My husband Bill Consiglio and I live as resident companions of The Community of the Holy Spirit at their Melrose Covent in Brewster, New York.  The sisters at Bluestone Farm and Learning Center strive to live a life reflecting sustainable living, social justice, and spiritual fulfillment. Daily life involves organic farming, (maple sugaring, planting, tending, gathering and preserving food, raising chickens, ducks, and bees), as well as fellowship, "Eucharistic Living", service to others, and individual artistic pursuits.  We chant the traditional monastic offices (Lauds, Noonday Prayers, Vespers, Compline), using inclusive language and an acknowledgment of how the “new cosmology” affects and informs our faith.

(See the sisters' website: http://chssisters.org) .

Bill works full time as the convent "handy-man."   I tend the kitchen garden and grow and arrange flowers for chapel. I serve as priest for the sisters, and chaplain to the Melrose School which the sisters founded in 1963.

In addition to writing, I lead retreats and workshops throughout the United States. Before coming to Bluestone Farm I served the Episcopal church as a parish priest, a children’s priest, a Christian Education consultant, columnist on children's spirituality and as a college (Vassar) and university (Cornell) chaplain. I’ve raised four children who are now grown. 

My interest in mystical theology began at the age of twenty-two when I read the Autobiography of Teresa of Avila.  I'm interested in questions about how people "learn" to discern layers of consciousness of the Holy.  And I'm particularly fascinated by the unending mystery of prayer itself.