Originally submitted as an article by Kathleen Owens (she/her), Manager of Clergy Programming and Communications, CCR, in the July 17, 2026 issue of Weekly Wisdom.
“Holy Wisdom showed me there is a spiritual power in showing up and being available to God in prayer, without words, just as ourselves. It was fabulous, such great freedom, to be told, ‘Show up as yourself and we’re going to see what God does. We believe God will do something. We believe the Spirit will move in some way.’” This is how Jennifer Zogg reflects on what she has learned from her experiences at Holy Wisdom Monastery in her career as an Episcopal Priest.
Jennifer first came to be part of a summer volunteer crew for a month in 2007, while she was in seminary. “I remember arriving at Holy Wisdom, a young woman from suburban upstate New York. The prairie is not a place I’d been. And there I was in the back of a pickup truck, chest high in leafy spurge and whatever invasives we were pulling from the prairie. At first, I thought, ‘This is terrible. What am I doing out in the hot sun, pulling these things? And even at the chapel, the Psalms are not what I know, they’ve rewritten them. What have they done to my tradition?’ But over that month of volunteering, I became completely new. I loved being out there. I formed a community with the other women who were there, we had such a bond. I adored the sisters and their spirit. It taught me to pray so expansively, to find expansive language for God, to hear how beautiful those prayers were.”
Jennifer came back to Holy Wisdom Monastery as part of the 3rd Cohort of CCR pastors for Contemplative Renewal Immersions in July 2022 and January 2023. “I came in close to spiritual exhaustion and burnout, wondering ‘How can I keep doing this work effectively?’ I needed some help caring for my soul. I found that in the silence, the space, the ease, and the hospitality. During that first immersion I felt my hands open and my heart open and just relax. I often say it reminded me of my better self. It reminded me of the image of God in me.”
In 2025, Jennifer moved to a new parish on Cape Cod. In this new call she is aware of what was planted in her at Holy Wisdom Monastery, “The seed of calling the land Holy no matter what it looks like or what it needs. I’ve spent the last year getting to know this land as a new friend and listening to what it’s telling me it needs. Holy Wisdom planted that in me. And it planted in me the rhythm of the prayers. Whether you are there or not, trusting that God is present, whether your heart is there or not, or whether you can concentrate or not. The seed is the faithfulness of showing up. Holy Wisdom has provided this experience for me of arriving in a more skeptical way, or in a difficult place, and always being broken open by the land and by the prayers. From when I was a seminarian to a mid-career Pastor. It provided these moments of renewal and resurrection.”
In her ministry, Jennifer tries to share the seeds planted in her over many years of connection to Holy Wisdom Monastery. “I have become an evangelist for a contemplative life in my congregation. Not in a programmatic way…. I’m trying to build a contemplative way of being, a contemplative way of life, into congregational experience as a balance to life that asks something very different of us all the time.” The call to show up and pay attention continues to resonate in Jennifer’s life and ministry. Thank you for supporting the space that has allowed Jennifer to show up as herself and to give her the ability to provide that space for others in turn.