Tessa Bielecki is Mother Abbess of the Spiritual Life Institute,a Carmelite community with hermitages in Colorado, Nova Scotia, and Ireland. She studied for a career in international relations at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., before entering a monastery in 1967. Mother Tessa is actively involved in Buddhist-Christian dialogs and international initiatives exploring world peace and planetary survival. She is the author of Teresa of Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense and Holy Daring, and publisher of Forefront,a quarterly magazine of contemporary spirituality.