Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 107

Monk in the World Guest Post: Melinda Thomas Hansen

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melinda Thomas Hansen's reflection In Protest.

It’s been a difficult year. And not just for me. Too many friends and family have been put through the ringer. Marriages crumbled. People moved. Children got sick. Addictions took over. Dreams were shattered. A mother died. A sister died. A baby died.

These are just the personal tragedies I am privy to. To say nothing of the state of the nation, the wars of the world, the thousands displaced, and the too many abused.

The world is on fire.

Sometimes I think my body forgets that the trauma and stress of the first nine months of the year has passed. I left my husband. My son and I moved into a beautiful, humble town-home surrounded by towering oaks which dropped their acorns with such gusto the week we moved in that I had to keep reminding myself “it’s just acorns, no one is trying to break in.”

Sometimes I am still gripped by anxiety. I have to root around in my brain to pinpoint the monster that provoked the shaking and the fear and ask if it is true, then give it a little hug and send it on its way. Sometimes I get this sudden feeling that I am about to be swallowed by a hideous void. My ribcage swings inward, collapsing my breath. I stare wide-eyed at the black and terrifying unknown. But for the most part, I am breathing better now. For the most part my ribcage swings outward and the wings beneath my shoulder blades unfurl. Shake off dew. Get ready to fly.

In church on Sunday, the rector told a story about a man in the 1960’s who sat outside the White House everyday and lit a candle in protest of the war and violence in Vietnam. One day a man came up and asked, “Do you really think sitting here like this day after day is going to change the world?”

The man replied, “I don’t sit here to change the world. I sit so the world won’t change me.”

When I was a girl I did not understand how once bright and smiling young people could grow old and bitter and mean. I did not believe that the world was broken.

And then I grew up.

Compared to the displaced, the abused, the trafficked, my personal struggles have been very first world. But they have been significant. They have been mine. And they have broken me. Still, I don’t want to be bullied by the cynicism and bitterness I often feel when I look back on the things that didn’t work out and see them as predictors of future failure.

I’ve been fighting to keep mySelf alive ever since the day I graduated High School full of hope and optimism and as much self knowledge and esteem as an eighteen year old can muster. Each time I put on a scarf, or cut my hair, or read fiction I am sending my fist up in defiance against the onslaught of forces bent on beating it out of me. Writing time becomes a statement to my Soul that I will not abandon her.

There are lessons to be learned from this world. The oak and maple and pine around my home speak slow and deep, telling me not to worry. The world is held in an embrace and I am part of that world.

Blessings abound.

My soon to be ex-husband and I remain on good terms. The friend who lost her seven month old baby to cancer is on a healing month in New Zealand – a trip funded by an outpouring of support. The Standing Rock Sioux in North Dakota won a temporary stay on the construction of an oil pipeline that would run under their water supply and along their sacred ground. Our church welcomed and helped settle three refugee families this year. My son’s godmother just sent me a picture of her newborn riding home from the hospital in our old carseat.

The rain falls. The sky remains. The trees hold down the earth, keep it from blowing away.

Last night I set my alarm. This morning I got up and practiced asana, moving my body into shape after shape with only the vaguest agenda. I breathed. I lit my candle. I sat.

A monk of the world in protest.

Of cynicism and bitterness and fear.

This world is going to change me. But I am going to choose how.

Melinda Thomas Hansen lives in North Carolina where she is mommy to an exuberant two year old, a yoga instructor, and a novelist seeking to break into publishing. She also formats the Abbey Newsletter, Daily Nourishment E-mails, and Monk in the World Guest Posts, a role which she is deeply honored to play. You can visit her blog archives at TheHouseHoldersPath.com.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Michele Chung

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Michele Chung's reflection The Art of Processing Feedback.

While a contemplative life is a personal and solitary journey, we are at the same time intended to live in community.  An important part of this relationship is our dialogue with our friends and family.  The feedback we receive, however, can often be a mixed bag of advice ranging from mere personal opinions to wise counsel. It’s often a confusing and messy process to figure out which advice we should listen to.

The good news is that the contemplative practices actually help us better discern the words that others share with us. The more clarity we have about our own journey, the easier it is to learn and benefit from others’ suggestions and input. Here are some key principles that help me process through the feedbacks I get.

Remember your focus. When you process through any feedback, it’s important to remember what your focus is for this season. If the feedback helps you grow further in your key area, then meditate on it. Otherwise, feel free to put it aside for now. A great advice that’s meant for a different season may end up being a distraction in the now.


The right advice is encouraging and inspiring. The right kind of feedback will be encouraging and inspiring. It should bring clarity and peace to a stressful heart.  Even a word of correction should bring a sense of clarity and hope rather than guilt and despair. The right kind of feedback on a creative project will also bring great synergy and even open unexpected doors.


Examine your response. When a word or suggestion stays on your heart or mind, try to understand what is causing that. Meditate and look deeper. Did it stir up fear or anger? Or a peaceful agreement and acceptance? Or even excitement? Even when there’s an element of fear, it can reveal a part of your heart that you may not be aware of. Sometimes the response of your heart gives more insight than the feedback themselves.


Know your own tendencies. We all have our “button” issues. If you know your triggers, then you won’t be so easily distracted by them when you receive feedback on those areas. I tend to be a people-pleaser and can be easily influenced by others. This has led to much unnecessary confusion and distraction when I felt guilty rejecting feedback from my friends. Once I see my issues, however, I’m more objective throughout the process, and can graciously let go of things that are not helpful, and move forward.


It’s not always about you. Ironically, some comments reflect more about the heart of the speaker rather than about you. What someone sees in your life may trigger their own fears and concerns. Admittedly, this is hard to discern, and I don’t easily jump to this conclusion in my own processing. However, there have been a few times when comments heavily weighed on my heart, and I simply didn’t have much insight. Suddenly, I was reminded of the speaker’s background or history, and then it was clear why they made those comments. Their comments reflected more about their own journey than mine.

Discerning and processing through feedback is more of an art than a science. The key is to keep our hearts connected to the still small voice inside and allow God to guide us. It may seem more expedient to just accept someone’s word or advice because they are a spiritual leader or a trusted friend.  Or it may feel justified to reject a word because we feel offended.  I’ve found, however, that taking the time to seek divine insight and work through my inner responses have kept me away from old assumptions and blind spots, and in the end, gave me the breakthrough I really wanted.  Although it may feel intimidating in the beginning, I hope these principles will help you ease into your own process.

Michele loves reading and learning about all things contemplative.  After a myriad of jobs, she is currently working at a bookstore and pursuing art and blog writing in her spare time. Michele lives in Silicon Valley with her husband and a house full of books. You can find more of her writings at mzchele.wordpress.com.

Give Me a Word 2017: 8th Annual Giveaway

SHARE YOUR WORD FOR 2017

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to God and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner's fire and be stripped down to one's holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered.

Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word –  this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – "give me a word" we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into.  The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.

What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?

Share your word in the comments section below by January 6, 2017 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).

A FREE 12-DAY ONLINE MINI-RETREAT TO HELP YOUR WORD CHOOSE YOU. . .

As in past years, I am offering all Abbey newsletter subscribers a gift: a free 12-day online mini-retreat with a suggested practice for each day to help your word choose you and to deepen into your word once it has found you. Even if you participated last year, you are more than welcome to register again.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and you will receive a link to start your mini-retreat today. Your information will never be shared or sold. (If you are already subscribed to the newsletter, look for the link in the Sunday email).

WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ON JANUARY 6TH!

We are delighted to offer some wonderful gifts from the Abbey:

One space in our upcoming New Year's online retreat – Spiraling Inward: Seven Celtic Spiritual Practices
One signed copy each of Illuminating the Way ,  Soul of a Pilgrim , Eyes of the Heart , The Artist's Rule , and Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire .
One space in our online program  Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
4 people will win their choice of our  self-study online retreats

So please share your word (and it would be wonderful to include a sentence about what it means for you) with us below.

Subscribe to the Abbey newsletter to receive ongoing inspiration in your in-box. Share the love with others and invite them to participate.  Then stay tuned – on January 6th we will announce the prize winners!

Celtic Spiritual Practices ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

In 2007 I traveled to Ireland with my husband John and began to fall in love with the path of Irish monasticism. I discovered more stories and a way of moving through the world that felt more spiral and less linear, more organic and less structured. The early period of Irish monasticism is quite unique in that it was less influenced by the Roman church and desire for uniformity of practice. The Irish monks integrated Christian teachings with the Druidic wisdom of their ancestors, and created a spirituality that was much more indigenous to the place they lived.

Five years later, as the result of much listening to our lives and following the threads that were unfolding, John and I embarked on a midlife pilgrimage and moved from the U.S. to Europe. First came time in Vienna, the city where my father was buried, and then six months later we settled in Galway, Ireland, on the wild west coast of the very fringes of the European continent. Our journey was very much into the unknown. We did not know when we left behind the life we loved in Seattle where the following years would take us. The unfolding journey has been far more wonderful than anything I could have imagined.

We have found in Ireland an even richer immersion in Irish culture and ways of being in the world, which are decidedly less controlled, structured, and planned than the American ways we are used to. We have learned to embrace Irish understanding of time with more fluidity. This is challenging at times, but ultimately invites us into a way of being that is more relaxed and spontaneous.

We have been introduced to more of the great Irish saints of this land, whose stories offer the kind of wisdom the desert monks also brought. We knew that monasticism had flourished in Ireland in the early Middle Ages, but were unprepared for just how many monastic ruins saturate this landscape. Within an hour’s drive of our home are dozens of monasteries which are now stone sanctuaries, overgrown with herbs and vines, but still holding the prayers of thousands.

In addition to the sacred land, come a variety of spiritual practices unique to the Celtic imagination. Practices which include always walking sunwise, in harmony with cosmic forces, walking the rounds at holy places as a way to arrive, ask permission to be received, and move out of our linear thought process, and practices of encircling oneself as a means of protection from harmful energies. The Irish monks also treasured learning by heart, blessing each moment, and listening to the wisdom of dreams.

We will be exploring seven Celtic spiritual practices in our upcoming online retreat for the New Year called Spiraling Inward which starts on January 9th. We would love to have you join us in an immersion in the Celtic way of being and prayer.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kathleen Maci

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kathleen Maci's reflection on restful wandering.

“I would never have known,” the HR representative confided to me in our meeting about my age of 63. I had been teaching at a university in Beijing, China for a couple of years and had just received the news that I was ineligible to apply for a Z visa allowing me a yearly work and resident permit. Anyone over the age of 60 is now ineligible to apply. Just like that – no job for 2016-2017 school year. No big deal, I thought. I had been saving and planning for a six-month self-funded sabbatical for two years. Contemplative living is my ongoing journey. I counted this piece of news as a sign that it was time. I needed the time to reconnect with all my unfinished projects. I needed to figure out what next.

Giddy with excitement as September approached – I took the time to travel and visit my son and grandchildren. I took a much deserved holiday with my significant other. Days flew by; then weeks. I was three months into the sabbatical when I began the online Advent Retreat — and when asked what word or phrase spoke to my heart, all that kept coming up was “restful wandering.” I got the wandering part. I’ve always had a vagabond’s heart.  But restful? What did that mean? How does one restfully wander; especially in unfamiliar places?

Time is an illusive animal. Just when you think you have a grip on time it slips away. I started recognizing just how much I connected productivity to my self-worth, to my identity. My age is a marker of time. Even my travel marks time. Yet, as a monk in the world I made a commitment to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations. My gift has always been teaching. It’s something I have always done to make a living even though I never imagined that I’d be a teacher for my career. It just “happened.”  Maybe it happened because I had a mentor in my life that could see the teacher in me when I could not.  I never acknowledged limitations.  But now, was one of my limitations age? I did not believe this. I refused to believe this.

Ongoing conversion and transformation means the willingness to commit to spending time in that “liminal period” – facing the threshold I’m about to cross; and it’s the unknown of the crossing that gets my attention. That might be why it’s so difficult to rest.  A threshold needs silence to recognize. I do not have a mentor at hand telling me what I would be well-suited for. Maybe my mentor is the heavenly father and I need restful silence to hear. But my busyness keeps the silence at bay. I must be willing to commit to deeply resting. And I had no idea how challenging deeply resting could be; but my sabbatical “time” is teaching me.

To restfully wander means to me that I am in a unique position to follow my heart and explore – just don’t commit to anything yet. My instructions are to listen. In other words, be at home where I am planted and enjoy what is at hand. This has meant several months in Arizona living with my dad, joining a long overdue exercise regiment, hiking; signing up for a writing pilgrimage in Ireland; joining a labyrinth gathering in Indiana, and hearing dog assistance training. I don’t know why my heart leaps at these certain experiences. I often find myself saying, really? Dog assistance training? Or, a labyrinth gathering?  I am realizing that I need to stop fighting the process and accept the strange formlessness of restful wandering. It is in relinquishing my will to see the situation as I want it to be that I will discover my own transformation and live at large as a monk in the world.  Life coach Martha Beck writes about “the still and curious of the threshold . . . to sit with the nothingness until your fear fades.”  That’s what I am working on.

I am now approaching seven months of sabbatical. All the things I have deemed so important – those unfinished projects have all gone untouched. And I focus on each day, one at a time, restfully wandering.

Kathleen Maci is a journalist, anthropologist and teacher whose home varies by season. She teaches writing to adults returning back to school for DePaul University’s School for New Learning. You can read more about her explorations at www.writingyourwaytoadventure.com. Her website is a work in process.

St. Brendan and the Archetype of the Pilgrim / Advent begins! ~ A love note from your online abbess

Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You

to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know

that my times, even now, are in Your hand.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You.

—The Prayer of St. Brendan (attributed to Brendan)

 

Dearest monks and artists,

I was not that familiar with Brendan the Navigator until I moved to Ireland. Officially, he would be known as Brendan of Clonfert, and there is a Cathedral in Clonfert, Ireland bearing his name and a site said to be his grave where I have visited. But there are many physical places connected to his story, including a monastery about a half hour north of Galway city where his sister founded a community and Brendan came before his death.

The “Navigator” or “Voyager” is his more commonly known title because his life was defined by his seven year long journey across the sea to find the Island Promised to the Saints. He would have visited the island of Inismor off the coast of County Galway to receive a blessing from St. Enda before embarking on his journey, so I relish knowing I have walked and sailed on some of the same landscape as he.

He hears the call to search for this mythical island and it is revealed in a dream, an angel says he will be with him and guide him there. He brings along a group of fellow monks for community, and searches for seven years sailing in circles, visiting many of the islands again and again. Each year he celebrates Easter Mass on the back of a whale. Each year he visits the island of the birds, where white-feathered creatures sing the Psalms with his monks. Only when his eyes are opened, does he see that this paradise he seeks is right with him.

There is also a deeper, archetypal layer to this journey, which resonates with our own inner pilgrim – the part of ourselves drawn to make long voyages in search of something for which we long. This is the inward geography of the journey, and one where we may physically only travel a few feet or miles but the soul moves in astronomical measure.

This journey is an allegory of spiritual transformation and the soul’s seeking to live and respond to the world from an experience of inner transfiguration with themes of Brendan’s waiting, anticipation, striving, searching, and seeing from a deeper perspective. The heart of the voyage asks us, what needs to change for the Land Promised to the Saints to be recognized? What is the way required through both illuminated and shadowy interior landscapes? Are we able to stay present through moments of solace, ease, and joy, as well as the anxiety, fear, and sometimes terror that comes when we let go of all that is familiar to follow our heart’s calling? Can we see the difficult journey as a passage of initiation?

We have a free call on Brendan the Navigator and the Pilgrim archetype tomorrow! Visit this link to register>>

Our exploration of Sacred Time during the holy seasons of Advent and Christmas starts today! Join us and make an intentional pause this year and reframe your relationship to time from one of scarcity to one where you touch the eternal. We promise rich conversation and connection and a wonderful online sanctuary.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © St. Brendan dancing monk icon by Marcy Hall

Monk in the World Guest Post: Cheryl de Beer

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Cheryl de Beer's reflection titled "Contemplatively Living with Questions".

My contemplative nature was awakened when I was 13.  I was blessed to attend Catholic high school where one of our teachers, a nun, taught our class silent prayer. I took to centering prayer and silence like a duck to water, eager to commune with the divine presence hidden within my heart. Through school I was also introduced to the Catholic Eucharist where I learned that the reality of Christ could be encountered in bread and wine. My spirituality took on decidedly Catholic leanings which favoured the age old traditions of silence and contemplation within a sacramental framework. My sacramental spirituality unfolded almost by accident, a graced accident. I had been sent to school by my Methodist family to receive a good education. I came away with much more. I became a deeply sacramental Methodist who sought the Presence within the silence of my heart and within the Eucharist (it was never just communion for me). And I started to live with questions.

My questions deepened when I was a young woman now married to a Methodist Minister. In this time, I sought to deepen my intimacy with Christ and entered spiritual direction. Direction brought me to the spiritual exercises of Ignatius and simultaneously the desert land of dry prayer. I found I couldn't pray with the method of imaginative contemplation. I was too deeply embedded within the tradition of imageless prayer. Stubbornness, Grace and the desire for deepened intimacy with Christ enabled me to prayerfully 'walk' my way through Ignatius' spiritual pathways – his four 'weeks' of the exercises. God in His grace sent nightly dreams which became my prayer material. The dreams surfaced images and content which not only deepened my experience of Christ who speaks from within my depths, but also gave me further questions to live with. I was led to live with the images whose meaning deepened over time. The whole prayer experience shaped me into someone who became familiar with God's language of dreams.

My dreams slowly took me into the deeper, darker parts of self and life. My questions intensified. Who was God and how was I being called to live my life in response to call? I began to test the call to ordained ministry. I was a contemplative seeking my practical vocation within life.

One dream in particular stands out in my memory from my early years of marriage. In this dream I'm in a classroom and have to write a letter about who I am. My husband starts to write it for me. I then take over, thinking "he can't write about the essence of me". I start writing and it flows. I write about how I'm like a friend of mine who I know to be a contemplative, and I think, shoo…that's the first part of me (being a contemplative). I then go on to write about the rest of me – the action part, but this part is fuzzy, and I can't remember the details thereof. Life and experience slowly taught me that the ordained ministry was not for me. I had my path to live. I became a pilgrim in search of life's answers and instead of answers, was led to live with Mystery. I was led to be still with the Presence in the midst of the images that slowly surfaced from my depths.

Grace then gifted me with another dream. In this dream the dream female asked me "what is your vocation?" I shook my head answering her " I'm not sure”. She looked at me and said, "I would dance." I have lived with that question for a long time. What does it mean for a contemplative to dance? Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered the Abbey of the Arts and the Order of "the Dancing Monks"!

The layers of this word "dance" are still being unwrapped. Artistic expression – dancing with the Trinity – giving form to and giving back that which one has received from the Divine, is becoming an increasingly soulful aspect of my spirituality. Writing in particular, is slowly being experienced as a call, one significant expressive form of "dance” for me.

I'm still a contemplative pilgrim living with questions but now I'm a dancing contemplative pilgrim living my way into a new life. Roughly 11 years after I completed the spiritual exercises my husband and I were called to the Church of Scotland. We were called to leave family, friends, country and even denomination to embrace a whole new life in the land of my ancestors, the land of my Scottish grandfather.

We didn't even have passports. On the 4th December 2014 we all found ourselves in home affairs – my husband, Kevin, myself and our two children, Michael and Sarah, applying for passports. We eventually arrived in Scotland from South Africa on the 15 July 2015. I arrived with Kevin, Michael and Sarah, as well as awareness of new questions. What new dance would the Trinity draw myself and my family into, within this promised land?

Upon arriving in Scotland my heart, like that of Wesley centuries before me, became "strangely warmed". I was coming home to the land of my ancestors, to the land of Celtic spirituality where God is to be encountered in all of life and the elements – in the wind, waves, fire, and earth.

My own journey continues to unfold. The contemplative life urges me ever forward to new pastures. The questions themselves have become part of my spirituality – a way of remaining increasingly open to life and the Spirit. I thus continue to live with questions, but am slowly learning to hold them lightly. I hold them as a way to prayerfully live with Mystery in the eternal now, and to dance my way deeper into life, love and the Trinity who waits with open arms to receive me in a future yet to be unveiled.

Cheryl lives with her husband and two children in Bellshill, Scotland. They recently emigrated to Scotland from South Africa.  She is a contemplative who is discovering a love of artistic expression and writing. Her writing life emerged in the process of completing a Master’s in Philosophy, in Theology, specializing in Christian Spirituality.

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

The United States celebrates the feast of Thanksgiving this week. I have always loved this time of gratefulness and sharing with loved ones. My heart overflows with gratitude for this beautiful community we have created together. I delight daily in knowing there are dancing monks all over the world.

The 5th century monk and mystic Benedict of Nursia counsels in his Rule for monastic life an attitude of contentment among his community. Whatever the circumstances they find themselves in, they are to find some satisfaction with what is in the moment. In a world of self-entitlement and inflated sense of need, learning to be content with what we have has the potential to be quite revolutionary. It means craving less and being more satisfied with what one has.

One way to encourage this this posture of contentment in our lives is gratitude. Gratitude is a way of being in the world that does not assume we are owed anything, and the fact that we have something at all, whether our lives, our breath, families, friends, shelter, laughter, or other simple pleasures, are all causes for celebration. We can cultivate a way of being in the world that treats all these things as gifts, knowing none of us “deserves” particular graces.

We might begin each day simply with an expression of gratitude for the most basic of gifts, life itself. Awakening each morning for another day to live and love, grateful for our breath and a body that allows us to move through our day. Then we can offer gratitude for a home and all the things that are important to us about this place of shelter.

Environmental activist and author Joanna Macy describes gratitude as a revolutionary act “because it counters the thrust of the industrial growth society, or the consumer society, which breeds dissatisfaction. You have to make people dissatisfied with what they have and who they are in order that they keep buying.” Gratitude is a way for us to cultivate a healthy asceticism and reject consumerism.

Gratitude is a practice that can begin with the smallest acknowledgement and be expanded out to every facet of our existence. A simple way to nurture this awareness in our lives is to end each day with a gratitude list. You might write 5-10 things for which you feel grateful each day, lifting up both the large and small moments of grace. It is a way to end the day by honoring the gifts we have received rather than dwelling on where life came up short for us. Consider saving these grateful noticings together somewhere, and after a season of time reading back over the things that made your heart expand and notice what patterns you find there.

Gratitude has a way of transforming our approach to life into one that is more open-hearted, generous, and joyful. Rather than moving through our day feeling cynical or burdened, we can consciously choose our thoughts. This doesn’t mean that we have to offer gratitude for injustices or abuse, we are always called to resist those. But it does mean we might be able to tap into greater joy to replenish us for those moments when we do need to fight for dignity and kindness. Gratitude overflows into joy and makes us feel connected to something bigger than ourselves.

I don't want you to just sit down at the table.

I don't want you to just eat and be content.

I want you to walk out into the fields

Where the water is shining and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there far from this white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with mud, like a blessing.

-Mary Oliver

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Barb Morris

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Barb Morris' reflection on the Monk Manifesto and New Cosmology.

"Someday we'll live in a convent."

A dear friend and I have a plan. “One of these days,” we say, “we’re going to have a convent.” We’ve felt this desire since we met more than 30 years ago, when our husbands were Episcopal Divinity School classmates. The timing isn’t clear. Do we wait until we’re clergy widows? That seems just a touch dependent and maybe a little morbid. But if our husbands are still alive, what do we do with them? (They plaintively wonder this as well.) Clearly the details are a little hazy. In the meantime, we find joy in imagining our convent’s amenities – a brook babbling through the interior spaces, a well-stocked library, and a garden with chickens and goats and a greenhouse, so far. We think a llama or two would be awesome. And private rooms for all the sisters.

My friend and I aren’t completely serious, yet the appeal of monastic life is real for us and for many people, including, I suspect, most of you reading this post. How do we understand and explain our call to an ancient form of devoted and disciplined life in this day and age? It’s been almost 1500 years since Benedict wrote his Rule, and our understanding of the cosmos is radically different than it was in Benedict’s day. So isn’t monasticism rather anachronistic, quaint in its adherence to rules and hierarchy, a vestige of a radically different time?

I think not. The Abbey of the Arts is one example of a contemporary phenomenon – New Monasticism – a movement which reimagines medieval structures and strictures for today’s realities. I believe that living as a monk, in the world or out of it, is encoded in our DNA. Each commitment of our Monk Manifesto correlates to a tenet of the “New Cosmology,” the physics of the Big Bang as currently understood. (I owe much of the following material to the late Judy Cannato’s books Radical Amazement and Field of Compassion.) Understanding how science validates my monkish desires calms my fearful mind and keeps it from whispering, “No one wants to be a monk anymore. You’re deluded and crazy.”

If you’ve signed the Monk Manifesto on this website, you’ve made eight commitments. Far from being anachronistic and quaint, each commitment is a practical way to live faithfully in the modern world described by physicists and cosmologists. Here are just a few of the connections I see.

My Monk Manifesto commitments to silence, solitude, and Sabbath are practical ways to live out my connection to all Creation. Because everything that exists is composed of material and energy from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, we’re connected at the deepest level. Everything. All creationkind. Rocks, water, birds, stars, us — we’re all connected. I strengthen my awareness of deep connection through regular silence and solitude, and I acknowledge my intrinsic value when I take Sabbath rest. I don’t have to prove my worth through being always busy. After all, I’m made of the same stuff as stars!

My commitment to cultivating “awareness of my kinship with creation” is similarly grounded in knowing my radical connection to all that is. If I take too much, or give too little, Creation suffers. We humans are unique in our consciousness of our connection and the consequences of living unfaithfully. We now know that, truly, no one is an island.

My Monk Manifesto commitment to radical hospitality, extended both within and without, is echoed in Creation’s reliance on black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. Only 5% of the universe is ordinary matter – matter we can see or feel or measure. Creation is almost completely composed of darkness. Every galaxy has a black hole at its center, and without dark energy the Universe would spiral itself into oblivion. So, too, with us. Our shadows and darkness are a necessary part of who we are.

My commitments to community and to intentional work are grounded in the New Cosmology concept of “holons,” which insists that everything is both a whole and a part. Atoms make up molecules, which compose cells, which form tissues, that coalesce into organs and systems and bodies. Individuals aggregate to form flocks and forests and families while continuing to maintain separate identities composed of smaller entities. Wholes depend on parts, and parts depend on wholes. Everything is necessary. Relationship is fundamental. Individual integrity and action are, paradoxically, both crucial and unsustainable.

My Monk Manifesto commitments to ongoing conversion and the cultivation of creative joy are rooted in the ideas that the Cosmos is continually creating itself, and humans are the Universe become conscious. We each have a part to play in this continuing creation. My call and vocation is to be the best “me” I can be. Taking my place as a whole/part in this new creation requires consciously letting go of what is no longer needed, dying to my small self over and over, and willingness to become a part of something previously unimagined.

So choosing to be a monk in the world is the opposite of crazy. On the contrary, choosing to live as a monk in the world is a radically sane way to embody the realities of the New Cosmology. Taking my Monk Manifesto commitments seriously, incarnating them as one unique individual living in community, is how I take my part in God’s ongoing creation of our world. This is how the Kingdom comes, one monk and one community at a time. "

Barb Morris is an artist, writer, and retreat facilitator living in Bend, Oregon with her Episcopal priest husband. More of her blogging, writing, and art are at livingviriditas.org

Join us for Sacred Time this Advent ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

This has been a challenging week for many of us across the globe. If anything these events remind us even more of how essential this path of the monk is in a world that favors division, hatred, constant noise, and an endless, manic rushing. This community of fellow monks gives me great hope. These practices offer us a steady place in this midst of chaotic times.

Our clocks and calendars were created as tools to serve us, but the roles have reversed and now we serve them in their perpetual drive forward. They measure time horizontally, in a linear way, always ticking off the missed moments. For some, the calculations are literal with productivity expectations rising, and the need to produce more and more widgets in the same amount of time growing. Our schedules are so packed full of appointments and commitments that there is no time to lose ourselves in dreaming, wandering, playing, in the eternal now.

It is only when we move more slowly and with intention that we can touch the vertical modes of experiencing time. The seasons offer us a portal into another experience of time and offer ways to begin practicing this alternate way of being.

Seasons like winter call for hibernation, rest, moving into darkness and mystery. Instead we are bombarded with an ubiquitous call to shop endlessly, to socialize as much as possible, lights are strung everywhere to stave off the night. This now begins as early as late summer, and at least by Halloween.

I have lived in different cultures and perspectives on time, from my childhood upbringing in the heart of midtown Manhattan, with its endless rush and bustle, to eventually moving to California in my twenties, and Seattle in my thirties. Each move represented a gradual slowing down, as each culture offered a different approach to the madness of modern life. Now in my forties, I am settling into life in Galway, a city on the west coast of Ireland, where “Irish time” is very distant from my urban upbringing. I love the slowness of life here and the less exacting schedules. The whole attitude toward life is much more relaxed.

I also love nature and the wisdom I discover there. Forests and oceans call me by name. I feel most alive in these places. My practice of yoga introduced me to the wonders of the breath. The monastic tradition of praying the Hours plunged me into a heightened appreciation of the texture of each day’s unfolding. A dear friend in Seattle who was a rabbi, introduced me to the incredible gift that is the Sabbath. As I grow older, I have grown in my appreciation of the moon and her cycles through the sky. And when my mother died in 2003, I learned to love the whole circle of seasons, as I moved through my own release and grief, and only slowly back toward blossoming and fruit again. The night sky teaches me about a more expansive time. I fell in love with the possibilities of winter and darkness as time for dreaming and imagining, for not rushing anymore, but allowing deep rest.

The Greek myths may help us understand this dual relationship we have to time. In the ancient story the Greek god Chronos was cursed, saying that he would one day be overthrown by one of his children. As a result each time a child of his was born, he would devour them to not allow the curse to take place. He was also depicted with a scythe and is known as the god of agriculture. Later he became associated with time and its destructive aspects. Chronos became the name for the kind of time which makes us keenly aware of its passing, always moving us inevitably  toward our own ends.

The Greeks also had a word for the more life-giving aspects of time. Kairos is known as the god of opportunity and is depicted with wings. Time may be the destroyer of things, but it is also the medium through which creativity happens. Time can be life-giving when we view it from an alternate perspective, from that of touching eternity.

How do we open ourselves to Kairos more often? How do we pause on the horizontal progression of time and touch the vertical moments of eternity? I believe part of the answer is opening ourselves to a connection to cyclical and spiral understandings of time as we have in nature. Much of monastic practice and tradition is rooted in this understanding and relationship.

Join us for an exploration of Sacred Time in community during the holy seasons of Advent and Christmas. Make an intentional pause this year and reframe your relationship to time from one of scarcity to one where you touch the eternal.

We also have two programs in the New Year, a community online retreat on Spiraling Inward: Seven Celtic Spiritual Practices, as well as a brand new small group spiritual direction journey guided by Christine and the Celtic story of the Selkie or sealwoman. Both start January 9th.

For more reflections from me, I wrote a reflection on lectio divina as a life practice for the website Monasteries of the Heart this week. You can read the article here>>.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner