The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom , by Christine Valters Paintner, author of Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire , invites readers to discover and develop their creative gifts in a spirit of prayer and reflection. This twelve-week course draws on the insights and practices of Benedictine spirituality to explore the interplay between contemplation and creativity. Summarized in the phrase “pray and work,” The Rule of St. Benedict provides the inspiration for Christine Valters Paintner’s newest exploration of the mutually nourishing relationship between contemplative practices and creative expression. Artists of all stripes and stations in life―poets or painters, potters or photographers―will discover how traditions of Benedictine, Celtic, and desert spirituality can offer new sources of inspiration for their work. Through this twelve-week course, themes like “Sacred Tools and Sacred Space,” “Creative Solitude and Community,” and “Nature as a Source of Revelation and Inspiration” are enriched by Paintner’s perceptive discussion and enhanced by insightful quotations from well-known artists and writers. Ideally formatted for faith sharing groups and parish retreats, this guide offers suggestions for grounding both the creative and the spiritual life through three basic practices: walking, lectio divina , and journaling. In sync with Paintner’s vibrant Internet presence, The Artist’s Rule is supplemented with online resources, including guided meditation podcasts, video lessons, and discussions. Gracefully written and ever-consoling, The Artist's Rule demands engagement from its reader. It challenges artists of every variety to journey actively with their Rule, and to thereby plumb the riches of both a contemplative and generative discipline. ---from Image Journal The Artist's Rule entices us to plunge into the riches of a contemplative, creative life. With hospitality, wisdom, and grace, Christine returns us to ancient monastic practices that have preserved the soul of spirituality across the ages and can restore us in our own time. --Jan Richardson "This jewel of a book will help you tap the eternal in your deep soul." -- Macrina Wiederkehr, O.S.B. , Author of Seven Sacred Pauses (from the Foreword) "It is a time of shift, of awakening, new challenges, greater complexity in every dimension of daily life. The Artist's Rule is a treasure for those of us who long to live a rich inner life, to be fully human and creative members of a creative Universe, to give expression to what is moving within us--to write, paint, make music, and dance. Christine frames her exploration in monastic wisdom, but in our present context where the whole world is our monastery. The inner guide of each of us is thoroughly welcomed and nourished throughout the chapters--in explorations, guided imagery, mystical insight, poetry, music, reflections, inspiration, practices of creativity, ritual--as we travel today's call to creativity and contemplation." -- Mary Southard, C.S.J., Artist/Illustrator for The Cosmic Dance: An Invitation to Experience Our Oneness "Graciously offered, wisely conceived, carefully crafted, The Artist's Rule leads the reader ever more deeply into practices that recover the awareness that contemplation and creativity spring from the same Source. This work, grounded in Benedictine spirituality, offers us ways to rediscover the sacred art of living and serving, following the Spirit's lead and awakening to the artist's palette of our daily lives." -- Mary C. Earle , Author of The Desert Mothers: Spiritual Practices from the Women of the Wilderness and Days of Grace: Meditations and Practices for Living with Illness In a world that lives in the shallows, hungering for depth, meaning, and beauty, The Artist’s Rule entices us to plunge into the riches of a contemplative, creative life. With hospitality, wisdom, and grace, Christine Valters Paintner returns us to ancient monastic practices that have preserved the soul of spirituality across the ages and can restore us in our own time. Silence, solitude, sacred reading, stillness: such treasures of the monastic path have the power to transform us and draw us far into the mysteries that lie at the heart of our lives. As she illuminates and navigates the connections between contemplation and the act of creation, Paintner beckons us into a sacred threshold space. What we find in this space―this sanctuary―will sustain and deepen our creative call, for the life of the world. Jan L. Richardson Author of In the Sanctuary of Women I highly recommend The Artist's Rule as a way to explore and embrace our inner monk and inner artist so we can unleash greater creative living. Using the wisdom of Benedictine values, Christine Valters Paintner seeks to nurture contemplative and expressive practices that flow from seeing all of life as a sacred, creative gift we give each other. Inner contemplative practices yield and sustain a cre