Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
Tomorrow Simon de Voil and I are leading our final contemplative prayer service of the season before we take a break until the fall. Our theme is Creative Joy which is the 8th principle of our Monk Manifesto:
I commit to being a dancing monk, cultivating creative joy and letting my body and “heart overflow with the inexpressible delights of love.”
Here is a reflection on creative joy from our Monk in the World online retreat:
Whether we dance literally or metaphorically, the dance is a symbol for forgetting our self-consciousness and letting ourselves be overcome with the joy and love that beat at the heart of everything. Our whole purpose in following a spiritual path and nurturing these practices in our lives is to expand our inner freedom which expands our capacity for loving the world. Kirk Byron Jones, in his book Soul Talk says that God is “always and forever dreaming your joy.” This is a beautiful image of the Holy One’s desire for us to live into this path of creative joy and to know it as sacred and good.
As we release the hold of expectations and disappointments, as we stop trying to live into the imagined life and live the one we have been given, we discover a profound inner freedom to make choices out of joy and love, rather than obligation or resentment.
In his book Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura writes that “God’s design in Eden, even before the Fall, was to sing Creation into being and invite God’s creatures to sing with God, to co-create into the Creation.” He goes on to say that the Christian story is about bringing in the New, which is the source of our imagination. We were created to partner with the divine in bringing the world to newness.
St. Teresa of Avila describes the soul’s journey as moving to our deepest interior, through the rooms of an inner castle to encounter the divine. Claudia Love Mair shares in her book about Teresa, God Alone is Enough, that “when we have come deep enough into the castle, by prayer, to be still with our God, we find sweetness and joy. This is a little piece of heaven right where we are.” We do not need to go on big adventures or travel far distances. The fountain of sacred joy is within us. All the ways we practice coming into deeper intimacy with the divine, is in service of connecting to this profound sense of love and joy which ushers back into connection with the world.
Howard Thurman reflected that “Every moment is a divine encounter; every facet is an exposure to the boundless energies by which life is sustained and our spirits made whole. Thus, we live joyfully into life and its restraints.” Each moment we can open our hearts to experiencing the life-sustaining love lavished by the divine presence. It is in this commitment to practice and show up for the deeper mysteries of life that we can kindle joy even in the midst of the limitations life brings us.
This does not mean as a contemplative that you need to always be happy. Far from it. Joy is not the same thing as happiness but tapping into a deep well of love. Joy is a deep and abiding presence, whereas happiness is a fleeting quality.
Our capacity for joy is in proportion to our capacity for sorrow, so the more we resist our grief, the more we also resist the treasure of joy available to us in abundant measure. Not the bitterness and resentment that Benedict counsels us to avoid, but the deep wells of sorrow we each carry within our hearts over losses and brokenness, betrayals and wounding. Following our Monk Manifesto second principle of inner hospitality, we are called to welcome in these feelings, and in the process, we carve out space for joy and love as well.
One of the key ways we open a portal to our deepening joy is through creativity and art-making. Dancing, singing, writing, painting, all of these have the potential to connect us to this inner wellspring. Barbara Holmes tells us that we can cross into joy’s embrace through word, song, or movement. “Portals open as the quickening steps of seekers engage a dancing God in a dancing universe. If there is any way to dialogue with the God who created a universe of vibrating and dancing ‘strings,’ perhaps it is through dance.” When we move into a place of surrender and forget our self-consciousness, when we inhabit a song or a poem or a dance, we connect to life in a life-expanding way.
Please join Simon and me for the contemplative prayer service tomorrow.
If you’d love to have an extended creative infusion, consider joining us for Writing on the Wild Edges (May 12-16), a writing retreat inspired by the voyage of Irish saint Brendan as a creative guide and ending on his feast day. We will also be exploring how the Celtic imagination can open up creativity to us in new ways.
We are also pleased to release the audio podcast for Day 1 Morning and Evening Prayer: Love from our 6thprayer cycle on Cultivating Seeds of Liberation. Listen here or on your favorite podcast platform such as Apple or Spotify. The prayer cycle is a free resource that includes contributions from many vibrant writers, artists, musicians, and dancers who are compensated for their work. If you have the financial means to support this resource, a donation in any amount is most appreciated and can be made here.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
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