Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Dorothy Stangs persistent activism on behalf of Brazils poor and the earth is well known to environmental and social justice activists throughout the world. Thursday marks the 10-year anniversary of her death at the hands of hired guns.

We know from her twin brothers, Dave and Tom Stang, that she would often convince female security guards to allow her to camp out on the floor of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice the night before she was due to testify at public meetings.

We know that if an official denied having received one of her letters, this delightfully outrageous Cincinnati sister would walk to the politicos filing cabinet, and much to his embarrassment, whip out the document.

Not so well known, perhaps, is Rainforest Dots love for painting and dancing.

Full disclosure: Sr. Dorothy Stang and I were classmates during the 1992 winter semester at Matthew Foxs Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names University, in Oakland, Calif. Seventeen of us most gripped by Foxs book Original Blessing -- had abandoned our real world lives for a few precious months of renewal and refreshment at the institute.

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We thirsted to become mystics, to allow our souls to free-fall and sink into this deeper dimension of spirituality through art as meditation: a practice designed to access the right side of the brain through music, writing, clay, drumming, painting and dance as doorways to the divine.

At Foxs Monday morning classes, we drank in his stories of Hildegard of Bingen and Meister Eckhart, delighted with the saints assurances that the Holy One lives in every scrap of creation and how we are collaborators assigned to bring our creativity to all beings for lifes sake instead of using it for destruction, war and greed. We studied liberation theology and social justice.

It was so affirming to know that here in the safe, validating container of Room 659, we werent crazy after all. Crazy was a put-down wed heard all too often back in the real world of economic madness and materialistic greed.

Each week, our latest projects emerged from our classes, taped to the walls of Durocher Hall dormitory, in the forms of original prayers, poetry and paintings.

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Painting, dancing were Sr. Dorothy Stang's lesser-known passions