Writing
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Spark My Muse Interviews Cassidy Hall
Today I had the honor of being on the Spark My Muse podcast with host, Lisa Colón DeLay. We talked about what it means to tend the fire within, the place of infinite possibility within each of us. The space we must protect, guard, feed, and learn to share in a way that offers love and creativity to the…
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Be The Hope, Now
Islamophobia is not just a problem for Muslims, it is a problem for all of us. It is not the “job” of the marginalized, persecuted, or attacked group to solve the problem. To ask the even more deeply grieving “what do you need,” or “what can I do,” puts even more agony upon them. This…
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The Way of Love; The Way of the Outlaw
The one whose vocation is love lives in a narrative that is controlled by reality.
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Encounters with Silence – Thomas Merton’s Hermitage
To go seeking for something which cannot be sought. To go on looking for something which cannot be found. To attempt to do something which cannot be done.
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The Uncertainty of Silence
(This will be among the many essays featured in the forthcoming book Notes on Silence that I’m co-authoring with Patrick Shen which can be purchased here.) “…I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone…” Rainer Maria Rilke I was around 8 years old when I began to have reoccurring dreams about…
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Creating From The Wound
I live in Los Angeles, the epicenter of self-defining artists. And, like most people in this city, I consider myself an artist. However, unlike most people living in Los Angeles — I believe we’re all artists in some form or another. I’m in constant awe of the way people create, perform, produce, and refine their…
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“Cassidy Hall found silence in an Iowa monastery and brought her discoveries to a new documentary” Des Moines Register
“A cricket chirped in the monastery’s library. That and the swish of a turned page, Thomas Merton’s “New Seeds of Contemplation,” was about it for sound. Cassidy Hall stopped on page 81. Merton did not write on the absence of sound on that page but the abyss of solitude in the soul: “You do not…
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Faith and Doubt in the Labyrinth
I am easily led to anxiety in unfamiliar situations. I don’t like to do things with other people, and though I recognize the necessity in community, I’d almost always prefer to go about my day on my own, for comfort’s sake. Like most of us, I like certainty. Like most of us, I realize life…
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Redwoods, Give Me A Word.
The towering redwoods of northern California have always mystified me. I’m constantly swept away with awe and wonder, as if I’ve rewinded my life back into childhood. With my gaze upward and my mouth wide open, I oooo and ahhhh at the way the light shines through the endless towers, the great elevated heights of…
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When Doing Nothing is Doing Everything
As originally posted on Huffington Post and Patheos: “Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.” Bell Hooks This time, after jumping in my car, no maps were necessary as I navigated my way towards New Mellerary Abbey for the 10th time since 2011. Maybe I had gone enough times to know my way,…
Dr. Cassidy Hall, DMin, MDiv, MTS, MA 