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
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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
  • 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
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Uncategorized

Monk in the World Guest Post: Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Keren Dibbens–Wyatt's reflection, "Hidden Treasures."

Photo composite icon of Julian of Norwich by R R Wyatt, used with permission.

I have long been nurtured and consoled by the life and writings of the 14th Century English Saint, Julian of Norwich. On what she thought was her deathbed, Julian, aged thirty, received a series of visions. They came whilst gazing on the crucifix brought along by a boy attending the priest who gave her the last rites. She survived her illness and spent the rest of her life meditating on the feast of revelations God had given her, even going so far as to become an anchoress. She took a solemn vow to remain in one small room attached to St Julian’s church from about 1392 to her death some time after 1416. She had a maid bringing her food and taking her laundry and so on through a small window, and also had one tiny window facing into the church through which to receive the eucharist, and one more, covered, window facing the street where she would give spiritual advice to those who asked. But for the most part she was alone with her God and her thoughts.

She spent those long years praying about and thinking on the things God had shown her, and wrote them down, along with her prayerful thoughts. She had most likely already written her first text, but hidden away from the world she wrote a longer one, having had time to dig deeper into her “shewings.” Somehow, a few precious copies of these books survived the Reformation, and give us the earliest book written in English by a woman, The Revelations of Divine Love.

Julian is special to me for many reasons. One is because, like her, I have been called to a life of contemplation. Another is that I have a chronic illness which not only seriously affects everything I do, but which has left me largely unable to leave my home over the last decade and not at all for the last three years. I have felt, many times, like an anchoress myself, stuck indoors, yet given the privilege of mulling over the wonders God has been so gracious as to give me in prayer.

Like Julian, I do not want to keep these things to myself, but want to share them with others, my “evencristens” (fellow Christians) and this desire has led to my own writing of books, one of which, called Recital of Love (releases Sept 8th) partly due to my affection and respect for this woman who died six hundred years ago, is about to enter the world.

In some ways of course, I do not dare compare myself to such a saint. The visions and understandings I have been given are small and yet still overwhelming for an ordinary disabled woman like me. But when God first began showing me things in prayer, it was finding Julian’s writings and those of St Teresa of Avila, that helped me understand what was happening. The word “mystic” is currently having a revival, but twenty years ago when my journey began, no-one I spoke to seemed to know what I was about. When I found these women and this word, everything began to make sense, and I knew in my heart that this powerful tradition of Christian mysticism was flowing through my life.

We are all, of course, capable of learning to attune ourselves to God’s voice, and it is deeply affirming to know that what all the mystics come back with from their sojourns into the heart of God is one sure and certain hope, which is that God is love, and love is God. We always encounter a loving personhood extending mercy and grace. There is no sense of condemnation or of a being who needs appeasement.

This is my own experience too, and out of it have come many wonderful pieces which I believe God has placed on my heart. I receive some of them through the filter of my imagination as pieces of poetic prose. When I began to write them out during my prayer times, and then started collating them, I had no idea that they would become a book. There are journals full of more seeings, shewings and understandings, and my hope is to weave them all into various books and tales. I hope that this work, mostly done shut away from the world, will be a blessing, and help people see that they are indescribably and wonderfully loved by the Three-In-One God who created them.

Here is one of the shorter pieces of the seventy from Recital of Love:

Rose

If you pluck a rose and place it in a vase of daisies, it will be ashamed of its thorns and diminished by its height, so aware of its own differences and overwhelmed by the longing to be the same as those around it, that it will shrink before your very eyes.

For it to bloom and open fully, letting light and colour into every dark fissure of its petals, it must be planted in good soil. For my sunshine-love-light to find its way round every petalled corner and into the hidden crevices that frame beauty in curves of darker hue, it must have love whispered to it daily.

It must be taught to open to the dew, to the rain and the sun alike, to become tender to cheek, snail, and aphid, as well as to shining droplets and warm rays.

Open then, to everything, for all things hold a lesson and all wisdom is precious, and there is no full bloom without the courage to face worms. Each rose must find its true form and colour, its own dear shape and vibrant translucency.

And I will shine here and bloom in your blooming. My rose garden spreads fragrance throughout the world, and nothing else smells so sweetly of heaven.

Selah


Keren Dibbens–Wyatt is a chronically ill writer and artist with a passion for poetry, mysticism, story and colour. Her writing features regularly on spiritual blogs and in literary journals. Her new book, Recital of Love, published by Paraclete Press, is out on September 8, 2020. Keren lives in South East England and is mainly housebound by her illness.

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Leave a Comment September 2, 2020

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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