Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 105

Monk in the World Guest Post: Jessica Curtis

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jessica Curtis reflection Metaphors as Messages.

Poetry has long been part of my spiritual practice. I especially love metaphors and have begun noticing places where they show up in my life other than poetry.

At church recently, the minister was talking about the idea that we come into this world with an inheritance. He referred to this inheritance as taking the form of a “blessing bundle” and a “burden bundle.” The goal over the course of a lifetime is to lessen the burden bundle and augment the blessing bundle.

I carried this metaphor around in my mind all week. I imagined myself walking down a path carrying two satchels – one filled with heavy stones (burdens) and the other filled with feathers (blessings). I imagined how one would be digging into my shoulder and slowing me down while the other would be barely noticeable.  Noticing the burdens rather than the blessings – this felt like a message for me.

I began to play with the metaphor. What if our inheritance is only one bundle? What if burdens and blessings are one and the same?

Perhaps it’s in framing our inheritance within the constructs of good and bad that we feel weighed down.

So, I turned my image into a single bundle. I did not want a bundle of feathers that might blow away on the wind. Instead, I pictured a backpack full of stones – with weight and texture and volume.

My practice for the week became visualizing that backpack of rocks with appreciation, carrying it on my journey as a valuable inheritance, not a burden.

I imagined how I might take some out of my bag to build a cairn, marking a place on the path that I want to remember or come back to. Perhaps I will use a few to help me cross a stream without getting too wet. I imagine those rocks in my bag, rubbing against each other on the journey, perhaps smoothing some of the rougher surfaces and polishing each other along the way. I might give some away as a token of gratitude. But most of all, I want to feel the weight of my inheritance as I walk along, letting it anchor me to myself.

When metaphors show up in my life, I have learned to pay attention. When the car broke down at the end of an especially busy week, I recognized my need to slow down. When I lost my voice the day after a significant conflict, I paused to ask myself what I wasn’t giving voice to.

In this way, metaphors can be a beautiful modality for understanding our inner lives and journeys. They can be a very useful tool in developing self-awareness. But where does the rubber meet the road? How do I apply these metaphors to the practicalities of my life?

One of the gifts of metaphor is its ability to help me bypass the intellect. I can apply my learning through the body and the intuition, and perhaps from there begin to impact the workings of the mind.

For example, I now have an image of a backpack of rocks and stones that I carry on my journey through life. I call up this image and experience it in the moment; my body imagines the constant weight upon my shoulders, I notice the strength in my legs and the steadiness of my feet planted on the floor. I am aware of the power in my body. I feel strong, and I appreciate this bundle that I am carrying.

In a different moment, I might be feeling weighed down by an experience, by a pattern of behavior in myself that I’m re-visiting or by a familiar voice of criticism in my head. Again, I bring awareness to that backpack of my inheritance. I can see myself opening it and finding that rock – the one that is not serving me any longer. I watch myself take that rock out of my backpack and put it down. I can choose to leave it behind.

Down the road, I may hear the same critical voice again. I can remind myself that I have chosen to leave that rock behind. I can imagine myself revisiting the place where I put it down and deciding it needs to be rolled down the hill where I’m standing. In my mind’s eye, I give it a push and watch it roll, end over end, picking up speed as it goes, getting farther and farther away until it is no longer in view.

This kind of visualization has become an ongoing intentional practice for me. I feel it building my muscles of awareness. I feel less anxious, learning to trust the messages – the metaphors – that show up in my life.

Jessica Curtis, M.Ed., CPCC, ACC, works with people seeking growth and fulfillment in their lives. A professional coach, Jessica helps people cultivate intention and live a spiritually-centered life. She lives in Massachusetts with her family and a flock of chickens. You can learn more about Jessica and her work at: www.jscurtiscoaching.com

Chronic Illness and the Body’s Journey ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

I was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was 21 years old. The only other person I knew at the time with this disease was my mother and her body had been ravaged by the effects of deterioration, with multiple joint replacements and eventually use of an electric wheelchair for mobility.

I first dealt with my diagnosis through denial. I had just graduated from college and travelled across the country to begin a year of volunteer work. I managed to push my way through fatigue and pain for about six years before I was forced to stop. I was teaching high school at the time and my wrists were growing ever more painful. An x-ray revealed severe damage to the joints despite the aggressive medication I had been taking.

My doctor urged me to stop teaching, it was too much for my body. Thankfully I had private disability insurance through the school where I worked that helped sustain me financially first through a year of rest and healing and later through five years of graduate work to earn a PhD. I lived much of that time with the fear I would never be able to support myself financially. I was profoundly grateful for my loving husband who worked to provide for our needs.

During that first year of disability, without any work to claim when people asked me “what do you do?”, I was often in emotional pain as well over the loss of an identity. I didn’t look sick and often came judgment from others, or inner judgment about why I wasn’t trying harder. Many were supportive, but others offered unwelcome advice or explanations about how I wasn’t thinking the right thoughts. Dr. Joan Borsyenko describes this as “new age fundamentalism.”

A great gift arrived to me one day at church, when a woman asked me that dreaded question. I responded about taking time for healing and she said, “oh, you’re on a sabbatical.” And with that phrase came a wave of relief, a connection to ancient wisdom about our need at times for deep restoration. My body responded with such release.

Language has a way of breaking us through to new understandings, to shift us out of old stories which bind us. Illness can move us into a landscape where we feel keenly a sense of being a stranger – whether to our own bodies, or in navigating health care systems and doctors to find relief and support.

It has been my experience of illness that has been one of the greatest teachers about how to listen to my body’s wisdom and fall in love with her again. Chronic illness can be a kind of sacred journey which doesn’t require that I dismiss the profound pain and uncertainty it brings. Instead it asks me to embrace mystery and unknowing, to seek fellow companions along the way, to understand that the profound discomfort of having so much stripped away can reveal my own gifts in service of healing others.

The year I turned forty I flew to Vienna, Austria by myself for a time of retreat. During the flight I developed a pulmonary embolism which took me several days to get treated. It was terrifying to realize I could have easily died walking alone on those city streets. In allowing myself to be fully present to the fear, to witness my experience with profound compassion, I found myself moving away from the victim’s cry of “why me?” We will never know the answers to those questions.

There is powerful Greek myth about the young maiden Persephone who is abducted into the Underworld by Hades. It is a story of innocence lost. Many of us diagnosed with serious illness feel in some ways “abducted” by forces more powerful than ourselves. Persephone was told that if she ate anything while there she would need to stay, and while some versions say she was tricked into eating the pomegranate seeds, I prefer the versions where she makes this choice herself. As a result she is required to stay there part of each year and becomes the Queen of the Underworld.

She moves from victim to sovereignty. She steps into her role as guide and companion to others who find themselves in that Underworld territory. She becomes the wounded healer. Her wholeness is in both body and soul. We are invited to this wholeness ourselves. When we meet illness with compassion and attention, it can become a journey of initiation into a way of being that deeply honors the paradoxes of life and treasures the tender and grace-filled vulnerability of our bodies.

(My newest book The Wisdom of the Body explores the contemplative path as one way to return to wholeness.)

You can find Part Five of A Different Kind of Fast for Lent on Embracing Attention here >>

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

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

A Different Kind of Fast: Part Five – Embrace Attention

Dearest monks and artists,

It can be so tempting to think, that in our busy lives multitasking will somehow make us more efficient and productive. We bemoan not having more hours in the day, but the hours we do have our attention is scattered, always trying to keep up. We spread our gaze between so many demands that we may get many things done, but none of it is nourishing.

St. Benedict wisely wrote 1500 years ago, that we are called to always be beginners in the spiritual life. The desert is a place of new beginnings; it is where Jesus began his ministry. In the desert, we are confronted with ourselves, naked and without defenses, called again and again to bring back all of our broken and denied parts into wholeness.

The monastic cell was a central concept in the spirituality of the desert mothers and fathers. The outer cell is really a metaphor for the inner cell, a symbol of the deep soul work we are called to, to become fully awake. It is the place where we come into full presence with ourselves and all of our inner voices, emotions, and challenges and are called to not abandon ourselves in the process through distraction or numbing. It is also the place where we encounter God deep in our own hearts.

Abba Moses wrote, “A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him: ‘Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.'”

Abba Anthony wrote a similar message: “Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cell or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going toward the sea, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside we shall lose our interior watchfulness.”

Connected to the cell is the cultivation of patience. The Greek word is hupomone, which essentially means to stay with whatever is happening. This is similar to the central Benedictine concept of stability, which on one level calls monks to a lifetime commitment with a particular community. On a deeper level, the call is to not run away when things become challenging.

Stability demands that we stay with difficult experiences and stay present to the discomfort they create in us.

The cell, it seems, is the complete antithesis of our rushed attention, of trying to get as much done as possible.

Instead, in our cell, we are called to full presence to our inner life. We cultivate the inner witness and watch as our thoughts scurry between different states, notice our internal responses to things, and observe when our minds move to distraction as a way of avoiding engagement with life. The cell is the place where we grow in deep intimacy with our patterns and habits. When we become conscious of our methods of distraction, we can learn to bring ourselves always back to our experience. In this attentiveness to our inner world, we can then bring this kind of loving gaze to our outer tasks.

Behold means to hold something in your gaze.  To behold is not to stare or glance, it is not a quick scan or an expectant look. We can’t multitask and behold at the same time. Beholding has a slow and spacious quality to it.  Your vision becomes softer as you make room to take in the whole of what you are seeing.  There is a reflective and reverential quality to this kind of seeing.  You release your expectations of what you think you will see and receive what is actually there and in the process everything can shift. What would it be like to allow the one task at hand to have your full awareness?

We are so used to using our capacity for vision to take in our surroundings quickly, to scan over things, to confirm what it is we are already thinking.  Seeing in this other way takes time and patience.  We can’t force the hidden dimension of the world to come forth, we can only create a receptive space in our hearts in which it can arrive.

This Lent I fast from distraction and multitasking so that I might embrace the practice of attention and beholding, creating space to see things differently.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Peggy Acott

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Peggy Acott's reflection on holding space.

How do I live as a monk in the world?

This reminded me of a recent writing prompt by Krista Tippett of On Being, that came to me by way of Jeffrey Davis and Tracking Wonder’s Quest2017 – #yourtruecalling:

What is your vocation, your sense of callings as a human being at this point in your life, both in and beyond job and title?

My initial response to Krista Tippett’s question was that of a storyteller, which I am in a few different ways. But, what kept whispering in the periphery of my thoughts then, and more emphatically as I contemplated how I try to make my way as a monk in the world were the words “holding space.”

There is a mindfulness and careful, sharp sense of presence that is required to holding a space. It is something I realize I practice and have consciously tried to cultivate, but that the deliberateness often follows behind a more intuitive recognition.

I emailed a Quaker friend of mine and asked her if “holding space” could be considered a vocation. She replied, “I would say yes.”

I think about how often, and for how long in my life friends have sought me out to share confidences and heart-concerns. They trusted me to hold space for them.

I think about the years I worked as a dinner waiter at a neighborhood Italian restaurant (actually, one of my favorite jobs), and the importance I placed on welcoming the diners to my tables and trying to provide an enjoyable experience along with the nourishment of a good meal.  It was a type of holding space.

I remember when I worked at a group home for pregnant teenagers, and volunteered as a birth coach to some of the girls. Getting the phone call in the middle of the night and driving to the hospital to be there as they traveled that amazing and powerful liminal journey through labor and delivery. I held space for them.  They gave me their trust.

More recently I think about the weddings and memorials I have officiated as a Life-Cycle Celebrant; of how people have come up to me, complimenting me on how well I “held space” for the ceremony and those attending. It was the confirmation of that, at the very first wedding I ever officiated, that showed me that something very real existed there for me.

I wonder at the job I held for more than two decades, the bulk of which involved getting needed supplies and support to a variety of school and community gardens. I often considered it Right Livelihood. I would like to think I was able to help others hold their spaces – gardens that can be as sacred as they are common, for they feed both body and soul.

I have interviewed numerous makers – craftspeople and artisans – told their stories in print. I have been called specifically a “good listener.” To me, that means I have done a good job of holding space for the person’s story.

Even as a fiction writer, I feel my task is to hold space for the book’s characters; to tell their story, or let them tell their own. I’m not always sure how that works, but it feels like a type of holding space.  Poetry is definitely a holding space activity. Writing, period, is an act of holding space.

I have for the last several years been a part of more than one writing group. It is a careful and compassionate practice of holding space for each other’s words.

But, so much of this is about holding space for others; how do I, in turn, hold space for myself, especially in a time seemingly fraught with threat and uncertainty?

For me, holding space carries with it the Buddhist act of being present in the moment. Being present, then, is a way of being held in the physical space you inhabit.  Beloved family and friends hold space for me; I also am one who seeks out places of natural beauty when I need “holding.” I am reminded of that most exquisite poem by Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” and return to its wisdom often:

            “ For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

It isn’t necessary to travel far to find such solace; I can find that grace in the presence of the small chickadees and juncos that come to visit my bird feeders.

It makes me think of the teaching of St. Ignatius, who, from the beginning (in the sixteenth century) instructed his Jesuits to “go out and find God in all things.”

An element of holding space is often a quiet connection to the Divine – I think this is true regardless of a person’s denomination or faith – for there is the divinity of all of creation, regardless of the belief of its source.

The photograph to the right hangs in my kitchen, near the stove and tucked in next to the spice racks. It came from a magazine, and it is one of my favorite possessions. I look upon it as a pictorial embodiment of who to try to be in the world.

Peggy Acott is co-author of the book Portland Made: New American Makers of the Manufacturing Renaissance, and has been published both in print and online, including Cactus Heart Press and The Communal Table.  She can be found at www.storytoceremony.wordpress.com and www.peggyacott.wordpress.com

Spring Equinox – Join us for the Sacred Seasons of the year! ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

We are so excited to be offering our online program Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year in a community format starting tomorrow with the spring equinox! In addition to the wonderful mini-retreats we created for each season, I am also hosting a live webinar session for each of the eight Celtic thresholds so we can join together in ritual and honoring. We also will have some added content on working with herbs and a vibrant online forum. To celebrate, I offer you an excerpt from our reflection on the spring equinox.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.

—Isaiah 35:1-2

I believe deeply that the seasons have a great deal of spiritual wisdom to offer us if we make space to listen. They teach us of the cycles and seasons of the earth and of our own lives. We are invited into the movements of blossoming, fullness, letting go, and rest, over and over again. Just like the lunar cycles of the moon's waxing and waning, so too does the body of the earth call us into this healing rhythm.

The spring equinox is on March 20th when the sun hovers above the equator, and day and night are equal length. This is considered the New Year in Persian tradition as well as the astrological calendar. Spring is a time of balance, renewal, and welcoming new life into the world.

As the northern hemisphere enters the season of blossoming we are called to tend the places of our lives that still long for winter's stillness as well as those places ready to burst forth into the world in a profusion of color. It takes time to see and listen. Around us the world is exploding in a celebration of new life, and we may miss much of it in our seriousness to get the important things of life done.

Poet Lynn Ungar has a wonderful poem titled "Camas Lilies" in which she writes: "And you — what of your rushed and / useful life? Imagine setting it all down — / papers, plans, appointments, everything, / leaving only a note: "Gone to the fields / to be lovely. Be back when I'm through / with blooming." Spring is a time to set aside some of the plans and open ourselves to our own blooming.

There is a playfulness and spontaneity to the season of spring that invites us to join this joyful abandon. We are called to both listen deeply to the blossoming within ourselves as well as to forget ourselves — setting aside all of our seriousness about what we are called to do and simply enter the space of being. In this field of possibility we discover new gifts.

The fertility and flowering of spring speaks of an abundantly creative God who is at the source of the potent life force beating at the heart of the world. Created in God's image, we are called to participate in this generous creativity ourselves. Our own flowering leads us to share our gifts in service to others.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the promise of God's abundance is often conceived of as blossoming in the desert. In that harsh landscape, a flower bursting forth from the dry land is a symbol of divine generosity, fruitfulness, and hope. Hope is a stance of radical openness to the God of newness and possibility. When we hope, we acknowledge that God has an imagination far more expansive than ours.

Where are you experiencing a new flowering forth?

Won’t you join us by celebrating spring together?

(with apologies to southern hemisphere monks, as we will be traveling through the year on the northern cycle)

You can find Part Four of A Different Kind of Fast for Lent on Embracing Slowness here>>

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

A Different Kind of Fast: Part Four – Embrace Slowness

Dearest monks and artists,

Modern life seems to move at full speed and many of us can hardly catch our breath between the demands of earning a living, nurturing family and friendships, and the hundreds of small daily details like paying our bills, cleaning, grocery shopping. More and more we feel stretched thin by commitments and lament our busyness, but without a clear sense of the alternative.

There is no space left to consider other options and the idea of heading off on a retreat to ponder new possibilities may be beyond our reach. But there are opportunities for breathing spaces within our days. The monastic tradition invites us into the practice of stopping one thing before beginning another. It is the acknowledgment that in the space of transition and threshold is a sacred dimension, a holy pause full of possibility.

What might it be like to allow just a ten-minute window to sit in silence between appointments? Or after finishing a phone call or checking your email to take just five long, slow, deep breaths before pushing on to the next thing?

We often think of these in-between times as wasted moments and inconveniences, rather than opportunities to return again and again, to awaken to the gifts right here, not the ones we imagine waiting for us beyond the next door. But what if we built in these thresholds between our daily activities, just for a few minutes to intentionally savor silence and breath?

When we pause between activities or moments in our day, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a new kind of presence to the “in-between times.” When we rush from one thing to another, we skim over the surface of life losing that sacred attentiveness that brings forth revelations in the most ordinary of moments.

We are continually crossing thresholds in our lives, both the literal kind when moving through doorways, leaving the building, or going to another room, as well as the metaphorical thresholds, when time becomes a transition space of waiting and tending. We hope for news about a friend struggling with illness, we are longing for clarity about our own deepest dreams. This place between is a place of stillness, where we let go of what came before and prepare ourselves to enter fully into what comes next.

The holy pause calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness, for mindfulness, and for the fertile dark spaces between our goals where we can pause and center ourselves, and listen. We can open up a space within for God to work. We can become fully conscious of what we are about to do rather than mindlessly completing another task.

The holy pause can also be the space of integration and healing. How often do we rush through our lives, not allowing the time to gather the pieces of ourselves, to allow our fragmented selves the space of coming together again?

When we allow rest, we awaken to the broken places that often push us to keep doing and producing and striving. There are things in life best done slowly.

This Lent I will fast from rushing through my life and overscheduling my commitments. I will offer myself the gift of pausing before and after whenever possible, to simply savor the sheer grace of the moment. The desert way also calls us to value holy leisure, times when we are not directing our attention on achieving anything, but simply resting in the goodness of the divine. I will also embrace the practice of doing nothing at all, making room for God to erupt in new ways in the spaces between.

With great and growing love,

 

Christine

 

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Rich Lewis

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Rich Lewis' reflection on Quaker Silence and Won Buddhist Temple Worship.

God offers us both rich and diverse contemplative practices.  Let me share two diverse contemplative experiences:  Quaker Silence and Won Buddhist Temple Worship.

Quaker Silence

In March of 2014 I decided to experience a Quaker silent service.  The church I attended traced its roots back to 1699.  The meeting house I sat in was built in 1823.  The service had no minister.  I sat in silence with 100 others.  We sat for one hour in a simple room.  It had only benches, windows and wooden floors.

On three different occasions, three individuals broke the silence with a thought that Jesus wanted them to share with the community. (Quaker silence is filled with holy expectation. The Quakers anticipate and expect that Jesus will show up.)  Then back to silence.

I heard the rain gently hit the windows.  I listened to human sounds: coughing, sniffing, breathing. The wind blew outside despite the indoor silence. The wooden floors creaked. I heard my thoughts. Sometimes I had no thoughts, just the spaces between thoughts.  The meeting room was a container filled with peace, love, community.

Of course God is in the noise too. It feels good to be silent. We need silence. It nourishes our souls. When we are silent we are naked before God. We empty our mind of its thoughts and emotions. We let God’s loving gaze shine directly upon us. I do this as part of my daily centering prayer sit but have never done so in solitude with a group this large.

At the end of the service we prayed for one another. We greeted each other and passed the peace. We are meant to have silence. Silence with our God. Silent in community is powerful! We need silent community!  I enjoyed my Quaker experience. I must do it again.

Won Buddhist Temple Worship

In May of 2015, I visited the Won Buddhism of Philadelphia Center. It was an amazing experience. Before I entered the temple area, we removed our shoes. I like this idea. The first thing I do when I enter my home is take off my shoes. It makes me feel comfortable. It relaxes me.

At the Buddhist center I too felt at home. I was relaxed. We began the service with a five- minute chant. I have never chanted for five minutes straight.  t seemed like it would be an eternity. It was not an eternity. Before I knew it we were done. It relaxed me and helped me get ready for my next experience.

From the chant we moved to a twenty five-minute silent meditation. I knew that this would not be difficult. I practice centering prayer for twenty minutes, twice per day. I close my eyes when I sit. The silent meditation that I was asked to participate in was with my eyes open. We were asked to gaze with eyes partially closed while we looked down the bridge of our nose.

Similar to centering prayer, we were told to just let go of all thoughts and ignore any itches. Let them pass. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was easily able to meditate with my eyes open. The time passed quickly.

We moved from the silent meditation into a walking meditation. I had never done a walking meditation before.  There were fifteen of us. We formed a circle that was approximately fifteen feet in diameter. We were instructed to walk slowly. Our walk was extremely slow.  The movement from when I placed my left heal down, rolled it until my toes finally touched the ground was three to five seconds before I performed the same action with my right foot.

It took some time to adjust to this very, very, very, slow pace. I needed to focus on how to maintain my balance.  Within a few minutes I felt at ease and became very comfortable with this pace. I actually began to enjoy it.

Like the sacred word in centering prayer, each step I took during walking meditation was a sacred step that opened me to God. We only walked one full circle. I do not know how long it took. I can say that it was a wonderful experience. I was at peace. I had entered the spaces between my thoughts. I was in the pure presence of God. I could have walked much longer. I will need to practice walking meditation again. If you haven’t tried it, I highly encourage it.

My Buddhist Temple experience taught me that contemplative prayer, the pure presence of God can be found in chanting, silent meditation, walking. God is everywhere. God waits for us to meet Him in the practice that best suits us. I am certain that there are many other forms of contemplative prayer that I can practice to meet the pure presence of God.

Rich Lewis teaches centering prayer in his local community at both church and college/university settings. Rich publishes a weekly meditation and book reviews on his site, Silence Teaches. Learn more about Rich at www.SilenceTeaches.com.

Feast of St Patrick ~ A love note from your online abbess

Holy Mountain*

I want to climb the holy mountain

ascend over weight of stone

and force of gravity, follow the

rise of a wide and cracked earth

toward eternal sky,

measured steps across the sharp path,

rest often to catch my heavy breath.

I want to hear the silence of stone and stars,

lie back on granite's steep rise

face to silver sky's glittering points

where I can taste the galaxies

on my tongue, communion of fire,

then stand on the summit and

look out at the laboring world.

I want to witness earth's slow turning

with early light brushing over me,

a hundred hues

of grey, pink, gold,

speckles of Jackson Pollock light,

then ribbons of mist floating

like white streamers of surrender.

I want to look back down the trail

as if over my past, forgive a thousand tiny

and tremendous transgressions

because now all that matters

is how small I feel under the sky,

even the sparrowhawk takes no notice of me,

how enlarged I feel by knowing this smallness.

I want to be like St. Patrick,

climb the holy mountain full of

promise and direction and knowing,

forty days of fasting aloft among clouds

until my body no longer hungers

and something inside is satisfied

and my restless heart says here,

no longer dreaming of other peaks.

—Christine Valters Paintner

*This poem first appeared in The Galway Review

Dearest monks and artists,

If you love the wisdom to be found in Celtic spirituality, join us on a yearlong journey in community through the wheel of the year. See this link for details>>

March 17th is the feast of St. Patrick who is the patron saint of Ireland, and the most well-known of all the Irish saints. He was born in 390 near England’s west coast or in Wales. When he was young, about sixteen years old, he was captured by pirates and taken to Ireland where he lived as a slave for six years.  He endured many hardships including hunger, thirst, and cold under the rule of a cruel pagan king.

It was during his enslavement, while spending long hours in solitude tending sheep, that he had a spiritual awakening. Through dreams and other voices, Patrick was able to escape and return back home again. He set out for Gaul for many years to learn theology and prepare himself for his future ministry. After many years passed, he had another dream where he heard the Irish people calling out to him to return to the land of his enslavement. Patrick’s name actually means “one who frees hostages,” and when he returns he is very vocal in his opposition to slavery, including women.

He returned to Ireland in 432 and spent the rest of his life preaching the message of Christianity and helping to establish the Christian church in Ireland. There is a great deal of evidence that Patrick was not the one to bring Christianity to Ireland, that it had already begun to flower, but certainly he was instrumental in this role.

I find his story intriguing. Here was a man enslaved, who escaped by divine intervention, and then hears the call to return to the land of his slavery and he goes willingly. He must have experienced more than his share of discomfort at the thought.

There are churches founded by Patrick in the area around Galway as well. One of my favorite sites is Inchgoaill island on Lough Corrib, just a few miles north of us. Legend tells us that Patrick was banished here for a time by local druids. The name of the place means “island of the stranger.” The island is now uninhabited, but there is a stone church at the site where Patrick’s 5th century wooden church would have been, as well as a marker stone where his nephew and navigator is buried, one of the oldest Christian markers we have. There is a later 12th century church nearby as well. We bring our pilgrims here for a morning of silence and solitude and you can hear the wisdom in those ancient astones.

Seeking out this “strangeness” and “exile” was at the heart of the monastic call. In going to the places which make us feel uncomfortable and staying with our experience, rather than running away, they cracked themselves open to receive the Spirit in new ways.

How are you being called in your life to stay with what is uncomfortable and to perhaps even return to a place where you did not feel free, in the service of freedom?

You can find Part Three of A Different Kind of Fast for Lent on Embracing Trust here>> 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

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

A Different Kind of Fast: Part Three – Embrace Trust

Dearest monks and artists,

My word for this year is surplus. It is a word which has been working on me for some time now. A couple of summers ago I was pondering how to make the work I love so much sustainable both energetically and financially. Even with work that arises out of passion, we bump up against our limits of what we can give and how much renewal we need.

As a contemplative and a strong introvert, my needs for quiet times are high and I am grateful for our seasonal rhythms which allow for extended times of restoration. But there is, of course, always the anxiety around money and being able to earn enough to live.

Then last summer my pondering shifted to consider something even more generous than merely sustainable: surplus. I am not just thinking about how to have enough energy and resources to meet the needs of this flourishing community, but to have more than enough, a surplus, an excess of reserves.

My word is inspired by a quote I read a couple of years ago by Jungian analyst Robert Johnson in his book The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden: “Nothing happens, which is enough to frighten any modern person.  But that kind of nothingness is the accumulation or storing of healing energy. . . to have a store of energy accumulated is to have power in back of one.  We live with our psychic energy in modern times much as we do with our money—mortgaged into the next decade.  Most modern people are exhausted nearly all the time and never catch up to an equilibrium of energy, let alone have a store of energy behind them. With no energy in store, one cannot meet any new opportunity.”  Those words have stayed with me ever since I read them, because I have recognized the contemplative call in them.

What makes this path so counter-cultural is the active resistance against living a life of busyness and exhaustion, of not making that a badge of pride, of having an abundance of time to ponder and live life more slowly and attentively. How many of us feel our energy is mortgaged into the next decade? How many of us can never catch up with the rest we so desperately need much less feel like we have a “store of energy” behind us? I think many of us live in the tension of “what is enough?” Enough time, enough money, enough love.

We are surrounded by messages of scarcity and so our anxiety gets fueled. I think one of the most profound practices to resist anxiety, to fast from its hold on me, is the practice of Sabbath. Walter Brueggeman, in his wonderful book Sabbath as Resistance, writes that the practice of Sabbath emerges from the Exo­dus story, where the Israelites are freed from the relentless labor and productivity of the Pharaoh-system in which the people are enslaved and full of the anxiety that deprivation brings.

Yahweh enters in and liberates them from this exhaustion, commanding that they take rest each week. We essentially live in this self-made, insatiable Pharaoh-system again. So weary are we, so burdened by consumer debt, working long hours with very little time off. So many take pride in wearing the badge of “busy.” So many are stretched thin to the very edges of their resources.

When we practice Sabbath, we are making a visible statement that our lives are not defined by this perpetual anxiety. It requires a community to support us.  At the heart of this relationship is a God who celebrates the gift of rest. Brueggemann says we are so beholden to “accomplish­ing and achieving and possessing” that we refuse the gift given to us.

The Israelites, and we ourselves, must leave Egypt and our en­slavement to be able to dance and sing in freedom. Dance is a cel­ebratory act which is not “productive” but restorative. When we don’t allow ourselves the gift of Sabbath rest, we deny the foun­dational joy that is our birthright as children of God. To dance in freedom is a prophetic act.

We are called to regularly cease, to trust the world will contin­ue on without us, and to know this embodiment of grace and gift as a revolutionary act. Nothing else needs to be done.

In the coming days, as part of my Lenten practice, I will fast from anxiety and the endless torrent of thoughts which rise up in my mind to paralyze me with fear of the future.

I will reclaim the Sabbath, making a commitment to rest and to lay aside work and worry. I will give myself the gift of things that are truly restorative—some time spent in silence, a beautiful meal shared with a friend, a long walk in a beautiful place. Sabbath-keeping is an embodiment of our faith that there is something deeper at work in the world than the machinations of the power structure. It is a way for us to embody this profound trust and enter into the radical abundance at the heart of things.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Monk in the World Guest Post: Abigail Carroll

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abigail Carroll's reflection Poetry as Sabbath.

Sundays in my family as a child were for church, waffles and maple syrup, and enjoying the outdoors or helping out with house projects. In short, celebrating the Sabbath was about worship, food, nature, and family. Today, Sabbath continues to mean each of these things to me, but more recently, it has come to mean something else, too: poetry.

When God rested on the seventh day after creating the world, I think he was doing something much more profound than simply catching his breath. Indeed, I chuckle at the thought of the One from whom all energy flows suddenly low on fuel. More likely, to my mind, He was taking time to enjoy his creation. And that stepping back for the sake of enjoying creation is, for me, the underlying mandate of Sabbath: to practice delight.

I started intentionally practicing delight as a way to honor the Sabbath the year, as a doctoral student, I was pulling my hair out preparing for my comprehensive exams. My pace of reading was intense, and my mind was operating at high speed with no break. Watching television or taking in a movie, our society’s go-to fix when it comes to relaxation, proved useless as a doorway into rest. If I took a walk or jog, my brain kept rehearsing the information I was feeding it, and prayer, instead of helping me transcend my studies in order to focus on God, inadvertently became about asking God to help me survive my dreaded exams.

The solution was counterintuitive. I realized that in order to put my mind to rest, I needed to actively engage it in something else. And then the answer came: music. I had studied piano growing up but had long desired to try my hand at another instrument. So I took up the hammered dulcimer, and for the first few days after my dulcimer arrived, the delicate harmonies of its strings so enraptured me that I could hardly think of my studies. (Whoever originated the idea of heaven as full of harps clearly had not heard a dulcimer!) I had stumbled on pure delight, which both solved my problem and created a new problem. All I wanted to do was play music. Thankfully, there was one day a week when I absolutely could—Sunday!

Each week after church, I made a point to devote the lingering hours of the afternoon to courting beauty in sound. I looked forward to this time so much that I often turned down social invitations to protect it. When my head hit the pillow on Sunday nights, my mind was fully rested. This was my routine for several years. While I no longer religiously devote Sunday afternoons to my dulcimer, I still take that time to engage in the practice of delight, and my new Sabbath practice is poetry.

Poetry is its own kind of music, and what I love about writing poetry is where it takes me—both physically and spiritually. In pursuit of words, I find myself meandering woodland trails, gazing for extended periods of time at clouds, and examining the dance of reeds at the edge of the lake. For me, poetry has become a way to notice, and noticing, I have discovered, holds profound implications for the soul. The more I notice, the greater my capacity for gratitude, and the greater my capacity for gratitude, the deeper my experience of joy.

In truth, I have written poetry since childhood, but only recently have I come to see it as more than just an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Alongside prayer, scripture reading, fasting, and solitude, writing poems has become, for me, a way to actively engage the disciplines of my faith. Poetry does not replace the traditional spiritual disciplines, but rather serves as a particularly attractive doorway into them. Often, a poem is birthed out of a scripture that catches my attention during study, and I engage my love of words as a vehicle for meditating on the Word. When it comes to prayer, I find that the poet inside me often manages the courage to articulate in verse what I otherwise lack the audacity to pray aloud. As a poet, I need solitude to do my work. I have come to find, however, that solitude is not only necessary for writing poetry, but a tremendous byproduct of it, too. And that leads to fasting, which, for me, is surprisingly inherent to the act of writing. When creating a poem, I am fasting from the steady diet of distractions this world continuously feeds me, and by fasting from distraction, I find myself becoming more attentive to what matters.

If writing poetry can be a doorway into the spiritual disciplines, the spiritual discipline that poetry most helps me engage is rest. For me, poem-making is not just an exercise I do on the Sabbath; it is Sabbath. Perhaps this is because engaging in delight affords me a deeper sense of renewal than the act of merely ceasing from my work. Delight may very well be the deepest form of rest. I’m thankful that the Creator set an example of delight when he called his creation “good,” stepping back to take it all in. And I’m thankful that, by inviting us to celebrate Sabbath, He furnishes us with the time and space to engage in the restful and restorative practice of delight as a way to honor him.

Abigail Carroll, author of A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans), serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well in Burlington, Vermont. She enjoys writing, photographing nature, and a well-brewed cup of hot tea. Click here to visit her online>>