Fr. BRENDAN
ELLIS WILLIAMS, CMR

(An t-Athair Brèanainn Èilis Mac Uilleim)

Poet, seer, priest, spiritual director, healer, artisan, scholar and teacher of religion, Western esoterica, indigenous Gaelic lifeways, 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 the great ecology of spirit.

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, conscious interbeing, and harmonious relationality in the great family of Nature, toward the one most needful end of the blossoming and liberative illumination of every soul.

I regularly give lectures, presentations, workshops, and retreats on a variety of subjects, including ascetical theology, mysticism, and theurgy in Western and Indo-Tibetan traditions; animism; meditation and contemplative practices; ancient Celtic myths, cosmologies, rituals, customs, and folklore; ecology and religion; Eastern and Western images of the sacred feminine; non-duality in the methods of religious inquiry; 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, healer, and meditation instructor. I am a priest of the Episcopal Church, and 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, and have also received formation and ordination as a Vajrayāna yogī (ngakpa).

In my work as a teacher, writer, healer, and spiritual guide, informed by the fruits of long labor and study in the spiritual 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 good of the human community and the whole of Nature.