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
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  • 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: Barb Morris

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Barb Morris' reflection on the Monk Manifesto and New Cosmology.

santo-domingo-cloister"Someday we'll live in a convent."

A dear friend and I have a plan. “One of these days,” we say, “we’re going to have a convent.” We’ve felt this desire since we met more than 30 years ago, when our husbands were Episcopal Divinity School classmates. The timing isn’t clear. Do we wait until we’re clergy widows? That seems just a touch dependent and maybe a little morbid. But if our husbands are still alive, what do we do with them? (They plaintively wonder this as well.) Clearly the details are a little hazy. In the meantime, we find joy in imagining our convent’s amenities – a brook babbling through the interior spaces, a well-stocked library, and a garden with chickens and goats and a greenhouse, so far. We think a llama or two would be awesome. And private rooms for all the sisters.

My friend and I aren’t completely serious, yet the appeal of monastic life is real for us and for many people, including, I suspect, most of you reading this post. How do we understand and explain our call to an ancient form of devoted and disciplined life in this day and age? It’s been almost 1500 years since Benedict wrote his Rule, and our understanding of the cosmos is radically different than it was in Benedict’s day. So isn’t monasticism rather anachronistic, quaint in its adherence to rules and hierarchy, a vestige of a radically different time?

I think not. The Abbey of the Arts is one example of a contemporary phenomenon – New Monasticism – a movement which reimagines medieval structures and strictures for today’s realities. I believe that living as a monk, in the world or out of it, is encoded in our DNA. Each commitment of our Monk Manifesto correlates to a tenet of the “New Cosmology,” the physics of the Big Bang as currently understood. (I owe much of the following material to the late Judy Cannato’s books Radical Amazement and Field of Compassion.) Understanding how science validates my monkish desires calms my fearful mind and keeps it from whispering, “No one wants to be a monk anymore. You’re deluded and crazy.”

If you’ve signed the Monk Manifesto on this website, you’ve made eight commitments. Far from being anachronistic and quaint, each commitment is a practical way to live faithfully in the modern world described by physicists and cosmologists. Here are just a few of the connections I see.

My Monk Manifesto commitments to silence, solitude, and Sabbath are practical ways to live out my connection to all Creation. Because everything that exists is composed of material and energy from the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, we’re connected at the deepest level. Everything. All creationkind. Rocks, water, birds, stars, us — we’re all connected. I strengthen my awareness of deep connection through regular silence and solitude, and I acknowledge my intrinsic value when I take Sabbath rest. I don’t have to prove my worth through being always busy. After all, I’m made of the same stuff as stars!

My commitment to cultivating “awareness of my kinship with creation” is similarly grounded in knowing my radical connection to all that is. If I take too much, or give too little, Creation suffers. We humans are unique in our consciousness of our connection and the consequences of living unfaithfully. We now know that, truly, no one is an island.

My Monk Manifesto commitment to radical hospitality, extended both within and without, is echoed in Creation’s reliance on black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. Only 5% of the universe is ordinary matter – matter we can see or feel or measure. Creation is almost completely composed of darkness. Every galaxy has a black hole at its center, and without dark energy the Universe would spiral itself into oblivion. So, too, with us. Our shadows and darkness are a necessary part of who we are.

My commitments to community and to intentional work are grounded in the New Cosmology concept of “holons,” which insists that everything is both a whole and a part. Atoms make up molecules, which compose cells, which form tissues, that coalesce into organs and systems and bodies. Individuals aggregate to form flocks and forests and families while continuing to maintain separate identities composed of smaller entities. Wholes depend on parts, and parts depend on wholes. Everything is necessary. Relationship is fundamental. Individual integrity and action are, paradoxically, both crucial and unsustainable.

My Monk Manifesto commitments to ongoing conversion and the cultivation of creative joy are rooted in the ideas that the Cosmos is continually creating itself, and humans are the Universe become conscious. We each have a part to play in this continuing creation. My call and vocation is to be the best “me” I can be. Taking my place as a whole/part in this new creation requires consciously letting go of what is no longer needed, dying to my small self over and over, and willingness to become a part of something previously unimagined.

So choosing to be a monk in the world is the opposite of crazy. On the contrary, choosing to live as a monk in the world is a radically sane way to embody the realities of the New Cosmology. Taking my Monk Manifesto commitments seriously, incarnating them as one unique individual living in community, is how I take my part in God’s ongoing creation of our world. This is how the Kingdom comes, one monk and one community at a time. "


head-shotBarb Morris is an artist, writer, and retreat facilitator living in Bend, Oregon with her Episcopal priest husband. More of her blogging, writing, and art are at livingviriditas.org

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2 Comments November 16, 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

  • 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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