Fr. BRENDAN
ELLIS WILLIAMS, CMR

(NGAKPA PALDEN DORJE)

Priest, monastic, yogī, spiritual director, writer, artisan, scholar and teacher of religion, Eastern and Western esoteric traditions, meditation and contemplative spirituality: chanting old rebel tales; tracing back song-streams of ancient wisdom; ferrying souls on the mythic riverways of human transformation; guiding folk from all walks of life back to their birthright of wholeness and freedom in unitive awareness.

The central aim of my work, in all its iterations, is to help restore individuals and communities to wholeness: to facilitate a felt experience of reciprocal blessing and conscious interbeing in the great family of Nature, toward the one most needful end of the liberative awakening of all sentient beings.

I regularly give lectures, presentations, workshops, and retreats on a variety of subjects, including ascetical theology and mysticism in Christianity and Indo-Tibetan traditions, meditation and contemplative practices, prānāyāma, ancient Celtic spirituality and folklore, ecology and religion, Eastern and Western images of the sacred feminine, animism, non-dual theology, iconography, esoteric symbology and praxis in Catholic Christianity. If you’re interested in booking me for a lecture, workshop, or other event, please use the contact page here to email a request.

I hold terminal degrees in poetry and theology, an undergraduate degree in literary theory and folklore, and am presently a candidate for the PhD in religion. I’ve worked over the years as a professional artist; counselor; writer; clinical Western herbalist; healthcare, retreat, and university chaplain; and parish priest. I currently work in private practice as a spiritual director, teacher, meditation and yogic breathwork (prānāyāma) instructor. I am a priest of the Episcopal Church, and a fully professed traditional monastic, currently serving as founding Prior of The Communion of the Mystic Rose, a contemplative religious order of the Episcopal Church. I was previously ordained as a Buddhist monk in 2003.

In my work as a teacher, writer, and spiritual guide informed by the fruits of long labor in the contemplative life, I aim to help individuals and communities inhabit fresh (and often ancient) stories, to experience new depths of listening from the heart, to shed old narratives that are limiting and life-negating, and to learn to embody approaches to life and spirituality that empower and facilitate restorative, holistic, unitive, and life giving transformation—for the human community and for the whole of Nature.