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
      • 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

Lent Easter

Death and Dancing in the Desert

I recently went out to the desert for a week of retreat.  Last Christmas I had a pulmonary embolism while in Vienna.  Coming so close to the reality of my own death demanded more reflection, more time to be present to what this experience was opening up in my heart.  I knew the desert was the place of fierceness calling to me.

In my first few days I found myself deeply drawn to images of death.  In New Mexico there are these wonderful figures everywhere of skeletons dressed in various clothing.  They are in celebration of Day of the Dead and invite us into a different relationship with death.

I went to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum and while I usually am entranced by her sensual depictions of flowers, this time I found myself standing in awe before her paintings of skulls and black places.

Even the carving of St. Francis on the heavy wood doors of the cathedral showed a skull at his feet and I was reminded that he refers to "Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape" in his poem "Canticle of the Sun."

I drove out to the stunning red rocks of Ghost Ranch and standing there in the desert heat and sun I found myself in the presence of an ancient wisdom.  The desert spares no one, but in welcoming her in, my life is made inifinitely richer.  Before my experience with near-death at Christmas I cherished my life and those I love, but there is now a fierceness within me.  I know on a visceral level how precious each day is.

Jean Leloup, author of Being Still: Reflections on an Ancient Mystical Tradition writes: "In the desert it is impossible to forget who and what we are. Our fragility brings us back to the Living One, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’ We discover again our essential axis…. The memory of the Living One quickens life within us. It centers us on the contemplation of the One who is at the heart of who we are.”  In the desert I remembered my essential axis and found my deep center again.

Toward the end of the week I participated in a Jungian-based expressive arts retreat, inspired by the work of Marion Woodman.  Essentially it is a way of bringing work with archetypes and inner symbols even more deeply into the life of the body.  Much of the work focuses on movement.  During our last session we were led through a guided meditation and movement experience.  We had been working with a fairy tale as our guiding theme about the places in our lives that have been dismembered and hidden away.  The meditation was a journey to begin reclaiming those parts and bring them back to wholeness.

The facilitator began by putting on a piece of music that irritated me at first.  It was loud and fast and I was tired at that point with a migraine brewing.  But as I slowly released my resistance into the dance, I discovered tears waiting there for me.  As the afternoon unfolded we moved between quiet reflective spaces and more expressive, dynamic movement and I found myself weeping again and again.  I love dance and movement and have been practicing yoga for years, deepening my practice of yin yoga especially these last couple of years.  And yet here I was discovering that there was something of my inner dancer who has been locked away.  When I explored this further I realized it happened when my mother died eight years ago.  Somehow my grief didn't have room for the full dance.  As I re-entered my grief from this new place I found myself connected to a renewed source of energy.  I blessed myself with my tears as I danced the emergence of this part of me.  And toward the end of the experience I invited my mother to dance with me.  She had been in a wheelchair for many years before her too-early death, but in my dance we were both wild and free.

Outside the Cathedral there is a marvelous statue of St. Francis dancing.  In the summer months it is a fountain and so he appears to be dancing across the water with abandon.  This was my lesson from the desert: I will one day return to ash and in the days until then I will dance my deep sorrow as well as my passionate joy. And when I am ash scattered in the ocean, I will continue to dance.

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10 Comments April 18, 2011

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

  • 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
  • Join us on a Desert Journey for Lent ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 5: Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin ~ by John Valters Paintner

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