A sanctuary for grounded Christian mysticism, contemplative living, and spiritual growth. Rooted first in the radical simplicity and spiritual heritage of the medieval Beguines — and kept in the company of the saints and mystics, the desert mothers and fathers, and the philosophers who have carried and deepened the contemplative life.
Contemplative Journals
Hand-crafted spaces for inner reflection — unhurried, unpretentious, made to hold the soul's honest movement.
Devotional Texts
Ancient wisdom made accessible — the Beguines, the mystics, and the living tradition of sacred poverty.
Sacred Art
Illustrations and prints rooted in botanical beauty and the iconographic traditions of the contemplative life.
Simplified Living
Books and guides for cultivating a quiet heart — the theology and practice of sacred poverty in ordinary life.
"She who is neither sought nor loved, neither thanked nor honoured by any creature — this Soul is free."
— Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls (c. 1300)
Contemplative Journals · The Anawim Studies Series
Waiting at the Threshold
The Anawim Studies Series · Volume I
Coming Soon
For those who have run out of words for God.
The first volume in the Anawim Studies Series — a contemplative journal through the life and thought of Simone Weil, for whom attention itself was a form of prayer. On affliction, on waiting, and on the faithfulness that remains when certainty has collapsed.
Written by Ward Draper — a formational companion for those walking the path of kenotic surrender, the self-emptying the mystical tradition understands as the very shape of divine love.
Notebooks · The Attending Series
Now on Amazon.ca
Fifteen notebooks for undivided presence.
Distinct from the authored journals of the Anawim Studies Series, the Attending notebooks are made for your own words — each kept in the company of a mystic, a saint, or a tradition, from Simone Weil and the Beguines to Meister Eckhart, the Desert Mothers, and Rumi. Guided pages, quotations, and generous room for the attention that comes slowly.
All fifteen volumes now available in print through Amazon.ca.
Attending
A Contemplative Notebook Series · Vols. I–XV
The Beguine Heritage
Women who built sanctuaries without permission.
The Beguines were medieval laywomen who created communities of prayer, art, and mutual care outside the walls of formal institutions. They wrote, they illuminated manuscripts, they cared for the sick. They were radical in their simplicity and in their refusal to wait for approval before living a life of depth.
The Mirror of Simple Souls draws its name and its spirit from their tradition — grounded, unafraid of beauty, and deeply suspicious of faith that has been made complicated for the sake of power.
Letters from the Studio
Receive a quiet word, once a month.
A seasonal letter on contemplative living, new additions to the collection, and small things worth noticing. No noise. No sales urgency. Just a letter.
The Studio Collection
Beautiful, unpretentious tools for the interior life.
We make things that help people be still. Nothing more is needed.
The Anawim Studies Series · Ward Draper
Contemplative journals along the kenotic path.
A planned thirteen-volume series of contemplative theological journals, each accompanying a life that has walked the path of self-emptying, descent, and surrender. Ecumenical in source — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and ancient contemplative traditions — and governed by the figure of the anawim: the poor in spirit, the humble, the afflicted, for whom poverty becomes the very condition of receptivity. Written by Ward Draper.
Volume I · Coming soon
Waiting at the Threshold
A contemplative journal through the life and thought of Simone Weil — attention as prayer, affliction, and the faithfulness that remains when certainty has collapsed.
A fifteen-volume series of contemplative notebooks — each kept in the company of a mystic, a saint, or a tradition. Guided pages, quotations, and generous room for the attention that comes slowly. Written and designed by W. Draper and published by the Studio. Available in print through Amazon.ca.
Volume I
Attending — Undivided Presence
The foundational notebook of the series — an invitation to attention itself, before any subject or saint. Spacious pages for the practice of undivided presence, where the whole series begins.
Kept in the company of Simone Weil, for whom attention itself was a form of prayer. Reflections and open pages for those learning to wait without grasping.
In the company of the medieval Beguines — laywomen who built lives of prayer and mutual care without permission. Pages for the independent contemplative heart.
In the company of Thérèse and her "little way" — the sanctification of small, hidden, ordinary acts of love. A notebook for the quiet fidelity of daily life.
In the company of the Celtic saints — Brigid, Columba, and the wandering monks who found God in wind, water, and thin places. Pages for a rooted, elemental faith.
In the company of Vincent van Gogh, who attended to light, labour, and the sacred in the overlooked. A notebook for seeing the ordinary world with reverent eyes.
A notebook in the company of the women mystics — Hadewijch, Mechthild, Julian, and their sisters in vision, daughters of the uncreated light. Pages for those who write of divine love with precision and fire.
In the company of the Desert Mothers and Fathers — the first contemplatives, who fled to the silence to find their true selves. A notebook of sayings and stillness.
In the company of the Philokalia and the prayer of the heart — the Eastern tradition of unceasing prayer and inner watchfulness. Pages for the descent of the mind into the heart.
In the company of Søren Kierkegaard — purity of heart, the leap of faith, and the courage to become a single individual before God. A notebook for honest interiority.
Unhurried prompts for the interior life. Botanical illustrations, generous margins, and space for the words that come slowly. Inspired by the daily rhythm of the Beguines.
Forty days of reflection on what it means to hold things loosely — possessions, certainties, the self. Structured for Lent but suited for any season of stripping away.
A journal in the tradition of Mechthild of Magdeburg's flowing light — structured around the four movements of contemplative prayer: desire, attentiveness, rest, and return.
A carefully prepared modern reader's edition of Marguerite Porete's 13th-century masterwork — the text that gives this studio its name. Accessible introduction, clarifying notes, space for reflection.
On the theology and practice of sacred poverty in ordinary life — not the poverty of having nothing, but the poverty of needing nothing. A guide for simplified spiritual living.
An introduction to the medieval Beguine movement — who they were, what they built, how they loved. A companion for those who find that the institution often cannot hold what the Spirit requires.
A series of hand-illustrated botanical prints rooted in the iconographic tradition of the contemplative life. Each print includes a line from the Beguine mystics.
A 52-card contemplative deck — one for every week of the year. One face carries a quiet image and a line of scripture; the other, a single reflection question. Four movements — descent, emptying, transformation, communion — with a guide booklet. For individuals, small communities, and spiritual directors.
A typographic print of the opening movement from Porete's Mirror. Printed on warm cotton rag paper with a single botanical illustration. Made to be placed where the eye rests.
We also welcome commissions — custom journals, illustrated texts, and sacred art for communities, retreats, and individuals with specific needs.
Our Story
We reject the loud and the elite.
A studio built on the conviction that the most important things are small, slow, and freely given.
The Origin
Born from a dissatisfaction with spiritual noise.
The Mirror of Simple Souls: Devotional Texts and Arts began as a response to a specific frustration — the proliferation of loud, platform-driven, productivity-flavoured Christian content that left the contemplative soul more exhausted than nourished.
We turned instead to the medieval Beguines: lay women of the 12th through 16th centuries who built communities of prayer, mutual care, and radical spiritual depth outside the walls of formal institutions. Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hadewijch of Brabant, Marguerite Porete — women who wrote of divine love with a precision and passion that the academy has only recently begun to recover.
Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls — the book that names this studio — was written around 1300 and burned by the Inquisition in 1310, along with its author. It has survived. What survives is a theology of radical simplicity, of the soul that has been emptied of self-will and finds in that emptying not absence but an astonishing fullness.
We took that as our mandate: to make beautiful, grounded, unpretentious tools for the interior life. Small things. Honest things. Things that serve the soul rather than distract it.
But the Beguines were never alone. The same fire burned in the desert mothers and fathers who first fled to the silence; in Francis and Clare, who wed poverty to joy; in John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, who charted the soul's dark and luminous ascent; in Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, and the Rhineland mystics who wrote of a love beyond words.
It burned, too, in those the tradition does not always name as mystics — Simone Weil at her threshold of attention, Søren Kierkegaard standing as a single individual before God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Óscar Romero paying for their fidelity, Vincent van Gogh finding the sacred in labor and light — and in voices from beyond the Christian West, like Rumi. The Studio keeps company with all of them. The Beguines hold pride of place, but they open onto a far wider communion of the poor in spirit — the anawim — who have walked the same path of self-emptying and surrender.
The Beguines
The Beguines were medieval laywomen who created semi-monastic communities throughout northern Europe — beguinages, or béguinages — without taking permanent vows, without formal approval, and without the patronage of wealthy institutions. They were weavers and nurses, mystics and theologians. They were frequently suspect to Church authorities precisely because they were independent, educated, and uncontrollable.
Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207–1282) wrote in the vernacular — in the language ordinary people spoke — a flowing account of divine love she called The Flowing Light of the Godhead. Hadewijch of Brabant (13th century) wrote visionary poetry of devastating beauty. Marguerite Porete (c. 1248–1310) wrote a book so radical in its account of the soul's freedom in God that she was burned at the stake for it.
These women are the theological and spiritual heritage of this studio. Not because suffering is to be romanticized, but because their insistence on simplicity, freedom, and direct encounter with the divine has never been more necessary.
The Company We Keep
Though the Beguines name this studio, the work now draws on a far wider tradition: the desert mothers and fathers, the saints and the mystics, the philosophers and the poets of surrender.
These are the voices gathered in our two series — the Attending notebooks and the Anawim Studies journals — each kept in the company of one who has walked the kenotic path: Simone Weil, Thérèse of Lisieux, Francis and Clare, John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Rumi, and more.
"I have written the truth about Love, because Love has constrained me to do it — I who am not worthy to name Love if justice does not grant it to me."
— Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls
What We Believe
Four convictions that shape everything we make.
Sacred poverty is a gift, not a deprivation.
To hold things loosely — certainties, comforts, the accumulated clutter of the religious self — is to be made available to something realer. We make things for those who are learning that emptiness is not a failure of fullness.
Beauty is theological, not decorative.
A well-made thing that honours the person who holds it is itself a spiritual act. We do not separate craft from contemplation. The way a journal feels in the hand is part of what it says about the soul that will write in it.
Simplicity is not minimalism.
Minimalism is an aesthetic. Simplicity is an orientation toward what is essential. The Beguines were not minimalists — they were fully alive to beauty, to community, to love in its most demanding forms. They were simply unencumbered by what was not necessary.
The interior life cannot be rushed.
We do not publish for urgency. We do not design for distraction. Everything in the Mirror of Simple Souls collection is made to slow the pace of a life that has been accelerated past the point where God can be heard in it.
The Mirror of Simple Souls: Devotional Texts and Arts is an imprint of a small, independent studio. We produce in limited quantities. We work with makers who share our commitment to simple craft.
The Contemplative Life
A quiet heart in a turbulent world.
Resources, reflections, and rhythms for those who take the interior life seriously.
I
Lectio Divina
The ancient practice of sacred reading — not reading to acquire information, but reading to be encountered. We offer a monthly text with a simple guide for the four movements: lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio.
II
The Daily Examen
St. Ignatius's five-movement evening prayer, adapted for a simplified practice. Not a performance review of the day, but a loving and honest gaze at where God was present and where we missed it.
III
The Beguine Hours
A simplified form of the Daily Office drawn from the rhythm the Beguines kept — morning, midday, and evening prayers that are brief, grounded, and possible in an ordinary life.
IV
Sacred Poverty
A 12-week practice of simplification — not austerity for its own sake, but the deliberate releasing of what has accumulated at the expense of what is essential. For individuals and small communities.
V
Contemplative Reading
A curated list of the texts that have most formed the tradition we draw from — Porete, Mechthild, Hadewijch, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, and their contemporary interpreters.
VI
The Studio Retreats
Occasional one-day and weekend retreats for small groups. Simple spaces, simple food, simple agenda: to be still, to read, to reflect, to return to ordinary life slightly more available to what matters.
Letters from the Studio
Recent reflections.
Winter · On Darkness
What the mystics knew about the dark night that we keep forgetting
John of the Cross did not call it a dark night of the soul because it felt terrible. He called it that because the soul, in that darkness, was doing something it could not do in the light...
The difference between minimalism and sacred poverty
Minimalism is about having fewer things. Sacred poverty is about being less encumbered by yourself. One is an aesthetic. The other is a kind of death that the mystics speak of with something close to gratitude...
Women who built sanctuaries without permission — and why it matters now
The béguinage at Bruges still stands. Thirteen hectares inside the city, surrounded by water, entered through a single gate. Inside: silence, small houses, a church, and a memory of women who decided that the life they needed did not require anyone's approval...
