A weekly letter subscription
Letters from history's greatest mystics, saints, sages, and seekers written to you, delivered weekly.
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in thee.
Augustine of Hippo, 354 to 430 AD
Each week, a voice from across the centuries writes to you. Not a biography. Not a lecture. A letter.
A letter from
Anchoress · Norfolk, England · c. 1373
Dear friend,
I am writing to you from a small stone room.
Nine and a half feet by eleven and a half feet. One window into the church, one window to the street. I chose this. I chose to be sealed inside these walls, to enter this enclosure singing the burial office, as one already counted among the dead. The door was shut. And I have never left.
I tell you this not to impress you with my sacrifice. I tell you because you need to know where these words come from. Not from a library. From a cell. From someone who has sat in silence long enough that the silence began to say something back.
When I was thirty years old, I became gravely ill. In that near-death, the revelations came. What I found was not what I feared. The word that came to me, and I have turned it over for forty years now, was this: courteous. A love that had no edges. A love that did not flinch.
Digital PDF, physical letter, or both. Delivered with the same unhurried care the original authors gave to their own words.
Each letter carries a reflection, a story, a question, and a closing blessing, written in the authentic voice of the figure.
Read slowly. Return to it. These are not content to consume. They are companions for the week ahead.
Letters arrive in thematic seasons: On Silence, On Suffering, On Love. A journey of the soul, not just a collection of letters.
My name is Ward Draper. I have spent more than twenty years on the streets of Abbotsford, British Columbia, serving meals, advocating for change, delivering clothing and tents, sitting with people in crisis, officiating weddings and funerals, teaching, operating shelters and drop-in centres, and trying, mostly imperfectly, to practice what the mystics and saints wrote.
I founded The 5 and 2 Ministries in the early 2000s. We now serve hundreds of people each week, thousands of meals and thousands of food hampers every year, operating seven days a week with two weekly meals served in the downtown core and regular delivery to homeless camps throughout the city.
This is not biography. This is context. Because I want you to know that when I read Julian of Norwich writing that the wound is the doorway, I am not reading it from a library chair. I am reading it from twenty years of watching people survive things no one ever should have, and from my own lifetime of lived experience alongside them. I have found, somehow, that the ancient voices had already been there.
Communion exists because I kept returning to the mystics, the saints, the theologians, the sages, and finding that they were not historical artifacts. They were dispatches from people who had walked the same territory: suffering, longing, doubt, inexplicable grace, the stubborn persistence of love in impossible conditions. They write about what I see every week on the streets: fractured hearts that yearn for peace. A peace found in silence, in belonging, in communion, and in a Love that calls to us in whispers, bringing healing and restoration.
I hold a Master of Arts in Theology and Culture from St. Stephen's University, supervised by Dr. Bradley Jersak. I am the author of a series of upcoming contemplative journals in the Anawim Studies Series, along with a number of other spiritual growth books currently in development. I have also founded and direct Threshold: The Institute for Social Integrity and Dignity, which works with organizations to close the gap between what they believe about themselves and what the people they serve actually experience. Threshold will be operational in the very near future.
Communion is one of the most personal things I have built. It is an invitation to sit with the voices that have held me, and to let them hold you.
Ward
Abbotsford, BC
Saints, sages, mystics, philosophers. Christian, Sufi, Jewish, Buddhist, Stoic, and every soul who ever looked up and wondered. The communion of the wise knows no single door.
Year 1 • Season 1 • Weeks 1 to 13
On Silence
Merton, Laozi, Eckhart, Thich Nhat Hanh, Teresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, Pascal, Julian of Norwich, and five more voices on the practice of stillness
Year 1 • Season 2 • Weeks 14 to 26
On Suffering
Job, John of the Cross, Dostoevsky, Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis, Etty Hillesum, Viktor Frankl, Julian of Norwich, and five more who walked through darkness
Year 1 • Season 3 • Weeks 27 to 39
On Love
Rumi, Bernard of Clairvaux, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hafiz, Martin Buber, Teilhard de Chardin, Howard Thurman, Augustine, and five more on divine and human love
Year 1 • Season 4 • Weeks 40 to 52
On Joy
Francis of Assisi, Baal Shem Tov, Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, Anne Lamott, Paul of Tarsus, and five more on the stubborn persistence of joy
Begin with a letter. Deepen with time. All prices in Canadian dollars.
The Scroll
Weekly letters delivered as beautifully typeset PDFs, meant to be read slowly, saved, and returned to.
CAD per month | $90 annually
The Epistle
The full digital experience, plus a monthly printed letter package mailed to your door on aged parchment with wax seal.
CAD per month
The Codex
For those who want to go deepest. The full experience, beautifully expanded.
CAD per month
Gift subscriptions available in 3 and 6 month options. Contact Ward directly at hello@communionletters.org
Available Separately
A full year of Communion letters, beautifully printed and bound. Fifty-two letters, four seasons, one volume. Designed for personal libraries, spiritual retreats, small groups, and as a gift of lasting substance.
$65 CAD
Ships annually each January. Available to all subscribers and non-subscribers alike.
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