How to Integrate Post-Retreat
Congratulations on completing your silent retreat! Heading back home can sometimes feels like a huge relief and sometimes feel terrifying — how will I preserve all this spacious awareness that I’ve been cultivating within the support of the community and the container? Often times, both sentiments are present at the same time. Here are some […]
Space, Art, and Music: Ideal Conditions for “Arte & Musica”
We’re so looking forward to “Arte & Musica,” our fundraiser/concert that’s happening in the Diego Rivera Gallery in SF on October 11th. In terms of the space, the music, and the art we’ll be inundated in, we couldn’t have asked for a better context for our event. The building at 800 Chestnut that houses the San Francisco […]
A poem for Vigils
This poem by W. S. DI PIERO captures some of the spirit of Vigils, our year-long examination of the midnight ritual of the western monastic office (part of the Art Monastic Cycle). It’s That Time The silence of night hours is never really silent. You hear the air, even when it doesn’t stir. It’s a memory of the day. […]
Envisioning Art Monastic Architecture
We’re using a website called Pinterest to collect images of what Art Monasteries might look like. So far we’ve collected quite a range of great images—structures that are historical, modern, big, small… We’re letting our imaginations run wild. Here are just a few of the hundreds we’ve gathered:
…become like little children…
I’m always on the look out for secular and artful pieces of contemplative wisdom. Here’s one (which I stumbled upon here), from a young adult novel called Looking For Alaska. When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need […]
“The End of Your World” and Other Resources
I’m adding a few more books to the resources section. First, a new section, on Vigils & the Monastic Cycle: Art & Death, by Chris Townsend Each of the following books represents a unique take on awakening, a broad term that factors in our vision statement: “The Art Monastery Project is dedicated to cultivating personal awakening and cultural […]
“The Rabbi’s Gift” and a Mother’s Day Dharma Talk
A Mother’s Day gift from one Art Monastery to another, as performed by participants of Art Monastery SF’s first Daylong Artmonk Retreat, May 13th 2012 (Mother’s Day), led by Joel and Michelle Levey.
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”? […]
Monastic Technologies (part 2 of 2 @ the Transpositions Art & Monasticism Symposium)
[I wrote this originally for the online Art & Monasticism Symposium, April 30 – May 5, through Transpositions, a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. This is part 2, and part 1 is here. It was featured alongside great posts by Christine Valters Paintner, Cole Matson, […]
Open-Source Monasticism (part 1 of 2 @ the Transpositions Art & Monasticism Symposium)
[I wrote this originally for the online Art & Monasticism Symposium, April 30 – May 5, through Transpositions, a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. This is part 1, and part 2 is here. It was featured alongside great posts by Christine Valters Paintner, Cole Matson, Preston Yancey, and Sr […]
