Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
This Friday, November 20th, we are delighted to welcome Fr. Adam Bucko who will lead a contemplative retreat on Spiritual Guidance for Dangerous Times. Here is our interview with Fr. Adam.
1. At Abbey of the Arts we talk a lot about being a monk in the world. What does that mean for you and how do you embody that idea in your own life and ministry?
There is a story often told in Zen circles, one that Thich Nhat Hanh loved to repeat. A man is riding a horse, galloping at great speed. He looks focused and determined, and he is completely absorbed in where he is going. A passerby, impressed by the speed and intensity of his movement, shouts, “Hey, where are you going?” The rider turns and replies, “I don’t know! Ask the horse!”
In so many ways, this is our life. And this is our world.
So often, we are driven by forces and energies that demand all our attention just to keep up. We rarely stop to ask: Why are we moving in this direction? Or what is actually driving us?
For me, following a monastic spirituality in the world is about learning how to interrupt that momentum. It’s about learning how to slow down, examine what drives us, and ask what we actually want to be guided by. Ultimately, it’s about getting off that horse that is taking us into the unknown, an unknown we haven’t chosen for ourselves, but one shaped by the forces that drive our culture: capitalism, consumerism, and a way of life that keeps us so busy consuming and keeping up that we rarely have time to question the very system we are helping to sustain.
But it is very difficult to stop and maintain a different pace on our own. That is why we need communities and guides who can help us stop, take stock of our lives, and touch something deeper than our habitual ways of operating. This is where spiritual practice comes in. This is where a Rule of Life, an organizing principle for how we live, becomes important. And this is where I believe the ancient wisdom of monasticism has something profound to offer our world today.
Because when we begin to slow down, we discover that underneath everything that normally drives us, there is another presence, another energy, something that has always been there, but that we can now begin to touch and become open to. A presence that longs to infuse our lives with a different kind of direction. A presence that is always moving life toward greater wholeness.
And as we begin to open ourselves to that presence, we discover that we are not simply witnessing this movement toward wholeness. We are invited to participate in it. That our lives can become places where something of that wholeness begins to take shape.
And as we begin to live from that deeper place, we become bells of mindfulness for the world around us. Our very presence can invite others to slow down, to come back to themselves, to reconnect with that deeper place within them where something gentler, more loving, and more whole is waiting to be discovered.
For me, this is what it means to be a monastic in the world.
2. In your retreat description, you describe how it is important for us to stay open in times that tempt us to close down. What sustains you in this practice of radical vulnerability?
I think what sustains me is a conviction that has emerged from my own experience. I’ve learned that there are different ways of responding to the suffering of the world, and I’ve done life both ways.
I’ve had periods of time when the circumstances around me made me close down. But the price for that was too great to pay. This kind of protection led to a form of spiritual numbness.
And I’ve also had times when I chose to stay open, or even allowed the circumstances of the world to penetrate my heart so deeply that it simply broke into pieces. Underneath all of those pieces, I’ve discovered a presence that was eager to flow into the midst of the situation, pick up the broken pieces, and reassemble them into something that could become my unique offering to the world.
Our openness to the pain of the world is ultimately an openness to the heartbreak of God, who suffers with the world because of the suffering we inflict on one another and on creation through our misguided choices.
But heartbreak is not all there is. As Beverly Lanzetta once said so beautifully, speaking of her own mystical experience, when she touched that reality of divine mercy, there was both unbearable pain and unbearable love that remade her into a caring and loving witness.
Obviously, living this way and doing this kind of work requires discernment and psychological wisdom. I recognize that sometimes closing down is necessary for our survival, especially when we experience trauma or overwhelming circumstances. There is a difference between protecting ourselves when necessary and allowing self-protection to become our way of life. And openness is not something we can force.
This is why I believe that being on a contemplative path requires not only spiritual direction but also psychotherapy. It is so easy to miss important signals from our own experience or to spiritualize things that actually require a skillful response and deeper healing work. I am speaking here from that perspective, not wanting to encourage people to simply open themselves to suffering without proper support, discernment, and caution.
Through spiritual direction and psychotherapy, we can begin to negotiate our willingness, take steps in line with what our own discernment and the guidance of others reveal to us, and slowly move toward greater openness and transparency, while honoring our unique nervous systems and the circumstances of our lives.
3. What do you love most about leading retreats with people?
I love leading retreats primarily because they offer an opportunity to help people step out of the noise and momentum of everyday life and enter into a different rhythm, one that creates space for stillness, listening, and a deeper awareness of God’s presence in our lives. To guide people into that inner space where they can begin to sense and listen for the quiet whisper of the divine that is always present and available to us. For me, it is one of the greatest gifts and privileges of my life to witness this and hopefully to help facilitate it.
And when people have that experience, you can literally see a spark in someone’s eyes. All of a sudden, there is this movement, this energy, this sense of aliveness that begins to gently but surely move people toward who they were born to be as they touch those deeper places within themselves.
And the goal is not simply to have that experience for ourselves, but to allow it to begin to shape and direct how each of us, in our own unique way, can live in service of compassion and justice in the world. To learn to show up in the midst of the suffering of the world with open hearts, with tenderness, and yet with ever-growing courage.
And so, for me, leading retreats is not so much about producing an experience, but rather helping people open, listen, and become more receptive, and slowly, over time, develop the spiritual senses that enable them to live with a growing awareness and remembrance of that divine presence that is always with us.
4. Which contemplative practices will you be guiding us in for the retreat?
We will begin our time together with the communal practice of the Incarnation Method of Prayer, a prayer method that draws on the Carmelite understanding of contemplative prayer as an intimate sharing between friends.
The practice begins with a kind of somatic awareness of what we are carrying within ourselves, our emotions, our difficulties, our joys. We then begin to turn all of that into a cry of the heart, an intimate sharing with God, before finally resting in receptive silence and consenting to God’s well-making action within us.
After the prayer, I will offer a talk that draws on my personal experience of prayer and accompanying people on the margins. The underlying framework for all of this will be the teachings of the Benedictine, Carmelite, Franciscan, and liberation traditions of contemplative life in the world.
We will then have time for journaling and personal reflection, followed by conversation together.
My hope is that our time together will support us all in remaining more grounded in God’s presence, and that from that place, we will be able to open our hearts to the many cries of the world, not only so that we may feel them, but so that, from that prayerful place of holding the world on our hearts before God, which is how Archbishop Michael Ramsey understood intercession, we may know what is ours to do.
Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle
Today we release the 7th and final day of video podcasts for our Cultivating Seeds of Liberation morning and evening prayer cycle. Day seven is on the theme of beauty. Here is the opening prayer for evening by Claudia Love Mair:
Beautiful One, we bow our hearts and our heads in thanksgiving. There is still so much beauty in the world, even among that which remains brutal. Through this beauty, which is your beauty, you can save us, elevating us aesthetically and ethically. Let beauty lift us, urging us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, in Spirit and in truth. For we are the people of faith, hope, and the greatest of all, Love. We are your people, your beautiful people in your beautiful world. Restore us to our rightful shine. We love you. We glory in your Divine loveliness.
Pray with the video podcasts here.
You are invited to join us in prayer with Day 7 of the prayer cycle and for our retreat with Fr. Adam Bucko this Friday.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
