Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 110

Call for Submissions: Monk in the World Guest Post

We welcome you to submit your reflection for possible publication in our Monk in the World guest post series. It is a gift to read how ordinary people are living lives of depth and meaning in the midst of the challenges of real life.

There are so many talented writers and artists in this Abbey community, so this is a chance to share your perspective. The link to the reflection will be included in our weekly newsletter which goes out to more than 10,000 subscribers.

Please follow these instructions carefully:

Please click this link to read a selection of the posts and get a feel for the tone and quality.
Submit your own post of 700-900 wordson the general theme of "How do I live as a monk in the world? How do I bring contemplative presence to my work and/or family?" It works best if you focus your reflection on one aspect of your life or a practice you have, or you might reflect on how someone from the monastic tradition has inspired you. We invite reflections on the  practice  of living contemplatively.
Please include a head shot and brief bio(50 words max). You are welcome to include 1-2 additional images if they help to illustrate your reflection in meaningful ways.  All images should be your own.  Please make sure the file size of each the images is smaller than 1MB. You can resize your image for free here.
We will be accepting submissions between now and December 19th for publication sometime in the winter/spring of 2017.  We reserve the right to make edits to the content as needed (or to request you to make edits) and submitting your reflection does not guarantee publication on the Abbey blog, but we will do our best to include as many of you as possible.
Email Christine by December 19th with your submission and include the reflection pasted into the body of your email and attach your photo(s).

We will be back in touch with you at the latest by the beginning of January to let you know if your post is accepted, if edits are needed, and/or when we have scheduled your post to appear.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kieran Hayes

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kieran Hayes's reflection titled My Spiritual Life in Six Pieces.

I sit on a cushion on the floor, legs folded, and bring awareness to the gentle tide of the breath rising and falling on the shore of my body. I am aware of sounds, of thoughts, of feelings. I get distracted, lost in thought, and then I return again to the breath which anchors me in the present moment. I come home to myself and the now, again and again.

This practice has been a still point in my life and spiritual practice for some twenty years. I hope that it bleeds into my ordinary days and makes a positive difference to the people I meet in some way.

I find a refuge in mindfulness practice and in the awareness that perceives change but is itself changeless. But I need more and that more is Christ. As the psalmist sings, God’s love is faithful from age to age. I can learn to have faith in God’s faithfulness to me, his loving presence as I walk the twisting, muddy path of my life. In my relationship with Jesus of Nazareth and his Abba I find another still point in a fleeting world.

The world around me moves with relentless speed and is riven with conflict. I am restless and hungry and have changed so much over the years. Here I give an archaeology of my spiritual search in six pieces. These pieces are important because they help me to be still, to connect with and offer myself to God. Each is a marker on my way and symbol of a spiritual practice. If I am to live with a mind of peace, a heart of compassion, I need time to breathe, to be and to pray. I need stillness. I am on the way, I will always be on the way, but I am learning to be still on the way.

—–

Zafu is the Japanese word for a meditation cushion and is associated particularly with Zen Buddhism. The essential practice of Zen is Zazen or sitting meditation, simply sitting with the breath and observing thoughts arise and pass away. Posture is important too. I find sitting on a cushion on the floor very grounding; the feet, knees and pelvis form a triangle that gives a solid base for the trunk and head. The American Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield writes that we must learn to ‘take the one seat’, to choose a practice and commit to it through thick and thin. Mindfulness meditation is a way for me to cultivate stillness, physically, emotionally and mentally.

—–

The Zen Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has a wonderful saying: ‘Listen, listen, the wonderful sound of the bell brings me home to my true self.’ I savour this phrase when I hear the bells of the local church ringing at noon every day. I try to remember to pause, take a breath and be still for a moment. It is a call to mindfulness and also to prayer, to the presence of Christ with me. In the psalms a bell signifies celebration: ‘Come, ring out our joy to God, the living God.’ The bell is a call to awakening and to the realisation of the kingdom of God within.

—–

Japanese incense has a light fragrance and I like to see those fine threads of smoke rising before the Icon on my coffee-table altar, or to see them illumined in sunlight. Incense creates a calm atmosphere for meditation and invites me to return to my senses, to the now. I begin morning prayer by circling a stick of incense before the Icon of Jesus and one of the Mother and child; it is a gesture of love, gratitude and reverence. Incense teaches me that life is fleeting as smoke, as cherry blossoms. In stillness I am alive to its beauty, accept its transience, cultivate gratitude, and kiss the joy as it flies.

—–

On one of my earliest visits to  the Benedictine monastery of Glenstal Abbey I spoke to one of the monks about The Cloud of Unknowing, the mystical text by an anonymous 13th century monk who urges us to send up a ‘sharp dart of longing love’ towards God. Beneath the monastery church in Glenstal there is an icon chapel, a hushed and holy place. Here hangs the icon of the ‘healing Christ’, the compassionate Christ who suffers because I suffer, God’s self-portrait. In his left arm he cradles the gospels, open at Matthew 11:28-30: ‘Come to me, you who are burdened, and I will give you rest.’  His eyes are dark, starless ovals.

—–

For centuries morning and evening have been times of prayer and special closeness to God. In the monastic tradition, Lauds (meaning ‘praises’) celebrates the gift of life and the new day; Compline (meaning ‘complete’) is an entrusting of ourselves to God’s loving embrace, to night and to death. The psalms are the songs of God’s people; they are great religious poetry which gives voice to deep human emotions of joy, gratitude, fear, despair and anger. They give me permission to be fully human. A beautiful prayer at Compline from Glenstal:

As shadows overwhelm the skies

Shine in our hearts eternal light;

Stay with us, Lord, as daylight dies,

Let angels guard us through the night.

—–

This shawl was a gift from two close friends who are a couple, Tina and Danny. I associate it with their loving friendship and use it to keep warm when I am meditating, covering my knees and legs or wrapping it over my shoulders. The fringes make me think of the tasselled Jewish Tallit or prayer shawl which is worn at morning prayer as the Shema Israel, ‘Hear, O Israel’, is recited. The holiest prayer of Judaism is a reminder that God is One and a call to love the Lord with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my strength.

Kieran Hayes (b.1973) is a writer and Spiritual Director (Milltown Institute). His areas of study include desert and Benedictine spirituality, Ignatian spirituality, and contemplative prayer. He works with individuals and groups in the areas of spirituality and personal growth. In 2013 he became an Oblate of Glenstal Benedictine Abbey in County Limerick, Ireland. He lives in Furbo, County Galway, in the West of Ireland.

Join me for the Veriditas Pilgrimage in Chartres, France

Soul of a Pilgrim with Christine Valters Paintner
May 22-26, 2017

Pilgrimage is as much an inner journey as it is an outer one. You are invited to travel to the frontier of your soul to discover the hidden presence of the divine in every step you take. Christine Valters Paintner will be sharing eight stages of the pilgrim's way–from hearing the call to packing lightly to being uncomfortable to coming home—in support of making an intentional, transformative journey to your own inner "wild edges." Through stories from the Celtic spiritual tradition, contemplative practices. teaching, sharing, creative exploration, music, and movement we will uncover the ways your own journey is breaking open something new.

Together we will cultivate attentiveness to the divine in daily life through deep listening and opening ourselves to the profound gifts that arise in the midst of discomfort and mystery. Often it is at times of life transition that we are called to approach a new threshold. Pilgrimage can be a way of navigating these crossings with grace and awareness. You will come away from the retreat with powerful practices to ground and guide you, a new appreciation for the spiritual gifts of being uncomfortable, and the invitation to continue the pilgrimage of discovery in the midst of your own life.

More details and registration here>>
Your Guide for the Journey

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE is the online Abbess of AbbeyoftheArts.com, a global online monastery integrating contemplative practice and creative expression. She is a retreat leader, spiritual director, and the author of ten books on monastic spirituality and the arts including The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within. Four years ago she embarked on her own life pilgrimage which brought her eventually to Ireland where she lives with her husband and together they lead pilgrimages and writing retreats to the sacred and wild edges.

Suggestions for Reading:

The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within by Christine Valters Paintner

The Art of Pilgrimage: A Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred by Phil Cousineau

The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality by Belden Lane

Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer by Christine Valters Paintner

On Chartres:

Malcolm Miller’s Chartres

Philip Ball’s Universe of Stone

Jane Welch Williams’ Bread, Wine and Money

On the Labyrinth:

Lauren Artress’ Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice and The Sacred Path Companion: Using the Labyrinth to Heal and Transform

Jill Geoffrion’s Praying the Labyrinth

On Medieval Times:

William Manchester’s When the World was Lit Only by Fire

Samhain: Entering the Dark Half of the Year (online retreat tomorrow!) ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year. The Celts divided the year into two seasons: the season of light and the season of dark. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, marking the beginning of a whole new cycle, just as the Celtic day began at night. In the silence of darkness comes the whisperings of new beginnings.

Two significant features of this feast is the beginning of the season of darkness and the honoring of ancestors. Crossing the threshold means welcoming in the dark as a time of becoming more closely woven with the spiritual dimension of life. Winter invites us to gather inside, grow still with the landscape, and listen for the voices we may not hear during other times of year. These may be the sounds of our own inner wisdom or the voices of those who came before us.

The Celtic feast coincides with the Christian celebration of All Saint’s Day on November 1st and All Soul’s Day on November 2nd which begin a whole month in honor of those who have died. We tend to neglect our ancestral heritage in our culture, but in other cultures remembering the ancestors is an intuitive and essential way of beginning anything new. We don’t recognize the tremendous wisdom we can draw upon from those who have traveled the journey before us and whose DNA we carry in every fiber of our bodies.

This is one of my favorite times of year with the darkening days of autumn and the spreading color across the trees.  I have long loved the wisdom of the Celtic Wheel of the Year, but living here in Ireland I experience the turning points more keenly.

In the ancient Celtic imagination, this was considered to be a "thin time" when the veil between heaven and earth grew more transparent and the wisdom of our ancestors was closer to us. We are reassured that we are not alone, that we share the world with a great "cloud of witnesses" and "communion of saints" just across the veil. These next several days are a threshold space and in thresholds we are closer to the other world which is always here. The communal honoring of the dead continues for the whole month of November.

Join us for our online retreat and honor your ancestors in community>>

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Join Christine in Chartres, France next spring for the Veriditas pilgrimage!

May 22-26, 2017


 


Description:


 


Pilgrimage is as much an inner journey as it is an outer one. You are invited to travel to the frontier of your soul to discover the hidden presence of the divine in every step you take. Christine Valters Paintner will be sharing eight stages of the pilgrim's way–from hearing the call to packing lightly to being uncomfortable to coming home—in support of making an intentional, transformative journey to your own inner "wild edges." Through stories from the Celtic spiritual tradition, contemplative practices. teaching, sharing, creative exploration, music, and movement we will uncover the ways your own journey is breaking open something new.


 


Together we will cultivate attentiveness to the divine in daily life through deep listening and opening ourselves to the profound gifts that arise in the midst of discomfort and mystery. Often it is at times of life transition that we are called to approach a new threshold. Pilgrimage can be a way of navigating these crossings with grace and awareness. You will come away from the retreat with powerful practices to ground and guide you, a new appreciation for the spiritual gifts of being uncomfortable, and the invitation to continue the pilgrimage of discovery in the midst of your own life.


Registration and details at this link>>

Monk in the World Guest Post: Lori Kochanski

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Lori Kochanski's reflection on the practice of loving the one in front of me.

The woman lay dying, waiting for a blessing.

The family is waiting to learn what it would take for their little girl to be baptized.

The seeker needs to know if we have $400 to complete his asylum paper work.

The secretary is waiting for the weekly announcements to be proofread.

My husband is waiting for dinner.

The teacher is waiting to teach the moves of the East Coast swing.

I wake knowing this is the agenda of a typical day in my life.  Maybe I should just stay here, in my bed, with only the words of the stack of books on the side table as a companion for this life.  It would be lovely, I think, to just dwell in the books of fiction or contemplate the life of someone else as laid out in the memoirs.  The poetry books hold a deeper truth that could occupy me for days.  Instead, I go to the bathroom and begin the morning ritual of preparation.

Before I realize it, I am on my way out the door.  It is amazing how that happens, how I can be awake and yet not notice how I got to the moment of turning the key in the ignition of my car.  Wasn't I just in bed contemplating staying there? Oh well, I am here now.

Outside the hospital I reach for my bags.  The first contains the real stuff I always carry-wallet, phone, electronic tablet, prayer beads, lip balm, and business cards that remind others who I am.  The other bag is invisible, but just as important.  Because I made the choice to swing my legs over the side of the bed and get up I also made the choice to be present to the waiting ones on the list.  And to be a creative, contemplative professional requires an heavy, imaginary bag of practices.

Today I choose a favorite practice, one that quickly shifts my heart.  It requires loving the one in front of you.   It looks like this:  when I walk into the hospital room with the dying woman I will really be with that woman, not other distractions, seeing only her.  When I leave and travel to the home of the young family with the child who wants to know how baptism works I will be right there, looking that child in the eye.  When I look into the face of the man who needs help I will look only there.  I will even love the one in front of me when I cannot give him what he says he needs.  I will help the secretary and not think about dinner with my husband.  Then I will hug my husband and be completely with him as we eat and then dance.

The act of loving the one in front of me is called a contemplative "practice" because there is no winning or losing or attainment of greatness in this way of being.  There is only the constant call to the present breath meeting another's life breath with an intention of love.   Perpetual practice is expansive and has no culmination.  We just return to it over and over again.   It brings to life the fullness of each moment.  It reminds me that this moment is all I have and the act of love is a choice.

Lori Kochanski lives in Easton, PA, with her husband Scott.  She is a Lutheran pastor and a spiritual director who is always seeking ways forward in community through hospitality and freedom.  Lori enjoys spending time with her husband, friends and family.  She also loves cycling and being in beautiful places.

St. Brigid and the Archetype of the Healer ~ A love note from your online abbess

St. Brigid and the Fruit Tree

There was the moment

you could bear it no more.

Your eyes brimming with

great glistening drops

summoned by the hunger of

the world, the callous and

terrible things men and

women do to one another.

Your tears splashed onto

cold stony earth, ringing out

like bells calling monks to prayer,

like the river breaking open to

the wide expanse of sea.

From that salt-soaked ground

a fruit tree sprouts and rises.

I imagine pendulous pears,

tears transmuted to sweetness.

There will always be more grief

than we can bear.

There will always be ripe fruitflesh

making your fingers sticky from the juice.

Life is tidal, rising and receding,

its long loneliness, its lush loveliness,

no need to wish for low tide when

the banks are breaking.

The woman in labor straddles the doorway

screaming out your name.

You stand there on the threshold, weeping,

and pear trees still burst into blossom,

their branches hang so heavy, low,

you don’t even have to reach.

–Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest monks and artists,

In Ireland, Brigid is one of the three patron Saints of the land alongside Patrick and Columba. We don’t know many details of her life, and there is great evidence that she is part of a much older lineage extending back to the Irish triple goddess Brigid of pre-Christian times who was the goddess of poets, smithwork, and healing.

Most of what we know about St. Brigid comes from the Life of Brigid written by the monk Cogitosis in the second half of the 7th century. The Life emphasizes her healing, her kinship with animals, her profound sense of hospitality and generosity, and concern for those oppressed. These stories of the Saints are not meant to be literal or historical, but spiritual, mythical, archetypal, and psychological, resonating with the deepest parts of our souls.

In our free live video seminar Monday, October 31 I explore Brigid as the archetype of the Healer. The Healer is the one who helps us to overcome inner divisions of body, mind, soul, heart, and spirit. Healing is very different than curing. We might have an illness which does not alleviate, but the Healer within allows us to find some wisdom and grace in the experience, allows us to have some peace and ease in the midst of unknowing and pain.

Similarly, with emotional wounds, the Healer is the one who helps us to welcome in the stranger and find reconciliation and perhaps even gratitude for these parts of self that have for so long vexed us.

Healing is not so much about “doing” but about a way of “being” that lies beyond all the false divisions we make in our lives. Healing often inspires radical life changes, and brings about ways of being more in alignment with our True Self and nature.

How might your inner Healer invite you into a space of being where all your scattered parts can come together and rest in radical welcome?

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: 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.