Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • Prayer Cycle
      • Introduction to the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle
      • Day 1 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Cathedral
      • Day 2 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Scriptures
      • Day 3 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Saints
      • Day 4 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Spiritual Directors
      • Day 5 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Icon
      • Day 6 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Sacrament
      • Day 7 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Liturgy
      • Prayer Cycle Leader Resources
    • About the Abbey
    • About Christine Valters Paintner
    • About John Valters Paintner
    • About the Wisdom Council
    • Monk Manifesto
    • Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks
    • Subscribe to Our Love Notes
    • Website privacy notice
  • Books
    • Sacred Time:
      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
    • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems
    • Earth, Our Original Monastery:
      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
    • The Soul's Slow Ripening:
      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
    • The Wisdom of the Body:
      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
    • Illuminating the Way:
      Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
    • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
    • Eyes of the Heart:
      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
    • The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
    • Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated & Explained
    • Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
    • Awakening the Creative Spirit:
      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
    • Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness
  • Poetry | Art | Music
    • Music + DVD
    • Poetry by Christine Valters Paintner
    • Poetry Videos
    • Dancing Monk Icons
    • Other Art Collaborations
      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
      • Saints & Animals art series by David Hollington
      • Sacred Time art series by Alexi Francis
      • Mary block print art series by Kreg Yingst
  • Programs
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Monk in the World (Ireland)
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Vienna Monk in the World (Austria)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
    • Community Online Retreats
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Lent 2021)
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World:
        An Online Writing Retreat
    • Self-Study Online Spiritual Retreats
      • Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert:
        An Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen
      • Dreaming of the Sea:
        A women’s discernment journey through the story of the Selkie
      • Earth, Our Original Monastery
        A Companion Retreat to the Book (SELF-STUDY)
      • Exile and Coming Home:
        An Archetypal Journey through the Scriptures
      • Eyes of the Heart:
        Photography as Contemplative Practice
        (Companion retreat to the book)
      • Honoring Saints and Ancestors:
        Online Retreat for the Season of Remembrance
      • Lectio Divina:
        The Sacred Art of Reading the World
      • A Midwinter God:
        Making a Conscious Underworld Journey
      • Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea & Stone:
        A Creative Retreat with the Elements (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Seasons:
        A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
      • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
        Eight Practices for the Journey Within
        (a companion retreat to the book)
      • The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seekers of the Sacred (a companion retreat to the book)
      • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
      • Watershed Moments
        in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
      • Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist:
        A 12-Week Companion Retreat to The Artist's Rule
      • The Wisdom of the Body:
        A 10-Week Online Companion Retreat to the Book
      • The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks

We Dance Wild

A poem for Abbey of the Arts by Australian spoken word artist Joel McKerrow

https://abbeyofthearts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Joel-McKerrow-HDDM-poem.m4a

We dance. We dance wild.
Not a two step, structured repetition. We dance large.
We dance flailing arms.
We dance the erratic and the wriggle,
the blunder, stumble and fall with no need to get back up again.
For our fumbles are our dance
and our dance is our rebellion and our declaration and our surrender.
Our falling to the floor is a knowing that it is only in the places
of dust and grime and footprint, only in the failed step and the rusty body, only in the falling
that we can ever truly meet the holy and the sacred.
We meet God on the floor.

So we choose to not rise too quickly,
to not keep ourselves together,
to not think we have this nailed,
this life, this God, this mystery, this question.
Our dancing is our stumbling and our stumbling is our dancing
and how disorderly we may seem,
and how undignified and messy,
we dive headfirst into not having the answers,
giving ourselves to a more spacious rhythm.
The song that is heard only in the silence,
only in the listening ear,
only in the unexplored landscape.
The whisper at the edges.

We find ourselves
when we lose ourselves.
The wilderness and the wild.
The Christ who gathers.
The Christ who descends.
The giving up of control.
The smallness of humility.
The largeness of the mystery.
The immensity of seeking the sacred in everything.
Never running from life
but plunging ourselves more wholly into her.
We dance and we feel our lumbered bodies begin to move.
We dance and we feel the heavy begin to take flight.
We dance to find liberation.

We dance to bring redemption,
the untwisting of the beautiful,
We dance to the new rhythm, the ancient rhythm, the holy rhythm,
the rhythm that holds it all together.
We dance to bring space.
We dance to hold hands.
We dance and we dance and we dance and we dance
until we are dizzy and falling.
We dance. We dance wild.

We are the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks.
—Joel McKerrow

Abbey of the Arts is a global community and virtual monastery. It is co-created by those who long to live into the monk and artist path more fully, knowing the depth and meaning to be found in them.

For those of you who want to affiliate with this community, I invite you to consider joining the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks!

Do you. . . ?

  • Do you long to cultivate a spacious and holy rhythm to your days?
  • Do you want to "live the questions" rather than find certain answers, believing in the grace of honest doubt and struggle?
  • Do you feel called to claim the sacred lineage of ancient monastic paths and bring that wisdom to the world?
  • Do you seek the sacred in all things, circumstances, and people, right in the midst of life's messiness?
  • Do you desire to plunge into the heart of your own creative upwelling, knowing that when you make space for life to become art, you cooperate with the Great Artist at work?
  • Do you honor the profound dignity of each person, regardless of culture, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, or religious beliefs?
  • Do you long for a community of kindred spirits who also seek this contemplative and creative path, as a radically alternative way of being?
  • Do you believe that the earth is our first monastery, shimmering with holy wisdom, and calling us to intimacy and simplicity?

Crossing Thresholds

There are many thresholds to the process of becoming a dancing monk. It is a lifelong journey, but here are some ways to begin. This isn't meant to be a linear path of things to check off a list but invitations which weave together to create a life of depth and service:

  1. Subscribe to the Abbey newsletter (daily, weekly, and monthly options). Read your online Abbess' love notes and reflect on how they stir your own soul's longings.
  2. Sign the Monk Manifesto, making a commitment to live out its principles in your daily life.
  3. Join our HDDM Facebook group as a place to stay connected with fellow monks! (Click "Join this group" and generally we process approvals within 24 hours)
  4. Commit to some central practices: lectio divina and practicing resurrection are two wonderful places to begin. Notice what rhythms contribute to your own flourishing. Seek out places for generosity, service, and, of course, dancing!
  5. Find spiritual support in your community through a soul friend or spiritual director. If you are unable to find a spiritual director in your community, several of the Wisdom Council members are available by Skype, phone, or email for soul care and support.
  6. Tell others you are a "dancing monk" when asked about your spiritual practice. You can find monk buttons to add to your website, blog, or Facebook page.
  7. Register for an Abbey retreat or program as you are able for deep soul support with others, either online in community or self-study, or live and in person.
  8. Gather your own small group community. Invite 2 or 3 friends to gather regularly and pray lectio divina together, or move through one of Christine's books together. There are group discounts for Abbey self-study classes. Having soulful conversations with kindred spirits opens us to new possibilities.
  9. Share and sustain the monk revolution by becoming a monk in the world and sharing the Abbey with others in your emails and conversations. Let your commitment to nurturing silence, spaciousness, slowness, and beauty spill over into your interactions. Witness to this alternative way of being in the world.
  10. When your practice falters, remember to always begin again, and again, and again. . .

Why a "Disorder"?

Abba Antony said to Abba Joseph, “How would you explain this saying?” and he replied, “I do not know.” Then Abba Anthony said, “Indeed, Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: “I do not know.” —Antony the Great

This world, this reality, revealed by God speaking to us, is not the kind of world to which we are accustomed. It is not a neat and tidy world in which we are in control- there is mystery everywhere that takes considerable getting used to, and until we do, it scares us. —Eugene Peterson

hildegard-logoThe heart of the contemplative life is never about escaping the world, but plunging ourselves fully into the heart of messiness and mystery.

As we deepen on the contemplative journey, our aim is to release our attempts at controlling our lives and surrendering into a far greater Mystery than our egos can contain. There are no step-by-step plans, only daily practice and immersion in the messiness of life as it comes. We live into the questions, as the poet Rilke so wisely wrote, rather than trying to find the answers. We practice being uncomfortable. We move more deeply into unknowing.

We follow the trail of the desert mothers and fathers, who traveled out to the heart of wild places to discover their own edges, to be stripped of false idols, to release certainty and control, and to encounter the God who is far beyond their limited imagination. We are also called to step out into this wilderness by showing up to life fully and embracing the disorder to be found there as precisely the place where the holy dwells and shimmers.

When we reach for control and conformity, we effectively squelch the Spirit at work in the world. We recognize the health and vitality to be found in diversity, and the free exchange of ideas as keeping us awake to what we most deeply believe. Creativity arises in response to what life offers us. To be an artist means to create out of the materials given.

Why Dancing?

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing. —Exodus 15:20

David danced before God with all his might. —2 Samuel 6:14

Praise God with tambourine and dance. —Psalm 150:4

The Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. . . Indeed we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance. —Thomas Merton

benedict-logoAs the Buddhist teacher Reginald Ray writes in his book Touching Enlightenment, our bodies are the last unexplored wilderness. We live so far removed from the sensual and incarnational realities of embodied life which offer us a deep source of wisdom and place of encounter with God.

Like the early desert monks, we are called to stay in the midst of wilderness for the sake of deepening into the divine mystery. Not just to bide our time, waiting for a way out of the messiness, but to dance right in the midst of it, to connect to the rhythm of life and trust that love is the fundamental force sustaining us.

Dancing may mean literally moving your body in response to the music of life, but it is also a metaphor for living from a full-bodied, contemplative awareness of the gift our physicality offers to us. It means living as if the incarnation really were true and matters deeply. The split between head and body is at the root of so many divisions in our world. We are in exile and being called home. When we attend to the body's wisdom with reverence, it offers us holy directions for our lives.

We are a radically inclusive tribe, living out the ancient paths of monk and artist as witness to an alternative way of being in the world. All are welcome. Bring your doubts, your questions, your laments, your celebrations. It all belongs.

We all need kindred spirits along the way. My hope at the Abbey is that you find them online, through the virtual dimensions of this work, as well as make live connections with other monks and artists in your local communities to help start a contemplative and creative revolution!

This place is a temenos, a sacred space and container for your own inner work. In the Greek imagination, a temenos is a sanctuary. For Carl Jung, it was a safe place where soul-making happens. The call is for the fruits of this inner work to be shared generously with the world.

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Comments

  1. Bill Montgomery says

    January 21, 2018 at 1:21 pm

    Hiya. I've been an oblate at a conventional monastery for some time.
    It's 4000 miles away now and doesn't have any chapters near me. Maybe an
    online community could fill that gap. I always felt a little young for that crowd anyway. I feel bound to Benedictines through the Liturgy of the Hours but outside of that, I'm just another American ex-pat security consultant trying to make a go of it in a new land. I do like dancing. I've always admired the Sufis for their emphasis on dancing as a spiritual experience.

  2. Kay Macklin says

    October 19, 2017 at 11:07 pm

    I've just finished writing a speech about my trip to ULURU the big monolith in the middle of Australia, and I wanted to dance for you all. I wrote a narrative and videoed my little dance so thought I'd put it here seeing I just found this spot. My photos won't upload, so have a look at my facebook page under the group the video is there. I'm so thankful for this site, I love it I DANCE LOUD. Here is my monologue..
    DANCING AT THE ROCK
    I can’t believe I’m actually here,
    I just know that I am here and I really want to dance in front of Uluru.
    I haven’t worked out how or when I will do it. But I am a member of the Holy Disorder of the Dancing Monks (A Christian Facebook Group) and I feel I must dance. I am going to dance for the Lord in gratitude of his provision of this wonderful adventure for me

    Arriving at the site – I just became entranced with the act of dancing for God and slipped into an aura of dance which I had never experienced before. I moved and raised my arms and floated my scarf in the wind and I heard a familiar hymn in my head,
    Dance, then, wherever you may be;
    I am the Lord of the Dance
    And I’ll lead you wherever you may be
    And I’ll lead you in the Dance
    One which had such happy memories for me of Angela my youngest daughter (now 33) dancing up and down the aisle of St Matthews church when she was 3.

    After I finish and return to the bus, I realise that everyone was here – about 20 people. The whole busload had watched me dance and they clapped as I get back into the bus. I was not even aware that anyone was watching as I danced. I am in a bit of a daze for a while – it was like an out of body experience

    The video turned out having Uluru in the bac
    kground looks amazing. All I can say is WOW …. I ACTUALLY DID IT….

  3. Kelly D says

    October 8, 2017 at 11:13 pm

    So excited – and hopeful! I've been looking for a group of seekers, misfits, contemplatives, and wanderers with whom I could connect and share. This Disorder sounds like the perfect place. Anyone interested in a prayer/share/dance group?

  4. Clarice Tarasoff says

    September 28, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    I am delighted to have entered the gates of the Disorder. It is now official!! Having lived in this place for my whole life, I am relieved to have finally found a home for myself, My thanks to those who have created a net in which I am able to catch myself. The mystery goes on. The stillness dances. The darkness reveals the light…. we move in our eternal dancing stillness. The silence and the sound. Life! Death! Being! Doing! Breathing in, breathing out! …on the dark side of "Yes". I am dancing the dance of life with you, …you show me myself and I show yourself you…and we move together as one, and we move together as One.

  5. Maggie Gilbert Beckjord says

    September 8, 2017 at 9:02 pm

    This is delightful. I had the blessing of worshipping through dance for years…. I took my mom to Florida before she died and took time to go out and dance on the beach. Yes I have loved movement and expression that is unique to dance. I am an artist and a contemplative. Looking forward to connecting, embracing the mystery!

    • Kelly D says

      October 8, 2017 at 11:12 pm

      I love it! Just found this site — tickled that there are others who move and are moved in similar ways! Dancing in nature is my Sunday morning ritual as of late…

  6. tonibird says

    January 25, 2016 at 9:58 am

    I was just talking about Nureyev yesterday with a neighbor who asked me why I became a dancer. When I was in High School taking dance instead of gym, my teacher Mrs. Ross took the class to see "I Am a Dancer", a film about the life of Nureyev. I've been hooked ever since. I didn't go on to become a professional, instead I taught dance in the Public School system in NYC at the JHS level and inspired children to dance and express themselves creatively. Now retired, I still dance, and am so delighted to have been directed to this site where I feel the inspiration to continue on this journey to dance, for dance is life and life goes on and on…..

Upcoming Programs

The Spiral Way:
Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination

Hosted by the Rowe Center
February 1-21, 2021
with Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
Retreat for Lent 2021

February 17-April 1, 2021
with Christine & John Valters Paintner and Betsey Beckman

Recent Reflections

  • Celtic Spirituality and the Spiral Way ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 3: Ní heolas go haontíos ~ by John Valters Paintner
  • Humility + Join us today for live prayer! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 2: Tús maith leath na hoibre – by John Valters Paintner
  • New Book Club for 2021: Lift Every Voice ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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