this small path:

1. Montmartre - Avenue Junot

2. Palais Royal

3. Louvre Cour Napoléon

4. Luxembourg Gardens

5. Paris Observatory

6. Parc Montsouris

It is less about finding every medallion and more about following the invisible axis.

Walking north to south.

Or south to north.

Like a quiet thread through the city.

Standing on the Line

Next time you see a small bronze disk stamped ARAGO, pause.

Stand on it.
Face north.
Then south.

Once this line measured the world.

Astronomers traced it to understand the shape of the Earth and the movement of the heavens. Now it remains only as small markers beneath our feet.

I have come to realize, the most interesting structures in Paris are the ones you cannot see.

The invisible ones.
The quiet lines.
The hidden axes.

The ones waiting for someone curious enough to follow them.

I am that someone.

With curiosity from Paris,

Original Arago Medallion Locations (selected archive list)

The medallions were installed along the Paris Meridian through several arrondissements.

18th arrondissement

• Avenue de la Porte de Montmartre

• Avenue Junot

• Rue Norvins

• Rue Lepic

9th arrondissement

• Boulevard de Clichy

• Rue Pigalle

• Rue Dupéré

• Boulevard Haussmann

2nd arrondissement

• Rue du 4 Septembre

1st arrondissement

• Rue de Richelieu

• Palais Royal galleries

• Place Colette

• Rue de Rivoli

• Louvre Cour Napoléon

6th arrondissement

• Quai des Saints Pères

• Quai Conti

• Rue de Seine

• Boulevard Saint-Germain

• Luxembourg Gardens

• Avenue de l’Observatoire

14th arrondissement

• Paris Observatory

• Boulevard Arago

• Place Denfert-Rochereau

• Parc Montsouris

Originally 135 medallions marked the line across Paris, though some have disappeared over time.

Finding them has become something of a treasure hunt for urban wanderers.

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I write a lot about Mary Magdalene. There is a swell in the collective around her energy, and she is deeply connected to France and my work here in Paris. I’ve shared my thoughts about her gospel, her healing, and the shadows, archetypes and distortions.

There are names in history that don’t stay in the past.

They move differently. They follow you. They appear again and again, in paintings, in quiet corners of churches, in the gaze of a woman you cannot quite forget.

Mary Magdalene is one of those names.

I didn’t come to Paris looking for her, she actually guided me to her path well after I settled here. Over time, I began to notice that she was here. At first it seemed that she was not always named, and not always obvious, yet present in a way that felt both subtle and unmistakable. I began to feel her in the curve of a figure carved into stone. In the stillness of a chapel at mid-afternoon. In the particular kind of silence that asks something of you.

And then suddenly, in the last few years, stepping into my role as steward of Sacred Paris, I see her everywhere!

This series, The Magdalene Path in Paris: Where to Find Her, is a seven-part journey through the city, moving from history and legend into lived experience. Together, we will follow her through France, into Paris, and into the places where she can still be felt, in churches, in museums, and in the quieter, more hidden layers of the city.

The 7-Parts of This Series
Journey with me each Sunday into Paris as we explore the story and love of Mary Magdalene in France.

Part I - The Woman Behind the Veil
Restoring Mary Magdalene

Part II - The Magdalene in France
Legend, land, and living devotion

Part III - Paris as a Sacred Landscape
How to begin seeing

Part IV - The Churches of Magdalene
Where she appears in stone and silence

Part V - Magdalene in the Museums
The inner life revealed through art

Part VI - The Esoteric Magdalene
Mysticism, Sophia, and inner knowing

Part VII - Walking the Magdalene Path in Paris
A living pilgrimage

Each piece stands on its own and also builds into a fuller experience of the Magdalene as she lives here.

Along the way, I will weave in a curated reading list for those who feel called to go deeper, along with guidance you can return to when you find yourself in these spaces, standing in front of a painting, or sitting quietly in a church, sensing that something is asking for your attention.

If you move slowly through this series, it begins to feel less like reading and more like walking. I hope this series inspires you in many ways.

PART I - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE VEIL
Restoring Mary Magdalene

“The Magdalene is not a penitent sinner but a powerful apostolic leader, a woman who knew the fullness of love.” - Cynthia Bourgeault

There is a version of Mary Magdalene that most of us inherited without ever questioning it.

She appears briefly, often without detail, introduced as a woman of questionable reputation who was forgiven, transformed, and then quietly placed at the margins of the story. Her devotion is acknowledged, though her authority is softened. Her presence remains, while her voice recedes.

For centuries, this was the Magdalene that endured.

A closer reading tells a different story.

In the Gospels, Mary Magdalene is never named as a prostitute. She is described as a devoted follower of Jesus, a woman present at the crucifixion when many others had fled, and the first to witness and announce the resurrection. These are defining moments. They place her at the center of the Christian narrative.

Over time, her identity became entangled with other unnamed women in the texts, and a single interpretation took hold. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I delivered a homily that merged Mary Magdalene with the figure of a sinful woman described elsewhere in the Gospels. The image was compelling, and it remained.

What followed reshaped how she was remembered.

A woman once recognized as witness, apostle, and bearer of good news came to be seen primarily as a symbol of repentance.

Even within that reframing, something of her original presence continued to surface.

Artists painted her alone, absorbed in contemplation, holding a skull, gazing into a mirror, sitting beside a candle that seemed to illuminate something beyond the visible world. These images carry a quiet intensity. They reveal a woman in direct relationship with the sacred, interior, self-contained, and fully present.

In time, scholars and theologians returned to the texts with renewed attention. The distinctions became clearer. The conflations began to loosen. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church formally revised its liturgical calendar, separating Mary Magdalene from the other figures she had long been associated with. Later, she would be honored more fully and named “Apostle to the Apostles,” a title that restores something essential.

The restoration continues.

Mary Magdalene is not only a figure to be corrected in history. She is a presence that continues to evoke recognition, especially in women who sense that there is more to her story than what they were first told.

There is a reason she returns.

A woman who remained when others left. A woman who witnessed what others could not bear to see. A woman who spoke what she knew, even when it was not easily received.

Seen in this way, she becomes immediate.

She carries a form of knowing that does not depend on permission and does not require explanation.

It is this Magdalene, the one who could not be contained, who begins to appear again when you walk through Paris with attention.

She is not always named, but she is present. And, she is everywhere.

Once you begin to see her, it becomes clear why this country has held onto her in ways that feel both quiet and enduring. And, it is clear to me that their connection to this Saint is why I am here guiding women on this path.

Reading List - Part I

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene - Cynthia Bourgeault

• Mary Magdalene Revealed - Meggan Watterson

• The Gospels of Mary - Marvin Meyer

• Jesus and the Lost Goddess - Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

An Open Invitation

If you feel called to continue walking this path more tangibly, there are a few ways to deepen the experience beyond these pages.

I offer intimate three hour Sacred Paris walks where we move slowly through the city together, entering churches, pausing in silence, and learning how to see what might otherwise be missed. For those who prefer to explore on their own, my Mary Magdalene in Paris digital guide gathers many of these places into a quiet companion you can return to as you wander. (I’m offering the guide as a gift with all yearly subscriptions for the month of April, now is a beautiful time to upgrade your subscription.)

Subscribe now

I have also created a pinned Google map, organized by arrondissement, marking the churches, chapels, and sites referenced throughout this series, so that you can find your way with ease and follow what calls you.

However you choose to continue, whether in person or in your own time, trust the pace that feels natural to you. This is not a path to complete. It is one you return to, again and again, each time seeing a little more than before.

I hope you will join me for Part II on Sunday, and I would love to hear from you. I will be opening the Chat for us to discuss the series and I’m happy to answer any questions you have about Mary’s presence in the City of Light.

With a love like Mary’s,

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Entering Notre Dame: A pilgrim series (Part Seven)

This reflection is part of Entering Notre Dame, a seven-part Sacred Paris series created for those who wish to experience the cathedral not as a monument, but as a living sanctuary.

These entries are written as pilgrim paths rather than articles, meant to be read slowly, revisited, and woven into your own encounters with Notre Dame, whether in Paris or inwardly.

Each piece includes a short audio invitation and a curated musical listening companion, designed to support embodied presence, attentive walking, and quiet devotion.

If light teaches Notre Dame how to be seen, sound teaches her how to breathe.

Long before you understand what you are hearing, your body has already begun to respond: to the way a single note lingers in the air, to the way silence gathers and deepens after it fades, to the quiet sensation that even the stone itself is listening.

In Notre Dame, sound is not decoration; it is architecture. It moves through the cathedral the way light does, shaping space, revealing depth, making presence felt.

Why The Cathedral Sings Back

Notre Dame was not designed only to hold music, but to complete it.

Stone receives vibration differently than wood does. The vaulted ceilings gather sound and return it softened, multiplied, extended, so that what is sung here does not end when the voice stops. It continues, held in air, carried in memory, suspended just long enough to change you.

This is why chant (and live music) belongs here: not as performance, but as relationship.

Gregorian chant unfolds at the pace of breath, leaving space for echo and allowing silence to become part of the phrase. In this space, silence is not absence but resonance, the continuation of sound in another form.

The Organ, A Living Voice

The great organ of Notre Dame is not simply an instrument in the modern sense; it is a living voice shaped by centuries of air and stone.

Its pipes carry time within them. It can whisper or thunder, but it never merely accompanies the cathedral, it enters into conversation with it. When the organ plays, the stone answers, and what emerges is a holy exchange.

Bells, Marking the Soul of the City

Beyond the walls, the bells extend this conversation into Paris itself.

They mark the hours, yes, but more than that, they interrupt the ordinary sense of time (and this can be felt throughout the city). They remind the city that time can be spacious, that it can gather people into a shared moment, that it can still be sacred.

When they ring, Notre Dame speaks beyond herself, calling without demanding, inviting without insisting. Marking with a softness that becomes a cherished ritual for those of us living in Paris.

Mass As Communal Breathing

To attend Mass here is to experience sound as a shared body.

Voices rise and fall together. Footsteps soften. Responses ripple through the nave. Even in silence, your breathing begins to align with the rhythm around you, until you realize you are not observing a ritual but participating in it.

This is why even those who do not identify as religious often feel something shift here. The cathedral offers participation without requirement, presence without persuasion.

And if you are wondering what it might feel like to attend Mass in a language you don’t understand, because the Mass takes place in French, you must experience this for yourself because a new and different depth of feeling can be felt when words fall away.

When Sound Becomes Memory

You may leave Notre Dame with something you cannot quite name - a vibration rather than a melody.

Sound enters here without asking permission and leaves traces behind. Long after the words are forgotten, your body remembers what it felt like to listen.

Notre Dame does not end in silence. It ends in listening.

In the echo that lingers after sound has passed. In the breath that slows without instruction. In the quiet awareness that something has shifted - not through explanation, but through resonance.

This is how the cathedral continues to live.

Audio Companion
The Singing Stone: A Listening Practice

A guided listening meditation that invites you to experience sound and silence as living architecture within and around you.

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Today’s post is a gift for paid subscribers, and the first tease of the month to upgrade if you haven’t yet. I’ve decided that the month of April will be filled with luscious invitations for you to step more deeply into this work with me, as we near the threshold of a community of 100 paid subscribers! (Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!)

The detailed seven-day itinerary below is an example of the full plan that I have designed for my Sacred Paris Pilgrimage. To my knowledge no one is offering anything like this in the city. Every detail is carefully planned, each guest is fully held, and this experience spans all faiths and the deeply sacred in Paris. (This is one of three 7-day experiences that I host in Paris along with The Magdalene Pilgrimage.)

The Sacred Paris Pilgrimage is designed for a small group of six women to walk together. I am currently calling in the next circle to gather July 11-18, 2026. If you are interested in learning more about this invitation please send me a personal note, or apply using this link.

I am also available to help you plan your own self-guided travel, and I help other guides and group leaders curate sacred travel in Paris (and beyond) for their groups too.

Without further ado…c’est parti! (Let’s go!)

Sacred Paris Pilgrimage Itinerary

JULY 11-18, 2026 | PARIS, FRANCE

DAY ONE: The Threshold

Theme: Arrival, Intention-Setting + Sacred Entry

You will arrive in Paris and step into sacred time. By mid-afternoon, we will gather at the Sacred Paris office, where luggage is dropped and you receive your first of many sacred offerings. This small gift marks the beginning - an invitation to cross the threshold with full presence.

Together we will walk into the stillness - not the common frequency of the City of Light, but the one that we will anchor ourselves into for the week. A private welcome ceremony will unfold in a hidden place - a space held just for us. We will enter quietly, there will be words and soft blessings and water and oil, and a moment of shared silence to open the circle.

Before night falls, we will share our first dinner as pilgrims. Around the table in a quiet Parisian bistro, you will meet the women walking beside you. I will offer words of welcome and devotion, and we will begin weaving the invisible threads of the journey together.

At 8pm, we will ascend the hill of Montmartre and step inside the Basilica of Sacré Cœur. The doors will open just for us. You will enter the Adoration Chapel as night falls, not as a tourist but as a devotee. There, in sacred silence, you will keep vigil. You may rest or remain awake. You will be held deeply.

This is the night your pilgrimage begins.

DAY TWO: Descent + Devotion

Theme: Returning from the Mountaintop, Anchoring into the City + Receiving Beauty

You will wake in silence as morning light spills into Sacré Cœur. After the night vigil, we’ll share a quiet breakfast nearby before climbing to the top of the dome. From this high place, you’ll see the city stretch wide below - a moment of arrival and return.

We will collect the luggage and walk together to Bourdoir des Muses, your home for the rest of the journey. In your room you will find a curated altar space, and sacred tote, and a nourishing lunch will be waiting there for you. The midday hours will offer space to rest, reflect and settle into the stillness of your new Parisian space.

In the afternoon, we will visit three sacred sanctuaries. At Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, you’ll touch stone and breathe deeply; gazing at the three hidden Magdalenes that many miss or never see. At Saint Denys du Saint Sacrement, you’ll sit before Delacroix’s Pieta and listen inward as the beauty brings you to tears. At Notre Dame des Victoires, you will light a candle and offer the prayer carried from the vigil - now ready to be released.

Dinner will be intimate and warm, a space to share in quiet conversation and sacred reflection. As we walk home beneath the evening sky, the city will feel different.

Back at Boudoir des Muses, a sweet blessing will be waiting on your pillow.

DAY THREE: Waters of the Body, Waters of the Soul

Theme: Purification, Memory, Movement + Devotion Through Sacred Water

This morning, we begin in motion. We will walk with altar jars in hand, gathering sacred water from five places in the city - beginning with La Madeleine, the church of the Magdalene. At each fountain, we will pause, say a blessing, and collect what flows.

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It was the juxtaposition, the sacred resting so naturally inside the ordinary, the timeless held for a moment within the machinery of flight that stopped me in my tracks. There she was, buckled in beside ordinary passengers.

There are images that move through us almost instantly, bypassing explanation, bypassing thought, touching something older and more intuitive within us. I have always felt this with holy things, with objects that seem to carry more than their form, more than their material, as if they hold a quiet presence within them.

When I saw this image, I wanted to know more and I followed this curiosity - and the story that I found inspired the post for today.

What I saw was a statue of the Virgin Mary, her hands joined in prayer, her gaze soft and slightly lowered, as though she were already aware of something beyond the cabin, beyond the sky. A black strap secured her gently to the seat. Around her, men in jackets, glasses, newspapers folded open in their hands, the ordinary choreography of flight. No one seemed particularly disturbed. No one appeared surprised.

And yet there she was.

A passenger.

I learned that this was the International Pilgrim Virgin of Fatima, carved in 1947 after the apparitions in a small Portuguese village, sent out into the world with a singular purpose, not to remain enshrined, not to be protected behind glass, but to travel.

To move.

To go where people are.

She has visited more than one hundred countries. She has crossed oceans, borders, languages, continents. She does not go into the cargo hold below. She is given a seat, a ticket, a place among the living. And, she is buckled in.

There is something about this that touches me deeply

Because it rearranges the order of things.

We are used to thinking of pilgrimage as a movement toward the sacred. We go to it. We prepare ourselves, we travel, we arrive, we stand before something that has remained still long enough to receive us.

But here, something else is happening.

The sacred is moving toward us.

She boards the plane. She sits beside strangers. She passes through security. She waits at the gate. She is carried into the most ordinary spaces of modern life, fluorescent-lit terminals, narrow aisles, overhead bins clicking shut.

She does not wait to be found.

She goes.

And I wonder what it would feel like to sit beside her.

To glance over, mid-flight, somewhere between Paris and Lisbon, and see her hands folded, her stillness intact despite the turbulence, despite the noise, despite the small restlessness that seems to live in all of us when we are suspended between places.

Would I speak to her.

Would I close my eyes.

Would I suddenly remember something I had forgotten.

There is a tenderness in the fact that she is never placed in the cargo area below the plane. That someone decided, somewhere along the way, that this mattered. That she would not be treated as an object to be stored, but as a presence to be accompanied.

That she would travel as we do.

Seated, upright, among us.

It makes me think of all the times I have entered a church in Paris not entirely believing, not entirely certain of what I am doing there, only to sit quietly and feel something arrive anyway. Not because I went looking for it with conviction or clarity, but because I showed up.

Or perhaps because something met me.

This is what feels so quietly radical about her journey.

Not the scale of it, not the miles, not even the devotion it inspires, but the gesture itself. The willingness of the sacred to enter the ordinary without announcement, without spectacle, without needing the conditions to be perfect.

To sit in economy class.

To be buckled in.

To wait.

There is a question that begins to form for me as I sit with this image: What if the sacred is not as distant as we imagine.

What if it is already traveling toward us, already seated beside us, already present in the spaces we consider too mundane, too unremarkable, too human.

What if we are not the only ones on pilgrimage.

What if we are being accompanied.

I think of her now somewhere in the world, perhaps boarding another flight, perhaps being carried carefully down an aisle, perhaps already seated, the quiet weight of her presence unnoticed by most, deeply felt by a few.

And I find myself wondering if this is not, in some hidden way, always the case.

That we are never traveling alone.

With limitless love to you,

A Small Practice

The next time you are in transit, on a plane, a train, walking between two places, imagine that the sacred has chosen to travel with you.

Not above you, not far away, but beside you.

Seated, quietly, without demand.

You do not need to do anything.

Only notice.

An Invitation

Another year of pilgrimage is upon us. If this post has stirred something in your heart, if you are feeling called into the heart of it all, it would be my honor to walk with you, and to guide you.

In May, I will be guiding small pilgrimages to Sainte Baume, walking the sacred land of Mary Magdalene, into silence, into stone, into the body of the mountain itself. It is an intimate journey, slow and deeply held, for those who feel called to walk this path.

And this summer, the doors are open for the Soul Residency in Paris, a private, four-day stay for women who want to live inside this energy for a time, to be held, to be guided, to move through the city as a sacred landscape rather than a destination. These residencies can be self-guided or fully curated, and applications for June, July and August are now being accepted.

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