Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 151

Invitation to Photography: Return to me with your whole heart

Welcome to this month's Abbey Photo Party!

I select a theme and invite you to respond with images.

We began this month with a Community Lectio Divina practice with words from the prophet Joel, read every year on Ash Wednesday. "Return to me with your whole heart" are a powerful words to begin the sacred season of Lent. What if we were to imagine Lent as less about sacrifice, and more about making the great return to God.

I invite you for this month's Photo Party to hold these words in your heart as you go out in the world to receive images in response. As you walk be ready to see what is revealed to you as a visual expression of your prayer.

You can share images you already have which illuminate the theme, but I encourage you also to go for a walk with the theme in mind and see what you discover.

You are also welcome to post photos of any other art you create inspired by the theme.  See what stirs your imagination!

How to participate:

You can post your photo either in the comment section below* (there is now an option to upload a file with your comment – your file size must be smaller than 1MB – you can resize your image for free here - choose the "small size" option and a maximum width of 500).

You can also join our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group and post there. Feel free to share a few words about the process of receiving this image and how it speaks of the "Return with your whole heart" for you.

*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: Alizabeth Rasmussen

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Alizabeth Rasmussen has been part of our community for several years and I have been blessed to spend time with her in person at a previous Abbey retreat. She suffered a stroke last year and has been on an incredibly arduous and courageous (with courage here also referring to the root of that word, meaning "with heart") journey. Read on for her powerful wisdom about remembering:

Remembering and Forgetting

After the stroke,

the credit card machine

makes little sense, which way

does the strip go?

How many ways are there?

(More than you think.)

So it was at the garage that day…

I gave him the extra parking ticket,

that I bought by accident,

this stranger, without a word.

I was flustered,

I was late,

I was alone,

And I was lost.

The line of people at

this downtown garage,

the garage didn't have

stairs and was a maze.

(After the stroke,

I was more sensitive

to people…as if it was

not bad enough before.)

So many people.

After purchasing a ticket (times two),

I made my way back to the car.

Then I tripped…

My shoe was caught

on the other side as

the doorway closed

behind me.

and my purse scattered

on the ground,

I couldn't figure it out

without getting my feet wet

with rain.

A man rushed past me,

– THE man who I had

given my extra ticket to –

…and he ignored me.

I felt so invisible,

which made me feel this small

And…mad.

But then a woman stopped,

to make sure I was okay.

I asked her if she wouldn't

mind grabbing my shoe

(in gestures), and she did.

I haven't lost the ability

to say, "Thank you."

I meant it,

(I hope she knows.)

Finally, I got to my car.

And exhaled…and remembered…

I wondered how many

people I had rushed past,

On the way to work,

On the way to the gym,

On the way to school,

going home…countless times.

Not noticing because I was busy…what with?

And I wondered how many

had I stopped to help?

Simply noticing.

I remember, for that's what

being human is all about.

And that’s what being a

Monk In The World means to me.

Forgotten and remembering:

Silence,

God is quiet, after all,

why not listen for Him?

Forgotten and remembering:

Hospitality,

we are the same…everyone of us.

I am in the oneing of love,

(Lady Julian of Norwich.)

Forgotten and remembering:

Community,

when loneliness threatens,

reaching out,

making myself vulnerable.

Forgotten and remembering:

Kinship with Creation,

the trees and the animals,

the beauty that surrounds us.

Forgotten and remembering:

Meaningful Work,

For me, that is,

even if it is “just” healing work

(after all, what’s more

important than healing?)

Forgotten and remembering:

Sabbath,

to catch up with

the blessings of life.

Forgotten and remembering:

Conversion, and

Conversion, and

Conversion,

for the rest of our lives…

And maybe sooner than later

…next time.

 

Alizabeth Rasmussen is a freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared indamselfly press, Wild Violet and Mused: The Bella Online Literary Review.  She blogs regularly at Write Click (www.writeclick.me) and is a Blog Editor for Literary Mama (www.literarymama.com)

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

A different kind of fasting (an Ash Wednesday love note from your online Abbess)

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Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today we enter the long desert of the Lenten season. If you participate in a liturgical service, most likely you will be marked with the sign of ashes and the words "from dust you came and to dust you shall return" will echo through the sanctuary space again and again.

St. Benedict writes in his Rule to "keep death daily before your eyes" and Amma Sarah, one of the desert mothers said, “I put my foot out to ascend the ladder, and I place death before my eyes before going up it.”

The word for desert in Greek is eremos and literally means “abandonment” and is the term from which we derive the word “hermit.”  The desert was a place of coming face to face with loneliness and death.  Nothing grows in the desert. Your very existence is, therefore, threatened. In the desert, you can only face up to yourself and to your temptations in life which distract you from a wide-hearted focus on the presence of the sacred in the world.

Death of any kind is rarely a welcome experience.  Even when we witness the mysteries of nature year after year reveal the glories of springtime which emerge from winter's fallow landscape.  We resist death, we try to numb ourselves from life's inevitable stripping away of our "secure" frameworks.  We spend so much energy and money on staying young. But when we turn to face death wide-eyed and fully present, when we feel the fullness of the grief it brings, we also slowly begin to discover the new life awaiting us.

In the desert tradition, death is a friend and companion along the journey.  St Francis of Assisi referred to death as “sister” in his famous poem Canticle of Creation.  Rather than a presence only at the end of our lives, death can become a companion along each step, heightening our awareness of life’s beauty and calling us toward living more fully. Living with Sister Death calls us to greater freedom and responsibility.

Alan Jones describes the desert relationship to death in this way:  “Facing death gives our loving force, clarity, and focus. . . even our despair is to be given up and seen as the ego-grasping device that it really is.  Despair about ourselves and our world is, perhaps, the ego’s last and, therefore, greatest attachment.”

I have been sitting with Jones' words and the invitation to fast during Lent, one of the central practices we are called to take on. The first reading today from the prophet Joel summons us to "return to God with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning."

But the kind of fast drawing me this season isn't leaving behind of treats like chocolate or other pleasures. This season I am being invited to fast from things like "ego-grasping" and noticing when I so desperately want to be in control, and then yielding myself to a greater wisdom than my own.

I am called to fast from being strong and always trying to hold it all together, and instead embrace the profound grace that comes through my vulnerability and tenderness, to allow a great softening this season.

I am called to fast from anxiety and the endless torrent of thoughts which rise up in my mind to paralyze me with fear of the future, and enter into the radical trust in the abundance at the heart of things, rather than scarcity.

I am called to fast from speed and rushing through my life, causing me to miss the grace shimmering right here in this holy pause.

I am called to fast from multitasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness to any one thing, so that I get many things done, but none of them well, and none of them nourishing to me. Instead my practice will become a beholding of each thing, each person, each moment.

I am called to fast from endless list-making and too many deadlines, and enter into the quiet and listen for what is ripening and unfolding, what is ready to be born.

I am called to fast from certainty and trust in the great mystery of things.

And then perhaps, I will arrive at Easter and realize those things from which I have fasted I no longer need to take back on again. I will experience a different kind of rising.

My word for 2014 is "essence" and the question in my heart these days is "what is most essential?" I think this is the question death asks of us as well. The desert summons us to her fierce edges to strip away everything that gets in the way of deeply nourishing our hearts. The more we acknowledge our own bodily mortality, the more we might be inspired to release all those agendas, plans, anxieties, and commitments which drain us of the life we are here to embrace.

I wish you a most blessed Lent dear monks, no matter how you choose to enter into this season. May your fasting help you gain clarity around what is no longer necessary. May your practice become a portal to what is most essential.

If you would like to join in an intentional and soulful journey, please consider our online Lenten retreat on The Soul's Journey, where we draw on the archetype and metaphor of pilgrimage for reflecting on the journey our deepest heart's longings are calling us toward. There is a delightful caravan of fellow monks and pilgrims already gathering and there is still room for your beautiful presence with us.

We also have a Community Lectio Divina practice this week on the theme of "Return to me with your whole heart." Stop by to pray with the text and share what shimmers for you.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Photo by Christine received in London's Regent Park

In Praise of Circles (a love note from your online Abbess)

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In Praise of Circles

“I live my life in growing orbits which move out over this wondrous world.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Friends around the dinner table

their mouths making “o”s of delight and laughter,

plates piled with new potatoes, pearl onions, and pork loin.

Time softens the edges of river stones,

the arc of waves reach for shore,

celestial orbiting spheres keep cosmic time.

There is the saffron yolk, blood oranges and blueberries,

the coins in my purse that let me buy fresh meat and vegetables,

a steaming bowl of bone broth.

St. Hildegard of Bingen saw the universe as a cosmic egg,

and St. Francis of Assisi displayed those wounds in his palms,

icons halo their heads with gold.

The mossy green iris of my lover’s eyes, lost together

in a circle of mingled limbs, breasts and bellies, imperfect,

soft, and round. The ring he slid on my finger years ago.

The curve of the old woman’s back bent over from

a thousand griefs. The pregnant belly ripening.

Blood ebbing and flowing through our bodies.

Monks arising for prayers, entering

the great cycle of rising and falling,

Sufi dervishes whirling, always left around the heart.

We say “going in circles” when we mean nowhere.

Why do we worship the straight lines,

the most direct route, nonstop, leaving the past far behind?

A circle is both diameter and circumference,

compass and horizon, holding center and edge together,

calling us to the heart and the wild borders.

Winter’s fierce stripping away will always come again,

but so will dahlias and desire. Memories unbidden, circle

around like birds returning from migration.

The journey isn’t just the steep ascent up the holy mountain,

but the descent back to the daily, those friends still

lingering by the fire, the bottle of wine now lying empty.

—Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Circles have been calling to me lately as symbol of wholeness and the rhythm of returning again and again to ancient cycles. This week we arrive at the threshold of Lent on Ash Wednesday as we circle around in the liturgical year. For two thousand years, this has been a time of deepened prayer, of renewal, of responding to the call of the prophet Joel in the first reading for that day to return.

Return is about coming full circle, about finding yourself back home again with new insight. It means to turn again, re-turn, providing an eternal invitation to us.

I spent three days last week on retreat at the monastic site of Glendalough, south of Dublin. I wandered for hours and hours on forested trails, trees encircling me with their holy presence, reminding me of what I most love. I sat in the old stone ruins of St. Kevin's monastic city, imagining myself in a circle of ancestors, ancient men and women who came to this place hundreds of years before because of their own holy longing, their desire to return to the heart of God.

I felt held in a wider circle of prayer by dear friends, and you, my beloved community. And by the end of the week, when I headed to Dublin for a conference, I found that I had remembered myself again. All those parts that had felt a bit scattered, a bit anxious, had returned once again to center.

My time in Dublin was blessed with both old and new connections and a growing sense of the monastic circle being re-created in Ireland, so many people doing this vibrant work of reclaiming this ancient wisdom for meaningful ways of living in the world. And this deepening network made me feel even more deeply connected to the global community of the Abbey, a vast circle of dancing monks, stretched out across this beautiful globe.

What are the sacred circles of your own life, calling you to return to what is most true?

If you are looking for a meaningful way to journey through Lent this year, please consider joining us for The Soul's Journey: A Creative Pilgrimage through Lent. Pilgrimage is a profoundly soulful journey of intention and seeking what is most essential to your life. Even though we might imagine it as a linear progression, it is essentially a circle we make, into the unknown and strange territories of our inner landscapes, and eventually back home again, returning renewed, with new vision. We are not seeking some other, better version of ourselves out there, but clearing away the inner obstacles to our own holy selves.

For the retreat, we will draw on several archetypal stories of journey in scripture to invite you into practices which help to open you to your own deepest desires. We will write midrash (creative encounters with the stories) and receive photographs as ways of paying attention to the movements of our own spirits. If this invitation shimmers for you, know how very welcome you are. We do have a limited number of partial scholarships we can also offer to those who are really struggling financially but for whom this journey calls strongly. Registration will stay open through this week so there is time to join the caravan of monks and pilgrims.

Do check out our Community Lectio Divina for this month where we are praying with Ash Wednesdays call to return to God with your whole heart. We also have another fabulous Monk in the World guest post by fellow monk Rachel Regenold.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Photo by Christine of a church in Paris

Community Lectio Divina: "Return to me with your whole heart"

With March comes a new invitation for contemplation. As Lent begins this month (on March 5th – join our online retreat here.) I invite you into a lectio divina practice with words from the first reading for Ash Wednesday from the prophet Joel.

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).

For the year I am choosing an overarching theme of discernment. I feel like the Abbey is in the midst of some wonderful transition, movement, and expansion.

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.

Even now, says the LORD,

return to me with your whole heart,

with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;

Rend your hearts, not your garments,

and return to the LORD, your God.. —Joel 2:12-13

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 1300 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.

You can see the full winter/spring 2014 calendar of invitations here>>

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: Rachel Regenold

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community.  Read on for Rachel Regenold's wisdom about the power of rhythm to bring more presence to life:

Drumming Myself into the Present Moment

I have frequently read about the power of being present as a means to live a more peaceful, contemplative life. Yet, I find myself whining, “Isn’t there an easier way?” While on retreat in the fall I succumbed to the beauty of being present when I didn’t have to worry about the details of everyday life. But when I returned to my regular life and its demands I wondered how to continue being present.

A few weeks after my retreat I invited my friend Becky to join me at an African drumming class held at a local shop. The sound of drums calls to something deep within my soul. As we stepped into the classroom, I tried to tuck away my fears about the fact that I have absolutely no rhythm, can’t dance, and can’t play an instrument.

We joined a group of seven women who had apparently been meeting regularly and drumming for years. Years. We were the only beginners, having drummed only once before on a retreat where we became friends four years ago. Everyone was kind and welcoming, but as Linda, the instructor, brought out the drums I began to sweat. She placed a Djembe drum in front of me. “This is Hairy Dragon,” she said. Hairy Dragon was aptly named as there was a dragon carved in the dark wood of its base and a ring of coarse hair just below the lip of the graying goat skin stretched across the top.

Linda advised us to take off all watches, rings, and bracelets so as not to damage the drums, and began by showing us the three different hand placements we would use – bass, slap, and tone. The bass was a flat palm to the center of the drum with the fingers touching each other – BOOM. I quickly lost track of the difference between a slap and a tone, knowingly only that my fingertips struck closer to the edge of the drum for both.

The other women began playing easily as the instructor taught us four different rhythms. Me and Hairy Dragon got off to a rocky start. I struggled to follow, feeling like I’d just been plopped into the middle of a foreign country and didn’t know a word of the local language. The instructor saw me stumbling and tried different ways of encouraging me, even telling me a mnemonic about elephants running to help me remember one of the rhythms. Usually a person who clings to words, I couldn’t keep the “elephants running” mnemonic in my head; the words would not align themselves with the motions my hands were supposed to be making.

After a few minutes of gentle attempts at instructing me, Linda wisely asked, “Would it be easier if I just shut up?”

I nodded “yes” gratefully.

I shook out my hands at my sides and closed my eyes, hoping that just listening to the others drumming for a bit would help me catch the rhythms. Instead, my brain began downloading every bad memory connected to my rhythm deficiency. There was the time my best friend – a drummer in the school band – snapped at me because I couldn’t march in time to “Pomp & Circumstance” at our high school graduation. And my drill sergeant’s frequent display of disgust at my inability to march in time with everyone else in basic training. Why did I sign up for this hour and a half of torture?

But then I opened my eyes, put my hands on Hairy Dragon, and somewhere in that first hour I started to get it. Just a little bit. By giving a name to the hand movement in my head as I made the movement, I was better able to keep up. I just ignored “slaps” all together; everything became a “tone” or “BOOM” in my mind. I particularly relished the “BOOM” of my flat palm striking the center of the drum.

After the instructor taught us all four rhythms, she broke us up into twos or threes so that each pair or trio was playing one rhythm as the other pairs and trios played the other three rhythms. I don’t think it was a coincidence that Linda started my trio off with the only rhythm I had sort of figured out.

Tone-Tone BOOM Tone-Tone Tone-Tone BOOM-BOOM.

As we rotated the rhythms each pair or trio was drumming, they began to come to me more easily. I also discovered that the moment my mind flickered away for just a second I lost the rhythm and struggled to get back into it. Ditto with questioning myself – “Do my booms and tones sound like everyone else’s?” – and criticizing myself – “I will never be good at this.” Instantly, I lost track of where I was and had to pause to regroup, watch someone next to me for a bit, and then slowly work my way back into the rhythm. I even tested my theory, thinking about what I’d do after class just to see what happened. Yep, rhythm lost.

Being fully present was the only way to keep my rhythm going. I turned off my chattering monkey mind and focused solely on my hands touching Hairy Dragon’s hide. In the final rotation of rhythms, my trio got the fourth one – the “elephants running” one – and my heart sank.

BOOM-BOOM BOOM Tone-Tone BOOM BOOM BOOM. Slowly, I got it.

I only fell out of rhythm a few times, straining to remain present so I could actually drum the rhythm, hugging Hairy Dragon between my knees and booming with relish.

When we finished Linda looked at me, “Wow, when you get it, you get it.”

Yes, I finally get it. Being present is the only way I can stay in rhythm, both in drumming and in life. The moment I dwell on the past, fret about the future, or allow self-doubt or criticism to creep in, the rhythm of my life is lost.

Rachel Regenold is a seeker, writer, and yoga practitioner in Iowa, where she lives with her four-legged children.  She enjoys blogging about finding meaning in everyday life at www.iowaseeker.com.

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

 

Creative Joy (a love note from your online Abbess)

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Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This week I have finally been able to give some attention to adding a lesson to the Monk in the World e-course on the 8th principle of the Monk Manifesto which reads:

I commit to being a dancing monk, cultivating creative joy and letting my body and "heart overflow with the inexpressible delights of love."

I share some of the reflection here this week as a reminder for each of us to practice gratitude, contentment, good zeal, and cultivate the creative joy, freedom, and love which we are called to embrace as part of being a monk in the world.

“What is more delightful than this voice of the Holy One calling to us? See how God’s love shows us the way of life.”

—Rule of Benedict Prologue 19-20

“But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”

—Rule of Benedict Prologue 48-49

After writing the first seven principles of the Monk Manifesto, a couple of years passed, and then I was inspired to add the 8th principle above. In that time I had been deepening into the gifts of dance and embodiment, and discovering there a source of deep joy which always brought me back to Benedict’s invitation.

Whether we dance literally or metaphorically, the dance is a symbol for forgetting our self-consciousness and letting ourselves be overcome with the joy and love that beat at the heart of everything. Our whole purpose in following a spiritual path and nurturing these practices in our lives is to expand our inner freedom which expands our capacity for loving the world.  As we release the hold of expectations and disappointments, as we stop trying to live into the imagined life and live the one we have been given, we discover a profound inner freedom to make choices out of love, rather than obligation or resentment.

In Chapter 72 of the Rule, Benedict describes two kinds of zeal. There is the wicked zeal of bitterness and cynicism which spreads its venom through communities with rapid ease. But there is also “the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love.” This kind of zeal also can have a profound impact on those we encounter. The monk in the world is called to become conscious of the kind of zeal he or she sows in the world. Is it bitterness and resentment? Or love and cherishing?

This does not mean as a monk in the world that you need to always be happy. Far from it. Joy is not the same thing as happiness, but tapping into a deep well of love. Joy is deep and abiding presence, whereas happiness is a fleeting quality.

Our capacity for joy is in proportion to our capacity for sorrow, so the more we resist our grief, the more we also resist the treasure of joy available to us in abundant measure. Not the bitterness and resentment that Benedict counsels us to avoid, but the deep wells of sorrow we each carry within our hearts over losses and brokenness, betrayals and wounding. Following our principle of inner hospitality, we are called to welcome in these feelings, and in the process we carve out space for joy and love as well.

In St. Benedict’s description of humility, he says the 6th step is contentment. Contentment is one of those principles we find in other traditions as well. In yogic practice it is called santosha, and both mean a commitment to be with the truth of our experience and find a measure of peace and joy with what you have. Contentment helps us to let go of our expectations for what might be and to rest in the grace of what is.

Finding contentment with this moment is a very monastic practice and opens us to the possibility of joy. One of the definitions I sometimes give for an artist is that the artist creates out of the materials given. When we can live our lives in such a way that we accept the truth of our situation, and then seek to create from it, whether beauty or more peace or a way of honoring the grief, then we become artists of our everyday lives. The artist does not wait for some better materials to come along first. The artist does not say, I will only dance when I am thinner or healthier.

I describe this as creative joy, because we most often tap into it when we are engaged in creative activity like art or dance, or when we are in the midst of nature witnessing the Great Artist at work. But we can also access creative joy in the midst of friendship, when we find our way through conflict to a deeper sense of intimacy. Or through cooking a beautiful meal with the ingredients we have on hand. Or discovering that in the midst of our tenderness and vulnerability comes a great softening which allows us to finally ask for the support we need.

At Abbey of the Arts we nourish both the contemplative and creative, because we believe both are essential. We cultivate a sense of inner silence and spaciousness to receive the creative insights and inspirations that are our birthright. The more we allow this into our lives, the more vibrancy and vitality we discover.

If you want to subscribe to the newsletter subscriber and receive access to the whole Monk in the World e-course you can go to this link to register. We do ask that you consider making a donation to the Earth Monastery Project in exchange for the materials, but if you are unable to afford anything, you are still welcome to participate in the course.

Do check out our Invitation to Dance for this month on the theme of soul friend and our latest Monk in the World guest post by fellow monk Jason Jones.

I am also excited to announce that prints of the dancing monk icons are now available! Orders must be placed before March 17th.

If you want to journey through Lent in a soulful way, join us for our online retreat on pilgrimage which begins next week!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Invitation to Dance: Soul Friend

We continue our theme this month of "Soul Friend" through the practice of dance (please visit our Community Lectio Divina practice, Invitation to Photography, and Invitation to Poetry which all explored this theme for February).

I invite you into a movement practice.  Allow yourself just 5-10 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 the theme of soul friend gently in your awareness, planting a seed as you prepare to step into the dance. You don't need to think this through or figure it out, just notice what arises. A soul friend can help us listen to our own deep and wise voice within. Let dance be your soul friend today.
Play the piece of music below ("Listen to the Voice" by Chloe Goodchild – to receive a free mp3 version of this song subscribe to the Naked Voice email newsletter) and 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. Sit with waiting for the impulse to move and see what arises.
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, phrase, or image that could express what you encountered in this time? (You can share about your experience, or even just a single word or image 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.

*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: Jason Jones

I am delighted to share another submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jason Jones' wisdom about listening with the ear of our hearts.:

Hospitality of Listening

“He listens,” is what a new friend told me when we were both on retreat together.  We both had daily times to visit with a retreat leader, and my friend asked how my session went.  “Good,” I told him.  “It was good.  How about you?”  “He listens,” is how my friend replied.  The two words he listens said there was hospitality, openness, welcome, and safety in that time.  My friend’s story and presence were welcomed in the listening.  I had the same experience; I was welcomed in the listening.

A month ago I called a monastery, asking about scheduling a visit.  The monk who answered my call checked the dates to make sure there was room and said, “Yes, you can come.”  He didn’t ask for my biography or references, and he didn’t question me to make sure I was their type of person before welcoming me; it was only “Yes, you can come.”  I asked if I needed to make a deposit to secure my place, “No,” he said, “we’ll hold your place for you.  Just come.”  He was honoring the basic instruction in The Rule of St. Benedict that says, “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”[1]  I know when I arrive at the monastery there will be a room and a bed and a place at their table and a welcome into the monk’s life of prayer.  It’s a basic practice of hospitality, something that is part of the regular life of monastic communities.

Living as a monk in the world means hospitality is a part of our experience, too.  We welcome the guest as we would welcome Christ, and this can be lived out in an open place at a dinner table or with a welcome to a guest room in our homes, but it can be practiced, too, in the gift of listening.  Hospitality is shown when we consciously listen. Whenever we listen to another we show welcome to the guest.

Listening is not natural for most of us.  When we listen we unlock and open the door of our hearts to hear and welcome another.  For a moment we give up control to open ourselves to the experience of another, and that can be frightening.  We resist hearing another’s story because we’re more comfortable with our own perspective.  A friend, jokingly, said it well: “My problem is,” he said, “I think I’m right about most things, and I don’t have time for those who don’t understand how right I am.”  He was teasing, but there was truth there;  it’s hard to set aside our own rightness to hear another.  When we listen, though, we set aside our exclusive claim to the truth so that we might welcome another’s experience.

Although doing it might be frightening, the guest whom we welcome may be the one who brings us the blessing.  The person we listen to, the guest to whom we show hospitality, just might be a hidden angel coming to bless us in our welcome.  Benedict understood this, saying the guest is to be welcomed as Christ.  Benedict said, too, that the poor and the pilgrim should be especially welcomed,  because “in them more particularly Christ is received.”  When we welcome another, we’re to welcome them as we would Christ, because we know this other person is a creation of God, someone in whom God’s love and work and spirit is present.  When we show the hospitality of listening, we’re welcoming into our lives the good things God has brought with that other person.  Even when the other is challenging to us, a generous listen may bring an unexpected blessing.

Listening usually comes with a conscious choice to do it.  We’re more comfortable plugging ourselves up with headphones or staring into our phones.  The open door of a listening ear isn’t always our first impulse.  When we do listen, though, we living out a basic openness that meets another not with suspicion or mistrust but with a monastic hospitality where we welcome whatever blessing he or she might bring.  May there be an open place for the guest at your table and your home but most of all in the openness of your ears so that you might hear and know the blessing brought in your welcome and listening.

[1]Quotes from Benedict come from: Fry, Timothy, ed.  The Rule of St. Benedict in English.  Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1981.

Jason Jones is the pastor of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Highland, Indiana (www.fcchighland.net ).  He enjoys cooking, running, art-making, and spending an evening with Max, his cat, on his lap.

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"Please can I have a God" (a love note from your online Abbess)

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Please can I have a God

(after Selima Hill)

not fossilized, hardened, stiff, unshaken,

not contained in creeds and testimonies,

judgments and stone tablets,

but in the wound breaking open.

Please can I have a God

who asks me to worship at the altar of mystery,

to lay aside certainty, and curl up

in the hollow of a great stone down by the river,

to hear the force of it rushing past.

Please can I have a God

with questions rather than answers,

who is not Rock or Fortress or Father,

but sashays, swerves, ripens, rages

at the rape of the earth.

Please can I have a God

whose voice is the sound of a girl, long silent from abuse,

now speaking her first word,

who is not sweetness or light, but the fierce utterance of

“no” in all the places where love has been extinguished.

Please can I have a God

the color of doubt, the shape of uncertainty,

who sees that within me dwells a multitude,

grief and joy, envy and generosity, rage and raucousness,

and anoints every last part.

Please can I have a God

who rolls her eyes with me at platitudes and pronouncements

and walks by my side in the early morning

across the wet field, together bare-footed and broken-hearted,

who is both mud and dew.

Please can I have a God

who is the vast indifference of forest and night sky,

who is both eclipse and radiance, silence and scream,

who is everything slow and dark and moist,

who is not measured, controlled, but ecstatic and dancing.

Please can I have a God

who is not the flame, but the flickering,

not bread, but the chewing and swallowing,

not Lover and Beloved, but the making love,

not the dog, but the joyful exuberance when I come home.

— Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims,

This poem landed in my heart a few days ago while sitting in a darkened candlelit Cathedral at night, music playing, and the invitation to quiet prayer. I had been having a week of feeling the extremes of my humanity, both profound tenderness and vulnerability, as well as deep joy and excitement, the real stuff of our holy disorder.

A couple of weeks prior I had attended a lecture by Irish theologian Mary Condren. Instead of using the term "God," which is a noun and gives a fixed sense, she prefers the term "divinity" as offering an invitation to the movement of the holy as animating force through the world. I have been pondering her words since then, noticing even more so how images and names can fix something in our mind which should be vast, fluid, and unknowable.

When I am struggling with my humanness, I feel some disdain toward statements encouraging me to have faith or hope. Not that I reject those stances in life, but the advice always feels like it is moving me away from the opportunity to really experience the grief that is visiting me.What if instead of my needing to move toward faith, I invited God toward my pain and sorrow? As a monk in the world, who claims inner hospitality as a foundational practice, my real work comes with experiencing the fullness of my life, all of it. Not just to celebrate the beauty and joy, of which I have an embarrassment of riches and feel profound gratitude for every single day, but to welcome in the feelings of tenderness and insecurity, whatever is bringing them into my life.They are indeed wise teachers.

The poem arose in the space of that quiet hour in the sanctuary. Inspired by a poetry writing exercise I was offered in a lovely weekly workshop I am taking here in Galway (the assignment was to write a poem inspired by this poem by Selima Hill) and I offer it to you if seeing God and divinity in new ways feels life-giving to you. If you are longing for a God with more fierceness, more mystery, more capacity to hold the vast paradoxes of life and the world we live in. This is, of course, not the last word, but only a beginning.

What are the fossilized images in your own life that need breaking open?

Do check out our Invitation to Poetry for this month on the theme of soul friend and our latest Monk in the World guest post by fellow monk Valerie Hess.

I am excited to announce that prints of the dancing monk icons are now available!  We have also posted the information about our Vienna monk in the world pilgrimage May 23-31,2015.

With great and growing love,

Christine