4.19.25

an update and the passion of Beautiful Possibility

Hi everyone,

I know I’ve been gone for awhile, and that a lot of you have only recently subscribed to The Red Abbess and have yet to hear from me — and I didn’t want to wait too long to say welcome and I’m glad you’re here.

The Red Abbess is first and foremost an exploration of the life- and world-changing power of passion, and about stories and lessons learned from a life surrendered to that passion. And as many of you know, I’ve been giving all of that passion to a project-in-progress on my other substack, The Abbey.

For those of you not yet connected with what’s happening over at The Abbey, that project is called Beautiful Possibility — a series that explores the beautiful possibility that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were lovers — a romantic as well as a creative couple — and this is the deeper and truer reason for my having been swept away by the story of The Beatles.

I can’t speak to the reading or listening of it, but the creating of Beautiful Possibility has been alternately ecstatic and heartbreaking, joyful and frustrating, exhilarating and terrifying, exhausting and inspiring — and always and still, all-consuming.

How all-consuming? Well, at one point I asked my friend to bring me groceries because I didn't have time to shop for food and there is no Door Dash in the woods of rural Maine.

All of which means that there is time for Beautiful Possibility or time for The Red Abbess, but alas, not both at the same time.

As soon as I’m finished midwifing the first part (of three parts) of Beautiful Possibility into the world, I’ll return to The Red Abbess to resume our conversation about passion, and about what I’ve learned in my experience of creating this series over these past months and years, and about the many things that were lost or broken (sometimes intentionally and sometimes not) in sacrifice to the creation of it — because that word “sacrifice” is as misunderstood as the word “surrender.”

We’ll talk about all of that when I get back, along with what’s it’s been like to surrender completely to a passion, especially when that passion is unusual and controversial and not without its peril.

In the meantime, I invite you to come visit the The Abbey and experience Beautiful Possibility for yourself. Tiny promo: It’s of interest, obviously, to anyone who loves The Beatles, but also potentially to anyone interested in mythology, spirituality, psychology, gender roles,, the role of the media in shaping reality, history, sexuality and, most of all, love.

And while there is no way to tell this love story without including some pain, Beautiful Possibility is mostly about joy and love, and an unexpected opportunity to heal our broken world. And all of that is something that I know most of us are in serious need of just now.

You can find the list of episodes in sequence here:

https://www.beatlesabbey.com/p/beautiful-possibility

And finally, I wanted to share a piece of artwork inspired by the series that author/artist Susan Montgomery created that captures some of the spirit of Beautiful Possibility.

See you all soon. Peace, love and strawberry fields,

Faith ❤️