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

Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World guest post: Judy Smoot

I've known Judy Smoot for several years now, first connecting through Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, then several other online classes, and finally the pleasure of spending time with Judy in person at our Awakening the Creative Spirit intensive.

Judy is a fellow Benedictine oblate, a spiritual director, a lover of the expressive arts, and the founder and director of Always We Begin Again, a nonprofit dedicated to serving those with chronic illness and their caregivers through contemplative and creative programs. I am delighted to share Judy's wisdom here with this community on being a monk in the world:

“Acquire a peaceful spirit and thousands around you will be saved.”

 – St. Seraphim of Sarov

Judy SmootFor reasons I did not understand at the time, this gentle piece of wisdom intersected my life in 2007 and became my heart’s desire.  At that time, six years ago, I had no idea what “a peaceful spirit” would come to mean in my own faith journey, nor what would be undone and recreated in my spirit to acquire this peaceful spirit for myself and others.

Since 2007, I completed training for spiritual direction and began companioning others personally and through retreat work.  I discovered St. Benedict and committed to the Oblate way of life, resigned a long-time staff position in a church, began a nonprofit ministry, and enrolled in an expressive arts program — all amidst our son returning from 2-1/2 years serving with the Peace Corps, gaining a beautiful and caring daughter-in-law, companioning my father as he left his human life on earth, and navigating various medical issues that come with age.  All of these transitions have resulted in relationships ending and new ones beginning, old habits released and life-giving practices welcomed — the shedding of the old to make way for the new has been terribly painful at times.  In retrospect, I am pretty certain I would not have entered into this turmoil of life-giving change had it not been forced upon me in quite a few instances.  As I reflect on how I “handled” all of this life change (and how it “handled” me some days), I am not entirely confident calling myself monk, mystic, or contemplative.  I recall the heat of the fire that surrounded me on some days and don’t remember feeling at peace or grounded in all the uncertainty.  Is this mindfulness and truth-telling part of what makes one contemplative ?

In January 2010, I began Way of the Monk Path of the Artist.  As an introduction, we were invited to offer a six-word autobiography.  Six words.  Can’t be done.   It could be a long retreat experience and doubt began to creep in. I wondered if this was the place in which I was to settle for 12 weeks.    Once I moved past the initial resistance, the words came quickly — “Contemplative seeking to offer spacious sanctuary.”  I have come to appreciate the word, “seeking”.  WOTM was exactly where I needed to be.  In 2011, Awakening the Creative Spirit confirmed I was beginning a journey toward something of significance.

Like some of you, I have redefined my understanding of what it means to be a monk.  I also have redefined “artist” – neither being attributes I would have assigned to myself even a few years ago, but characteristics that I now claim as part of my soul’s story.   As I have entered more deeply the process of “naming and claiming” (also known to me as “taking personal responsibility – ugh), the Contemplative Seeking to Offer Spacious Sanctuary has become a fully alive person living as a monk in the world.

I spend a lot of time tethered to a very non-contemplative computer.  As I write this, I am waiting for a call from a computer programmer about web updates I am unable to do on my own.  As director for this new nonprofit, I must squeeze in my first love of serving people simultaneous with board development, creating a strategic plan, fund raising, maintaining blogs and Facebook accounts — all of the details that support the end result of programming for those we serve.  I try to create a somewhat contemplative work space in which all of this can occur.  But, as I look around, my immediate space is, frankly, a mess.  I am fully in the world.  Yet, I sense the monk expanding within me.

The Abbey supported me in establishing my Rule of Life in 2010.  It reads,

I choose to live:

true to my authentic self;

prayerfully;

simply and without hurry;

within supportive communities;

creatively;

with abandon and confidence; and

as a mystic living in the world.

Some days (months), I do this well.  Others, not so much.  It is life’s ebb and flow.   My desire to live mindfully and truthfully keeps me in a seeking mode.  The constant change of life’s circumstances keeps me humbly reliant on God’s provision.  God’s peace is not the same as the world’s peace.  That is important for me to remember.  Often, God’s peace is not a warm, fuzzy, feel good sensation as much as a strong anchor holding me secure during raging storms of uncertainty and risk taking as I continue to walk the edges of life pushing out to the horizon (my word for 2013).

Judy Smoot 1.JPGIn 2005 I was blessed to travel to San Francisco with my husband for a five-day work trip he had in the area.  We found ourselves returning repeatedly to Grace Cathedral and its labyrinths.  I now realize that the monk began to push herself into my world during that trip.  My husband took the below picture as I walked the outdoor labyrinth.  The poem followed a short time later.  Patience.  Contemplation.   Risk-Taking.  Trust.  Prayer.  Truth.  Simplicity.  Community.   The peaceful spirit has taken root within me.  As it has become authentic for me, it spills into the lives of others seeking a sanctuary, seeking a refuge from the chaos that we all live within.  Are lives saved as a result?  I cannot say for sure.  But I do trust that God works with my meager offering, and isn’t that enough for each of us to offer as monks in the world?

Thank you for hearing my story.

 

The Way is Made by Walking

She walks a labyrinth path
to enter the soft, strong sanctuary of her soul
Ideas and images weave with joyful abundance
through the channels of her heart
seeking their voice in one word of simplicity.
Freedom takes flight as she contemplates “what if?”,
and wonders of God’s invitation for a “sacred yes.”
Compassion for the least of these rises from her
deep silence with the Holy One.
The word,
Refuge

Judy Smoot is a Benedictine Oblate, spiritual director/retreat leader, and founder of the non-profit ministry Always We Begin Again providing spiritual care for people living with a chronic diagnosis and those who support them on their journey.   She is a 2007 graduate of the Columbus-based spiritual direction program, Wellstreams, and is currently a student at Expressive Arts Florida Institute in Sarasota, Florida.  She enjoys facilitating creative-based experiences for those desiring to express their faith and prayer life through expressive art.  Judy and her husband are currently following their dream to live more simply and close to nature by building a woodland cottage for themselves and visiting friends and family about 50 miles from where they currently reside.   They anticipate a spring 2014 move.

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20 Comments December 9, 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

  • 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
  • Hildy Tales One: Dia dhuit, is mise Hildy! by John Valters Paintner, Your Online Prior

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