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
    • 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
      • 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
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • 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
      • 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
    • 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

Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World guest post: Paula Huston

I adore Paula Huston's work and wise spirit.  She is a fellow monastic oblate (Camaldolese Benedictine) and writer of several books on spiritual practice, including my favorites Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit and The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life.  I had the gift of participating in a nonfiction writing workshop with her several years ago in New Mexico through the fabulous Glen workshop.  The Glen is a really wonderful gathering of writers and artists wrestling with the questions of meaning and substance in life.  Paula is a gifted teacher and also offers her wisdom for writers through the Image Journal's online manuscript critique in creative nonfiction.

Paula HustonYears ago, a young newspaper reporter showed up at a contemplative hermitage in the wilderness of Big Sur, hoping to interview some of the monks.  Never much in evidence except in the chapel during the Hours, on this particular day they made themselves especially scarce.  She looked in vain for someone she could talk to.  Finally she was rescued by Fr. Bernard, a diminutive French-Canadian who never could resist the sight of woman in distress.  He led her to a bench overlooking the sea, then gallantly invited her to ask him whatever she liked.

Thrilled to have captured a real monk, she said, no doubt a little breathlessly, “You’ve been here for almost fifty years, am I right?”

“You are indeed,” Fr. Bernard responded with his charming blue-eyed twinkle.

“Well, what I really want to know,” she said, “is why a person would ever come to a place like this.”

Without a moment’s pause, as though this were a question he had been thinking about for a very long time indeed, he said, “That is easy. I came here because life is short and I wanted to live it in the best way I could.”

In all the years I have been an oblate member of Fr. Bernard’s community, I have never heard of a better reason for taking up the monastic life. The monk’s life, when it is going well, is a life of discipline and integrity, one that (given enough time and commitment) slowly but inexorably leads to a new kind of person.  And when I first met Bernard and his brothers, that is what I wanted more than anything: to be better than I was.

That longing was so strong that it carried me through several decades of learning about and trying my best to practice (while still living very much in the world) various monastic disciplines: silence, solitude, fasting, chastity, frugality, simplicity, anonymity.  Much of that time was spent in frustration.  My efforts were so weak and I myself so apt to be derailed by the usual stresses of modern life that the task seemed hopeless.  Over and over, I rushed to the sanctuary of the hermitage for refueling, only to re-shoulder all my burdensome responsibilities as soon as I got back home.  Teaching.  Wifehood and motherhood.  Caretaking of elderly parents. Farm work. Writing.  The obstacles to a contemplative life seemed insurmountable.

Yet one of the great teachers of Christian contemplation, the fourth-century Evagrius of Ponticus, believed that the kind of life I was seeking and failing to find came only to those who did what I was doing, no matter how unproductive it seemed.  He called this early, essential stage on the contemplative path “praktikos,” a terms that connotes both “practical” and “practice.”   What it means is that we not only read about becoming less self-centered and egotistical but actually “practice” doing this through a disciplined approach to daily life.

If we persevere long enough, he believed, then we will advance to a stage he called “physikos.”  We will begin to understand created nature, including human beings.  We will begin to see why the world is as it is.  Or as the great British Romantic poet Wordsworth put it, we will learn to “see into the life of things.” More, we will begin to love the universe, including our sometimes irritating, sometimes horrifying fellow creatures, in a way we cannot possibly love them when we truly only love and care about ourselves.

And finally, said Evagrius, we might even become “theologikos,” or whose who are gifted–perhaps like Fr. Bernard was at the end–with the ability to see and comprehend divine realities.  We might become what the Eastern Orthodox call “pneumataphors,” or “bearers of the Holy Spirit.”  We might become pure enough of heart and focused enough in the mind to contemplate God.

As a “monk in the world,” if this is what I really am, and most days I feel like a bit of a fraud in that regard, I know I am a very long way indeed from Evagrius’s definition of a theologikos.  What I do know, however, after nearly twenty years of attempting to incorporate whatever monastic wisdom and practice I can into my everyday modern American life, is that I have indeed changed along the way. I am a little better than I used to be.  And I do, at rare but riveting times, see the world and its tragic beauties and terrible griefs and inexplicable sufferings in a new and unfamiliar way–a way that makes me want to love instead of condemn it.

As an “artist of the everyday,” if that is what I really am, and most days I seriously doubt this too, I know that whatever I once thought the writing life was meant to be has long since burned to ash.  My early aspirations to literary greatness.  My secret conviction that only public praise, and a lot of it, could possibly validate my existence.  Instead, I’ve come to believe that the only writing worth doing anymore  (not that I am yet capable of doing it) is that which helps light the way to theologikos, or genuine contemplation.

What I have learned is that transformation has a way of sneaking up on us.  Whatever happens along the contemplative path is very subtle.  And it is only in looking back at ourselves from the perspective of decades that the change begins to reveal itself.

For this small insight after so much stumbling blindness, I am profoundly grateful.

Paula Huston is the author of two novels, Daughters of Song and A Land Without Sin, plus six works of spiritual nonfiction.  Her essays and short fiction have been honored by Best American Short Stories, Best Spiritual Writing, and the NEA.  She currently teaches in Seattle Pacific University’s MFA in Creative Writing program.

To read other posts in this series click here>>

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Print
«
»

19 Comments October 28, 2013

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

Connect with the Abbey

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
JOIN THE HOLY DISORDER OF DANCING MONKS
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES
DONATE TO SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY

Copyright © 2021 BY ABBEY OF THE ARTS · WEBSITE PRIVACY NOTICE

Copyright © 2021 · Flourish Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in