Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 109

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kate Kennington Steer

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kate Kennington Steer's reflection on "Project Wholeness." 

I am currently in the midst of trying to find ways to refine my activities.  I know I need to make an act of creativity the energy focus of my every day because I am positive that my healing will be found this way.  This healing may or may not include physical wellness, but what I am convinced of is that healing is ‘about’ wholeness.  My Inner Witness watches my heart expand every time I glimpse the possibility in the juxtaposition of colours I have laid down on a canvas, or in the sense of ‘rightness’ in the composition of a photograph, in the shape of a line etched in a print, in the crystal aptness of an image in a line of poetry, in the combination of stitches in a knitting pattern.  It may be that only I can see these things in my work at present, and the offered vision of ‘God in the everyday’ isn’t yet expressed in such a way that others can share in it, but I remind myself time and again that isn’t the point of this adventure. Even the fleeting promise of a moment of right seeing and receiving lifts me away from my absorption with my own problems into an arena where the Spirit is allowed free reign to work.

So when a psychologist recently asked me ‘if you know what you need to do to find healing and wholeness why aren’t you going all out to pursue this?’, I was surprised to find myself stumped and distressed.

At the time it didn't help that I thought she was asking me to make a bit of a black or white choice:  will you use precious energy loading up the dishwasher rather than playing with inks and charcoal or making images with your camera?  I had been talking about being part of a community, a family, where you put other people first.  She was talking about me asking for their help to readjust my priorities.  I was arguing real life didn’t allow me to stop doing chores; she was saying my friends and family would put up with a great deal of washing up if it meant I might be well!

In her tantalising picture, opening up at least one opportunity for my creativity is the single most important thing I have to do this day.  Even if today is a bad bed day and I only have energy for five minutes worth of daydreaming rather than lifting an actual pen, camera or brush, that freewheeling is an essential contribution to ‘Project Wholeness’.  Who knows, perhaps in those few precious minutes I might see how to unlock the potential for a future career?

I know that in the light of this conversation with the psychologist I need to start a new set of dialogues with those who care for me on a daily basis, because ‘Project Wholeness’ is going to need some massive underpinning.  I’m going to need help discerning and naming the areas of my life where I will need support.  Working towards my healing is going to require understanding, not just about not clearing up the table after a meal on one day, but about a million other tasks on countless days to come.  Cheerleaders of my project are going to have to understand I need time on my own, that if I shut the door I’m not shutting them out but enclosing my sparse concentration into a sacred space for creativity for as long or short a moment as it will manage.

‘Project Wellness’ also requires a change of language.  I find talk of goal setting and prioritising is at odds with my understanding of the contemplative life, not least because it taps directly into my tenacious ambitious, competitive and perfectionist tendencies.  Instead I remind myself to use the monk’s terms of intention and attention.  I recognise that I am in a classic threshold place.

Yet despite all my mulling over this, at a meeting with a neuropsychiatrist last week I was surprised that I still felt ambushed when he echoed the same idea as the psychologist: ‘You know it all already. You know what you have to do.  You just have to believe you will get better.’  In that moment I felt that he was abandoning me into the isolating abyss of trying to get better with no professional help.  But I realised his emphasis on cognitive behavioural therapy as the vehicle of my recovery spectacularly managed to miss the point.

For I am not alone, whatever tale my lying ego may wish to spin about the opposite; wellness is not just about my willpower.  For I am part of this Abbey, and my fellow monks witness to me time and again that it is the Spirit’s prompting which makes me believe creativity will be the source of all my healing. The neuropsychiatrist spoke truer than he knew: the Wonderful Counsellor has already given me the wisdom I need to live this day.  The only priority I need to embrace is the intention to open my eyes and seek God’s face; and to practice expressing the abundance of the love that I find there in the most meaning-full ways I know how.  As Mary Oliver put it so exquisitely:

'Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.'"

Kate Kennington Steer is a writer and photographer with a deep abiding passion for contemplative photography and spirituality.  She writes about these things on her shot at ten paces blog.  She also posts series of ‘daily acts of seeing’ on Facebook. Join in with gentle ambling conversations about contemplative photography at https://www.facebook.com/1actofdailyseeing/?fref=ts

Ancestral Pilgrimage: Honor Landscape and Lineage ~ A love note from your online abbess

As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children, and friends can become true spiritual companions after they have died. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life. Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.

—Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Dearest monks and artists,

I stood there at the edge of the Baltic Sea, on the beach at Jurmala in Latvia, and I felt a deep kinship to this place, which I had never been to before. Perhaps it was standing at this borderland place where forest meets the sea, the same kind of landscape I had inexplicably fallen in love with in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Thousands of miles away I had met this place of wildness and fallen in love. As I stood in this ancestral land, I felt a connection, a kind of deep knowing.

Maybe the felt connection was because of the photos I have of my father playing on these same sands, the carefree days of his childhood long before the burdens of adulthood settled into his bones and the deep grooves formed on his forehead.

Whatever the source, walking this ancestral landscape brought me a sense of understanding and peace. My father had fled this country as a boy when the Russians invaded. He became a refugee, never to return home again in his entire life. I was making this journey in part on his behalf, to restore something that had been broken. 

One of my primary spiritual practices these last several years is ancestral pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a journey of meaning to a sacred site, in this case, a place that was significant for my ancestors. I trace my genetic lineage back through England, Austria, and Latvia and have travelled to each of these places, some multiple times, as a part of my personal journey.

These journeys have changed me and brought much healing to my life and called forth even more from me. In the summer of 2012 I made an even more radical choice. After several of these ancestral pilgrimages, my husband and I moved to Vienna, the city where my father grew up after leaving Latvia and is now buried, as a deeper commitment to continuing this ancestral journey. And then we followed the call to Ireland, the land of John’s maternal ancestors.

A pilgrimage is a special kind of journey, one taken to a holy place with the hope for an encounter with the sacred and the intention of being changed by what happens there and along the way. We don't go on pilgrimages to return the same person.

I believe we are profoundly connected to the land and culture and stories of our ancestors in ways we don't fully realize. Their experiences, their sorrows and joys are knit into our bones, woven into the fabric of our very bodies. The impulse to discover one's story often leads you to reach far back into history. We can't fully understand the impact of these connections until we stand on the land and speak the language of those who came before us and gave us the gift of life through our ancestors.

When I stood on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Latvia and imagined my father playing as a child in the sand and the waves, I connected to this experience of longing. I understood him in new ways. I saw the innocence of a young boy before the war came and shattered everything he knew. May Sarton wrote in one of her poems: "Now the dead move through all of us still glowing . . . What has been plaited cannot be unplaited . . . and memory makes kings and queens of us." Remembering what has been already woven into us is the task.

Each time I prepare for these journeys with excitement and anticipation, as well as fear and trembling, knowing I will have to confront the shadow sides of my family system. But it is in facing the dark depths that I no longer have to live in fear of them.

"If your journey is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion," writes Phil Cousineau, in his book The Art of Pilgrimage.

I believe, along with psychologist Carl Jung, that the stories of our ancestors run through our blood and the unhealed wounds and unfulfilled longings continue to propel us forward or keep us stuck in old patterns. The stories of our grandmothers and grandfathers are our stories and we can help to heal the wounds of the past and in the process heal ourselves by telling those stories again, giving voice to the voiceless, unnamed secrets and to the celebrations, insights, and wisdom gathered over time.

Jung introduced us to the concept of the collective unconscious, that vast pool of ancestral memory within each of us. It is a kind of deposit of ancestral experience. He believed it comprises the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. Nothing is lost; all of the stories, struggles, and wisdom are available to us. Each of us is an unconscious carrier of this ancestral experience and part of our journey is to bring this to consciousness in our lives. "I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete or unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors," he wrote.

Consider making a pilgrimage to walk in the footsteps of your own ancestors, those everyday saints who struggled with life's heartaches and suffering. Spend time in the places that shaped their imaginations and their dreams; speak the language with which they whispered their most private secrets to one another, the words they used to express their aching sorrow and profound joy. It doesn't matter if you know nothing of the details. Walking, being, listening, and noticing the impact of trees, rivers, mountains, and sky on your own spirit is enough.

A pilgrimage doesn't have to be a long journey overseas. It might be to a nearby cemetery or a phone call with a living relative to ask about stories you have never heard before.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Nicole Keisler

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Nicole Keisler's reflection titled Rhythms of Life.

Everything here takes time.

Even a simple task of washing dishes seem to grow into an event; part of a daily ritual that is as much a part of life here as the rising and setting of the sun.

Make the not-so-long-walk to the "kitchen."  Fill the basin. Carry the water. Wash the dishes. Rinse. Then rinse again.

As I slowly wash off the remainders of yesterday morsels in the lean-to that is the scullery, I am aware that I am not bombarded by a stream of constant thought of what to do, and then what to do after that.  I find instead that my ear is catching a rhythmic pattern of the rain water that had gathered on the corrugated iron sheets overhead and was now adventuring through a break in the metal, land with a constant tam ti tam on the base of an overturned aluminum pot that had been left previously by a fellow dish washer.  I listen to its music as the after-rain breeze of this equator bordering village pushes gently through the tall, wheat colored Kenyan grasses.  Despite my preconceived notions, the weather here surprises me and verges on cool, making me grateful for the long sleeved chambray that I don.  The rhythm of the pot changes to a ti ti tam and I notice a base line as yet another pool overhead finds its way straight to the red tinged mud surrounding the lean to.  I hear the song of the birds with the iridescent blue wings and rust colored breast.  I am fully present in this moment, listening to the sound of song erupting all around me, these rhythms of life that capture and enrapture me.

I wonder: have these songs been here the whole time? Maybe not this particular one, inspired today by the wind and rain, but the songs of winds blowing through dried reeds and ripe maize stalks, the songs of red soil on metal and stone as the currents of the day relocate it to a nearby path or perhaps a field, the song of the distant Mombasa/ Nairobi highway and the motorbikes and taxis and buses and freight trucks make their way to and fro, busy little ants scurrying between the bustling colonies.

As I appreciate the song and remain present I realize that these tasks that slow me, that "take" me from whatever "more important" activity I can fill my time with, are not TAKING time at all. Rather they are time re-orienting, time appreciating. These things that cause me to slow my pace and move with intentionality and purpose are more time giving than time consuming.

It causes me to reflect on what the Message translation describes in Matthew 11:

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace . . . "

No one tells you how uncomfortable these "unforced rhythms" can be.  They sound so alluring until you are fetching water, and it seems like all you have accomplished was retrieving the water and in the end brushing your teeth.  When you come from a time oriented, task driven culture, unhurried rhythms feel unnatural and, initially, wasteful.

There is a better, more efficient way to do this! we exclaim. And in our rush to make more time available we find that we simultaneously fill it with more, more, more! Until we are exhausted and wondering why there is no time for anything.

But this unhurried rhythm that sounds and feels so wasteful, this one that Jesus invites me, a weary and tired sojourner, into is exactly that: wasteful. By all appearances it will go against the grain of human nature to busy ourselves so that we feel productive and fruitful. To carve out time for stillness, mindfully present of His Presence, to allow a clearing of the mental pollution as the thick fog of thought dissipates, revealing a reality that was once unrecognizable but now suddenly and beautifully clear . . . And suddenly there is time to breathe and simply BE.  This "takes" time in the sense that it will not happen immediately. But it gives time back as I am able to connect more with people along my unhurried path; as I discover holy thoughts and dreams and desires lost under the weight of obligatory business; as I commune in the stillness of my God that desires to know me and be known by me.  Jesus invites me to waste my time and and even my very life, that I may gain it back and even more abundantly so.  This upside down kingdom principal that takes me forward as I willingly fall backward into the arms of unforced rhythms of grace redeems time seemingly lost when I submit to the unhurried stride of my Rabbi.

It remains a process for me: unlearning busyness and embracing unforced rhythms. At times it is enjoyable. Other times it is frustrating to the point of outright boredom and defeatism.  But it is in the learning, this process of training my mind and heart to live out of fullness in The Infinite that I am discovering freedom, rest, connection with God and self and others, and in fact even more time than what I once thought was wasted and lost.  Indeed, time has been redeemed, as all things are, in the unforced rhythms of grace.  THESE are the rhythms that beckon to all of us, inviting us to yielded, unhurried living leading to full days and full hearts; teaching us that to gain means that first we must lay down so that we may have open hands to embrace every good and perfect gift our Father wants to bestow upon us if only we will make time to receive.  THESE are the rhythms of LIFE.

Nicole Keisler is a nomad currently embracing the unhurried "art of being" while traveling a spiritual highway from South Africa to Israel. She is a wife, mother, daughter, lover, dancer, painter, and contemplative, song-writing her way through the nations. She is on the move in North Africa.

The Soul’s Migration: Following a Holy Direction ~ A love note from your online abbess

Fin and feather, flesh, blood and bone: the earth calls its creatures to leave the familiar, turn again into the unknown; to move steadily and continuously and at great risk toward an invisible goal, expending great energy with the possibility of failure… ~ Marianne Worcester

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Two years ago I had the privilege of leading a retreat on the shores of Cape May, NJ. Cape May is a resting place for weary souls seeking renewal and refreshment. It is also the resting place for Monarch butterflies as they make their long migratory journey to Mexico.

In the Skagit Valley, north of Seattle, I have stood on a midwinter's day and witnessed thousands of swans and geese landing in a field, also on their own movement toward an invisible goal. In Alaska are the pods of Humpback whales who feed off the nutrient rich waters all summer and gain sustenance, and then return to warmer seas to give birth in the winter.

Autumn is the time of transition, of the earth's turning, with the balance of light and dark in the northern hemisphere tilting toward the dark season and the invitation to release the excess we carry and rest into growing Mystery. It is a season of initiating these great movements across the globe of birds, fish, and mammals following an instinctual call.

I am taken with the mysteries of migration, the inner knowing that rises up in them to embark on a journey, the impulse to swim and fly across great expanses of earth and sea in search of a feeling of rightness that season.

I think of the ancient desert monks who each knew that one day they would have to leave behind the familiar and venture out into the wilderness to seek a space of radical encounter with God. Or the Irish monks who felt called to a particular kind of journey called peregrinatio, which was a pilgrimage for the love of Christ without a destination in mind. The practice was to step into a small boat called a coracle, without oar or rudder, and let the current carry them to the place of their resurrection.

They yielded their own agendas and plans to the current of love, trusting in this deeper wisdom at work in water and wind, on behalf of the One who opens the way before us.

St. Gobnait, one of the early Irish women saints, fled her home to the island of Inisheer, but was told by an angel that this was not her place of resurrection. She was to seek the place of the nine white deers, which led her journey onward to a place she did not know. The place of resurrection is the land where the heart finds its home and soul's deepest dreams come to fruition.

Swans and swallows, whales and salmon make the long arduous journey to give birth to the new lives breaking forth in them. The monks wandered in search of wild places that could break apart their own expectations and judgments, to let the new life being offered to them come forth.

In the Book of Isaiah (48:6-7) we read:

Now I am revealing new things to you, things hidden and unknown to you, created just now, this very moment. Of these things you have heard nothing until now so that you cannot say, Oh yes, I knew this.

In the Christian contemplative tradition, we are invited to rest more deeply in the Great Mystery, to lay aside our images and symbols, and let the divine current carry us deeper, without knowing where, only to trust the impulse within to follow a longing.

As autumn tilts us toward the season of growing darkness, consider this an invitation to yield to the mystery of your own heart's desires. You do not need a map or agenda, simply a willingness to swim in the waters carrying you back home again.

The monks knew the wisdom of embracing a season of unknowing, to wrest from their grip the idols of certainty and security. As mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade says, "a false sense of security is the only kind there is." Of the new things happening you have known nothing until this moment.

Taking flight requires courage to ascend into the unfamiliar and unknown. And it requires a community of kindred souls who affirm the journey isn't completely crazy and there is more awaiting us beyond the borders of our narrow expectations.

The soul's migration demands the long, slow journey in a holy direction, calling us only to follow the impulse of love.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Dancing Monk Icon Cards – limited number of sets available for holiday orders

**Ordering open until October 31st or we sell out of current stock – whichever comes first.**

We are delighted to offer for sale a limited number of sets of the dancing monk icon cards.

All 18 designs included – the original 12 dancing monks plus an additional 6 we added from the Irish Celtic monastic tradition (see list of names below).

These are printed on high quality cardstock, plastic-coated, with rounded corners, and in vibrant colors. Reverse side of all cards is the same design (see image to the right).

Size is standard European A7 size (74×105 mm).

Place your order by October 31st and the packages will be mailed direct from Ireland in the beginning of November. Please allow another two weeks beyond that for shipping time. This should allow plenty of time to arrive for the holidays.

To order outside the European Union (non-EU):

$25 per set when you order 1 or 2 sets –

$20 per set when you order 3 or more (maximum of 10 sets) –

$5 flat rate shipping (no matter how many sets you order)*

*After you add your item to the cart below you must select your country and zip/postal code and click "update cart" for shipping charges to appear.* (If you have no postal code, enter 0000)

*Please keep in mind that we do have to include customs forms for packages outside the EU and you are responsible for any customs duty charged on your parcel.

 

To order within the European Union (EU):

€25 per set when you order 1 or 2 sets –

€20 per set when you order 3 or more (maximum of 10 sets) –

€5 flat rate shipping (no matter how many sets you order)*

*After you add your item to the cart below you must select your country and zip/postal code and click "update cart" for shipping charges to appear.* (If you have no postal code, enter 0000)

VAT is included in the EU price.

 

*If you would like to order 10 or more sets please be in contact with us first.

 

Designs include the following monks and mystics from our series:

Hildegard of Bingen: I am a feather on the breath of God.

Benedict of Nursia: Let our hearts overflow with the inexpressible delight of love.

Mary, Mother of God: My soul proclaims the greatness of our God, my spirit rejoices in God.

Francis of Assisi: The world is my monastery.

Dorothy Day: Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet too.

Rainer Maria Rilke: May what I do flow from me like a river.

Amma Syncletica: We must kindle the divine fire within ourselves.

King David: David danced before God with all his might.

Prophet Miriam: And the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.

Thomas Merton: Join in the joy of the cosmic dance.

Brigid of Kildare: Christ dwells in every creature.

Brendan the Navigator: Help me to journey beyond the familiar and into the unknown.

Ita of Kileedy: I thirst for divine love.

Gobnait of Ballyvourney: Go seek the place of your resurrection.

Columcille of Iona: Alone with none but you my God, I journey on my way.

Kevin of Glendalough: He finds himself linked into a network of eternal life.

Ciaran of Clonmacnoise: Circle me God, keep fear without, keep joy within.

Patrick of Armagh: Christ within me and all around me, in everyone I meet.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Timothy Nickel

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Timothy Nickel's reflection on dancing with God and each other as hospice chaplain.

Silence and Space

God is the silence behind all sound,

ever present if we listen.

God is the empty space amidst all objects,

ever present if we behold.

These truths inform us …

we are always in God’s presence.

Indeed we are God’s presence!

If we listen for the silence behind all sound,

there is God.

If we behold the empty space amidst all objects,

there is God.

With sound or without,

With space or without,

God is no more or less present.

God is the very emptiness from which all else flows.

All sound comes out of God’s silence.

All objects reside in the midst of God’s space.

We live and “die” encased in God’s very being!

My employment is that of a hospice chaplain, a contemplative “monk” dancing daily with death.  In the legal field, there is a phrase, “in contemplation of death,” which pertains to the giving of a gift when someone knows or expects to die in the near future.   The giving of the gift is motivated strictly by the understanding and belief that death is quickly approaching.  My daily dancing with death, my awareness that death is interwoven into our living,  is typically a contemplative, meditative dance often of silence and equally as often, of verbal reflection with the one who is dying or with vigilant family members.

In my daily contemplation of death, I have the opportunity to gift others as well as to be gifted by others.  Though this monk prefers to dance alone, there are always the occasions of dancing with others.  Sometimes we dance at arm’s length, not even touching, as we move about the room, metaphorically, assessing each other, me for their needs, and they for my trustworthiness.  Sometimes we dance much closer as the relationship evolves over time or when circumstances dictate a fast forwarding, when the dance floor is suddenly titled, like the developing tragedy on the Titantic, and we find ourselves in each other’s arms, not necessarily because of our own choosing, but because life has given both of us an invitation into a depth of relationship that has now opened up to us.  And sometimes, we dance with the greatest of intimacy, as tears flow, prayers are spoken, stories are told, laughter is shared and we sit in the embrace of sacred silence, witnessing with awe the changing breathing patterns of a beloved exiting this world.

Death invites us into the deepest of contemplative stances which some have called Innocence or a state of Not-knowing.   The author of the Cloud of Unknowing writes of it.  Death educator, Stephen Levine, speaks to the issue, particularly in his book, “Who Dies?”  It is those moments of being fully present to what is occurring.  It means bringing to a situation, to a crisis, a mind that clings to nothing.  It is when we can empty ourselves of ourselves so we can be filled with Something Else and we are able to hold the Something Else in a sacred container for everyone in our presence.  In these moments, we step closer to laying claim to the mind of Christ, Christ consciousness.  We exist with clarity and compassion, our egos and sense of “I” dissolve for a time.    We are graced with stepping through that liminal veil that seemingly separates the physical/material world from that which exists as pure spirit.

Cultivating this openness to the Unknown is typically a developmental process, a maturation in the spirit, where Love slowly overtakes us and it becomes easier  to say what God is not, than it is to tell someone exactly what God is.  For me it has been a journey that started as a young man caring for the aged and has evolved into me soon becoming one of those aged ones myself.  I am experiencing a slowly opening appreciation of the archetypal Jokester and Trickster, having moved through a number of other archetypal stages along the way, i.e. Warrior, Seeker and Magician.

My daily discipline is now a hodge-podge of what I am able to do rather than what I would like to do.  Walking the dog first thing in the morning introduces me to the Zen life of my dog, Satori, who simply eats when she is hungry and sleeps when she is tired and provides me with unconditional positive regard by licking my bald head.  My daily devotions consist of reading, writing and relationships with some meditation thrown in when I able to remain awake.  I believe God is working in me, however, even when I drift off to sleep.  I integrate my day through writing about my visits with dying patients and grieving family members in brief 100 word narratives, capturing the essence of any visit I might make.  Poetry comes to me as a desire and in that desire, it usually finds its own expression.  My role is to not force it.  When “I” become involved, the poem usually grinds to a halt, I recognize this and toss it aside.  Kahlil Gibran in his book, "The Prophet", speaks of the Wander, the seeker of the lonelier way, the one who walks upon the mountaintops, and loves the unreachable heights, striving to attain that which is most unattainable.   For me, that is a rather good description of this Dancing Monk.

I began with a poem, allow me to conclude with a poem:

And We Dance

Happy we come in to the world as infants.

Emotionally balanced with memories of from where we came.

Slowly we awake to this new world,

Engaging with it with stuttering steps and a new found language.

We breathe in the Life Energy offered to us.

The world from which we came soon dissolves in our memories.

There is a forgetting.

Age advances and there is a call to grow and evolve … transform and transcend.

We are invited to seek and search for ancient truths that lead to progressive change.

For some, there is an opening, a discovering of who I am, of who I can be.

Harnessing the secrets that seem to be locked away, secrets forgotten by most.

We heal in body, mind and spirit.

Reaching out to others with our healing so they might live in the world free of pain.

In moments of quietness, the extraordinary is revealed in the ordinary.

Sobering joy descends upon us.

Our True Nature is revealed.

The realization of who we are, from whence we came and the fullness of our life

adventures is seen and appreciated.

We realign ourselves with the imagination of our spiritually mature

childhoods of innocence and wonder.

Playfulness returns.

Our hearts sing.

And we dance.

Timothy has been a hospice chaplain for the past six years. Previously, he was a Pastoral Thanatologist at a continuing care retirement community where he has worked for 35 years. His education in the realm of religion, spirituality and psychology. His early influence was Thomas Merton and now is immersed in Evolutionary Spirituality.

 

Feast of St. Francis and the Holy Fool ~ A love note from your online abbess

St. Francis at the Corner Pub

Approaching the door, you can already

hear his generous laughter.

He stands on the bar upside down for a moment

to get a new perspective on things,

a flash of polka-dotted boxers

as his brown robe cascades over his head,

sandaled toes wiggling in the air in time with

a fiddle playing in the corner.

Rain falls heavily in the deepening darkness

and he orders a round of drinks

despite his vow of poverty and the single silver coin

in his pocket, multiplied by the last Guinness poured.

Nothing like a good glass of wine, he gleefully says,

heavy Italian accent echoing through the room,

he holds it up to the overhead light, pausing for a moment

lost in its crimson splendor, breathes deeply.

At ease among fishmongers and plumbers,

widows and college students, and the

single mother sneaking out for a moment

of freedom from colic, cries, and diapers.

As the wind blows rain sideways, in come the

animals, benvenuti to pigeons, squirrels, seagulls, crows,

and the neighborhood cat balding from mange,

a chorus of yowls, coos, caws, and meows arising,

all huddle around him. No one objects to the growing

menagerie, just glad to be dry and warm.

He clinks glasses all around, no one left out.

—Christine Valters Paintner

 

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

“We are fools for the sake of Christ” (1 Cor. 4:10)

There are many aspects of Francis’ foolishness, from stripping his clothing publicly, appearing naked in the church, renouncing his wealth, befriending all creatures, and calling his community of brothers “fools for Christ” reflecting the words of St. Paul above. He tames a wolf and during the Crusades he walks unarmed across the Egyptian desert into the Sultan’s camp where he had every reason to expect his own death, a foolish act indeed.

We are always being called to new revelation and to see the world from another perspective. The inner Fool is the one who helps us to see things anew and to dismantle the accepted wisdom of our times. Paul also writes “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Cor. 1:20b) Productivity, striving, consumption, and speed are some of the false gods of our western culture. A life committed to following the Divine path is one which makes the world’s wisdom seem foolish, but conversely, the world looks upon those with spiritual commitment often as the ones who are “fools.”

This can be a challenging archetype for some of us as we often try to do everything possible so as not to look foolish. However, this archetype is the one which helps to subvert the dominant paradigm of acceptable ways of thinking and living.  The author GK Chesterton, in his book about Francis of Assisi, explores the idea of Francis seeing the world upside down, which is really seeing it right side up, because we get a totally new perspective. There is a subversive act of truth-telling through the Fool’s humor and playfulness.

The Fool risks mockery by stepping out of socially acceptable roles and asks where are you willing to look foolish? Through the fool we find vicarious release for much we have repressed in ourselves. If we have always lived according to the “rules” or been overly concerned with how things look, the Fool invites us to break open and play. The Fool encourages us to laugh at ourselves, reminding us that humor and humility have the same root as humus, which means earthiness.

We activate the fool when we do something that others have a hard time understanding or accepting. I remember when John and I first began our move to Europe and we sold off or gave away our possessions, various family members and friends couldn’t understand different things we had let go of – how could we release our library of treasured books? How could I burn years of journals? How could John quit his secure job? To some, our choices appeared “foolish” because they didn’t fit their way of thinking about how you move through life. To others, they seemed liberating precisely because it was a different path chosen.

How does Francis call you to your own path of holy foolishness? What have you been longing to do but afraid of looking “foolish” to others?

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing Monk Icon © Marcy Hall at Rabbit Room Arts

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kimberly Knowle-Zeller

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kimberly Knowle-Zeller's reflection on weeding for life.

I’ve never been a gardener. But don’t say my mother never tried to cultivate a love of the dirt and growth and soil and plants. She tried her hardest. She lived in the garden and hoped her daughter would similarly follow suit. Yet, I’ve heard her repeat over to me, “You barely pulled one weed growing up.” Perhaps it was the hard work. Or the heat. Or my impatience.

But I didn’t pull many weeds nor did I plant much as a child. So the fact that I have a garden now is quite amusing to my mother. And to be honest, it’s pretty amusing to myself as well. Because I still am impatient. I still run away from hard work at times. And I still am not a fan of the heat. But gardening I am.

In the interest of full disclosure, my mother actually planted our first bed of plants. She created the raised beds. She weeded. She watered. She nurtured. Then she went back home to Ohio. Leaving us with our new garden and the work of nourishing the plants. To my surprise, I found myself weeding at night. After our daughter was in bed and the heat subsided I would go and weed. I would pull and pull some more.

With all this rain, there have been plenty of weeds. I hear my mother’s voice, “A weed isn’t bad in and of itself. A weed is just that which we don’t want.” The weeds in my garden are those plants that aren’t life giving to the rest of my garden. They are getting in the way of full growth for my strawberry and tomato and pepper plants. Many nights I keep pulling. It’s a never ending task. I remove the weeds to make way for more growth that is sustaining.

One night as I weeded, I thought to myself, “What are the weeds in my life that I need to remove?” What are those things that aren’t necessarily bad for me, but are keeping me from truly living?” Too often I have too much and I’m not able to remember that nothing belongs to me. Too often I fail to remember that everything is a gift from God. Too often I recite the Lord’s Prayer, “give us this day our daily bread,” and I forget that my neighbor, too, needs daily bread to survive. Too often I give to Open Door Food Pantry that which I don’t want and that which is left over rather than giving from my abundance. I have plenty of weeds that are keeping me from really experiencing life.

When I pull these weeds each night and reflect on what I have, I get uncomfortable. “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48).

I pull and pull and pull some more. I have been given much. I have been entrusted much. In shedding my attachment to things and stuff, in removing myself from the busyness and the drive to compete and gain notoriety, I begin to see myself as God sees me — a loved Child of God. When we’ve been stripped down to not needing to be defined by what we’ve accumulated, then, only then, can we really see ourselves and our neighbors for who we are — children of God. Nothing more and nothing less.

Much of the time my thinking of how much stuff I have is just that – thinking. But it’s a start. Maybe it’s enough to keep pulling those weeds. Giving thanks for the One who sustains all of life. Maybe it’s enough to sit and rest in the garden. To be still and know that God is God. Someday soon, I pray, I will start pulling those weeds in my life that are keeping me from fully living and loving and serving. For I know that my life and the life of my neighbor depends on it.

Kimberly Knowle-Zeller is an ELCA pastor, spouse of a pastor, and mother to a one-year-old.  She currently lives in Cole Camp, MO. In her free time, Kim enjoys serving on the board of the Sedalia Area Farmer's Market.

 

 

Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: Wisdom for Life’s Journey ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This week we marked the autumn equinox, a time when the sun rests above the equator, and day and night are divided equally. It heralds a season filled with change, celebrates the harvest, and ushers in the brilliant beauty of death. Autumn is a season of transition, of continual movement.

In the ancient Celtic tradition, these seasonal turning points are threshold times when we are invited to pay close attention.

Another ancient practice was that of drawing a circle of protection around oneself, as a way of creating safe boundaries and honouring the divine presence surrounding us. Sometimes the world can feel quite threatening and the circle is a sacred symbol of wholeness. This practice was later incorporated into the Christian tradition and we see examples of it in St. Patrick’s breastplate prayer – Christ before me, behind me, to my right, to my left, above me, within me, around me, and in everyone I meet. There are many examples of this prayer, with the Deer’s Cry being perhaps the best known.

This practice of drawing a circle of protection is also intimately connected with a prayer of the directions. When we name the presence of Christ and the sacred in every direction — in the east with the resurrection, with the rising sun in the south at the hour of fullness and fires burning brightly within, in the setting sun at dusk that reminds of our own limits and the sweetness of what is most precious, and the darkness of the north, a place of mystery, unknowing, rest, and incubation – we come to know this presence as infusing our every encounter. We come to honor the seasons of our lives.

The Celts traditionally aligned the directions with the four elements as well (this is a practice in many indigenous traditions) and we find it later integrated into some Christian prayers and awareness. St. Hildegard of Bingen in 12th century Germany followed this same alignment in her teachings too.

The season of autumn is connected to the hour of dusk, to the waning of the moon, and to the element of water. Water invites us to yield and surrender our own ambitions and striving, and allow a wiser and more fluid source to move through us.

Fall calls me to let go of false assumptions, wrests my too-small images of God from me as I slowly approach the Mystery of dying and rising. Autumn demands that I release what I think is important to do and returns me to the only thing which matters that I remember—to love and to allow love to sculpt me, even as it sometimes breaks my heart. Water reminds us to allow the river of love to flow freely through us.

But equally, this season calls us to the harvest. Seeds planted long ago create a bounty and fullness in our lives. Autumn invites me to remember the places in my life where I had a dream that once felt tiny and has now grown and ripened into fullness. The element of water reminds me of the wide expanse of the sea and in the Irish landscape the abundance of holy wells which are signs of the abundant source of life available to us.

The directions and elements are a part of an incarnational spirituality, one that honors the divine presence all around us and infusing us, and an intimate part of creation.

Water, Wind, Earth, & Fire: The Practice of Praying with the Elements starts tomorrow! Join us on a journey into deeper intimacy with nature through reflections, creative practices including SoulCollage®, movement, and song. We also are hosting a discussion forum where a vibrant conversation always unfolds.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Ann Hoare

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Ann Hoare's reflection on experiencing the beauty that enlarges life.

‘Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing which will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfilment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving towards the summit of fulfilment. When this spiritual path opens, you can bring an incredible generosity to the world and to the lives of others.’

These beautiful words from John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara, profoundly influence my spiritual journey. My spiritual formation is that of St Ignatius Loyola – Ignatian spirituality – that has its roots in the conviction that God is active, personal, and—above all—present to us. Ignatian spirituality is a spirituality for everyday life. It starts from God in our world and active in our lives. It is a pathway to deeper prayer, the grace of spiritual freedom, good decisions by keen discernment, and an active life of service to others. Jesuit priest David Fleming wrote: it is a spiritual “way of proceeding” that offers a vision of life; an understanding of God; a reflective approach to living; a contemplative way of praying; a reverential attitude to our world; and an expectation of finding God daily. So for me, God’s footprints can be found everywhere—in my work and relationships, in my family and friends, in my sorrows and joys, in the sublime beauty of nature and in the mundane details of my daily life.

One of the key elements of Ignatian spirituality is the Daily Examen, a technique of prayerful reflection on the day’s events in order to detect God’s presence. In these reflections I return often to a constant theme in my life – why am I here? What is my purpose? To paraphrase Mary Oliver, what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? The ongoing discernment of the Examen provides an answer to these questions. I am here to make a difference: to all lives that touch mine and to all God’s creatures; to live a life of service; and to do this with passion and joy.

In these often troubled times it is easy to become disillusioned and to join in the 'woe is me chorus'; to forget that in spite of the newspaper stories and TV sound bites that tell us otherwise, the good and the beautiful surround us as well, if we just take the time to notice. The following excerpt from O’Donohue’s poem A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted complements the Examen perfectly:

Take refuge in your senses, open up 

to all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

when it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of colour

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

until its calmness can claim you.

Be excessively gentle with yourself. 

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.

Learn to linger around someone of ease

who feels they have all the time in the world

Gradually you will return to yourself,

having learned a new respect for your heart

and the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Thomas Moore in Care of the Soul, writes that the soul craves beauty, and is nurtured by beauty. What food is to the body, arresting, complex, and pleasing images are to the soul. For the soul, it is important to be taken out of the rush of practical life, out of all the messiness, and busyness of our everyday lives, for the contemplation of the timeless and eternal realities.

Beauty is a necessary part of my ordinary life. Each day I look for those moments when my soul glimpses an occasion for beauty, not just in my surrounds but in the people I meet, and those unexpected encounters that lighten and brighten my days.

Today my life was filled with beauty. As I drove to an afternoon tea to celebrate the 89th birthday of a still practising artist, I took notice of the cloudless blue sky, the Cassia and Golden Rain trees bursting into bloom, and the pelicans as they perched on the bridge spanning the bay. We ate cake and sang happy birthday, and listened to the stories from a long and creative life, filled with passion and joy. On my way home I paused to sit by the sea and watch the myriad of colours streaking the sky as the setting sun cast its light across the water.

Now as I reflect on this day I give thanks for the loveliness of autumn, for the beauty of creation and for friendship. Again I return to John O’donahue who wrote that ‘to experience beauty is to have your life enlarged’ and at the end of this day, I feel that my life is enlarged indeed."

I am a fledgling spiritual director, a facilitator of prayer and reflection days, with a particular interest in art and prayer, and a giver of the first Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola. I live in Brisbane, Australia.