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Invitation to Dance: Holy Waiting

We continue our theme this month of “Holy Waiting” through the practice of dance. 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 this image of “Holy Waiting” as the gentlest of intentions, planting a seed as you prepare to step into the dance. You don’t need to think this through or figure it

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Prayer for Awakening (a love note from your online Abbess)

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Prayer Upon Awakening “The breezes at dawn Have secrets to tell you; Don’t go back to sleep.” -Rumi What force gently lifts back night’s inky black gown studded with shimmering stars, where soot turns to umber, seawater to crimson, rose to saffron, and then to that brilliant morning shade of blue, spilling forth like the seven silk scarves of Salome in a dance of revelation? What is being awakened in you in that threshold moment, when a thousand black crows scatter to the

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Monk in the World guest post submissions welcome!

If you follow along at the Abbey, you know that over the last six months we have had a great Monk in the World guest post series from fellow monks, authors, bloggers. It has been a gift to read how ordinary people are living lives of depth and meaning in the midst of the challenges of real life. I have been pondering lately how many talented writers and artists there are in this Abbey community, and so starting in January, we are opening up the series to submissions from YOU. The reflection will be included in our weekly newsletter which goes

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Invitation to Poetry: Holy Waiting

Welcome to Poetry Party #73! I select an image (*photo above by Augustine Baron) and suggest a theme/title and invite you to respond with your own poem. Scroll down and add it in the comments section below or join our Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group and post there. Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog (if you have one), Facebook, or Twitter, and encourage others to come join the party!  (If you repost the photo, please make sure to include the credit link below it and link

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Give Me a Word 2014: Fifth Annual Abbey Giveaway

Share your Word for 2014 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

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Monk in the World guest post: Judy Smoot

I’ve known Judy Smoot for several years now, first connecting through Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, then several other online classes, and finally the pleasure of spending time with Judy in person at our Awakening the Creative Spirit intensive. Judy is a fellow Benedictine oblate, a spiritual director, a lover of the expressive arts, and the founder and director of Always We Begin Again, a nonprofit dedicated to serving those with chronic illness and their caregivers through contemplative and creative programs. I am delighted to share Judy’s wisdom here with this community on being a monk in

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Invitation to Photography: Holy Waiting

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 (Visio) Divina practice (stop by to pray with this beautiful image from Mary Southard).  As I prayed with Mary’s art I felt held in this womb of waiting and watchfulness, attentiveness and presence, of sinking into the gift of stillness and knowing this is necessary before the birth can come. With our overall theme of the year at the Abbey as discernment, I love the idea of exploring the gifts of waiting, being fallow, embracing rest, as essential

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Earth Monastery Project: Grant Winners Announced

This past autumn, Abbey of the Arts launched a new initiative – the Earth Monastery Project – as a way of encouraging creative visions for nourishing an earth-cherishing consciousness. We had a marvelous batch of applicants for this first round and John and I along with Wisdom Council members Cheryl, Stacy, and Richard, truly had a difficult time discerning who should receive our first grants. After much prayerful consideration, we are pleased to announce the winners: Martha Brunell and the Monarch Waystation Project creating an oasis in northern Illinois “for our dwindling monarchs to eat, rest, and lay eggs and for other

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Monk in the World guest post: Mary Earle

I first encountered Mary Earle’s work several years ago in her book Beginning Again: Benedictine Wisdom for Living with Illness and Broken Body, Healing Spirit: Lectio Divina and Living with Illness. Her books helped me fall even more in love with the balanced way of monasticism and to see it as a profoundly healing path as someone who lives with chronic illness. Benedictine spirituality has taught me tremendous gentleness and compassion toward my body.  Mary, who is an Episcopal priest and spiritual director, has written many more wonderful books as well including Celtic Christian Spirituality and Marvelously Made: Gratefulness and the Body. I

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Community Lectio (Visio) Divina: Art by Mary Southard

Artwork: “In the Shelter of Your Wings” © Mary Southard, CSJ Used with permission courtesy of www.marysouthardart.org With December comes a new invitation for contemplation. This month I invite you into a visio divina practice, which is an adaptation of lectio divina. In visio divina we are invited to see with the eyes of our heart, much in the way lectio calls us to listen with the ears of our heart. I was drawn to this piece of art by Mary Southard for the month of December because we are entering the season of Advent, which is a season of waiting, and in the

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