Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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      • 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
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        Earth as the Original Sacrament
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        Earth as the Original Liturgy
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      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
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      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
    • The Soul's Slow Ripening:
      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
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      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
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      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
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      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
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    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
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      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Lent 2021)
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      • 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
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        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
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Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the Word Guest Post: Laurie Klein

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Laurie Klein's reflection on using playful gestures for prayer.

I wanted to play more. Ultimately, a childhood diversion beckoned.

'Busy hands are happy hands,' my mother always said.

Raised to work hard at everything, I’ve been productive over the years but often at great personal cost. Excessive intensity wears a girl down.

Other people seem to delight in each step toward their goals, a pleasure I find inspiring. And contagious. As a fellow monk in this dangerous, everyday-falling-around-our-ears-world, I want to step lightly. I long to filter the gravitas of purposeful work through generous handfuls of joy. Spontaneity. Childlike vision.

So, I’m trying to bring play into my work.

Tapping the spritely energy of play generates something more alive—in my process, the end product, and in me.

Brother David Steindl-Rast reminds me that play 'works' because it’s meaningful. And for me, it unknots something within, loosens those self-imposed seams I construct to protect myself.

Play not only frees, it heals. In response to one of Christine’s writing prompts, I wrote these lines to remind myself how I want to view life:

How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist

Wear shoes with soles like meringue
and pale blue stitching so that
every day you feel ten years old.
Befriend what crawls.

Drink rain, hatless, laughing.

Sit on your heels before anything plush
or vaguely kinetic:
hazel-green kneelers of moss
waving their little parcels
of spores, on hair-trigger stems.

Hushed as St. Kevin cradling the egg,
new-laid, in an upturned palm,
tiptoe past a red-winged blackbird’s nest.

Ponder the strange,
the charged, the dangerous:
taffeta rustle of cottonwood skirts,
Orion’s owl, cruising at dusk,
thunderhead rumble. Bone-deep,
scrimshaw each day’s secret.

Now, lighting the sandalwood candle,
gather each strand you recall
and the blue pen, like a needle.
Suture what you can.

***

I find that absorbing regular doses of wonder equips me to better mend this hurting world. Which makes me wonder: What if work and play are kissing cousins, rather than twins separated at birth? Maybe they’re meant to play tag. Even hold hands, at times.

Whatever the task, I want to kneel often, and marry the moment with the abandon of that hatless, laughing kid in the rain.

Can I bring play into prayer?

My mother used to calm my fears with a fingerplay.

'When you’re afraid,' we spoke in unison. Then, from pinkies to thumbs, each of us touched our fingertips together, pair by pair, adding one word for each motion: “Put – your – trust – in – God.” The fingerplay soothed and refocused me.

A childish diversion? Sure. But I still use it when late-night anxiety assaults my thoughts.

One day my body decided to take Mom’s anodyne further.

My personal theme for last year was “Extend Your Orbit.” Intending to prop penned reminders of this around the house, I wrote the phrase on numerous 3×5 cards. Afterward, my hands cramped. With no plan in mind, I interlaced my fingers over my heart, palms facing inward, then turned my linked hands outward, lifted and circled them over my head—a good stretch. (Try it right now?)

If you’re playing along, now expand the gesture, allowing the movement to come from your waist, gently swinging your raised, interlocked fingers in a larger circle.

Feel anything loosening?

I like to think that what arose spontaneously for me that day stems from my mother's gift to me, all those years ago. It certainly distilled “Extend Your Orbit” into a wonderfully repeatable, wordless prayer. Now I begin most mornings this way.

'Some love best with their hands,' Annie Dillard once said.

Perhaps you’d like to try some of these universal gestures as a fresh means of prayer, with or without words:

  • Use the French Voila! fingertips kiss, to acclaim the beautiful
  • Brush palms past each other several times, to honor completion, or a boundary
  • Salute the heavens as a pledge of obedience
  • Blow a kiss skyward as a silent “I Love You”
  • Applaud, audibly or silently
  • Tenderly lift your chin with an index finger, and raise your eyes
  • Tap your watch, then open your hand and lift it to God

Spontaneous movement waits within, ready to bubble up and surprise us.

You might also consider exploring sign language to find more motions that speak for you. Words like please, thank you, life, grow, joy, forgiveness, love, friend, Jesus, and compassion are easily learned, eloquent movements.

For illustrated ideas, click here >>

Does this idea beckon to you? I hope you’ll share your ideas for using gesture as prayer. I’d love to hear them! "


unnamedLaurie Klein plays with words as well as her hands to see what they’ll say next. She blogs at lauriekleinscribe.com, and her debut poetry collection, endorsed by Christine, is titled Where the Sky Opens. A past winner of the Thomas Merton Sacred Poetry Prize, she lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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4 Comments September 7, 2016

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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