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
    • Walk the Ancient Paths: Pilgrimage
      • Monk in the World (Ireland)
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World (Ireland)
      • Vienna Monk in the World (Austria)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
    • Live Programs and Spiritual Retreats
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World:
        An Online Writing Retreat
      • 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)
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
    • 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: Celeste Boudreaux

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Celeste Boudreaux's reflection "Healing Art."

For Celeste

I see you, though you try to hide
Blending into the wall
Daughter of a defective mother
(Whose empty eyes betray her lipstick toothed smile)
You lurk in the corner, timid and sad and skinny
Child of a deceptive poverty
Cinderella’s colorless little sister
Dwelling in the big house, eating ashes
Bearing in silence your public shame and private anguish
Called to be the strong one, the good one
Who needs nothing, demands nothing, receives nothing
Mother’s caretaker during her final years
Of agonizing unraveling

Forgive those who looked away in discomfort
Who did nothing, made no inquires
Waited until after the final, successful disaster
To offer any help

For I see you
And I’m telling you
I see a brave and resilient child
Not needless, but worthy of compassion
Not invisible, but beautiful with color and texture
Not deserted, but secretly upheld
Not unscarred, but admirably capable of growth

Sweet girl
Unfold a little
Relax, smile, be silly
Receive my love
Accept these tender tears
You will not slide into the abyss
Because I will hold you tight

On Good Friday, 1975, when I was 16, I came home from my after school job and found my mother’s body. She had attempted suicide twice before. Before I had left for my after school job, she had said goodbye to me at the front door to the apartment, and now she was laid out on the bed not breathing.

Naturally, this was a defining trauma of my life, but it was merely the culmination of a childhood of pain and deprivation. After my parents’ divorce, my stern grandmother had taken charge and imposed her harsh discipline on me and my five siblings.

When I was 13, our family was broken up again, and my uncles put me in an apartment with my mother. Now I had to become the mom, doing the cooking and grocery shopping and worrying about paying the bills. My tortured mother swirled within the vortex of her own inner turmoil, swinging between extreme agitation and debilitating depressions, until that terrible Friday.

As an adult, I staved off my own depression by maintaining a discipline of positivity, denying my own pain. I had internalized my grandmother’s relentless standards and productivity ethic. This served me well until I found myself flat on my back with a tangle of health problems made substantially worse by extreme stress, overwork, and debilitating anxiety.

At this point of desperation, God began to lead me on a path of healing through art. I started drawing simple pictures of me as a little girl and Jesus as my father: rocking in his lap; twirling myself dizzy and landing in his outstretched arms; sitting cross-legged in a field weaving a clover flower crown as he sits nearby, smiling as he watches me play. I drew all the tender interactions that I missed during my girlhood, the moments that would have told me that I was a much loved and cherished child, that I had permission to play and express joy, and that he delighted in me just being myself. Drawing these pictures was a kind of meditation, a way of spending time with those images, of transforming them by some strange alchemy into the reality of memory, and thus starting to heal my little girl’s heart.

One day as I struggled with my anxiety, I was inspired to write a lullaby, as if Jesus my father was singing it to my toddler self, crying hysterically in my crib. “Sweet little baby girl,” he sang, “Daddy’s here…you are heard, never fear.” Later, I wrote “For Celeste,” a poem to my teen self. It seemed that God was leading me to speak the language of my child self at different ages: a lullaby to comfort a baby, drawings for a young girl, and now a poem for a teen who had written poetry at that age so long ago.

Recently, I have begun making collages that express aspects of myself, such as The Good Little Girl, pictured at the beginning. I expected that I would be done with it by now, but I have found that deep healing comes in stages, one layer at a time.

As a monk in the world, I am learning that I can only truly know and love God in proportion to how well I know and love myself. If I do not extend to myself the grace and compassion that he extends to me, then I will not be able to be present to others in a deep and meaningful way.

I close with a poem for all those who have walked through pain and disillusionment away from a broken ideal towards a more humble and graced reality.

Eve’s Journey

Exiled from the garden of perfection
I journey on my forced march
Fearful and desperate
Searching, clutching, clinging
For any bit of comfort and control
Hiding in loneliness and sorrow
Learning to bury it deeply, deeply
And soldier on in pride of self reliance
Teased and blessed by glimpses of glory
Amidst the mustiness of decay
I catch a whiff of honeysuckle
Lost Eden peeks through a fallen world
Can I say yes to both pain and beauty
Is less than perfect good enough
Does God hold more dear the broken and mending heart


Celeste Boudreaux lives in Houston, Texas. In addition to her day job as a university administrator, she is a spiritual director and one who sees beauty and expresses it through photography, painting, drawing and poetry. She also loves yoga, walks in nature, and butterfly gardening.

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Leave a Comment September 18, 2019

Upcoming Programs

The Way of the Hermit:
A Spiritual Survival Guide for Dark Times

January 22-24, 2021
with Kayleen Asbo, PhD

The Spiral Way:
Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination

Hosted by the Rowe Center
February 1-21, 2021
with Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

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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