Artmonk Experience with Mayfield Senior School Conservatory in Italy

We had a great day running the Artmonk Experience for Mayfield Senior School Conservatory and Incantato Tours on April 9! We brought in Julia Pond from London for the weekend to help us run the show. We began the day with Lectio Divina, the ancient monastic practice of reading a sacred text “listening with the ear of your heart,” as St Benedict called it. Rather than a passage from the Bible, we offered the girls from this Catholic school in California the following poem by Walt Whitman.

This is what you shall do;

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others,

hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people,

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons

and with the young and with the mothers of families,

read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,

dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency

not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face

and between the lashes of your eyes

and in every motion and joint of your body.

― Walt Whitman

After Lectio Divina, students chose amongst three breakout sessions:

Movement Meditation with Isadora Duncan expert Julia Pond

 

Theater of the Oppressed with Art Monastery Artistic Director Liz Maxwell,

or songwriting in the church with Art Monastery Music Director Charles Darius.

Julia shared her most recent work in progress and then we all had lunch at nearby restaurant Pizzeria NordEst, overlooking Lake Piediluco.