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
    • 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)
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
    • 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
      • 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: Cindy Steffen

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Cindy Steffen's reflection, "Instead, a Monk."

As I reluctantly walked toward the massive wooden doors of the stone church, every exhausted cell in my body shouted, “I don’t want to be here! I don’t want to do this! I don’t want this life!”

It had been just over two months since my husband, Craig, suddenly died of a pulmonary embolism. A month after his passing, we were scheduled to leave on a long-awaited Peregrination; a road trip sabbatical with hopes to discover new callings for the second half of life. He was incredibly excited.

Now, I was utterly lost.

Once inside the Widows Group, I quickly found a chair and turned to hang my coat on the back. What I heard behind me I believe changed the course of my healing journey.

“So, how are you doing, Jane?

“Oh, you know, just trying to keep busy.”

Upon hearing this, a huge lump formed in my throat and inside I screamed, “I am NOT doing it like that! I am not going to just keep busy, so I can forget the pain of losing my true companion!” Instinctively, I knew the “busy path” was not the right direction toward whatever new wholeness lie ahead. So, what did I do?

I became a monk, instead.

When the bottom drops out because of loss or tragedy, and we feel we are free-falling, it is best to hold on to the basics. So, as the desert father, Abba Moses, exhorted, I sat in my “cell” – a blue leather recliner in the family room and “let it teach me.” I yelled, I sobbed, I cursed, I wished I could just dissolve, I prayed, and stared at the walls, either remembering or trying to listen, desperate for my lost connection.

Like St. Francis with his creatures, I surrounded myself with books to discover the wisdom of those who had also experienced great loss, both contemporary and ancient. I read and I read. If it didn’t resonate with me, I put it down and picked up another. Through much reading, my instincts were validated; to embrace the pain of grief, to hold it close, is to heal from it.

I am still learning this.

One of the hardest realities of loss is truly understanding that your life will never be the same. In her book, An Alter in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Reverence stands in awe of something – something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits.” I felt beyond dwarfed. I became utterly limited. Somewhere in my soul, I knew I had to treat my grief with reverence and stand in awe of what this other side of love can do to a heart and soul.

So, on my first, “first” – my 60th birthday, one month after Craig’s passing, I called my anam caras together to “sit Shiva” with me . . . or my version of the practice. I asked them to come sit on our/my bed, as I wailed and wrestled with God, repeatedly sobbing that I wanted him back and wasn’t sure I could go on. When they weren’t mourning with me, I asked them to make various soups in my kitchen and freeze them for the upcoming winter.

Sacred basics . . .  soul friends and soup.

Journaling was also an essential and voracious practice I engaged in. Early writings revealed how much my world had drastically shrunk; I wrote that I didn’t want to go anywhere, didn’t want to be invited anywhere, wanted human interaction only on my terms, often didn’t even answer the phone. So, I created a secret Facebook page for friends and titled it, My Journey of Grief, Small Days, and Hope. The theme of life became those “small days” and I surrendered to them; days when there was nothing to do but cry, or when all I could do was unload the dishwasher, then go watch a movie. When my chest felt like it was filling up with concrete, I grabbed the journal or computer and expressed the Job-like truths in my soul – dark, raw, and questioning as they were. But the tears that flowed from that writing cleansed the pain for at least one more hour; one more day. And looking back, I realize the wisdom I needed, which showed up on the pages between the pleading and the cursing, was Divine.

The last spiritual practice, and maybe the most important, was the daily walks I took with my dog. I call them my “weeping walks” because that is what I did. In winter, bike paths are empty, so lots of ugly crying and conversation took place between a new holy trinity . . . God, Craig and Myself. The beauty I would allow myself to see did its subtle and gracious work of slowly mending my broken heart. My morning ritual was a walk to the creek, leaning on a jutting branch of an old box elder, and telling Craig how much I loved and missed him. It’s where I buried my head in my gloves that first winter and trusted that the prayer I could not speak was being uttered by groanings of the Spirit. It’s where the realization took root that now my husband was also a spirit and our relationship would, indeed, be different.

It was not the life I wanted.

But it is a life I am growing into . . . quiet, intentional, transformational . . . rather like a monk.


Cindy Steffen lives in SE Ohio, where she facilitates retreats for writers, seekers, and now widows through her business, Heart by Nature Retreats. She is the author of Sightings – Twenty-one Poems Observed. An avid birdwatcher, interpretive naturalist, and writer, Cindy is slowly finding her new normal. Visit her at CindyKSteffen.com and www.facebook.com/heartbynatureretreats.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Print
«
»

Leave a Comment October 16, 2019

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

Connect with the Abbey

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
JOIN THE HOLY DISORDER OF DANCING MONKS
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES
DONATE TO SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY

Copyright © 2021 BY ABBEY OF THE ARTS · WEBSITE PRIVACY NOTICE

Copyright © 2021 · Flourish Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in