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
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  • Books
    • Sacred Time:
      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
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    • 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
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      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
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    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
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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)
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
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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
      • 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
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Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Abigail Carroll

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abigail Carroll's reflection Poetry as Sabbath.

Sundays in my family as a child were for church, waffles and maple syrup, and enjoying the outdoors or helping out with house projects. In short, celebrating the Sabbath was about worship, food, nature, and family. Today, Sabbath continues to mean each of these things to me, but more recently, it has come to mean something else, too: poetry.

When God rested on the seventh day after creating the world, I think he was doing something much more profound than simply catching his breath. Indeed, I chuckle at the thought of the One from whom all energy flows suddenly low on fuel. More likely, to my mind, He was taking time to enjoy his creation. And that stepping back for the sake of enjoying creation is, for me, the underlying mandate of Sabbath: to practice delight.

I started intentionally practicing delight as a way to honor the Sabbath the year, as a doctoral student, I was pulling my hair out preparing for my comprehensive exams. My pace of reading was intense, and my mind was operating at high speed with no break. Watching television or taking in a movie, our society’s go-to fix when it comes to relaxation, proved useless as a doorway into rest. If I took a walk or jog, my brain kept rehearsing the information I was feeding it, and prayer, instead of helping me transcend my studies in order to focus on God, inadvertently became about asking God to help me survive my dreaded exams.

The solution was counterintuitive. I realized that in order to put my mind to rest, I needed to actively engage it in something else. And then the answer came: music. I had studied piano growing up but had long desired to try my hand at another instrument. So I took up the hammered dulcimer, and for the first few days after my dulcimer arrived, the delicate harmonies of its strings so enraptured me that I could hardly think of my studies. (Whoever originated the idea of heaven as full of harps clearly had not heard a dulcimer!) I had stumbled on pure delight, which both solved my problem and created a new problem. All I wanted to do was play music. Thankfully, there was one day a week when I absolutely could—Sunday!

Each week after church, I made a point to devote the lingering hours of the afternoon to courting beauty in sound. I looked forward to this time so much that I often turned down social invitations to protect it. When my head hit the pillow on Sunday nights, my mind was fully rested. This was my routine for several years. While I no longer religiously devote Sunday afternoons to my dulcimer, I still take that time to engage in the practice of delight, and my new Sabbath practice is poetry.

Poetry is its own kind of music, and what I love about writing poetry is where it takes me—both physically and spiritually. In pursuit of words, I find myself meandering woodland trails, gazing for extended periods of time at clouds, and examining the dance of reeds at the edge of the lake. For me, poetry has become a way to notice, and noticing, I have discovered, holds profound implications for the soul. The more I notice, the greater my capacity for gratitude, and the greater my capacity for gratitude, the deeper my experience of joy.

In truth, I have written poetry since childhood, but only recently have I come to see it as more than just an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Alongside prayer, scripture reading, fasting, and solitude, writing poems has become, for me, a way to actively engage the disciplines of my faith. Poetry does not replace the traditional spiritual disciplines, but rather serves as a particularly attractive doorway into them. Often, a poem is birthed out of a scripture that catches my attention during study, and I engage my love of words as a vehicle for meditating on the Word. When it comes to prayer, I find that the poet inside me often manages the courage to articulate in verse what I otherwise lack the audacity to pray aloud. As a poet, I need solitude to do my work. I have come to find, however, that solitude is not only necessary for writing poetry, but a tremendous byproduct of it, too. And that leads to fasting, which, for me, is surprisingly inherent to the act of writing. When creating a poem, I am fasting from the steady diet of distractions this world continuously feeds me, and by fasting from distraction, I find myself becoming more attentive to what matters.

If writing poetry can be a doorway into the spiritual disciplines, the spiritual discipline that poetry most helps me engage is rest. For me, poem-making is not just an exercise I do on the Sabbath; it is Sabbath. Perhaps this is because engaging in delight affords me a deeper sense of renewal than the act of merely ceasing from my work. Delight may very well be the deepest form of rest. I’m thankful that the Creator set an example of delight when he called his creation “good,” stepping back to take it all in. And I’m thankful that, by inviting us to celebrate Sabbath, He furnishes us with the time and space to engage in the restful and restorative practice of delight as a way to honor him.


Abigail Carroll, author of A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans), serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well in Burlington, Vermont. She enjoys writing, photographing nature, and a well-brewed cup of hot tea. Click here to visit her online>>

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1 Comment March 8, 2017

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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