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
    • Breath Prayer:
      An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred
    • 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
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
      • Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color (Book Club – March 2021)
      • God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with Teresa of Avila (Book Club – February 2021)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • Sky, Sun, Sea, & Stone:
        Celtic Spirituality and Creative Writing
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • 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 (SELF-STUDY)
      • 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
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Introduction to the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle

Introduction to the Prayer Cycle

Abbey of the Arts is a virtual monastery and global community of monks, artists, and pilgrims dispersed all over this beautiful globe. The Abbey was founded by Christine Valters Paintner in 2006 with a vision of supporting people to integrate contemplative practice and creative expression. In 2013 she and her husband John moved to Ireland and he joined her in co-shepherding this community. They are joined by a team of treasured Wisdom Council members who support this work with their own gifts.

We are not affiliated with any particular institution and open our doors to people from any denomination or none at all. We strive to create a place of welcome and hospitality where we might dialogue with one another and grow. Our spirituality is steeped in the rich Christian mystical tradition, and three strands of monasticism: desert, Celtic, and Benedictine, all of which profoundly influences our ways of praying.

We are an open and affirming community and strive to be radically inclusive. We delight in being joined by people like you, who are seeking to be monks in the world and artists of everyday life, seeking kindred spirits, a community committed to contemplative rhythms and creative expression.

Poetry is our nourishment.  Art inspires our souls.  We dance and sing for the joy of it.

Morning and evening prayer nourishes many monastic communities and we have integrated this rhythm of prayer into our live retreat and pilgrimage programs. Our participants expressed a hunger for a prayer cycle that could be used by community members no matter where they were, that reflected our values and emphasis.

We are thrilled to present you with the first week of our Abbey of the Arts Prayer Cycle which takes as its theme Earth as Original Monastery, inspired by Christine’s recent book. Nourishing an earth-cherishing consciousness is central to our vision and practice.

Each day you are invited to morning and evening prayer with the original cathedral, scripture, saints, spiritual directors, icon, sacrament, and liturgy. These prayers bring together the rich tradition of monastic prayer, the wisdom of ancient mystics, songs from our album compilations, embodied prayers to accompany each song, contemporary versions of the psalms, and poetry and blessings.

You are welcome to pray through on your own or with a group. We provide all of the written texts for seven days of morning and evening prayers in this free handout.  Duplication is permitted with attribution. The songs are available to purchase as a CD or mp3 download and the dances are available for purchase on DVD or streaming format.   Your purchases help to support our ability to offer these resources and continue to develop more weeks of the prayer cycle on different themes.

How to Pray with the Prayer Cycle

Make some time each morning and evening to pause and join with us by entering into the prayers offered. You can pray with the songs and movement, or leave them out if you want to keep a simpler focus. If you are praying on your own, read through each section aloud, pausing between each one to allow a few moments to rest and integrate what has been said.

You can also pray this with a small group local to you by gathering together at a regular time. Divide up who reads which parts aloud, again leaving some quiet between each section.

Notes About the Music

All the songs are recorded and published by Abbey of the Arts, so you can listen to the pre-recorded podcast that includes the songs, or access the songs on your own.  For complete lyrics to the Opening and Closing songs, you can download the free PDF (available on the Abbey of the Arts website) for each of the CD collections.  If you wish to learn and play the music live, a link to purchase and download a PDF of the Musical Scores is also available on the website through the Leader Resources.

The three CD collections from which the Opening and Closing Songs are drawn are

Singing with Monks & Mystics (2015)

The Soul’s Slow Ripening: Songs for Celtic Seekers (2018)

Earth, Our Original Monastery: Singing Our Way to the Sacred (2020)

The Sung Responses (Psalm Intro, Doxology, Amen, and Prayer Responses) are also available through the audio and video podcasts we will be releasing weekly starting October 2020. You can have access to the individual audio and video recordings for these through the Leader Resources.

Notes About the Dances

We at Abbey of the Arts are committed to the path of sacred embodiment as a deepening of our spiritual practices. Along these lines, each of the songs included in the prayer cycle has a dance or gesture prayer to accompany it.

Sometimes we are called to stillness, and the Audio Podcast allows you to pray along in stillness, taking a walk, lying in bed, or participating in whatever setting you may be.  Other times, you may be called to explore the dance of embodiment for Morning and Evening Prayers.  For this, you can choose to view the Video Podcast, which offers gesture or movement prayers for each of the songs and responses.  As you pray through this offering, feel free to follow along in some or all of the dances, and pray with your whole being.  
To find more support for joining in the embodied prayers, you can also do a bit of preparation.  Each movement prayer has a corresponding teaching video which you can access by purchasing or downloading the corresponding DVD, or by joining the Leader Resources page.  To ready yourself for prayer, you can view the teaching videos to practice and become familiar with the dances for that day, and learn the imagery and background for the movement prayers.

The gestures for the Responses (O Love, Doxology and O God of Earth,) remain consistent for the entire prayer cycle, so they can become trusted friends as you return to them each day.

If you are praying the Prayer Cycle in a live group, (and if you are comfortable leading movement,) you can learn and lead the gestured responses. You could also lead the Opening and Closing Dances, (but this would clearly be dependent on the level of comfort of both you and the group.)  Again, the Leader Resources are created to support you in leading these prayers in various settings.

Our intention at Abbey of the Arts is to create resources that are multi-layered that you can adapt for your own solo or group setting.  Sometimes, just witnessing an embodied prayer which was filmed in a natural setting can lift our spirits, invoking our own memory of glorious outdoor sacred spaces, even when we are at home with our computers or gathered in indoor sanctuaries.

The three DVD collections from which the Opening and Closing Dances are drawn are

Dancing with Monks & Mystics (2015)

The Soul’s Slow Ripening: Dancing the Sacred on a Celtic Path (2018)

Earth, Our Original Monastery: Dancing Our Way to the Divine (2020)

The three Gesture-Responses are available under the Leader Resources, and will be included on our next album and DVD offering in spring 2021.

Closing Blessings for Morning Prayer

One further note is that each of the Morning Prayers includes a video version of the blessing prayer which is a visual feast to deepen your meditation.  These videos will be incorporated into our video podcasts but you can also have access to each of them individually through our Leader Resources.

Conclusion

We are delighted that we can pray through the seasons with you in song, dance, poetry, blessing, and quiet contemplation.  For all of us, may our Sacred Earth be a place of deep encounter with the mystery of the Divine One, embracing us, challenging us, and calling us to awe and intimacy in every breath we take.

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Upcoming Programs

Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
March 13, 2021
with Drs. Jamie Marich, Kellie Kirksey, and Christine Valters Paintner

Novena for Times of Unraveling
Becoming a Monk in the World

March 17-25, 2021
with Christine & John Valters Paintner, and Simon de Voil

Recent Reflections

  • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Call for Submissions – Monk in the World Guest Post Series
  • Hildy Tales 7: An Nead by John Valters Paintner
  • Sacred Time and Slowing Down ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 6: Céim uile an domhain ~ by John Valters Paintner

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