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)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color
      • The Way of the Hermit:
        A Spiritual Survival Guide for Dark Times
        with Kayleen Asbo, PhD
      • 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

Monastic Spirituality, Nature

I live my life in widening circles. . .

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
-Ranier Maria Rilke

Round and Round the earth is turning
Turning always round to morning
And from morning round to night.
-Song Lyrics (source unknown)

The rain I am in is not like the rain of the cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
-Thomas Merton, Rain and the Rhinoceros (with credit to Bryan Sherwood for reminding me of it)

I have been thinking about rhythms a lot lately.  An essential part of monastic spirituality for me, is the commitment to live one’s life in sacred rhythms. In the monastery, the monk lives a life of balance, ora et labora, work and prayer. The liturgy of the hours calls us back to prayer at regular intervals to remind ourselves that the center of our lives is God and not the work itself. It is the essence of humility to let go of what we are doing and know the world will still go on. The root of humility is humus, meaning the earth. To live into these sacred rhythms is to live into rhythms grounded in the fertile soil that nurtures life.  Often the hours that are still celebrated in monastic communities are the sacred hinges of the day: morning, noon, evening, and night.

Most of us live our lives in artificial rhythms ruled by the demands of the market. We are enslaved by our drives for more productivity, more things. A true retreat for me is one where the only schedule I follow are the needs of my body and intuition, where I check in regularly with the wisdom calling to me from within to listen for what wants to happen next, whether eating or walking or writing or art-making or sitting in silence. It is a true gift in my life the days I work from home I can wake up without an alarm clock.

I want to live a life that honors the ancient rhythms and cycles of the earth. I love Merton’s words: "The whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer." In a technological world, we live by engineered rhythms, rhythms that demands we are “on” and accessible most hours of the day.

I want my life to rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I want to shed parts of myself in autumn, go deeply inward in winter, blossom into spring, and shine forth and be radiant in summer. I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the limits of my body and the pleasures of rest, the delights of play.

I want to move slowly enough to hear the voices of stones and grass, of sunlight spreading across the ground and the irregular rhythm of rain. I want to witness the slow wearing away of canyon rock by water. Merton says the rain surrounded him “with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody. . .” There is such abiding wisdom in these voices, if we only allow ourselves the freedom to live into them and listen.

I live my life in widening circles:

Each day the turning of the earth, the rising and setting of the sun, honoring the varying qualities and gifts of light and darkness. Each week a day of Sabbath rest where I release the world’s hold on me. Every four weeks the moon moves through her cycle, growing into fullness, then her gentle waning until she disappears for a night into blackness. Every five weeks I enter my menstrual cycle, a reminder of my fertility and the uniqueness of being female. Every ten weeks I receive the gift and sacrament of healing from my medication.

Every four months we mark the turning of the seasons and the slow movement to a new way of being in the world. Each year I remember the day of my birth and the births of all those I love. I give special honor to the commitment of my marriage, and the days that recall the great and terrible losses of my life. Every seven years, they say each cell in your body is changed and you are completely new.

Then there is the largest personal cycle of a lifetime. When my own life falls into the Great Beyond, a rhythm that is not predictable or solid like the turning of the earth.  I am only sure it will happen and I give myself to it as Rilke writes, and in that giving I receive a life of fullness.

What are the sacred rhythms of your life? What are the circles you live?  What helps you live into wholeness and a wisdom greater than yourself?

-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

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11 Comments October 5, 2006

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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