Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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  • Books
    • Breath Prayer:
      An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred
    • 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
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      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
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      • Mary block print art series by Kreg Yingst
  • Programs
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
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      • 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
      • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Sacred Balance:
        Aligning Body and Spirit Through
        Yoga and the Benedictine Way
    • 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)
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
        (SELF-STUDY)
      • 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 (SELF-STUDY)
      • 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: Susan Fish

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Susan Fish's reflection on creative work as offering in the midst of trying times.

I’ve never been to Paris but when I saw the cathedral on fire this week last year, I held my breath. I like knowing that iconic sites like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame de Paris are there. It is enough for me that they stand in my mind as signs and symbols, pointing.

When Notre Dame began to burn, I recognized that fire as a symbol too: I know what that’s like. Over the last three years my life was turned upside down by a family member’s head injury, which resulted in an event that felt like a kind of betrayal. The thought of a roof caving in feels very familiar to me. And now, in the first months of 2020, many of us know this experience.

A few years back, after the death of Carrie Fisher who played Princess Leia, I heard she had once said, “Take your broken heart. Turn it into art.” 

So I did. I wrote a novel that contained precisely none of the details of my life, and every one of the emotions. It contained its own icon, its own Notre Dame – a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall of the main character’s room in the Florentine convent where she stays to work out her own caved-in roof. 

When my writing coach said the book was structurally sound, off it went into the world to look for a publishing home. 

But as no thanks letters rolled in, I felt like the girl in the story told by writer and minister Robert Fulghum about playing the game Giants, Elves and Wizards with a group of children. As they prepare to play what is effectively a full-body Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fulghum feels a tug on his sleeve. “Where do the mermaids stand?” asks a young girl. Fulghum tries to put her off – the roles don’t include mermaid – but she will have none of it: “For I am a mermaid.” 

Rejection is never easy and they say you’re supposed to recognize that it’s not personal, that it’s never about your own value or even necessarily the value of the writing. But that’s easier said than done. Where do the mermaids stand?

Fulghum’s answer to the girl is to tell her, “The mermaids stand right here, next to the King of the Sea.”  And that was my answer to my publishing angst too. I am reminded that my worth comes not from publication but from being beloved, that my writing too needs to come out of this place.

The fifth principle of the Monk Manifesto reminds me that living as a monk in the world means committing to “bringing myself fully present to the work I do, whether paid or unpaid, holding a heart of gratitude for the ability to express my gifts in the world in meaningful ways.”

I shift that principle a bit to say “whether published or unpublished.” This means I need to write even when it seems foolish, like the woman who lavished perfume on the feet of Jesus, mopping it up with her own hair. It means continuing to offer my gifts to the world, even in the face of rejection. The writer Elizabeth O’Connor says, “The artist or prophet [is] the one who dares to act on the bold belief that she has a word to speak that would be healing if it could be heard…our lives are for the greening of the earth and each other.”

In this season, it’s a question to ask ourselves: how, at a distance, can our lives be for the greening of the earth and each other? In a time of pandemic, how can we express our gifts in the world in meaningful ways?

For me, some of that answer has been in writing small prose poems on my Facebook page, as ways of pointing people to the beauty and the sorrows of life, and in writing daily collect prayers in order to point people toward God. It has also meant not thinking less of my work because I am not a nurse, doctor or frontline worker, but to be a mermaid by the King of the Sea.

I love that Notre Dame will be rebuilt (and that the uproar over its rebuilding led to torched Black churches getting funded in their rebuilding too). I love that Notre Dame’s rose windows survived the fire intact. Most of all, I love the story that came out days later, that the rooftop beehive on Notre Dame survived the fire, and that the bees inside had simply been lulled to sleep by the smoke, as they would be when racks of honey were removed. Timbers may have crashed down but beauty and small queens and drones alike have survived

I, too, have survived the crashing that inspired the story and the crashing of rejection, and we too will survive this collective crash. Like the bees making their sweet honey, my work—and yours even if your work is a very different call—is to create with a heart of gratitude out of a place of love, and to send my stories out into the world as a fragrant offering. 


Susan Fish is a writer and editor living in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Her Italian novel, Renaissance, will be published in by Innana Publications in 2021.

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Leave a Comment April 15, 2020

Upcoming Programs

  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
    • May 15, 2021 - May 16, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Reverend Deb Goldman
  • A mini-poetry reading from Christine plus other publishing news
  • St. Kevin Holds Open His Hand and Radical Hospitality ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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