As a young child, Meinrad Craighead was always making images. Originally christened Charlene, she was the first of three sisters born to a poor family in Arkansas, US. Growing up during the Depression, she made do with mud and scraps of paper to fulfill her innate desire to express herself creatively. 'I was ecstatic when my father gave me a little tray containing three sticks of charcoal. We were so poor that we were only given anything at Christmas or, perhaps, on a birthday. When I was 12, I was given a little drawing table. Despite the fact that my parents were both uneducated, they supported me in my desire to be an artist. From as early as I can remember it was my identity. There was never any question. It was all I did and all I ever wanted to do. By the time I was a teenager I spent hours drawing everyday.'

In 1960 Meinrad received a scholarship to study Fine Art at the University of Wisconsin. After teaching for two years she took a year off to study in Florence. She did not return to the US until 21 years later.

Despite the family's lack of money and constant moving to look for work, Meinrad's childhood was grounded in a secure and loving family life that had a profound influence on both her art and spirituality. Her grandmother, or Memaw as she called her, was a powerful storyteller and it was in her lap that Meinrad began to visualize the stories that were to become her dreamlike paintings.

Her Catholic upbringing further fired and nourished her imagination through ritual and ceremony. 'I think, from the beginning, I had a safe container in which to dream, inside the arms of my mother and my grandmother and then out into the safe container of the imagery of the Catholic Church.' The candles, incense, poetry, psalms and litanies all combined to give the young Meinrad a feeling for mystical ritual, which still imbues her paintings and her daily life.

However, her first mystical experience, at the age of seven, was not in the church but in nature - with her pet dog. As she gazed into her dog's eyes she felt a mysterious rush of water coming from deep within herself. 'I listened to the sound of water inside and I understood: this is God. Soon after this I came upon a photograph in a book - it was a statue of a woman. The recognition was immediate and certain: I knew this was the woman I had heard in the water and whose face I had sought with the dog's eyes. This discovery brought a sense of well-being and gratitude which has never diminished. Because she was a force living within me, she was more real, more powerful than the remote 'Father' I was educated to have faith in. I believed in her because I experienced her.' Rather than threatening her certainty that the woman was, for her, the truer image of Divine Spirit, the Catholic Church offered reflections of the feminine deity in Mary as the Great Mother.

'One of the great, profound images inside the Catholic Church is the continuity of the tradition of the Great Mother. Jung says that the whole mythos of the Great Mother, going back in time, is contained historically in the Catholic Church. The church itself is called the Great Mother, and the term is the womb of the church, and all the language of the Great Mother is still in Catholic ritual. Combined with the influence of my maternal grandmother and mother as Wise Women who made God the Mother real in my life, my Catholic heritage and environment have been like a beautiful river flowing over my subterranean foundation in God the Mother. The two movements are not in conflict: they simply water different layers in my soul.'

It was only after Meinrad moved to Europe that she discovered her family's relationship to the German monk Bruder Meinrad Eugster, whose tomb still attracts thousands of pilgrims. Although this was deeply meaningful to her (she took his name) it was not, she states, the inspiration behind her decision to enter a monastery. 'Nothing really influences you to enter a monastery other than a specific call. I was in my late 20s when I began to understand that this was what I was meant to do and at first I was shocked. I had a rich artistic life, taking part in exhibitions, lecturing and traveling, but the more I got into my deepest inner self, in relationship to my creative work, the more I came to know that I was supposed to choose the structure of monastic living. Having studied art history, I knew the paradigm of artists inside monasteries. The archetype of the monastery as a place dedicated to a solitary life, which allows space for communion with the Great Spirit and creative expression from that core place, was enormously appealing to me. This is what vocation really is. It is literally a calling from your own interior and there is no way I can explain it other than that.'

In 1966 Meinrad entered Stanbrook Abbey in England, where, for the next 14 years, she continued her creative work, publishing her first book, The Signs of The Trees, and becoming the subject of a number of TV documentaries.

People often look for a conflict of ideology as a reason for her finally leaving her life as a nun in 1980, but Meinrad explains it differently. 'The spiritual energies which guided me into the monastery were now calling for me to leave the Abbey. I began to understand that there was something that I was supposed to do that I couldn't do in the monastery, but I didn't know what it was. It was hard because I loved monastic living and, at 44 years old, it would be hard to start a new life but, again, I had to trust my intuitive calling. It was only after I left that I began to understand that I was supposed to concentrate on images of the Great Mother.'

With a generous grant from the British Arts Council, Meinrad produced her second book, The Mother's Song. This extraordinary collection of paintings and prose was an outpouring of Meinrad's personal vision of God the Mother. 'She (the Goddess) had guided me as an artist, illuminating my imagination - eventually she erupted in my imagery.'

When asked if Meinrad still considers herself a Catholic, she replies: 'I'm a Catholic in the sense that I am who I am. I'm not a Catholic if you mean do I go to Mass. I know nothing about Catholic politics. I do not have any context for Catholicism except as a cultural and spiritual heritage. All through your life your vocation is honed. As this happens, things that are no longer useful fall away. This is not a negative thing, but a maturing. You let go of things that were once the center of your life because they have done their work.'

In 1983 Meinrad finally returned to the US to set up her studio in New Mexico, where she still lives and works. Here she continues some of the principles of a monastic life. 'I still identify with some of the vows I took as a nun - the vow of poverty for example. My understanding of poverty is not to have what you don't need, so I live a very simple life. I am still following my commitment to obedience. I am obeying the same spirit that drove me into a monastery, drove me out of a monastery and drives me in my creative vocation.'

The Catholic Church gave Meinrad a deep understanding of the importance of ritual, but now her rituals are her own. 'Ritual is a physical manifestation of one's spiritual life and my spiritual life is the awe and the transcendental understanding of the unity of the Universe. Every morning I light a small fire outside when the sun is going to rise over the mountains. I take a glass of water and pour half on the earth and drink the other half. So I acknowledge the fire, earth, air and water elements and that we are not separate from the Universe. The fire of creativity is no different to the fire I burn in the belly of my wood stove - I relate it tothe fire burning in my soul. After the fire I walk around the grounds of my home and commune with the natural surroundings. This is at the crack of dawn and I'm praying in the sense of being with the trees, being with the beginning of the day.' In addition to her daily ritual, Meinrad gathers with a community of women eight times a year for equinoxes and solstices, as well as the Celtic feast days on the first day of February, May, August and November.

More recently, Meinrad worked with a Nicaraguan shaman. 'This was a very powerful experience, but it's no different to the creative work I do privately. All creativity is shamanic because you are journeying into the unknown - crossing the threshold of reality into the unstructured reality of your dreams to receive information which comes to you from the spirit world. When I go into the studio in the morning, I don't know what is going to happen with a painting. To be inside that mystery, the creative mystery, is to be inside the unspeakable mystery of the Universe. What you bring back isn't just for you: it's for the Universe, the community. I found it interesting to do this side by side with another person - the shaman would come back with information that was very useful to me, helping to identify different manifestations of animal spirits that were mine. Of course, all of this feeds back into my paintings. Fox Woman is a painting of a manifestation of the wolf spirit and Yellow Woman is an image of the Great Mother from the Native American tradition. Although she is a traditional figure, the image is unique. When you paint from the heart of the creative source, when you live inside Her and She is your home, you create something that has never been seen before. This is what the artist does. Praising the Goddess in a historical context is one thing, but you don't really get near her story unless you understand that we are vehicles through which she is expressed.'

Although Meinrad is keen to avoid direct criticism of a patriarchal spiritual tradition, when questioned directly about its effect on our psyche, she replies: 'Of course, it has completely stolen our birthright. However, that leads to political talk. Obviously we live in the Western world and we know the paradigm of the patriarchal 'Father' who looks after everything. The priority of the males in the house crosses over into the East and will probably be with us for as long as we can imagine into the future, but there is a place where it doesn't matter. If you are following your intuition, if you are smart enough, silent enough and together enough, you are going to be OK because you can do that sifting and throwing out. Not a throwing out because of anger, as in "Oh, this has destroyed me", leaving you angry all the time, but a honing down of what is meaningful to you. I only speak from the point of view of an artist; if I were a politician, perhaps I would speak differently. I've never thought in terms of 'fixing' society. I've had this narrow road that I've been able to stay in and lead a holistic life. If you are following your intuition you will ipso facto lead a holistic life. The thread to follow is always ahead of you - if you are really following that in the deepest way, you're not going to get lost, you're going to get nearer and nearer to your own center.'

For Meinrad, hearing and following her intuition has been an innate tool that has guided her entire life. For those of us who sometimes find it hard to hear our own inner guiding voice, Meinrad has a very clear message. 'Really, it couldn't be simpler. First of all you have to find the space and place to be, and then just be in silence. The point is that none of this can happen without your own solitude. It's no good craving the bliss of creativity if you are not happy alone with yourself, if you're not at home with your own soul. This is where you find the balance in your life; otherwise you are always trying to be part of other people's solitude, trying to fix situations. Doing nothing, growing without structure, is where you begin the journey to the depth of your own being. This is not about chasing a concept of 'heaven', 'nirvana' or 'bliss', which is why I object to any of those definitions. The place to reach is the center of our Selves, and when we arrive at the center of our Selves we can come from authenticity, however we might speak in the world. As artists, writers, teachers, doctors - whatever we do - we can come from our own uniqueness and that uniqueness is why we are here.'

MORE INFORMATION

To see this article in its original presentation, as it was first published, and to read all the other articles that accompanied it, order Kindred Spirit magazine - issue 54 http://www.kindredspirit.co.uk/

"The Mother's Song" and Meinrad's most recent book, "The Litany of the Great River", are both published by Paulist Press, U.S., and can be found on http://www.pomegranite.com/

Meinrad's website is http://www.meinradcraighead.com/

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