Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 105

Monk in the World Guest Post: Jean Wise

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jean Wise's reflection entitled Living With the Tension of Routines and Adventures.

Paradox. Deep within me live two longings that I used to believe contradicted each other. I assumed you thrived more within the blessings of routines or within the advantages of adventures. One or another, not both, worked better for me, so I thought.

“You can’t enjoy both,” lying voices whispered to my heart. 

I am learning now to hold the predictable and the impulsive times equally, knowing they both nourish my spirit. I enjoy and am grateful for routine and adventure. Both enrich my journey and bring gifts to my heart. And I acknowledge often while I am in the midst of one, I crave the other.

Routines offer me a sense of control, freedom and a way to manage my time. To be honest, sometimes I just don’t want to make more decisions and should think through everything. I let the pattern of the day guide me. This type of freedom relaxes and releases built-up anxiety.

Routines help me intentionally create time with God in a regular uninterrupted fashion. I know when I hem my days – the beginning and the ending – in prayer and time with him – I feels his presence more throughout the day.

Routines bring a framework into my life. I love the sense of accomplishment by checking off items from my daily to-do list and tackling bigger projects, like writing books, that God has placed in my heart. A regular schedule provides time, space, and support to getting things done. A predictable system keeps me on track.

Routines help me stay with positive self-care habits.  I keep up my fitness challenges and eat less unhealthy snacks when at home and in the flow of the customary cycles. The practices of healthy habits thrive with routines.

I know what to expect when living in routines. The comfort of knowing the order of my work day, the sequence of our regular worship service, and the familiarity of rhythms of each day. I am content and joyful in the cyclical beat of life.

But then I get restless with too much routine.  Boredom leads to laziness and discontent and become too constrictive in its predictability of the same old grind. I hunger for adventure.

When traveling, learning something new, and stepping out of my comfort zone, my normal daily point of view widens. I pay attention to the details in life and in nature. I am awake. I am alive.

Adventure produces creativity within me. Routine helps me get things done and out of the way, allowing for time and space for new ideas to emerge. Creativity blossoms in the wild and innovative garden of the open territory of the unknown, strange, and new. I discover, explore, and flourish in the sweeping ranges of spontaneity and novel undertakings.

Stepping out of routine I find refreshing renewal. I leave the old patterns behind and let go of the known framework is like sipping on cool, restoring water. I dive in and shower in enlivening waterfalls of inspiration.

I observe more when on an adventure. My senses heighten. My mouth swirls with new tastes.  I sleep in different beds and stretch myself in different time zones. My mind bursts with history lessons and exploring places I’ve never been before. I am grounded with others from the past and dreamers of the future. I am part of a whole – the network of humans across centuries.

My spirit flourishes with both routine and adventure. I no longer struggle with the idea that I should choose one or another, I willingly accept the gifts they both bring into my life. I appreciate and live mindfully no matter if surrounded by the predictable or the spontaneous.

I love coming home from a vacation and snuggle back into the warmth of routines. My spirit takes a risk to leave my safe harbor to learn, stretch, grow and live and returns home, rested and ready to work.

Routines keep me on automatic mode to stay healthy, attune to the important details of life. Adventures nourish my imagination and stirs my spirit that at times settles into sleepy hibernation. I soar with adventure; I sink deep roots in routine.

Routines keep me on a path that may evolve to a rut if I am not careful.  Adventures wake up my soul and stretches me when I venture off the path occasionally.

Living with the contradiction of both routine and adventure, I feel whole. My soul quickens with excitement, not anxiety, in the energy of oscillating between both modes. And I am thankful for the gifts both bring.

Jean Wise is writer, speaker, and retreat leader. She is spiritual director, RN, and a Deacon, living in northwest Ohio. Her passion is to help others deepen their walk with God. She writes twice a week on her blog at: www.healthyspirituality.org and is the author of several books including Spiritual Retreats, a Guide to Slowing Down to be with God.

Becoming Body-Words of Love ~ A love note from your online abbess

Listen, whatever it is you try

to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you

like the dreams of your body,

its spirit

longing to fly while the dead-weight bones

toss their dark mane and hurry

back into the fields of glittering fire

where everything,

even the great whale,

throbs with song. —Mary Oliver, from "Humpbacks"

Dearest monks and artists,

Several years ago, before moving to Ireland, I completed a training to teach yoga. I began the program because I had practiced yoga for many years and longed to dive more deeply into it. I expected to fall in love with my own body even more in the process; what I didn't expect was how much I would fall in love with other people's bodies as well. As I walked around the studio and students are in their various poses I see the incredible variety in body types, shapes, sizes, flexibility, and bone structure. My training involves hands-on adjustments, which are less about "fixing" a pose and more about either offering a deeper experience of it or providing a sense of loving presence with a student through a shoulder rub or simply laying my hands on their back.

When students are in savasana, or corpse pose, which is always the final pose in any physical yoga practice, I go around and place my hands gently on their heads one at a time and I offer silent blessings for them and their bodies. I don't know most of their stories so I ask for healing in whatever is keeping them from being fully alive and fully present to their beautiful physical selves.

When I was twenty-one, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, a degenerative auto-immune illness. The only other person in my life I knew with this disease was my mother and it had ravaged her body. I was devastated. I felt deeply betrayed by my body. In an auto-immune illness the immune system begins to attack its own tissue. Six years later I had to take a year off from work and go on disability because of the pain and inflammation. That was the year I first walked into a yoga class and was one of the paths I took back to loving my body.

Sexuality isn't just about our sexual relationships with another person, but about our capacity to engage in intimacy with the world through our physicality. Theologian James Nelson writes:

Our human sexuality is a language as we are both called and given permission to become body-words of love. Indeed our sexuality—in its fullest and richest sense—is both the physiological and psychological grounding of our capacity to love.

Body-words of love. That phrase takes my breath away. How do I allow my very body to become the fullest expression of love and tenderness in the world? This body with its aches and its loveliness. This body that has experienced searing pain. This body that will one day become dust, but also sprang from my mother in a burst of desire for life.

In all the attention we give to the perfection of the body in our culture, we undermine our capacity to become body-words of love. We forget that we are called to both the joy and the sorrow woven together. No surgery can excise our mortality. No procedure can remind us of our sheer giftedness, gift given to each other. The effect of our obsessions with our bodies is that we grow in our distrust of our physical selves.

We are not offered ways to be with our bodies in the full range of their glorious beings—the joys, delights, pain, and disappointments. We are not encouraged to trust our bodies in this culture, for they forever need improving. We can buy an endless variety of products and programs geared solely at responding to the message that our bodies are somehow not good enough, not beautiful enough, or not wise enough on their own.

I had a dream once where I went to the doctor and discovered I was pregnant. But the doctor told me that I wasn't nourishing myself enough to sustain the pregnancy. I awoke thinking of Mary Oliver's words above: "nothing will ever dazzle you / like the dreams of your body." I am dazzled by this invitation from my body to be even more nourishing and loving than I already am. I take the invitation very seriously. I began immediately to ponder ways I could offer my body the deepest kind of nourishment in tangible ways.

The dreams of my body are about breathing so deeply that every cell expands and shimmers; they are about resting into a generous multiplicity of sabbath moments each day, of swimming through warm and buoyant water, walking through a thick grove of trees, feeling wind across my skin, experiencing the fire of my passions kindling within. My body is dreaming of space for all of these and for the yet unknown dreams, the ones that pulse deep within me and with time and space will emerge in their own beauty and power. Our bodies long to be in intimacy with the world around us.

Valentine's Day is that highly commercialized holiday of chocolates, flowers, and Hallmark cards. In many ways it has become another way to mark how inadequate we feel about ourselves if we are without a partner, or about our relationships and how to express love if we are partnered.

February 14th does offer us another invitation, however—to consider the call to become "body-words of love."

I understand this invitation as beginning with myself and then allowing that felt love of my own body to radiate out into the world and offer loving presence to others.

How many of us treat our bodies with the lavish attention they deserve? What does it mean to treat our bodies like the temples they really are? What is the damage caused by the endless messages we receive each day about our bodies' inadequacies? What if for one day we could put to rest the damaging stories we tell ourselves about how our bodies don't measure up? What if we could bring our full presence to our bodies' needs instead of endlessly ignoring them?

St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), an orthodox monk who later became an Archbishop, upheld the doctrine that the human body played an important part in prayer rooted in the Incarnation; that is, the whole person, united in body and soul, was created in the image of God, and Christ, by taking a human body at the Incarnation, has "made the flesh an inexhaustible source of sanctification."

I am in love with this image: What if our bodies truly were an "inexhaustible source of sanctification" and we treated them as such? To sanctify is to bless or make holy, to set apart for sacred use. To consider our bodies a blessing is another way to become "body-words of love."

This Valentine's write a love letter to your body, offering both gratitude and forgiveness. Instead of using words, offer it in food, in warmth, in touch.

The body loves slowness. Instead of rushing from place to place until you crash into bed exhausted, allow holy pauses to breathe deeply, take a long bath as an act of offering, lavish yourself with oil. Prepare a nourishing meal for just yourself. Eat chocolate, but make sure it is the deepest, darkest, richest kind you can find and eat it with as much attention as you can summon. Make an appointment for a massage and receive some loving touch imagining that you are being anointed for blessing others. The senses are the gateway into the body's wisdom.

My newest book The Wisdom of the Body offers ways to offer this kind of lavish love to our embodied selves.

We also have some wonderful online programs coming up. Join us for our Lenten online retreat on the ancient practice of lectio divina, our Sacred Seasons retreat in community and a yearlong journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year, or our Dreaming of the Sea small group spiritual direction program working through the mythical story of the Selkie.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Nancy L. Agneberg

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Nancy L. Agneberg's reflection on entitled Winter Spirituality.

I love winter.

I prefer winter to summer and spring.

When it is fall, I think fall is my favorite season, but then winter comes, and I know, for sure, winter is my favorite season.

Oh, I am willing to join in with the usual February and March conversations about winter being far too long and will spring ever arrive? As I listen to the whining about the cold, the snow, the dark, I politely nod my head in agreement. 

“I know, I know,” I say. “Isn't it awful?”

Once at a retreat the ice breaker activity centered on the question, “What's your favorite season?” The floor was divided into four quadrants labeled winter, spring, summer, fall. One by one each participant stood in her preferred season, giving her reason for choosing that season.

“I love the new growth, the beauty of spring flowers.”

“I love the freedom of summer, being able to be outside all the time. 

“I love the fall colors and wearing a sweater again.”

While I wasn't quite alone in the winter square, there weren't many of us, but we seemed to share the same sensibility.

“I love the feeling of being tucked in.”

“I love the peace and quiet when it snows.”

“Winter feels more spacious to me, more time to be with myself.”

Yes, that is it.

I welcome the coming of winter. Cave Time. Sabbath Time. A time not only to hibernate and rest, but a time to grow and deepen. 

On dark winter mornings when I go upstairs to my garret office, I stand, just for a moment, in the glow of my desk lamp's circle of light. That one light reminds to me to stay quiet, to listen to the inner promptings. In this focused circle of light I meditate and pray. I write. I read. I sit in silence. Here there is shelter for deep conversations and connection. Here I am reminded of my own inner light, even in moments of darkness. 

With a shawl wrapped around my shoulders I delight in doing the next thing, often feeling productive and creative. Or I choose to do nothing. Either way is a choice of contentment. Winter's uncluttered, unlittered nature moves me patiently from day to day without surprise of color or blossom or smell of dirt. Instead I stop, I rest. I stretch slowly, deliberately, quietly, careful not to wake any other bears in my cave.

I love the bones of trees in the winter; the skeletons. The ability to see how a tree is made and how it reaches; its spread and girth and width. The bones, the basics, the dark against the grey sky. The shadows cast, the possibilities, the past, present, and the imagined future.

It I were a painter, winter trees would be my subject. From a distance I would paint a colony of trees, a naked community, like being at a nude beach. Up close I would paint every line and blemish and wrinkle and wart and age spot and acne scar. The signs of a life lived. They've earned their wrinkles, just as I have earned mine.

They have lived through many seasons, many years, known draught and deluge, the coldness of abandonment and neglect and the pressing heat of passion too close for comfort. I love the starkness, the lack of pretense, the startling beauty of trees in winter. The way they seem to say, “Look at me. This is who I am.” 

A winter tree looks either older than its years or younger than time and that is just the way I feel. I am a winter tree.

There is a certain clarity that comes with winter, a clarity I would like to discover in my own winter season of life. One can see forever, or at least it seems that way. And yet, we can't quite see how or when exactly it will end. Winter asks us to let go of the need to know for sure. Winter reminds us to rest in the surprise of the present moment, but at the same time assures us that it will melt into another time. On its own time. Not ours. 

I value the harvest of fall, the energy of spring, the secure lingering of summer, but even more I covet the lairs of winter, the hidden passages, the unlit corridors, the streamlined views, the bareness of the horizon. The action coldly stopped, frozen without conscious time. I've done what I can all those other days and months and now it is time to leave what is undone and to unwind the sweater till once more it is yarn. It is sheep. It is essence.

Ah, this is it. Winter is essence and offers the time to recall, to re-call my own essence.

Nancy L. Agneberg, a writer and spiritual director, finds joy in helping others deepen their relationship to the Divine, the Sacred, the Holy, especially as one ages. Currently, Nancy is writing a spiritual memoir, which explores the spiritual invitations of living in different homes. She posts frequently on her blog, Clearing the Space.

Feast of St. Gobnait – Patron of Bees ~ A love note from your online abbess

St. Gobnait and the Place of Her Resurrection*

On the tiny limestone island

an angel buzzes to Gobnait

in a dream, disrupts her plans,

sends her in search of nine white deer.

She wanders for miles across

sea and land until at last

they appear and rather than

running toward them

she falls gently to wet ground,

sits in silence as light crawls across sky,

lets their long legs approach

and their soft, curious noses surround her.

Breathing slowly, she slides back

onto grass and clover and knows

nothing surpasses this moment,

a heaven of hooves and dew.

Is there a place for each of us,

where we no longer yearn to be elsewhere?

Where our work is to simply soften,

wait, and pay close attention?

She smiles as bees gather eagerly

around her too, wings humming softly

as they collect essence of wildflowers,

transmuting labor into gold.

—Christine Valters Paintner

*First appeared in Headstuff online journal

Dearest monks and artists,

Gobnait is perhaps one of my favorite of the Irish saints. She is a 5th-6th century monk who fled her home in County Clare and headed first for the island of Insheer, one of the three Aran Islands off the coast of Connemara. It is not clear why she fled, only that she was seeking refuge. There is a beautiful church ruin there on the island still dedicated to her where we bring our pilgrims.

There is a deep and rich tradition among the Irish monks to seek out the place of one’s resurrection. This was often done through the practice of peregrinatio, a setting sail without oar or rudder to let the currents of love carry them.

The story tells us that an angel appeared to her to instruct her to go on a journey to the place where nine white deer would be grazing. Only there would she would find her true place of resurrection. She wandered through the counties of Waterford, Cork, and Kerry in search. At first she saw three white deer in Clondrohid and followed them to Ballymakeera where she saw six more.

Finally, when she arrived to Ballyvourney in County Cork, where there was a small rise overlooking the River Sullane, that Gobnait saw nine white deer grazing all together just as the angel had promised, so she settled there and founded her monastic community. I have been to her holy site there as well and it is also a very special place with still much reverence for her witness.

I love the stories of the Irish monks and their wandering. I know that sense of feeling called somewhere, only to be called to move again long after I thought I had settled for good.

Have you found the place of your own resurrection? The place that brings you alive and where your gifts can thrive?

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing monk icon © Marcy Hall (prints available in her Etsy shop)

Monk in the World Guest Post: Pat Butler

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Pat Butler's reflection on entitled Abba Ice.

“Out of whose womb came the ice?”—Job 38:29

January

A monastery forms in this plane of all places, over New Jersey, as I fly north in the dead of a Northeast winter, in the grip of an historic deep freeze.  I am returning home from a short trip South, contemplating the icy lunar landscape below, pocked by crows, bridges, and ice-encased riggings. I’m startled to discover how much I’ve missed this purgatory, how eager I am to return to it.

A monastic silence fills the fuselage. In this carrier cum library, laptops, iPads, and Kindles are out. Movement is restricted: we swipe our scroll screens. Our Rule of Life is simple: eat, sleep, read, watch media. Our cloister walk is to the toilets, where we wait in line, listen to the engines’ drone, the flight crew’s chatter, or peer out the window at cloud formations.

Traveling alone in a community of strangers, I study the news: a near drowning; two boys stranded on a rock in a river; a truck driving across the frozen bay.

Now we are over New York. The harbor is frozen; occasionally an ice floe breaks off, revealing darker patches of blue. I travel in this trinity of bay, clouds and ice, a triune community of water.  Abba Ice slips around the mouth of the harbor, and visits me in my cell—Seat 20C.

“I like this winter,” he comments. “It has personality.”

I have missed discussing this winter with him.  When I arrive home, I drive to the bay, to check the ice and resume our conversation: how do I live as a monk in this frozen world?

My spiritual practice expands to include this daily pilgrimage to the bay, to see if it will freeze entirely, and to hear how he might answer my question.

One small patch of blue remains open, big enough for a skiff, in which three fishermen huddle, working their lines.  How did they even get there?  Whatever trail they forged through the ice, the sub-zero cold has erased it.

How long will the cold last? Will it succeed in closing that blue patch? I want to see the bay freeze over, something I’ve only witnessed twice.

Will we see it, Abba Ice?

Are you prepared for the winter it takes to do so?

  February

Abba Ice inches across the bay, into the sound, coves, rivers, salt marshes and kettle ponds along the coast, into our minds and hearts, which thaw incrementally as he freezes the waters, testing us.

What is in your heart?

The ice crawls past Center Island, pulling pilings down. We are weight-lifting with snow blowers, shovels, and battery chargers. The cold becomes the hub around which our lives revolve. If weather can be said to transcend itself, this is that weather. Temps hover near or below zero for months, teaching me what extremes the climate must take to freeze a bay.

A Coast Guard cutter cuts a channel through the ice, emptying the tongue-tied silence of the cold. Its goal: a half-submerged dingy, its engine tilted up to the sun, rakish and blue. Two fisherman are missing: gas can, cooler, buckets, and clamming rake recuperated by the cutter, half a mile from Peacock Point.

This winter lays us waste, and takes lives.

Abba Ice speaks again: Wait. There is more.

A wandering snowflake announces the arrival of the next blizzard.  A frenzy of food shopping erupts, before the hunkering down in spite of accidents, the cat missing, and the conundrum of management not closing the office when the state closes the roads. Thankful for heat holding up, toilet paper holding out, sufficient water and food, internet raving on.

March

Black silhouettes at attention.

Shivering in the beautiful danger we stand in, eyes running, lips chattering, we stare at the sun transcribing its message on the ice.  Abba Ice summons us to look as long as it takes to see; for some intuition, some spiritual download or upgrade to complete. Hoping it will do so while the coat is still keeping me warm.

I mark the sun’s herculean effort to set slowly enough to match our dimmed wits; watch its controlled descent, with power to incinerate the naked trees, the bare bay, and us—none of which it does. Instead, it restores us to our senses. Power made perfect in beauty.

Watch.  Wait.  Look.

Chronos becomes Kairos. Abba Ice lays down a path of pearls bought at great price—ice formations illuminated by a winter sun that knows how to take its time.

Do you know how to take your time?

We scramble back to our cars, photos secured, turn on the heat and our music.  Vespers includes the Hallelujah chorus, arias coaxing frozen tides to remember how to hold a note, how to have a wooden leg for the inebriation of sunset. Melted by beauty and silence, our red-nosed faces stun-drunk, we witness a theophany the soprano’s voice salutes.

And then it is finished. The sun sets. The bay is completely frozen.

This is the Hope of Ice.

I take notes…

Where everything can be transformed, so can I.

If the sun can move that slowly, so can I.

If that’s what it takes, I’ll endure it.

In a winter where we can no longer walk on water, the water turns to ice.

Pat Butler, poet and writer, has three chapbooks published through Finishing Line Press, and poems in literary and online journals. A native New Yorker, Pat currently resides in Florida, where she enjoys being a recent first-time home buyer, all things French, and anything in, near, or on the ocean.

Website: The Literary Boatyard

Blogs:

On the Road to Italy

Poems from the Boatyard

Honoring Imbolc and the Feast of St Brigid ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

I share with you a brief excerpt from our online self-study retreat Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year.

February 1st-2nd marks a confluence of several feasts and occasions including: the Celtic feast of Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, Candlemas, Feast of the Presentation, and Groundhog Day!

Imbolc is a Celtic feast that is cross-quarter day, meaning it is the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox.  The sun marks the four Quarter Days of the year (the Solstices and Equinoxes) and the midpoints are the cross-quarter days.  In some cultures February 2nd is the official beginning of spring.

As the days slowly lengthen in the northern hemisphere and the sun makes her way higher in the sky, the ground beneath our feet begins to thaw.  The earth softens and the seeds deep below stir in the darkness.  The word “imbolc” means “in the belly.”  The earth’s belly is beginning to awaken, new life is stirring, seeds are sprouting forth.

It is the time when the ewes begin to give birth and give forth their milk, and heralds the coming of longer and warmer days. It is the first sign of life after the long dark nights of winter. Brigid breathes into the landscape so that it begins to awaken. Snowdrops, the first flowers of spring are one of her symbols.

In many places the ground is still frozen or covered with snow, but the call now is tend to those very first signs of movement beneath the fertile ground.  What happens when you listen ever so closely in the stillness?  What do you hear beginning to emerge?

What new seeds are stirring deep in your belly?

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing monk icon © Marcy Hall (prints available in her Etsy shop)

Monk in the World Guest Post: Elaine Breckenridge

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Elaine Breckenridge's reflection on Saint Brigid.

I went to Ireland last year and met Saint Brigid: monastic leader and pastor, protector and companion, soul friend and healer. Oh, I had known about Brigid as there are no shortage of books detailing her life as a person in history and her tradition as a goddess of the land of Ireland. But on this sacred journey, experience expanded knowledge as throughout my two week journey, time and again I met Brigid.

My visit to the Anglican cathedral bearing her name in Kildare was a surprise. Her image in the stain glass window actually took my breath away. There she was–a life-size figure on the same par as Patrick and Comicille (Columba). And what was she holding? A crozier! What looks like a shepherd’s staff is also the primary symbol of the office of Bishop. I knew of legends that described her “accidental” consecration as a Bishop in the church. Stories tell that the Bishop said the wrong prayer over her as she was being set apart as an abbess. But to see what I had considered to be a folktale preserved in the historical record of the church (the window) was amazing. That day, I met Saint Brigid, monastic leader and pastor.

I knew that Brigid was and still is a symbol of hospitality and abundance. Walking through the village of Kildare, that tradition came alive as I saw her image in a fine tile portrait in front of a local pub. A sign advertised a special sale on Brigid’s Ale. Fitting, since among her many occupations, Brigid is the patron saint of beer makers. Just a few doors down the road her cross was displayed lovingly in a shop window. I imagined the owners hung her cross asking for her special prayers of blessing and protection.

There are many accounts about the cross of Brigid being placed in homes and shrines asking for her blessing and companionship. I knew this but I was not prepared to see her large cross guarding this house on Inish Mor in the Aran Islands. In Ireland, the presence of Brigid continues to be a blessing: in the church, the market place and home. In Ireland I met Saint Brigid, protector and companion.

No pilgrimage to Kildare could be complete without a visit to the famous well there that bears her name. While countless wells and shrines in Ireland bear her name, this particular one includes a statue of her holding the likeness of a flaming torch, reminding visitors of her association with both fire and water. Passing through the threshold into the outdoor sanctuary was passage into a world of contemplation and beauty. I walked the pilgrims way to the well led by six stones and stopped to listen at each one. At each rock, I was given a word. Presence. Healing. Inspiration. Discernment. Love. Surrender. These words guided my retreat with the Abbey of the Arts that month. Well known for her ministry of spiritual direction, at the well, I met Saint Brigid, my Anam Cara or soul friend.

Brigid followed me home, from Ireland to Lodi, California. She has appeared in my dreams and in my prayers. Part of the Brigid tradition places her at the birth of Jesus and as a companion to the Holy Family. One night I had a special dream. As I awoke, I realized that she had done for me what she had done for Jesus and his parents. When I was an infant, I was hospitalized for many weeks. Yet, she had been a special presence, a companion when I thought I was alone.

I have carried the memory of being both abandoned and trapped in my mind and in my body, kept as I was in crib with only custodial care. But now I realize that I was not trapped but sheltered and protected under the holy mantle of Saint Brigid. She was there, the healer and had been present to me just as she had been present to the Holy family and to the many women in childbirth who called upon her name. In my home in California, I met Saint Brigid, my healer.

And so a new chapter of my spiritual journey begins. The wounds of childhood have left me with a fear of scarcity—whether it be around time, money, food or affection. What better practice than to team up with Saint Brigid not only the healer, but the patron of hospitality, abundance and generosity?

As I celebrate her feast day this year, the day after Imbolc, the first day of spring on the Celtic calendar, I look forward to a new birthing taking place in my soul. I know that whatever comes forth, Brigid, saint, leader, and my Anam Cara, protector, companion and healer will be with me.

 

Elaine Breckenridge is a dancing monk and an Episcopal priest currently serving St. John the Baptist Church in Lodi, California. Her passions include incorporating Celtic and Creation Spirituality into traditional liturgical forms, the music of Kristopher E. Lindquist (Kelmusic.com), yoga and living the Abbey of the Arts Monk Manifesto.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Elaine Breckinridge

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Elaine Breckinridge's reflection on Saint Brigid.

I went to Ireland last year and met Saint Brigid: monastic leader and pastor, protector and companion, soul friend and healer. Oh, I had known about Brigid as there are no shortage of books detailing her life as a person in history and her tradition as a goddess of the land of Ireland. But on this sacred journey, experience expanded knowledge as throughout my two week journey, time and again I met Brigid.

My visit to the Anglican cathedral bearing her name in Kildare was a surprise. Her image in the stain glass window actually took my breath away. There she was–a life-size figure on the same par as Patrick and Comicille (Columba). And what was she holding? A crozier! What looks like a shepherd’s staff is also the primary symbol of the office of Bishop. I knew of legends that described her “accidental” consecration as a Bishop in the church. Stories tell that the Bishop said the wrong prayer over her as she was being set apart as an abbess. But to see what I had considered to be a folktale preserved in the historical record of the church (the window) was amazing. That day, I met Saint Brigid, monastic leader and pastor.

I knew that Brigid was and still is a symbol of hospitality and abundance. Walking through the village of Kildare, that tradition came alive as I saw her image in a fine tile portrait in front of a local pub. A sign advertised a special sale on Brigid’s Ale. Fitting, since among her many occupations, Brigid is the patron saint of beer makers. Just a few doors down the road her cross was displayed lovingly in a shop window. I imagined the owners hung her cross asking for her special prayers of blessing and protection.

There are many accounts about the cross of Brigid being placed in homes and shrines asking for her blessing and companionship. I knew this but I was not prepared to see her large cross guarding this house on Inish Mor in the Aran Islands. In Ireland, the presence of Brigid continues to be a blessing: in the church, the market place and home. In Ireland I met Saint Brigid, protector and companion.

No pilgrimage to Kildare could be complete without a visit to the famous well there that bears her name. While countless wells and shrines in Ireland bear her name, this particular one includes a statue of her holding the likeness of a flaming torch, reminding visitors of her association with both fire and water. Passing through the threshold into the outdoor sanctuary was passage into a world of contemplation and beauty. I walked the pilgrims way to the well led by six stones and stopped to listen at each one. At each rock, I was given a word. Presence. Healing. Inspiration. Discernment. Love. Surrender. These words guided my retreat with the Abbey of the Arts that month. Well known for her ministry of spiritual direction, at the well, I met Saint Brigid, my Anam Cara or soul friend.

Brigid followed me home, from Ireland to Lodi, California. She has appeared in my dreams and in my prayers. Part of the Brigid tradition places her at the birth of Jesus and as a companion to the Holy Family. One night I had a special dream. As I awoke, I realized that she had done for me what she had done for Jesus and his parents. When I was an infant, I was hospitalized for many weeks. Yet, she had been a special presence, a companion when I thought I was alone.

I have carried the memory of being both abandoned and trapped in my mind and in my body, kept as I was in crib with only custodial care. But now I realize that I was not trapped but sheltered and protected under the holy mantle of Saint Brigid. She was there, the healer and had been present to me just as she had been present to the Holy family and to the many women in childbirth who called upon her name. In my home in California, I met Saint Brigid, my healer.

And so a new chapter of my spiritual journey begins. The wounds of childhood have left me with a fear of scarcity—whether it be around time, money, food or affection. What better practice than to team up with Saint Brigid not only the healer, but the patron of hospitality, abundance and generosity?

As I celebrate her feast day this year, the day after Imbolc, the first day of spring on the Celtic calendar, I look forward to a new birthing taking place in my soul. I know that whatever comes forth, Brigid, saint, leader, and my Anam Cara, protector, companion and healer will be with me.

 

Elaine Breckenridge is a dancing monk and an Episcopal priest currently serving St. John the Baptist Church in Lodi, California. Her passions include incorporating Celtic and Creation Spirituality into traditional liturgical forms, the music of Kristopher E. Lindquist (Kelmusic.com), yoga and living the Abbey of the Arts Monk Manifesto.

Dance with Miriam on the Shores of Freedom ~ A love note from your online abbess

Miriam on the Shores

“All the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.” – Exodus 15:20

Her skirt hangs heavy with seawater,

staccato breath after running from death.

She can still feel soldiers reaching out

to seize her blouse before the waves caved in.

Collapsing on dry earth for a moment,

the impulse to dance begins in her feet,

spreads slowly upwards like a flock of starlings

rising toward a dawn-lit sky.

So many dances in secret before,

night-stolen movements after exhausting days

heaving stones and harvest.

She finds herself now upright, weeping.

To stand here, face to the sun,

feeling an irrepressible desire to

spin

tumble

sashay

turn

shake

twirl

Savoring freedom with her limbs

as if it were a physical presence

like a fierce wind or the breath of labor,

shackles slipping off slowly.

She couldn’t help but dance.

The story says she picked up her tambourine,

which means she had packed it among the essentials.

In fleeing for her life, she knew this would be necessary.

How many of us still live enslaved in Egypt, beholden and weary?

Do you have the courage to run across the sea parted just now for you?

Will you carry your musical instrument and dance right there on the shores?

—Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest monks and artists,

On January 29th will be our next monthly live video seminar following my book Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics. Our theme is Miriam and the archetype of the Prophet.

You might imagine this scene from the poem above and feel it viscerally. Imagine yourself running for your life with your community, knowing that if you slow down you will be sent back to slavery or perhaps even death. And while the celebration of God killing the Egyptian soldiers may feel repellant, we can look at the story from an archetypal perspective and see the divine presence at work here in favor of freedom rather than slavery, doing what is necessary to allow freedom to thrive.

Arriving on the shores of the other side, it is written that Miriam takes out her tambourine and leads the women in a public celebration and worship of this God of liberation. In the midrashic texts, the ancient rabbis give great praise to Miriam for her tremendous trust in God reflected by the very fact that she was carrying her tambourine with her, in anticipation of the celebration. We can imagine her forethought, in the act of packing whatever she could bring in that hurried exit from Egypt, her tambourine felt like an essential. It is reflective of the depth of her trust that they would be liberated and there would be cause for music and dancing.

In that moment of unbridled joy, they are on a threshold as a People. As we know, the story says they continue wandering for forty years in the wilderness trying to reach the Promised Land. They will grumble many times over their hunger and discomfort and even reflect longingly on their time back in Egypt when they at least had food and shelter guaranteed. But none of that matters in this pause to celebrate the gifts so generously given. They will return to their human ways soon, but in that moment they touch the divine grace in a fully embodied way.

I love that in the limited texts we actually have about Miriam, this is one of the most significant. It is believed that this Canticle of Miriam may be the oldest, written portion of the Hebrew Scripture. And here she is clearly a leader in the community and enacts a ritual to mark the importance of the occasion. Her tools are music and dance to unleash the joy that this moment deserves in response. With her given title in the scriptures as “prophet,” we can savor this role of the prophet – to name the divine liberation and invite the community into a ritual which helps them to experience this more fully.

With great and growing love,

Christine

 

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing Monk Icon © Marcy Hall (prints available in her Etsy shop)

Monk in the World Guest Post: Erin Marie Clark

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Erin Marie Clark's reflection on conversing with the wisdom of the tarot.

It was towards the end of my time training to be ordained as an Anglican priest that I was tackled by a mischievous and confounding spiritual practice: namely, reading the images and stories in tarot.

Five months before I was due to be ordained, I stumbled on a blog post written by a tarot card reader. The warm, generous, pastoral tone of the post surprised me. It echoed the tone of posts and emails and conversations I had had with spiritual directors, mentors and prayer partners — those who had supported me in my journey of faith. It was, in short, the sort of wise speech I want to develop in my own pastoral work.

But…tarot? I didn’t (and still don’t) think one can or should try to predict anyone’s future. Taking randomly shuffled cards and using them in a process of discernment seemed as foolish to me as opening a Bible to a random page, shutting my eyes, picking a verse and taking it as some kind of sign — a Gideon’s-fleece-style foolishness, not a spiritual practice for sensible contemplatives, trying to live in their own real world monasteries of the heart.

Tarot’s system of imagery kept confronting me, however, as I researched the history, meaning and composition of the cards, discovering the immense riches of creativity of deck-making artists, the deep affirmation of life in its materiality and intangibility. I stumbled across traditional images that depicted chalices and wafers, feasts and famines, royalty and commoners, doves and lambs: so many of the symbols central to my faith. Exploring the tarot, I felt like I was pulling apart an accordion to see how it produced such beguiling music.

I returned to tarot-reading bloggers, trying to figure out their technique. I rolled my eyes when I found what seemed to be blatant nonsense or baseless divination. I nodded at the times where I felt the readers had really caught the spirit of an archetype, of the complexities of a situation, and when their suggestions of action were filled with wisdom. I enjoyed the puzzle of reading and discovering, of thinking about how different images drew on the wisdom of human experience, of religious tradition and of navigating life with intention.

Spending Holy Week in Canterbury that year, I snuck to a shop on the high street which sold tarot cards, feeling highly deviant the whole time for buying a deck in between services at the cathedral. Voices from my childhood hissed, ‘Paganism!’ in my head as I curled up with the deck after the Good Friday liturgy. And yet, when I studied the cards, daring to shuffle them and bringing a question from my life to them, asking, ‘What if these images had something to say to me?’, I felt unencumbered by fear or shame. I was only asking questions, the answers to which were as important, and elusive, as answers gleaned from conversations with holy texts or spiritual teachers.

I keep on reading the cards. Alongside the daily work and joy of prayer and study, leading a church in its word and sacrament, connecting with my parish and all its inhabitants, I read the tarot. I journal about how its symbols appear within my own faith tradition and in the people I meet with their complex needs. Continuing to ask ‘What if…’ of each card that turns up, without relying on them to tell me the future or how to solve my problems, I use them as a tool to more carefully consider my choices and my personal history. I sieve my experiences through the tarot’s symbols, seeking to connect with archetypes in ordinary changes and challenges.

Obviously there is potential conflict between my practice of tarot and my vocation to priesthood, and I have not reached a good way of reconciling the two. Starting up a ‘tea and tarot’ group wouldn’t work in my parish, needless to say! I read for my partner and for close friends whom I trust to ask good questions and call me out when my readings come from rote adherence to symbol rather than intuition and good listening — this is the same calling-out I’d hope I’d get for any shoddy preaching or pastoral work.

As someone whose attempts to live contemplatively and creatively in a fast-paced city, I have found tarot invaluable for its insistence on slowing down, and ‘testing the spirits’: asking what other perspectives there could be on our lived questions. The tradition of card-reading encourages people to create symbolic codes to aid their own spiritual exploration (some of the best examples include the Byzantine Tarot, the Dancing Monk Icon cards, Rebekah Erev’s cards, from Christian- and Jewish-informed perspectives, for example). Traditions which give rise to such deeply psychological and deeply faithful creativity have, in my book, the mark of the monk about them.

Erin Clark is a happily uprooted Michigander living in central London, UK. She love to write, run, listen, laugh and travel, and she works as a trainee priest in the Church of England. You can find her on Twitter at @e_m_clark.