Dialogue: the monastic impulse as a spark to serve something bigger than yourself?
There’s a great dialogue happening in the comments to my second submission (here is part 1) to the Transpositions Art & Monasticism Symposium. These are exactly the kinds of conversations I was hoping would happen. Cole Matson asked: How much do you think the search for God is necessary for a way of life to be called “monastic”? ...
Laura Riding was an artmonk
“The mercy of truth – it is to be truth.” In reading Paul Auster’s fantastic collection of essays, The Art of Hunger, I came across Truth, Beauty, Silence, a stunning look at Laura Riding’s life and work. As the poets she influenced (Auden, Ashbery, etc.) are among my favorites, I have read a little ...
“the simple way” » 12 Marks of New Monasticism
Through a google alert pointing me to this article, I just stumbled on The Simple Way, “a community in inner-city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world.” I am looking forward to exploring more. But first, I love this clear exposition of their values (how many elements of monasticism can you ...
Otherhood, the Podcast: Episode 1, Christine Valters Paintner and “The Artist’s Rule”
Otherhood, the Podcast: Episode 1, Christine Valters Paintner & "The Artist's Rule" [ 27:05 | 17.43 MB ] Meet Otherhood, the Podcast. In this, the first episode, I interview Christine Valters Paintner about her new book (the Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul With Monastic Wisdom), the oblate life, and what it means to be both an artist and a monk. BTW, we’re giving away a free copy of the Artist’s Rule to ...
Atheists Seek a Place Among Military Chaplains – NYTimes.com
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — In the military, there are more than 3,000 chaplains who minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of active duty troops, regardless of their faiths. The vast majority are Christians, a few are Jews or Muslims, one is a Buddhist. A Hindu, possibly even a Wiccan may join their ranks soon. But ...
Immanence
I’m heading off the grid for a week, but I really look forward to giving this more attention when I get back: ”artmonks: children of Thoreau & Whitehead,” a post by Adrian Ivakhiv. If Thoreau’s quest to “live deliberately ... and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” were cross-bred with ...
Creating an Art Monastery
Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.
Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.
So we’re making a monastery.Living in intentional community is not for everyone—the idea triggers an autoimmune response in some people, for whom it might signify the sacrifice of personal autonomy and individuality—but once you develop a taste for the stuff, it doesn’t fade. I unabashedly love it.
Since I began this blog-inquiry into monasticism just six months ago, dissecting Taoism, Vedanta, Eastern and Western Christianity, as well as the various vehicles of Buddhism into what I have called the elements of monasticism, community is an element I haven’t written about directly much at all. Yet it figures in my mind as an important piece of what all monasticisms are aiming at. For those individuals who dwell in abbeys, ashrams, friaries, priories, sketes, lavras, mathas, mandirs, koils, gompas, lamaseries, wats, viharas, community is a powerful spiritual practice.
So we’re making a monastery.
Pico
Renaissance humanist philosopher Pico della Mirandola, who died at 31 in 1494 shortly after determining to become a monk, wrote “The Oration on the Dignity of Man” when he was only 23: He [God] received man, therefore, as a creature of undetermined nature, and placing him in the middle of the universe, said this to ...
“They call it Christianity. I call it consciousness.” —Emerson
via the church and postmodern culture: conversation, in a post on multitasking.via the church and postmodern culture: conversation, in a post on multitasking.
