Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 120

Embracing a Surplus – A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Last year my word was “dwell” – an invitation to root myself even more in this place I call home. I keep falling more in love with Ireland, the landscape, the stories, the people, the seasons. It was a wonderful year of deepening friendships and widening community, and even more of a sense of how I am truly called here to this place where I thrive.

A couple of summers ago I was pondering quite a bit how to make this work I love so much sustainable energetically. 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.

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 call of the monk in them. What makes this monastic 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?

There are, of course, seasons of life which sometimes demand more from us energetically. It has been three and a half years since John and I embarked on our life pilgrimage which uprooted us from our long-time beloved home in Seattle and sent us to Vienna, Austria for six months and then on to Galway, Ireland where we have now been for three full years. So much moving and transition over time demanded a lot of inner resources. This past year with my invitation to “dwell” I found an inner shift, where I no longer had to tend so much to the energy of transition. In some ways, I feel as if my body finally trusts that I am not going to make it uproot and move countries again for a very long while.

I am deepening into this new season of life, not one marked by so much change and wandering, but one committed to stability for the long season ahead. One where I fall back in love with the sacred ordinary details of daily life: cherishing old and new friendships, shopping at the market and cooking for nourishment, celebrating the vibrant creative community we have here, enjoying long walks along Galway bay and noticing something new each time, showing up to my computer each day to write from my heart, swimming, dancing, swooning over life’s moments.

I am looking forward to discovering how surplus is inviting me into a deep kind of trust that there will be enough, more than enough, time, money, love.

I am delighted to have a poem published this week on the wonderful website Headstuff, click here to take a look at “This is How the World is Saved.”

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Painter

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This is How the World is Saved (poem by Christine)

I am so delighted to have my poem "This is How the World is Saved" featured this week at the wonderful website Headstuff and to launch their Revolution NOW series for 2016! It is a poem about the grace of the ordinary.

Click to head on over and read it>>

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Winners of Give Me a Word 2016 Random Drawing and Word Cloud

Thank you to everyone who participated in our annual Give Me a Word! We had over 1700 in the mini-retreat and over 650 leave their words at our blog post here.

Above is a word cloud composed of our community words. If you don't see your word visible, please trust that it dwells in the spaces as an essential element to the whole.

We are delighted to announce the random drawing winners:

One signed copy of either  Soul of a Pilgrim ,  Eyes of the Heart ,  The Artist's Rule , and Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire (winner's choice!): Judy (Hope), Alison (Spaciousness), Kristen Vincent (Trust), Kate (Trust)


One space in Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year: Mary T. Migliorelli (Completion)


4 people will win their choice of self-study online classes from the following:  Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert: A Self-Study Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen ,  Soul of a Pilgrim: An Online Art Retreat ,  Seasons of the Soul ,  Lectio Divina : The Sacred Art of Reading the World , or Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Contemplative Practice: Donna Herzfeldt-Kamprath (Grounded), Maureen (Balance), Rosemary Palmer Hall (Authentic), Valerie Hess (Restore)

I have sent out an email to the winners, so if your name appears above look for those instructions in your in-box.

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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 the power of a word:

word

As the seasons shift again and the year moves into what I think of as its dying arc, I have been prompted yet again to return to the word I was given at the end of Advent last year: Welcome.

Welcome is all ‘about’ answering the Spirit's invitation to listen, live and love more deeply as I follow in the footsteps of the Way to and with Christ. It is an all embracing word: whatever arrives in this day will come; its coming is beyond my power to control; and further, this coming will be ‘well’, in a way which will most probably be completely beyond my comprehension. My definition of welcome needs must be expansive and encompassing, and as I have been exploring its meanings and themes I have been reminded of TS Eliot’s echo of Julian of Norwich’s words, 

And all shall be well and

All manner of the thing shall be well

The example of faith that these echoes proffer to me is a particular challenge  – and comfort – when I find myself unmoored by periods of severe depression or struggling with the necessity of long periods of retreat from the world by a bad patch of ill health.  Welcome assures me that fear is not the final word, wherever my explorations will take me.

Part of my recent commitment to unravelling the mysteries embedded in welcome is praying Thomas Keating's famous 'welcoming prayer' each morning before I begin my period of centering prayer.  I am finding it draws together strands of definitions I have already glimpsed and throws open the windows of my soul to other meanings:

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know that it is for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure,

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and God ’ s action within.

Amen.

Praying this prayer is not easy – at all!  The challenge to ‘let go’ of the key drivers that underlie and inform all of my behaviour brings to the fore all my fears in one fell swoop.  I am presently finding it difficult to get past the second line: that welcome is ‘about’ healing, even though it was partly recognising this very need of God in every way that brought me to this word for this year.  But ‘everything … is for my healing’?  I know that embedded in here is the Invitation: the possibility that, through the presence of the Holy Spirit opening my eyes to noticing what keeps me from God,  all my reactions to whatever arrives this day may lead me into closer relationship with God.  The Invitation is the beckoning of possibility – that all may be redeemed by Grace.  This is the freedom I am continually offered, and repeatedly fail to see.  As St Ignatius says, ‘there are very few people who realise what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands, and let themselves be formed by his grace.’

For all the difficulties I create for myself, on some mornings I have a glimmer of the possibility of understanding. This creates a hope in me which prays with Wendell Berry that since it is

A grace living here as we live,

Move my mind now to that which holds

Things as they change.

 

(1982.IV, A Timbered Choir)

This tension between holding/being held in stasis and flux is a very real presence in my life.  For example, I had set aside the last month for writing a new project. I was excited about the creative and spiritual challenge of this form of service and was certain that I had also been offered this project as an opportunity for my work to reach a new audience, and who knew what possibilities after that?  And yet, I have spent nearly the whole month lying in bed, unable even to dictate.  I will miss my publishing deadline, and will not fulfil my contract as it stands.

The challenge of welcome becomes very applicable at this moment.  The challenge of welcome intimately involves me in the process of the letting go, over and again, of creative opportunities that failed to happen; or those that have happened and failed to materialise my original vision or do justice to my inspiration.  Even more crucially, welcome is ‘about’ letting go of those times, photographs, prayers, essays, poems which did come close to expressing an iota of the wonder of God, so that the Spirit may take them wherever is most needful; so that I do not mistake them for God.

The challenge of welcome asks me in not to grasp onto all this ‘failure’, ’loss’, or ‘success’. Welcome wishes to release me from the possibility of mistaking these activities as signs of my worth and identity.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

       As good, nay, better, perchance: is this your comfort to me?…

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?

       Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?

       Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good!

(Robert Browning ‘ Abt Vogler ')

Hope and Gratitude needs be my only response to welcome.  And although I continually fall short in this on a daily basis, it remains true that this is what my soul needs for its healing. Only from this will come the kind of soul-making inspiration to see where my embodied creativity can join long enough with the Spirit to receive a word or an image that might aid others to see the Holy. Here. Now.

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 (http://shotattenpaces.blogspot.co.uk).

 

 

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The Elements as Wise Guides and Companions | January 29, 2016

10.00am – 4.30pm | Arrupe Room, Milltown, Ranelagh, Dublin 6

Join me in Dublin for a day of retreat with the AISGA (All Ireland Spiritual Guidance Association, non-members welcome to register).

As we approach the feast of Imbolc and St Brigid, we will gather together to pause and listen for how each of the four elements of wind, fire, water, and earth might offer us wisdom and guidance for the season ahead. As the earth reawakens to new life we will listen to the seed rumblings in our own bellies. Through song, gentle movement, writing, photography, reflection, stillness, and conversation we will let the gifts of nature inspire our creative longing and vision. You will come away from the day reconnected and refreshed. No art experience necessary, just a willingness to explore!

Advance registration is required at AIGSA.ie

More details here>>

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New Year and Epiphany Blessings ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

New Year blessings to you!

I love the Epiphany gospel story (in some churches celebrated January 6th and some next Sunday) and I offer you a reprise of a reflection on the invitations this text has to offer to us:

The story of the magi offers us a template for an archetypal journey, that is, one we are all invited to make. We can find ourselves in the text if we have ever longed to follow an inkling into the long night knowing there were gifts awaiting us.

Follow the star to where it leads

The story begins with the magi calling upon the grace of night vision.  Navigation in ancient times was largely by stars and constellations. Travelers had to know the night sky and trust the path through darkness and unknowing.  As you cross this threshold into the New Year, what is the star beckoning you in the night? As you stand under a black sky of unknowing which star is shimmering? The star might be a particular practice, which when you commit to following it, will guide you in a holy direction. It might be a word to guide you for the year.
Embark on the journey, however long or difficult

Herod gathers all his chief priests and scribes to find out more about this holy birth. Instead of searching out for himself, he sends the magi on his behalf. While Herod seeks outside advice and send others, the magi make the journey for themselves. Where are you tempted to trust others to make the journey for you, perhaps in reading books about the spiritual journey but never practicing yourself? How might you own your journey more deeply in the coming year?
Open yourself to wonder along the way

The scriptures tell us the magi were “overjoyed at seeing the star.” I like to imagine them practicing this kind of divine wonderment all along the journey there. Moments which spoke to the sacred call. When we lose our sense of wonder our hearts become hardened and cynical, we forget to believe in magical possibilities. As you enter into a new cycle of the earth’s turning, how might you embrace the gift of wonder? What practices open your heart?
Bow down at the holy encounters in messy places

When the magi enter the messy, earthy place of the manger, it says they bow down and prostrate themselves. Prostration is an act of humility and honor, as well as full-body connection with the earth. As you encounter the sacred in the most ordinary of places, how might you express this embodied appreciation and honor?
Carry your treasures and give them away freely

The magi reveal the gifts they have brought of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold represents the honor brought to a King, frankincense is a connection to the divine by raising our prayers heavenward, and myrrh a holy oil of anointing.   What are the treasures you carry with you into the New Year? How might you offer them even more generously to others in the months to come?
Listen to the wisdom of dreams

The magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod and they listen to this night wisdom. The scriptures are filled with stories of dreams delivering important messages and facilitating discernment. Our own night dreams arrive unbidden laden with mystery and meaning.  In the New Year, how might you honor these stories which emerge from the darkness and surrender of sleep?
Go home by another way

After receiving the gift of the dream, they choose another way home. In truth, after any journey of significance, there is no going back the same way as before. We always return with new awareness if we have been paying attention.   What is the usual path you have traveled which has become suffocating? How this year call forth new directions in your own life? Is there something symbolic of the new way home which you could carry with you like a talisman?

These stories carry ancient treasures for us: guidance and wisdom along the way. Ultimately we turn inward to discover our own call, our own treasures to share, the dreams emerging in silent spaces.

I invite you to find a window of time in these next few days to ponder this story and these questions in your heart and see what insights they awaken for you. 

Let this New Year’s be different. Instead of making resolutions which only reinforce a sense of internal dissatisfaction, follow the holy star in a community of kindred souls and dancing monks. Each of us has a different way to follow, but together we share our moments of wonder and grace which amplifies and multiplies them. I am so glad you are here.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo: © Christine Valters Paintner at Heiligenkreuz monastery near Vienna, Austria

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The Promise of Holy Darkness ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Advent is my favorite liturgical season of the year. Images of waiting, darkness, and birthing make my soul sing.  We are each given time and space to grow more welcoming to unknowing, where so much promise and possibility dwell.  During Advent we honor a God who is far beyond our own imaginations and who calls us into the fullness of our own horizons.

The 17th century German mystic Angelus Silesius wrote, “I must be the Virgin and give birth to God." He describes the call of this time: to birth the holy in the midst of our lives, wherever we find ourselves. This is not something that waits until we have more time or space or money. We birth the holy right here, right now.

Birthing is a messy process with lots of unknowns along the way. Birthing the holy demands that we release control and let the journey take us where it will.  This is a practice of cultivating trust in the organic unfolding of my life. If I make space to listen to the deep desires of my heart and I follow those, not knowing exactly where they will take me, I find myself being led to beautiful and exhilarating landscapes.

We hear of “birthing pains” because there is a physical and spiritual stretching apart as we make way for unleashing new life into the world. The poet David Whyte writes "What you can plan is too small for you to live." The real adventure of life begins when I release my own plans and allow myself to birth what is being brought forth within me.

During this time that we wait for God's coming enfleshed, I pay close attention to my dreams, those nighttime visions that come to show me something new. An angel appeared in a dream to Joseph to tell him to wed Mary even though she was already pregnant. I listen for what holy invitations are being whispered to my own heart that might seem hard to believe in the scrutiny of daylight.

God comes into the world through dreams of daring to break through perceived boundaries. We need the night vision of Advent to receive them.

May you be blessed with the illumination of holy darkness in the days ahead. May Christmas arrive as gift of unexpected surprise.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo: © Christine Valters Paintner

PS – We will be taking a short break from the weekly and daily emails for the next couple of weeks for a time of rest, stillness, and sabbatical. See you again on January 3rd.

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Spaces Available for 2016 Ireland Pilgrimages

Last week we added one last set of dates for pilgrimage in Ireland this coming year: August 30-September 7, 2016.  We filled several of those spaces and had a bit of shifting around from other dates, so right now we have the following availability: (click links to go to pages with descriptions)

Writing on the Wild Edges in Ireland – May 3-11, 2016 (ONE SPACE)

Monk in the World: Pilgrimage to the Sacred Edge of Ireland – August 30-September 7, 2016 (THREE SPACES)

The Soul's Slow Ripening: Monastic Wisdom for Discernment – Pilgrimage in Ireland – September 20-28, 2016 (TWO SPACES AVAILABLE)

Join our intimate community of 12 pilgrims for a journey to the sacred edge of Ireland based in the wonderful city of Galway!

If you prefer to wait until 2017, let us know and we will add you to the advance notice list when those dates are published in the spring.

We also have just a few spaces left for our pilgrimage experience in Vienna, Austria next November 12-20, 2016. Come to one of the most beautiful cities in the world with us and visit stunning monasteries and savor the music, architecture, and food. We will explore contemplative practice for contemporary life.

More details on our Vienna journey>>

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Monk in the World guest post: Jean Wise

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jean Wise's reflection on the power of silence:

Rediscovering Silence

I love words. I love taking sounds and syllables and dance with them on a page either in my journal or in my work as a writer. My ears tingle with the sound of words as they roll from my tongue in speaking or in song.

Words have their benefits. They form a container for me to hold reason, a sense of control and clarity and dare I say, my ego. We live in a society where what we do and what we accomplish drives our value and in words we find meaning in this chaotic world.

Lately I have been listening to live streaming and podcasting. I enjoy learning and it is through the words and wisdom of others I grow. I listen as I walk each morning. I listen when I take an afternoon break. Don’t tell anyone, but I have even listened in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep.

But I have been gorging on words lately, an overconsumption of words – written and spoken. I soon realized something was amiss. I felt off kilter; unbalanced. My attention span shrunk with all the distractions. Our culture of noise encompassed me and coated me with its desire and wants and expectations. Too many words fragmented my sense of being.

Then I read a statement from Richard Rohr: “As a general spiritual rule, you can trust this: The ego gets what it wants with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence.”

Silence – I forgot to hold onto its promise and presence. As a dancing monk here on the Abbey of the Arts, I forgot the very first principle of our Monk Manifesto.

"I commit to finding moments each day for silence and solitude, to make space for another voice to be heard, and to resist a culture of noise and constant stimulation."

Time to restart once again with a basic spiritual habit that I know nourishes my spirit: silence.

The external noise and internal chattering will never cease until I intentionally find pockets of silence to rest. To center, to become myself again.  To enter my inner cloister for refreshing peace. To hear that true voice within me.

What kept me wrapped up in noise instead of pursuing silence sooner? I finally realized it was fear. Fear of what I would miss by not staying connected. Society has even given a name for this phenomenon: FOMO: Fear of Missing Out.

I used to think practicing silence was an occasional habit to embrace but more and more I am seeing it as an essential daily, even a foundational piece. I need to let go of the words that contain and refrain and dive into the pool of refreshing silence. There I will find freedom without constraints. In silence I come before the throne of God just to listen and to be.

I love words but need to remember they are just tools, which have their purpose at times, but also not all the time. If I cling too tightly to them, my hand and my heart cramps with its tension. It is in letting go and entering silence I find the important work of my life.

So I return to silence with a deep thirst. I realize once again I crave silence more than words.

I begin my mornings with contemplation. I sit in my chair. Light a candle, Close my eyes and deep breathe. I take in silence and expel the noise within. I invite God to fill this newly opened spacious room in my heart and mind.

I find pockets of quiet throughout the day. I pause and pay attention to that present moment. I stop, look around, and listen deeply.

I end my days soaking in silence. The dark whispers its invitation to sit still before I sleep and appreciate the gift of that day with gratitude.

Coming back to silence I am amazed how wonderfully refreshing these moments are in the midst of a noisy chaotic work week.

Henri Nouwen wrote:  “In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me – naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken – nothing.  It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something."

"Silence is God's first language," wrote John of the Cross.

I do love words. But even more I love to dwell in the space between the words or even beyond all language. Silence opens within us a space to rest, regroup and to return to the world restored and refocused. The practice of silence is a simple, essential and powerful way to stay connected with ourselves in a noisy inner and outer world.

Jean Wise is Journalist/writer, blogger, speaker, and retreat leader. She is spiritual director, RN, and an Associate in Ministry, living in northwest Ohio. Her passion is to help others deepen their walk with God. She writes twice a week on her blog at: www.healthyspirituality.org. She is the author of Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room: An Advent Devotional.

 

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Give Me a Word 2016: 7th Annual Abbey Giveaway

SHARE YOUR WORD FOR 2016

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to God and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner's fire and be stripped down to one's holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered.

Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word –  this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – "give me a word" we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into.  The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.

What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?

Share your word in the comments section below by January 6, 2016 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).

A FREE 12-DAY ONLINE MINI-RETREAT TO HELP YOUR WORD CHOOSE YOU. . .

As in past years, I am offering all Abbey newsletter subscribers a gift: a free 12-day online mini-retreat with a suggested practice for each day to help your word choose you and to deepen into your word once it has found you. Even if you participated last year, you are more than welcome to register again.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and you will receive a link to start your mini-retreat today. Your information will never be shared or sold. (If you are already subscribed to the newsletter, look for the link in today's email).

WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ON JANUARY 6TH!

We are delighted to offer some wonderful gifts from the Abbey:

One signed copy each of Soul of a Pilgrim , Eyes of the Heart , The Artist's Rule , and Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire .
One space in Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
4 people will win their choice of self-study online classes from the following: Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert: A Self-Study Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen , Soul of a Pilgrim: An Online Art Retreat , Seasons of the Soul , Lectio Divina: The Sacred Art of Reading the World , or Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Contemplative Practice .

So please share your word (and it would be wonderful to include a sentence about what it means for you) with us below.

Subscribe to the Abbey newsletter to receive ongoing inspiration in your in-box. Share the love with others and invite them to participate.  Then stay tuned – on January 6th we will announce the prize winners!

If this is your first time commenting at the Abbey, or you are including a link, your comment will need to be approved before appearing, which usually takes less than 24 hours.

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