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
    • 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
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      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
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      • 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)
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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 emptiness.

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” So says the Chinese prophet Lao Tzu, writing 500 years before Jesus.

Maybe it’s my advancing middle age, but the spiritual practice of welcoming emptiness has become more and more necessary to me. As Lao Tzu prescribes, I find myself, after decades of adding things to my life, subtracting in order to find Wisdom.

I’m especially drawn to emptiness this Advent – this season of waiting. Emptiness feels particularly necessary during these holy-daze. I could fill up every day and every night with Christmas-ish activity. My to-do list could be as long as my arm.

Since it’s likely not Advent when you read this, let me assure you that the spiritual practice of welcoming emptiness can be fruitful all year round. Each commitment of the Monk Manifesto is furthered by the spiritual practice of welcoming emptiness.

Welcoming emptiness is, at its core, a willingness to come face to face with our deepest selves.

Virtually from the time we’re born, we’re given disguises and personas to wear. At first, we wear them because we’re dependent on our caregivers and we know in our tiny baby selves that life will just go better if we become who our parents want or need us to be. Most of us, eventually, like fish oblivious to water, forget that our identities were ever assumed. We’ve become our disguises.

Here’s where emptiness comes in. After four or five decades of living from our shells, we begin to wear out. This wearing out often comes in the form of aimlessness and depression – that almost-predictable midlife malaise that calls us to pay attention to who we really are.

Here I am – trying to explain emptiness. That’s sort of the opposite of what I’m suggesting! So, here are some forms that emptiness might take in our embodied lives:

  • Emptiness might take the form of dispensing with pretending and disguises. We might just get back in touch with our souls and let ourselves be who we are. We might just decide that taking the risk of authenticity is worth the payoff of real relationships, with ourselves and with others.
  • Emptiness might take the form of forgiveness. We might choose to release our identity as victims of someone or something else, and see what’s left.
  • Emptiness might take the form of allowing ourselves to feel anger, fear, and sadness. Rather than filling ourselves with food or booze or shopping or reading or something else that distracts us, we can simply give our feelings space to exist.
  • Emptiness might take the form of white space on our to-do lists and calendars.Giving ourselves the gift of time to do nothing – empty time – is necessary for new life and new creations to emerge.
  • Emptiness might be physical. Emptiness might mean freeing ourselves from the actual things that bind us. Emptiness might take the form of empty space on our bookshelves, in our closets and garages, or on our plates.

Welcoming emptiness is paradoxical. How can we welcome something that doesn’t exist? How can we cultivate nothingness?

My answer to this paradox is that emptiness isn’t really empty. It’s in emptiness that God can speak to us, and we can finally hear. It’s in emptiness that we become aware of and moved by holy intuition, guidance, and inspiration. It’s in emptiness that we know ourselves to be deeply and irrevocably connected with our divine Source.

Welcoming emptiness takes courage and faith.

(Going beyond welcoming emptiness to actively cultivating emptiness takes even more courage and faith.)

Here’s more Lao Tzu for inspiration:

“We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.”

I invite us to stop. Let’s notice what’s going on inside ourselves. Notice when we’re filling our fertile emptiness with identities, expectations, or busy-ness. Notice when we push away an unwelcome feeling and distract ourselves. Notice when we blame others for our choices. Notice when we’re so attached to our agendas that we fail to see God’s agenda.

Stop. Welcome emptiness, and welcome God’s deep love beneath and around emptiness. Cultivate the emptiness that allows Love to grow. When we empty ourselves of all that isn’t God, we allow God to expand within us and overflow into a hurting world.

Emptiness is unpredictable. Emptiness makes room for grace and surprise. Emptiness makes us useful as Christ’s body in the world, in ways that are inevitably surprising.

Above all, emptiness trusts that we are much, much more than our identities and our grudges and our fears and our things – we are God’s love embodied. We are God’s hands working for peace and justice and the dignity of every human being.

May we welcome and cultivate emptiness in order to become more fully ourselves.


Barb Morris is a writer, teacher, and artist living in Bend, Oregon with her Episcopal priest husband. More of her blogging, writing, and art are at www.barbmorris.com.

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1 Comment April 19, 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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