{"id":5305,"date":"2011-07-25T06:30:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T10:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/?p=5305"},"modified":"2011-07-29T15:41:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T19:41:24","slug":"mindful-monday-monastic-wisdom-for-the-creative-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2011\/07\/mindful-monday-monastic-wisdom-for-the-creative-soul.html","title":{"rendered":"Mindful Monday: Monastic Wisdom for the Creative Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In her new book, “The Artist\u2019s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul With Monastic Wisdom,\u201d<\/a> author Christine Valters Paintner offers a twelve-week program to introduce monastic wisdom and practice to anyone wanting to integrate spirituality and creativity. In her spiritual journey, Paintner has discovered that the contemplative path allows her creativity to flourish in ways it never did before she embraced monastic practice. <\/p>\n

I must confess that I haven\u2019t done the twelve-week journey. I\u2019m not feeling very monkish lately. Summer (and especially this summer) seems to zap what little holiness I posess, as I work out of my son\u2019s bedroom and am interrupted about every ten minutes by his changing sports attire and gear. I can\u2019t really get mad at him, though, because, after all, I am occupying a sizable chunk of his room. I do pay him rent, which doubles if I don\u2019t pay on time. Business men, these little people are today.
\n
\nSorry, I digress. I don\u2019t think monks do that. <\/p>\n

I did go through the book and mark some of the beautiful passages she includes. Those alone, I think, will inspire you, as they did me. Apologies, again, for the formatting mess. I have yet to figure out what I’m doing wrong:<\/p>\n

The heart of human identity is the capacity and desire for birthing. To be is to become creative and bring forth the beautiful.<\/em> \u2013John O\u2019Donohue<\/p>\n

Come, come, whoever you are.
\nWanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
\nIt doesn\u2019t matter.
\nOurs is not a caravan of despair.
\nCome, even if you have broken your vow
\nA hundred times.
\nCome, yet again, come, come.<\/em> \u2013Rumi<\/p>\n

There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.<\/em> \u2013Thomas Merton<\/p>\n

A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to a voice saying to us: \u201cI have a gift for you and can\u2019t wait for you to see it! Imagine!\u201d<\/em> \u2013Henri Nouwen<\/p>\n

The true monastery was not dependent on the enclosure of walls. It was, rather, a quality of consciousness or a state of heart that involved daily commitment to maintain an inner aloneness\u2014that place where God and soul dwell in intimacy.<\/em> \u2013Beverly Lanzetta<\/p>\n

Silence is never merely the cessation of words\u2026.Rather it is the pause that holds together\u2014indeed, it makes sense of\u2014all the words, both spoken and unspoken. Silence is the glue that connects our attitudes and our actions. Silence is the fullness, not emptiness; it is not absence, but the awareness of presence.<\/em> \u2013John Chryssavgis<\/p>\n

I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one\u2019s being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.<\/em> \u2013Martha Graham<\/p>\n

Come to the edge, He said. They said: we are afraid.
\nCome to the edge, He said.
\nThey came. He pushed them, and they flew \u2026<\/em> –Guillaume Apollinaire<\/p>\n

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
\nAnd find that the dark, too, blooms and sings.<\/em> \u2013Wendell Berry<\/p>\n

I love the dark hours of my being
\nIn which my senses drop into the deep.<\/em> \u2013Rainer Maria Rilke<\/p>\n

Work is love made visible.<\/em> \u2013Kahlil Gibran<\/p>\n

The night will give you a horizon wider than you can see.<\/em> \u2013David Whyte<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* Click here to subscribe to Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a> and click here to follow Therese on Twitter<\/b><\/a> and click here to join Group Beyond Blue<\/b><\/a>, a depression support group. Now stop clicking.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her new book, “The Artist\u2019s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul With Monastic Wisdom,\u201d author Christine Valters Paintner offers a twelve-week program to introduce monastic wisdom and practice to anyone wanting to integrate spirituality and creativity. 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