Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 142

Invitation to Lectio Divina: Thomas Merton on Silence

With December we offer a new invitation for contemplation. We are returning to a monthly focus on our Monk Manifesto themes. Our focus for this month is Silence. The month of December can be busy and full of noise. And so it is all the more important to take special care to cultivate true silence.

I invite you into a lectio divina practice with some words from Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.

How Community Lectio Divina works:

Each month there will be a passage selected from scripture, poetry, or other sacred texts (and occasionally visio and audio divina as well with art and music).

How amazing it would be to discern together the movements of the Spirit at work in the hearts of monks around the world.

I invite you to set aside some time this week to pray with the text below. Here is a handout with a brief overview (feel free to reproduce this handout and share with others as long as you leave in the attribution at the bottom – thank you!)

Lean into silence, pray the text, listen to what shimmers, allow the images and memories to unfold, tend to the invitation, and then sit in stillness.

Let me seek, then, the gift of silence, and poverty, and solitude, where everything I touch is turned into prayer: where the sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is in all. — Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton

After you have prayed with the text (and feel free to pray with it more than once – St. Ignatius wrote about the deep value of repetition in prayer, especially when something feels particularly rich) spend some time journaling what insights arise for you.

How is this text calling to your dancing monk heart in this moment of your life?

What does this text have to offer to your discernment journey of listening moment by moment to the invitation from the Holy?

What wisdom emerged that may be just for you, but may also be for the wider community?

Sharing Your Responses

Please share the fruits of your lectio divina practice in the comments below (at the bottom of the page) or at our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group which you can join here. There are over 2600 members and it is a wonderful place to find connection and community with others on this path.

You might share the word or phrase that shimmered, the invitation that arose from your prayer, or artwork you created in response. There is something powerful about naming your experience in community and then seeing what threads are woven between all of our responses.

Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group here>>

*Note: If this is your first time posting, or includes a link, your comment will need to be moderated before it appears. This is to prevent spam and should be approved within 24 hours.

Monk in the World guest post: Alicia Dykstra

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Alicia Dykstra's wisdom on the gifts of being a "grazer":

Grazing

People often say you are what you eat. I never took that too literally, but at one point it occurred to me that the saying is true at many different levels. As a monk in the world we are called to pay attention, so I thought this all through some more and tried to figure out what God was trying to tell me.

I love to graze and nibble snacks all day and rather have a smorgasbord than a ready assembled meal. I’m never satisfied with just three square meals a day, but need little snacks often.

This is true for my quilt work as well. I love collecting bundles of fat quarters or sweet sixteens and put them together in a quilt. My quilting friends will hand me a stack of scraps and say: “You do something with it”.

My taste in books is the same, it’s very eclectic and deals with all kinds of topics and with the E reader I can switch books after a chapter or two if I get bored of one or need a break.

My education is again very wide and diverse and I consider myself a Jill of all trades and master of not too many. I just love learning new things and if something piques my interest I will google it and collect articles and books about the topic or take a class to learn more.

It also affects my travel style. I like to visit different places every time and meet different people and different cultures and food. I will get the travel guides out and check all the places of interest to visit and learn a few basic phrases in the local language.

What does this all say about my spiritual life then? Am I satisfied with following one God and how do I exercise my faith?

The answer to the question is a full hearted “yes!” I do believe there is only one God and my grazing side is satisfied in the Trinitarian believe of Father, Son and Spirit. God is the same in character all the time, but reveals himself in so many different ways. And it is a sport to find where and how he reveals himself to me and in totally different ways to other people.

I don’t call myself Reformed or Catholic or Baptist, even though I was raised and attend in these traditions. I believe in unity, but not sameness. That’s what I love about quilting too. You create a unified whole by putting hundreds of different pieces together. God created this world with so much diversity and I believe we are a true representation as the universal church (although our diversity has been and is often used by the Enemy to tear us apart and it is very confusing to explain to new believers).

My dissatisfaction can become a curse and drive the people around me crazy. I can’t sit still for too long or with nothing for my hands to do. As you can imagine I’m a do-er and have a hard time learning to be a “be-ing”. On the other hand I think it’s also a gift.

God did create all of us differently for a reason. My grazing personality forces me to stay open and look for connections. It fuels my creativity to find ways to “do” faith in a way that fits my personality and not feel guilty about it. There is not only one way to be a follower of Christ or to worship God. The psalmist tells us to “taste and see” what God is doing and it has helped me to taste and see God in so many different ways and not to get stuck in a “right” or “wrong” way of doing life.

God and Faith often seem a paradox and that can be scary, but it is so true. As much as I like to graze, I also need to be rooted somewhere. Benedict calls us to stability and as a being on the move all the time I wondered about roots in my life. God called me as a mover but gave me a secure home base both in faith and family. My greatest joy is to show that God is different from what you expect him to be and that he shows up in the most unexpected places. Life is one big puzzle and we don’t need to have all the answers. I trust God to have the big picture and so I graze and collect in the hope that one day the complete picture will be revealed and I hope to inspire the people around me that there are different ways of living out our faith and to encourage them to seek and worship God in a diverse community.

Alicia Dykstra has been married to Terry for 30 years and is the mother of three young adults who move in and out of the house. She was born in the Netherlands but has been living in view of the Rocky Mountains in Calgary, Canada for almost 25 years. She loves learning, eating, travelling, reading, quilting and making new connections.

Click here to read all the guest posts in the Monk in the World series>>

Week 1 Advent Practices: Breathing Deeply

This is a weekly Advent series by Christine from the Abbey archives. If praying the with the four elements kindles a spark in you, consider my book Water, Wind, Earth, & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements.

As we enter these four weeks of Advent, we cross into a holy time when the scriptures are filled with images of expectancy as we await the coming of a God who enters into the heart of this world. I invite you during these next four weeks to embrace this season as a time to tend to your relationship to creation. As we anticipate the way holiness becomes enfleshed, we are called to reflect on the ways we honor the sacred embodied in the world, what theologian Sallie McFague describes as God’s body.

In 2003, the Canadian Catholic Bishops published a pastoral letter on the Christian ecological imperative. They described three responses to which we are called: ascetic, prophetic, and contemplative. Reclaiming a healthy asceticism calls us to conversion and recognizing how we must live more simply to put less of a strain on earth’s resources. Cultivating a prophetic vision means to examine our collective impact and to name acts of injustice.

The third is nurturing a contemplative response to creation, which I will be focusing on here for the season of Advent. A contemplative response means bringing ourselves fully present to the sacred voice that speaks through trees, mountains, and creatures. It means cultivating a sense of spaciousness in our lives so we have time to nurture an intimate relationship with the natural world.

The readings for the first Sunday of Advent always convey a sense of urgency and the need to awaken and stay alert. This first week’s readings exhort: “Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mark 13:33). Where have you been asleep to creation as the very matrix in which you live and breathe? How are you being called to awaken to a deeper sense of kinship to earth and her creatures? Where have you fallen asleep to the holy presence shimmering through nature?

In the Cherokee tradition, the element associated with the time of dawn and awakening is air or wind. As we rise each morning we are reminded of our own call to awaken to the needs around us. We inhale that first deep breath of the day and remember that we are sustained moment by moment through the gift of breath. The dawn is the time of promise, when the world seems full of possibility. During Advent we are invited to awaken to hope and new beginnings.

The word inspiration comes from the Latin root spiritus, which means Spirit or breath. To be inspired is to be filled with the spirit or to be breathed into. The Spirit continues to move and breathe into each one of us, offering inspiration each moment of each day.

The ancient Celtic monks practiced peregrinatio, a form of pilgrimage where they would set out in rudderless boat without oars and let the wind carry them to the “place of their resurrection.” Perhaps part of the Advent call is to release our carefully constructed plans and awaken to the wildness of God’s creative call.

When we awaken and breathe deeply, we become alert and present to the grace of each moment, we feel ourselves inhaled and exhaled by God. The breath is ruah, the breath of God enlivening the world. In one of her poems, Mary Oliver asks the potent question: “Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” Or are you living in a way that draws deeply on the gifts that enfold and sustain you? Breathe in and allow the element of air to guide your response to these questions.

Practices for Advent

• Consider creating an altar for this season of Advent and include symbols from creation that are meaningful to you. You might include a feather for the element of air or wind as a reminder to breathe deeply of life each day. Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th-century Benedictine abbess described herself as a “feather on the breath of God.” Offer a prayer that during these four weeks you might be like a feather and surrender to the ways God calls you to respond to the suffering of creation.

• The practice of breath prayer goes back to early Christian roots and is found in other religious traditions as well. Begin each day by paying attention to the rise and fall of your breath. Gently deepen it into your belly, which creates a relaxing effect on the body. Imagine yourself being breathed into by God with each inhalation. With each exhalation, release what keeps you from being fully awake and present to this moment. The Jesuit and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin poetically describes the “breathing together of all things.” Open your awareness to the rise and fall in each moment of the breath of every living thing. Join your breath with the breath of God sustaining all creation. Then remember that the trees take in our carbon dioxide and release oxygen in a sacred dance of mutual exchange. Ask yourself, “What is being awakened in me?” and pay attention to what stirs within.

• Play some flute music. The 14th century Sufi poet Hafiz writes: “I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through, listen to this music.” How does your life allow the breath of God to move freely through it? In what ways do you constrict the flow of air through your body and life? What is the music being played within you?

Word for December: Silence

It is in the silence

that my hope is, and my aim.

A song whose lines

I cannot make or sing

sounds men's silence

like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world

lives in the death of speech

and sings there.

—Wendell Berry, excerpted from "The Silence"

Advent blessings my dear dancing monks!

As we begin this holy season I wanted to invite you into the deep stillness of the heart which is the real gift of this time ahead.

Two years ago we had a photography party on the theme of "silence" and I created this video for reflection from images shared by the community (and requesting permission).

Next Sunday we will return to our Community Lectio Divina practice with the quote from Thomas Merton included in this video. For now, rest into the images and listen to your own deep longings.

Monk in the World Meditation Silence from Christine Valters Paintner on Vimeo.

We are returning to our monthly explorations of the Monk Manifesto and silence is the first principle: "I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation."

Each month for the next eight months, we will take one of the Monk Manifesto themes for the entire month and it will shape our Community Lectio Divina, Poetry Parties, Photo Parties, and Dance Parties.

The desert mothers and fathers wrote extensively about seeking interior silence.  The word they used was hesychia, which refers to a kind of deep inner stillness.  We can surround ourselves with quiet, but hesychia refers to the quiet that comes from within.

Amma Syncletica, one of the wise desert mothers, offers us this wisdom saying:

"There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in town, and they are wasting their time.  It is possible to be a solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts." (Syncletica 19)

What I love about this saying is that she very directly tells us that we do not have to wish for a life in a monastery to find silence and stillness (especially if I go there and never let go of the endless mental chatter).

To be a monk in the world means to cultivate the practice of silence in our everyday lives.  I love life in the city, I love to be able to walk and get whatever I need.  But the crowds, the traffic noise, and the occasional jackhammering can all make silence feel far away.  But if my inner life is full of judgment, or clamor, or chaos, I will never find silence, no matter where I am.  Whereas, the desert elders tell us, you can be in the midst of a sea of noise, and still cultivate inner peace.

This is where practice is essential.  Each morning I show up to my morning time of silence.  I begin with some journaling to help give the chatter in my mind a place to rest.  I engage in a time of yin yoga, which is a marvelous and deeply contemplative practice of holding asanas, or poses, for 5 minutes at a time.  In this way, I enter the stillness of the body.  I close my physical practice with a movement prayer and I seek stillness at the heart of dance. And finally I have a time of sitting in silent meditation, where I just sink into the quiet both within and without.

I find the physical element of meditation practice important.  When we meditate, we aren't trying to transcend the body.  When I practice yoga and dance, I move energy through my body, I release patterns of holding and tightness which can just get reinforced by sitting still.  If I don't have a movement practice before meditation, I often find my body is more restless.  If I allow it to have its natural language, then I discover the vast pool of silence right within my body.  Allowing my awareness to sink into my body cultivates more capacity for physical stillness, which is connected to the stillness of the mind.

Sometimes when we sit down to silent meditation, we feel agitated, we are restless, a list of things to do is hovering right in front of our eyes. These are the times when it is so tempting to walk away, to decide that you just aren't in the "right space" for it and to try another time. But this is exactly when we need the commitment to notice our thoughts, and as much as possible every time they arise, breathe deeply and let them go. The whole practice may be just that. Because cultivating this capacity to be with the mental overwhelm will always bear fruit in our daily lives. We don't wait for our life situation to be "perfect" because it never will.

Do you have a daily practice of savoring silence?

Could you pause right now, for just 5 minutes, quieting your thoughts and breathing deeply? (yes, even just 5 minutes can offer deep refreshment if you give yourself over to it)

What might you discover?

There is still time to join us for our online Advent retreat if you want the support of a structured contemplative and creative practice along with a whole community of dancing monks with whom to share your insights and struggles.

Register here: Birthing the Holy: Advent & Christmas Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes

Thanksgiving Blessings!

Today is the U.S. feast of Thanksgiving and I am sending out gratitude for this amazing global community of dancing monks!  Here are three poems for you to ponder on this day, perhaps one will speak to your heart.

Thanksgiving

I have been trying to read

the script cut in these hills—

a language carved in the shimmer of stubble

and the solid lines of soil, spoken

in the thud of apples falling

and the rasp of corn stalks finally bare.

The pheasants shout it with a rusty creak

as they gather in the fallen grain,

the blackbirds sing it

over their shoulders in parting,

and gold leaf illuminates the manuscript

where it is written in the trees.

Transcribed onto my human tongue

I believe it might sound like a lullaby,

or the simplest grace at table.

Across the gathering stillness

simply this: “For all that we have received,

dear God, make us truly grateful.”

-Lynn Ungar, from Blessing the Bread

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

 

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings

we are running out of the glass rooms

with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

and say thank you

we are standing by the water looking out

in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

after funerals we are saying thank you

after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

in a culture up to its chin in shame

living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you

in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

remembering wars and the police at the back door

and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you

with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable

unchanged we go on saying thank you thank thank you

with the animals dying around us

our lost feelings we are saying thank you

with the forests falling faster than the minutes

of our lives we are saying thank you

with the words going out like cells of a brain

with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster

with nobody listening we are saying thank you

we are saying thank you and waving

dark though it is.

-W. S. Merwin from Rain in the Trees

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Dancing with Monks and Mystics (guest post from Betsey Beckman)

For the last several months, we have been embarking on an exciting creative project and collaboration.  It started with choosing 12 dancing monks to be a part of the original Dancing Monk Icon series painted by Marcy Hall.  These icons were meant to depict some beloved monks and mystics in a joyful and colorful way, reminding us of our call to dance through this life.

We had the inspiration to feature a dancing monk for each week of our Advent/Christmas and Epiphany/New Year's online retreats. My dear friend and collaborator Betsey Beckman was inspired to have songs created for each dancing monk and then to choreograph a gesture prayer to accompany the music . Read on below for her insight into this process.

If you would like to join us for these online retreats you can find the registration info here:

Birthing the Holy: Advent & Christmas Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes
Illuminating the Way: Epiphany & New Year's Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes

Dancing with the Saints … could it be better than dancing with the stars?  Of course! (If you are a dancing monk that is!) What an adventure it has been preparing for our upcoming online retreats that will explore praying and dancing with a colorful array of monks, mystics and archetypes.

Here is the timeline:

2012 – Christine chooses 12 Monks and Mystics to be spiritual guides or “patron saints” for the Abbey of the Arts.

2013 – Christine commissions a beautiful color icon by Marcy Hall for each of these guides/archetypes.

Spring 2014  – Christine makes plans for upcoming online retreats with our archetypal guides. Begins writing a poem for each monk/mystic.

Summer 2014 – Bing!  Inspiration arises!  – If we have 12 icons and 12 poems for our array of holy archetypes, and we are indeed a Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks, then of course, it would only be right for us to have 12 songs and 12 dances to explore the gift of these fine spiritual guides as well! Abbess Christine weighs in enthusiastically about such a notion, and gives encouragement for us to embark on this voyage – full steam ahead.

September 2014 – Song Writers: on your mark, get set, go!  Five different artists write (or adapt) 12 songs – an amazing array of reflection and inspiration.

October 2014 – 12 songs recorded (or sent in) by our various artists:  Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, Laura and David Ash, Carmel Boyle and Betsey Beckman (me!)

October 2014 – I wake up choreographing!

November 2014 – Now time to film!  By the grace of God, I already had plans to participate in Christine and John’s beautiful pilgrimage to the western shores of Ireland this November.  With new motivation for visiting sacred sites, fellow dancing monk, Sharie Bowman and I take camera in hand and go about filming the dance meditations as our side-project in an array of sacred locations on our group pilgrimage.

These include:

Holy Mountain on the isle of Insimore (ancient monastic site on the Aran Islands)

The ferry to Inismore

15th Centruy monk’s fishing cabin at on the River Cong

The shores of the sea in County Clare

Ross Errilly Friary in County Galway

Brigid’s Well in Kildare

Byland Abbey in Yorkshire, England

What an honor and privilege to be “birthing the holy” in the form of this project while visiting sacred sites in Ireland and England. As a child, I discovered the simple joy of dancing in nature.  This summer, I spent time dancing in my yard, enjoying the sweet gifts of staying at home.  This fall brought about the stirring adventure of journeying far and wide – embracing the archetype of St. Brendan the Navigator – visiting ancient sites on a sacred voyage, and dancing by wells, oceans and abbeys.

Upon returning home, I am immersed in our “Dancing with Monks & Mystics” project still, and am looking forward to filming the movement prayer for Mother Mary for the third week of Advent.  I will be praying a beautiful setting of the Hail Mary in the Cathedral of St. James in Seattle.  What an honor.

I am bubbling up with joy to have the occasion to create movement prayers that are simple enough for anyone to join in and are also are infused with artistry and soul inspired by our saints and archetypes.  Some of the dance prayers are gestural and contemplative, some are energized by simple foot patterns, and some add (optional) spins and twirls for more adventurous dancing monks!

Beyond the online retreats, we are planning to publish these beautiful dances, songs, poems, and icons as resources for communities and individuals to continue to pray with in book, CD and DVD formats.  Whee!

When we dance, the cosmos celebrates within us and through us.  Hope you can embark with us on this sacred journey… and as Merton would say – “Join in the joy of the cosmic dance!”

Betsey Beckman, MM is nationally acclaimed as a spirited dancer, storyteller, teacher of SpiritPlay and dancing Spiritual Director. With her extensive repertory of sacred storydances, she is regularly featured as artist/presenter at national conventions as well as local churches. She earned her Masters in Ministry degree from Seattle University, her certificate in Movement Therapy from the Institute for Transformational Movement, and is a certified InterPlay leader. As dancer, choreographer, author, mother, wife, teacher and spiritual director, she is passionate about living life fully and fostering creativity in all those with whom she shares life and ministry. Betsey’s publications include books (she is co-author of Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Expressive Arts to Spiritual Direction), recordings, and The Dancing Word series of DVDs on embodied prayer. She offers the gift of playful improvisation whenever possible.

 

 

 

 

Invitation to Dance: Honoring Saints & Ancestors

We continue our theme this month of "Honoring Saints & Ancestors: which arose from our Community Lectio Divina practice with the letter to the Hebrews and continued with this month's Photo Party and Poetry Party.

I invite you into a movement practice.  Allow yourself just 5 minutes this day to pause and listen and savor what arises.

Begin with a full minute of slow and deep breathing.  Let your breath bring your awareness down into your body.  When thoughts come up, just let them go and return to your breath. Hold this image of our "Saints & Ancestors" as the gentlest of intentions, planting a seed as you prepare to step into the dance.
Play the piece of music below ("Dance in the Graveyards" by Delta Rae) let your body move in response, without needing to guide the movements. Listen to how your body wants to move through space in response to your breath. Remember that this is a prayer, an act of deep listening. Pause at any time and rest in stillness again.
After the music has finished, sit for another minute in silence, connecting again to your breath. Just notice your energy and any images rising up.
Is there a word or image that could express what you encountered in this time?  (You can share about your experience, or even just a single word in the comments section below or join our  Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group  and post there.)
If you have time, spend another five minutes journaling in a free-writing form, just to give some space for what you are discovering.
To extend this practice, sit longer in the silence before and after and feel free to play the song through a second time. Often repetition brings a new depth.

Monk in the World guest post: Alexander Gilchrist

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Alexander Gilchrist's wisdom about finding contemplative moments on the commuter train:

As much as we complain about the service, the trains generally run on time. That means the express train to New York’s Grand Central Terminal is going to be pulling into my station around 6:21 a.m. and pulling out at 6:23 a.m. – whether I’m on it or not. That dependability has sometimes forced me to sprint through the parking lot like a 50-plus year old schoolboy in order to make the train. On those mornings, it almost takes until the next stop to catch my breath between cars (it’s a long parking lot), and then find a seat. It’s worth the effort however, because the next train is a local and it gets into the city 40 minutes later than the express. A 40 minute extension of a two-hour commute used to make me pretty ornery.

What has this to do with being a Monk in the World? Pretty much everything. You see, I’m a recovering Type-A personality. My false self’s need to continuously prove my worth drove me to try to achieve a lot and achieve it quickly. For a variety of reasons, as I reached adulthood, I had a drive to demonstrate my value; to show that I could do something well, and that I was worthy of respect. Over the years, that need for respect almost got me fired, almost ruined my marriage and estranged me from my wife and three sons for a very painful period of time. Something had to give.

My current pastor, an emissary of God, introduced me to contemplative faith and another friend introduced me to The Abbey of the Arts. Though I read voraciously about contemplative living, the practice was and is difficult for my ego and me. But the Monk in the World course was a long soaking rain in the parched summer of my soul. I return to its teachings and reflections quite frequently, as my brittle edges need reconditioning. The Monk Manifesto has been like a handbook, and in this particular season of my life, the first (silence and stillness), second (hospitality) and seventh (conversion) principles are especially helpful to me.

The early morning is critical. I claim it as my own. The early hours are when I find silence and solitude, when I make space for another voice to be heard. My two-hour commute to the city required long ago that I embrace the morning, and it has set my body-clock to that rhythm. Now I look forward to that time even on weekends and vacations. The wee, pre-dawn hours invite me into liminal moments, that beautiful blending of time and space where Man and The World are quiet, and the sacred breaks in and roams unfettered. I am my candlelit self then, known to God as I have always been, deep down. The Day is also itself, unaffected yet by events or activities. In the morning, I am able to center myself without the bias and baggage of my ego, and my grace receptors are unfurled for the day. In the morning, I am reminded that life on the surface is, by definition, shallow – easily affected by external ripples.

The Manifesto names Hospitality as a guiding principle, and as that sank in a part of me was touched by a new light. As the youngest of eight, and an eyewitness to the events on the morning of 9/11, I am especially moved by those who are or who feel unwelcome. I was often excluded from my siblings’ games and activities when I was growing up because I wasn’t big enough or old enough. More recently, I recall all too vividly the story of the New York City cabdriver who, in the wake of 9/11, was pulled from his cab and beaten to death because he had dark skin and was wearing a turban. Unfortunately, some of that still exists in the world. As the day is awakening, thoughts are clearest. Good sleep has a way of sweeping away the residual effects of the previous day’s judgments and battles. Yet unjaded by the world or my false self, I sit in the mornings with an expansive flow of outward and inward hospitality in my heart. Being able to draw from that flow, as I enter into one of the most densely populated places on the planet, converts the experience from being obligatory to being a practice of faith.

Each person on the street is just like me; she carries a weight or at least a story that I do not yet appreciate. Through my desire to be hospitable, I am reminded that curiosity and perception can replace speed and efficiency. My former yardsticks for rationality and success become less meaningful.

I mentioned at the outset that missing my normal train used to make me pretty ornery. I look back with inward hospitality at how long it took me to realize missing the train was actually MY fault. There was a long stretch of my adulthood during which I did not see well (much less acknowledge publicly) my own failings, and I struggled with how to treat anger. I still slip down that slope occasionally, but those whom I love report that my ongoing conversions are gaining some traction. The phrase “reformed, and always reforming” now seems less boast and more plea. The humility of ongoing conversion is probably the most liberating concept that this aspiring Monk in the World has stapled to his heart. I am already loved, warts and all, and that has allowed me to dance even if someone is watching.

Alexander Gilchrist is an avid birdwatcher, and an amateur photographer who hikes, paddles and spends as much time as possible in the woods with his wife and three sons. An aspiring Monk in the World, he is an economist by training who lives in New York state and works in New York City.

Click here to read all the guest posts in the Monk in the World series>>

Ritual Cup of Tea (guest post by Tonja Reichley)

For the last several months, we have been embarking on an exciting creative project and collaboration.  It started with choosing 12 dancing monks to be a part of the original Dancing Monk Icon series painted by Marcy Hall.  These icons were meant to depict some beloved monks and mystics in a joyful and colorful way, reminding us of our call to dance through this life.

We had the inspiration to feature a dancing monk for each week of our Advent/Christmas and Epiphany/New Year's online retreats. My dear friend and herbalist Tonja Reichley will be offering recipes for creating ritual teas to accompany each of the archetypal invitations. Read on below for her insight into this process.

If you would like to join us for these online retreats you can find the registration info here:

Birthing the Holy: Advent & Christmas Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes
Illuminating the Way: Epiphany & New Year's Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes

A Blessing for the Senses

May your body be blessed.

May you realize that your body is a faithful and beautiful friend of your soul.

and may you be peaceful and joyful and recognize that your senses are sacred thresholds.

May you realize that holiness is mindful, gazing, feeling, hearing, and touching.

May your senses gather you and bring you home.

May your senses always enable you to celebrate the universe and the mystery and possibilities in your presence here.

May the eros of the earth bless you.

—John O’Donohue

Celebrating our body and the senses that help us experience fully this beautiful package that ensconces our soul is one of the great delights of being human. As an herbalist and a monk I dance with the herbs and the sensual pleasures they ignite as a threshold to deepen into my experience of the Divine.

In many of my herb classes I invite my students to work closely with an individual herb, to open up their intuition to the wisdom of the herb, to remember. To do this I suggest ways to spend time with an herb getting to know it just as we get to know people.

One of my favorite ways to connect in a sensually intimate way with an herb is through a ritual cup of tea. This is a simple and intentional process, an active meditation, that connects us to the gifts of the herbs and receiving the blessing they have for us. Enjoying a cup of tea is an ancient tradition, an act that monks would have practiced, an act that my Irish ancestors would have practiced. A ritual cup of tea connects me not only to myself and the Divine dancing there but also to my spiritual and genetic lineages.

To connect ritually through the process of creating and enjoying a cup of tea, begin by turning off all distractions and focus solely on what you are doing. Bring your full presence to your task. Share this time solely (soully) with yourself and your herb(s) or your favorite tea. I adore and drink many herbs and, too, one of my favorite moments of the day is first thing in the morning making my pot of Barry’s Irish tea and indulging in the first sip.

Allow the entire process of the tea-making and drinking to be a meditation. Be totally present and intentional with all aspects of filling the kettle, bringing the pot to boil. Of gazing upon the beauty of the herb as you put it in the pot or in your special tea cup.

Pour the water, directly off the boil, over the herb. Breathe in the steam, feel it caress your skin. Engage your senses. As we do in the Druid tradition, invite your senses to be thresholds to a deeper knowing, a deeper connection. When you take a drink, follow the path of the tea as it moves over your tongue, igniting your taste-buds and then down your throat. Experience it moving into your body. Notice where it flows and where the nourishment and healing are received within your body.

Be with the herb, feeling your own spirit dance with its spirit. Receive the gifts. Give of your gratitude. Be in the stillness that happens in this authentic exchange. Be in the beauty and power of simple ritual.

I am delighted to prepare ritual tea blends and reflections for the upcoming online retreats Birthing the Holy: Advent & Christmas Online Retreat AND Illuminating the Way: Epiphany & New Year's Online Retreat with Monks, Mystics, and Archetypes. Each week as we journey with a monk or mystic, the ritual tea will give us an opportunity to slow down, sit with the archetype and reflect, with our senses as thresholds, into the wisdom of each.

I will be providing recipes for each ritual tea and the herbs we will be working with are common and should be easy to find if you have a local health food or herb shop that sells loose-leaf herbs. Another option is to purchase the entire kit of ritual teas from my shop MoonDance Botanicals. You can purchase five teas for each course or the entire series of ten. Purchase the teas for Birthing the Holy here and Illuminating the Way here and a combined set here.

Herbalist (BS, MBA) Tonja Reichley spends her time in the urban alleyways of Denver and on the windswept coast of western Ireland foraging for wild herbs to nourish, heal and revitalize the whole self.   She loves the power and connection of ritual and ancient Celtic monastic traditions.  She created MoonDance Botanicals, a herbal boutique where all products are handcrafted by a collaborative herbal community and is the author of The Way of Brighid Oracle Cards, a 33-card deck dedicated to Irish goddess and saint, Brighid offering reflections, meditations and affirmations..   Her new book The Holy Wildness: Awakening to Ancient Rhythms of Sacred Irish Landscape  explores how the turas, the holy journey, offers thresholds to sensual secrets, deep yearnings and spiraled awakenings.   Visit her website at www.dancingwiththewild.com .