I recently finished a telecourse on the miraculous connection you can make in “an intersection” that transforms and enlarges all the benefits you derive from uniting your spiritual practices with your creative practices. While this seems rather mystical and magical in approach, and it is that — the course also contained all the hard-facts and details of what it takes to put full effort into your own creation and bring it forth into the world and to other people!
Janet Conner, the creator of this course and author of “Writing Down Your Soul” and it’s companion journal, “Your Soul Pages” (www.writingdownyoursoul.com) began each lesson of the Intersection for Writers with a special writing from Daniel Ladinsky, who has many published books out on the translation of mystical poet Hafiz, for our class:
“I would like to remove some rocks from
your field so that you can plant more wheat.
….then an orchard you can grow….
then the world will come to taste
your riches.”
All of us in the course came to enjoy hearing those words pour over us each week and they bolstered up each of our unique projects and fueled us with the inspiration to keep on tending our field of creativity, for what we truly want is that we will find our way through the marketing and sales maze sucessfully so other people will be able
“to taste our riches.”
I have discovered that some of life’s creativity and spiritual artists actually use their very own fields and meadows as a place where we can taste their riches and the richness of Source, Itself.
Although I have never visited Green Mountain Monastery and the Thomas Berry Sanctuary, my heart draws me to it and perhaps I may one day be blessed enough to walk its grounds.
A virtual tour of their website and the explanation of their mission and purpose is enough to know they are the makers of Holy Ground. The kind of ground our Mother Earth is so much in need of. In speaking of their mission, they state:
“We are a new monastery in the Catholic Tradition with an original founding impulse that has gathered its inspiration from our mentor and co-founder, the late Fr Thomas Berry; monk, scholar, and cultural historian.
The integration of the story of the Universe with our deep Christic roots shapes our monastic expression for the 21st century.
Rooted in the evolving lineage of this tradition as it has unfolded through its major “Moments of Grace,” (Desert, Community, Mendicant, Intellectual, Activist….) we seek to awaken to the fullness of Christ Consciousness at this new moment, the Cosmological/Planetary in order to become radiant expressions of Love in Action for the sake of the Whole.”
Their consciousness of land, infilled with the Spirit of All, is deeply rooted not only in the very ground they walk, but in their hearts and souls as well.
Sanc-tu-ary
- a sacred place
- the holiest part of a sacred place
- a place of refuge and safety
- a wild place
“We consider our 160 acres of fields and boreal forest, wildlife and running streams, birds and wildflowers and the entire community of life here in this place to be the Thomas Berry Sanctuary.”
In his paper, The Wild and the Sacred, Thomas wrote:
This we need to know: how to participate creatively in the wildness of the world about us. For it is out of the wild depths of the universe and of our own being that the greater visions must come.
“Thomas Berry, at his request was buried on our land on June 8, 2009 and we are deeply honored to be the place of his final rest.”
“The meadow was chosen as his burial site because it was the deep archetype of the Meadow, (which represented the entire Earth Community) that Thomas carried with him throughout his life. His religious orientation, it seems to us, had its origin in the deep Mystery of the Meadow, where he experienced Earth as the primary revelation of the Divine.”
“The Meadow also influenced his intellectual life and became the norm for his entire range of thinking. Whatever preserved the Meadow was good, whatever opposed the Meadow was not.”
As a boy of eleven years old, Thomas Berry caught his first view of the lilies blooming in the Meadow across the Creek and dedicated his life to this vision.
Thomas understood the exquisite presence of the Meadow’s diverse members to one another, each reflecting the numinous mystery that fills the Universe.
Thomas Berry recalled, in his writing, the profound effect coming upon the meadow covered in white lilies had upon him at that young age:
“Although the Meadow has none of the immensity or grandeur of other places, still in this little Meadow the magnificence of life as celebration is manifested in a manner as profound and impressive as any other place I have known in these past many years.”
http://www.greenmountainmonastery.org/the-meadow-thomas-berry-burial-site/
For a beautiful, musical visit to the Meadow, go to the website above and play the recording: In This Holy Place.
I am going to bring some of that Holy Place into my home for the Christmas season by ordering one of their Balsam Christmas Wreaths.
From Green Mountain Website:
Freshness of the Forest
We are entering into our Christmas Wreath Making season. The fragrance of Balsam fills the air and we honor the gift of our Forest Beloved. Consider purchasing a wreath from us this year!Our beautifully fragrant balsam wreaths are hand harvested from our evergreen forest in Vermont.
Wreath Size: 20 inches with bow and pine cones
Cost: $25 plus shipping
To Order: send an e mail to: greenmountainmonastery@together.net
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There are two more (at least) marvelous stories to be heard about Green Mountain Monastery and those are the stories of Sisters Gail and Bernadette, which are coming soon.
Napkinwriter 
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