Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 124

Sacred Time: An Online Retreat for Advent & Christmas

 

Advent invites us into the holy practice of waiting and attending the birth that is coming. Christmas calls us to celebrate that birth with wonder and awe. Our culture tells us the season should be filled with shopping and rushing. The wisdom of ancient monastic practices tells us that this is a time for pausing, savoring, and soaking in awe and wonder.

Instead of becoming overwhelmed this year during the holidays, let this be an opportunity to move into a new set of rhythms which cultivate slowness through seasonal awareness. Imagine arriving at the New Year, not exhausted, but deeply refreshed by having tuned into your own soul’s cycles and longings and honoring those.

We may fantasize that if we only had more hours in the day we could catch up with ourselves, but the truth is what we most profoundly need is a new relationship to time and practices which call us to remember that now is all there is.

Instead of “spending” time or “wasting” time, or counting “time as money,” what if you made a commitment to a new way of experiencing the moments of your days so that you created an opening to the new birth happening right now? When we bring ourselves present we touch eternity.

Click here for more details and registration>>

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Blessings for the Feasts of All Saints and Souls ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today in the Celtic seasonal calendar is the feast of Samhain and in the Christian liturgical cycle the Feast of All Saints (followed by All Souls tomorrow). It is a very special time of year when the northern hemisphere is moving toward growing darkness and is time of preparation for stillness and rest. In the Irish imagination, this is a threshold time, when the veil between worlds feels especially thin. Darkness invites us to rest into the mystery of things.

This is one of my favorite moments of the year’s unfolding. Last year at this time the belongings we had kept in storage in Seattle – two pieces of family furniture and boxes of family photos – arrived to our home in Galway, bringing a deeper sense of rootedness here for us. Having those tangible connections to our ancestors felt like a gift in those November days.

This past May, we traveled to Vienna, Austria to lead a pilgrimage group and spent some time at the beautiful Central Cemetery. This is the place where my father is buried alongside his parents. I visited his grave and encountered there a cuckoo bird circling from tree to tree, calling out to me again and again. I had never had an encounter like this before with my father’s spirit. As many of you know, much of our travel over the last several years and the time we spent living in Vienna had to do with healing this difficult relationship.

I took the cuckoo bird to be a sign of his reaching out to me and have been holding that image for the last several months, savoring the solace it brought. What puzzled me about the cuckoo bird’s appearance is that it lays its eggs in the nest of another bird, removing the eggs already there, and lets the other bird warm its own offspring to hatching.

Last week, while receiving a massage from a very gifted woman here in Galway, I had a waking dream while lying on the table in the liminal space between waking and sleeping. I have been dealing with a difficult situation and my father appeared to me saying that the eggs that had been given to me were not mine to mind and doing so would take away the nurturing from my own new birthings. I began to weep at this gift of clarity.

In the dream, my father then asked me for an embrace, and I felt such an overflow of love toward him like I have never experienced. I could suddenly see him as both his innocent child self and the grown man he had become. His parents also appeared and encircled us both with their embrace. I saw this gorgeous light in the distance, the stunning gold light of October sun. I said to the three of them that they didn’t need to stay here any longer, they could walk toward the light, and so they did.

I lay there for several minutes following and savored this encounter, it felt like such a gift. After I got dressed and went out to see my massage therapist, she said that she felt my father’s presence in the room and this beautiful golden light surrounding us both. I was stunned, because I had said nothing to her of the dream and there is no way she could have known what had transpired. It was a gift of confirmation.

I have continued to savor this opening to deeper love and freedom in the days that have followed. These are the kind of magical encounters that can happen when we open ourselves to them. Nineteen and a half years later, a great healing has come.

May you experience the thinness of the veil in your own life and may the ancestors guide you with their wisdom and love.

With great and growing love,

CHRISTINE

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo: © Christine Valters Paintner in the Vienna Central Cemetery

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Monk in the World guest post: Melinda Thomas Hansen

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melinda Thomas Hansen's reflection turning on the homing beacon.

“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.”

~ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

A table was set up outside the bookstore at Kanuga, the retreat center where my family and I spent our summer vacation. As so often happens, on our final day there I felt the stirring need to purchase a little token of our time in that scared place. A slim white paperback caught my attention.

The Mockingbird is a journal, published by Mockingbird Ministries “…that seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways. [They] do this primarily, but not exclusively, via publications, conferences, and online resources.”* Each volume has a theme and this volume, Volume 5, focused on forgiveness.  I scanned the table of contents, flipped through the beautifully laid out pages, hesitated, and put it back.

Something larger was at work.

As I moved on, perusing the other items on the table, I felt a tug, as though the book had lassoed a rope around my body and was pulling, drawing me in.

For months I have been struggling with layers of resentment and anger. For months I have been reworking the pages of my novel unable to figure out how to fix it. For years I have been lamenting that my life has, thus far, not turned out the way I envisioned it. I am not yet a bestselling author and humanitarian—a kind of literary Bono.

"Forgive me for the expectations I had of this life.

I had very specific standards that have not been met.

Either through my own failures or those around me.

That I would be Eudora Welty-meets-Mother Theresa.

That I would write tomes of wisdom whiling away my time in an urban ministry program.

Instead I am a mother who lives in the suburbs.

I occasionally remember to donate baby formula to the food pantry…"*

This was the first piece I read (and photographed with my iPhone and texted to my mother and best friend). The anonymous author continues on with an all too familiar litany of standards she set for her life, and all the many ways she struggles with acceptance and gratitude.

Next I read an interview with “The Warden of the World’s Nicest Prison” who affirmed my thoughts about incarceration but which I felt too naive to verbalize. Then I read an essay on forgiveness in marriage. After that came Hearts and Crosses by O.Henry, a story of how we hurt each other and how we forgive.

One of the main scenes in my novel that had been giving me fits was the critical moment where the protagonist forgives herself for all the ways she blamed others for her suffering, and in doing so offers the antagonist an opportunity to do the same. The essential plot and spirit of the scene was right but the setting, the dialogue, and the actions—all the basic elements of story—felt sappy and forced.

After reading Hearts and Crosses I took out my file of magazine clippings, crayons and watercolor paper, and made some Wisdom Cards. To make Wisdom Cards write a question on three or four pieces of paper, turn them over, and mix them up. That way you don't now which question you are working with as paste on images and drawings. Each card will have its own flavor. An image on one card just won’t work on another. The pieces hone in on each other and create a new whole. When the collages are finished, turn the cards over, and read the question your art-making has addressed. I always expect direct answers. “This is action a, now take action b.”  Fortunately, art is more subtle than that.

Lying in bed that night, after reading Hearts and Crosses, after making Wisdom Cards, words and pictures churned as I faded into sleep: hearts, crosses, forgiveness; the novel, my characters… decoupage… magnolias…summer heat… photographs… an antique store… a kind gesture. And there it was, how to fix the novel.

I may never be the literary Bono I envision myself to be—though I still hold out hope for that possibility. I may never truly rid myself of anger and resentment. What I need to remember is that neither of those things is the point.

What I need to remember is that it’s the process; the movement of the soul, the diving down into the dark, painful places of the heart: the resentment, the disappointment, the selfish grasping, the shame.

What I need to remember is the many ways God has, if not answered, evolved the deepest longings of my being.

How do I practice being a monk in the world? I switch on my homing beacon, and listen.

 

*The Confessional, Mockingbird Volume 5, Mockingbird Press, page 19.

** I highly recommend both Mockingbird and the book “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” (which has a fabulous, unabridged audio version).

 

Melinda Thomas Hansen is mother to a one year old, so living as a monk in the world is a bit more challenging these days. Her touchstone practices are writing, yoga–both teaching and doing–, taking walks and looking at trees. Visit her online at www.thehouseholderspath.com

 

 

 

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St. Kevin and the Blackbird + Poems from the Wild Edges ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This fall has been a season full of wonderful opportunities for journeying alongside our beloved dancing monks in person.  When you receive this love note, we will be in the midst of our third pilgrimage group in Ireland, something we love doing because we continually see this amazing landscape through new eyes and are blessed by the community that forms.

As many of you know John and I arrived in Galway almost three years ago in the midst of a life pilgrimage.  It can be hard to explain sometimes how we ended up in this place. It is certainly beautiful, perched on the edge of the ocean, with a feeling of being on the wild edges of Europe. The Irish people are genuinely warm and welcoming to us. We have ancestral connections to this land, and so something in our blood draws us to this place.

After years of claiming the path of monastic spirituality as the one most life-giving for us, it makes perfect “sense” that we would land in Ireland, a place where monasticism flourished for so many centuries in a unique form from more Roman-centered monasticism.

Here on this Irish soil we discover the sheer plenitude of monastic ruins within an hour of where we live, because it was so much a vibrant part of the culture. We immerse ourselves in the stories of saints like Brigid, Brendan, Patrick, and Columcille, hearing them whisper across the landscape.

We find a path that is more about following one’s own ripening and unfolding rather than looking for the straight path and plan. There is a wonderful story about St. Kevin, who founded the holy city of Glendalough where we led our young adult pilgrimage last spring. In his prayer, kneeling with arms outstretched and palms open, a blackbird lands in his hand and nests. He feels her laying eggs and realizes he has to stay in this position until the birds are hatched. It is a marvelous description of holy yielding of our own agendas, to the birthing happening already around and within us. (The image above is our newest dancing monk icon of St. Kevin).

This monastic path calls us to let go of our own plans. As the poet David Whyte writes, “what you can plan is too small for you to live.” This is the beauty of this ancient way. It teaches us through stories and practice and very concrete way to let go of plans and surrender to the Divine current carrying us to our own places of resurrection.

We are delighted to share with you some of the poems that pilgrim participants in our Writing on the Wild Edges retreat wrote while in the beautiful landscapes of Inismor and Inisbofin, two islands off the coast of Connemara. Click here to stop by the blog post and savor the inspiration of this sacred land.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

P.S. – If you subscribe to the wonderful journal Weavings, look for my article on “Welcoming in All of the Selves as Beloved.”

Photo: © St. Kevin dancing monk icon by artist Marcy Hall

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Poems to Savor by Pilgrims on the Wild Edges

August 30-September 7, 2015 we had 13 pilgrims join us for a very special pilgrimage and writing retreat on the wild edges of the world. We stayed on the islands of Inismor and Inisbofin, off the coast of Connemara and let the landscape inspire our creative process.

I am grateful to these dancing monks for sharing their inspiration so freely with the community. Pour a cup of tea and then savor these poems:

A Pilgrim’s Progress

She heard the call of wind and jagged earth, stones and hungry green; the raw bitter hum of want. Held to a moody sky of blue and gloom, of the spirit of rainbow and drifting cumulous, of rain and more rain; a volatile dome clothing this land.

She let the wind take her like bramble. Carried her over sharp limestone, over the courage of heather, and the green wild caught in crevices. Whipping away at her soft edges in a Pilgrim’s chant of many yesterdays to find her longing.

She let the hurt take her; reminding her of where she was and where she’d been. In that way of how the world is full of claws and serpent tongues. Of wordless stares projecting. Of the harsh spoils of thoughtlessness.

She let the wind take her in her vulnerability across the sparse hard that pilgrims had walked centuries ago to find answers to the ‘Why’? Hoping this place of stark refuge would push the questions into the heart to feel the answers.

She rolled and she tumbled. She gave no grasp to any of what might hold her to stillness. Letting what might be still settle inside her softly as her body found it’s way to the sea. Of shells, and stones, and seaweeds tangle. Of sandy grit and salty water’s healing lick.

She lay exposed in the tides ease under the sky-dome of every season’s moving. Letting the caress of home and belonging flow over her raw naked. Letting the query of her quest be her answer.

© Jeanne Adwani

 

I arise today by the grace of God,

surrounded with Christ's love,

infused with Spirit's power,

protected by Father's arm.

I arise today by the grace of God,

the Holy Three,

the Ever One.

Open me today to wonder, love, and praise,

that I might greet Christ in all people,

that I might see Christ in all places.

Awaken me today to wonder, love, and praise. Amen.

© Carol K. Everson

 

Pilgrim

How do you know to listen to the angel

who could be deer, could be skunk,

could be simply the brook water rushing

past in a constant murmur of invitation?

How do you know when the wandering

is complete, the place you are meant to be

sometimes the place you began, sometimes

so far away that everything familiar drops away

like a woman shedding veils in the moonlight;

all that is left of you is skin and soul?

Who are these saints, wandering until

they reach their place of resurrection?

You hold your doubts like burning coals

scorching your palms, smoke blinding you

to the dream just ahead

stumbling because you cannot see clearly

the one place you were meant to inhabit,

the island of your soul.

© Nita Penfold

“Why Are You Here?”

Why am I here?

to love and be loved

to listen …

and yield to the whisperings

of sacred wild edges

to bless and be blessed

open to spaciousness and wholeness

to dream, dance and sing

songs of gratitude …

to love and be loved

all the days of my life.

© Anne Wicks, 2015

Photo © Anne Wicks – Kilmurvey Beach, Inismor, Ireland

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Earth Monastery Project Grant Winners

The Earth Monastery Project is a small grant project we administer to help encourage projects which nourish an earth-cherishing consciousness through contemplative practice and creative expression.

We were delighted with our batch of applications and have selected the following four to receive a small grant for the first half of 2016. We will post more details as they complete their work and report back to us.

Laurel Dykstra, Vancouver, BC, Canada  

Earth-Bible Curriculum Boxes: to encourage multi-age (3-11 years) groups of children to engage with scripture and creation.

Sandi Howell, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Creating a series of art photographs to explore the intersection of nature and humanity and generate reflection and conversation around possibilities of collaboration versus dominance.

Monica McDowell, Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

The Girl with a Gift: a mustard seed project to distribute this work of eco-fiction, coming of age novel to churches and generate discussion on eco issues.

Philip Wood, Manchester, United Kingdom

Litany for the Wayside: a liturgical and poetic sequence with visual and musical responses

To learn more about the Earth Monastery Project and support this work click here>>

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Monk in the World guest post: Terrie Marie Childers

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Terrie Marrie Childers' reflection on responding to God's invitations.

A few years ago I returned to the workplace full time, accepting a position as the administrative assistant to the police chief in our town. I enjoy working with the officers and this job was definitely a divine appointment. However, as a contemplative individual, the long work day in a secular environment often leaves my soul parched and thirsty for spiritual refreshment.

The “Monk in the World” concept has been such a helpful perspective for me and this dear community is a continual encouragement. As I studied the commitments described in the Monk Manifesto I began to see each one as an invitation to intimacy with the Holy One. Gradually, I embraced the practice of being attentive and responsive to the invitations presented to me in the middle of every ordinary day.

My morning drive down backroads on the way to the station invites me to deepen my kinship with creation as I notice the beauty of untouched nature. My break times at the office invite me to step away for a few precious moments of silence to “be still and know.” My interactions with prisoners in our small jail invite me to show hospitality to strangers and demonstrate the unconditional love of Christ to individuals outside my typical social circle.

As I practice expectant awareness regarding these divine invitations I’ve noticed a few things.

First, invitations are personal. When I receive a gilded invitation to an extravagant birthday party, I can’t transfer that to another person and send them in my stead. The request is not for a body, any body, to be present. It is for ME, uniquely and personally.

Second, invitations compete for my time and attention. In order to respond affirmatively to an invitation, I must refuse other possible engagements. I must value that invitation above other entertainments, usually because I value that relationship above others.

Finally, invitations hold expectations for a response. I must make a choice, I must RSVP, I must show up – or the invitation is worthless.

Most of the invitations I acknowledge are for a short sacred pause or a brief moment of Presence. Not long ago, however, while enjoying a weekend getaway, God gave me a surprising and delightful invitation of a more substantial nature. My friend and I were on a private retreat featuring large chunks of time for silence, prayer and study as well as walks in nature and art making. On the second morning I hurried through my morning devotions (we must adhere to our schedules, you know) when God stopped me in my tracks with a gentle whisper, “Linger with Me.”  I realized that in my compulsive haste to get on to the next scheduled event, I was neglecting the One with whom I longed to abide. This is what I wrote in my journal regarding that encounter:

Yesterday as I was finishing

my brief morning prayers

Jesus invited me to

linger a little longer.

What a sweet offer of Presence!

Why hurry to some distracted busyness?

Why scramble to empty preoccupations?

Why rush to a chaotic and choking schedule?

Sacred life is lived

quiet, deep and slow!

Time for stillness and waiting and listening.

Time for introspection and questions and wondering.

Time for just resting in the bliss of Christ’s Presence –

kissing His feet and whispering tender words of devotion.

If God, who holds the planets in their orbits

and binds the oceans to their limits;

who ordains governments

and raise up kingdoms;

who sustains my every breath

and decrees my every heart beat…

If the sovereign and supreme

King of the universe

has time for me…

Why not linger a little longer?

I am convinced that divine invitations abound and are liberally scattered through our hurried days, if only we would notice them. My prayer for each of us is that we would be attentive to God’s whispered invitations and that when we hear them our response will be a resounding and ecstatic YES!

I live in rural Texas with Doug, my darling husband of 34 years. I am mom to my two grown children and “Nunny” to my four grandarlings.  I am passionate about art journaling and enchanted by words and in my free time I can be found outdoors with my notebooks, paints and prayer beads, trysting with the Beloved.

 

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Honoring Saints and Ancestors

Dearest monks and artists,

We are approaching the Celtic feast of Samhain, the great doorway into the dark half of the year in the northern hemisphere and a time when the veil is considered especially thin. This is my favorite time of year, when I feel the most energized and my heart comes alive to the wisdom of those who have walked before me. I share with you a short excerpt from our Honoring Saints and Ancestors online self-study retreat:

Psychologist Carl Jung wrote extensively about the collective unconscious which is this 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.

He even believed it comprises our animal ancestry which existed longer in time than our human existence. It is the place where archetypes emerge – those symbols and experiences that appear across time and cultures. The stories of our ancestors are woven into the fabric of our very being. As the poet May Sarton writes: “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.”

Jung wrote:

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. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.

The invitation for this season ahead is to remember and honor these stories which live inside of us, many of them unfinished or incomplete. We let the “lost human voices speak through us” and perhaps discover our own deepest longings are woven together with theirs. Consider spending some time in your journal holding this image of offering space for the lost human voices of your ancestors to speak. What stories might they tell? What wisdom might they offer?

With great and growing love,

CHRISTINE

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

www.AbbeyoftheArts.com

Photo: © Christine Valters Paintner on Inchgoaill island in Ireland

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Monk in the World guest post: Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Keren Dibbens-Wyatt's reflection on singing your song.

Every morning I practice centering prayer and I commune with the divine, and I usually get interrupted at some point by three hard of hearing old ladies who stand outside cackling and shrieking with laughter, whilst they completely fail to control the Jack Russell that belongs to one of them. This goes on for at least half an hour. The dog drives me mad with its incessant yapping, the women with their nails-on-blackboard voices. This is their gossip time and it happens rain or shine, but at unpredictable moments so that I cannot plan around it.

Photo by Jeannie Kendall and used with permission

One minute I’m feeling whole and at peace, the next I am face to face with my shadow side as I find myself harbouring a desire to own a bazooka. The world seems to always knock us back down to earth when we are trying to make the spiritual life a priority.  So how do we deal with it?

Well, one helpful perception the Lord gave me is the idea that everyone is singing their own song, whether they are a Jack Russell, a sparrow, a cantankerous writer or a bilious old lady. Sometimes it’s not the one he’d have chosen for them, but it is their own, and they are entitled to sing it, just as I’m entitled to sing my own song of meaningful silence. The fact that one encroaches on another is just the way it is. In this imperfect world, dancers step on each other’s toes, singers sing without consideration of harmony.

Not everyone sings their song in tune. Some screech, some are so busy trying to sing someone else’s song that they never find their own. Still others try to sing the song that they think they are supposed to be singing, the one that will please others, conditioned by the rules and pressures and ill-fitting melodies of the world, so that barely a note in ten is their own.

To know your own song requires a lot of listening and a willingness to learn the tune. Often, it requires silence.  The notes may come quietly, like a tinkling of bottle tops in a tree, a lullaby that rises from deep inside your soul. Or they may come thick and fast like raindrops in a thunderstorm, Wagnerian and powerful.

Whatever it sounds like, your song will sit happily in your soul and start proclaiming its right not only to be there and be welcomed, but to be sung.

So we start out tentatively, a few notes at first. Maybe we clap our hands over our mouths at the strangeness of the sounds, or at the shock of hearing truth emanating from our inner selves. Perhaps someone else might tell us to shut up.  More often than not those naysaying fears will come from inside of us, from that inner critic that insists on appraising everything instantly for merit, usually impatiently and in error, like a bread inspector constantly pulling the loaves out of the oven whilst they are trying to rise and bake.

But, if we persevere, the sounds will come. The notes will become less wobbly and more buoyant with confidence, and because they feel and sound so right to the ears of our listening hearts, that long lost stardust music will make its way onto canvas, onto blank pages, into pulpits and pianos and classrooms, it will mark clay and wood, iron and gold, and sing your true self all over your friendships, your interests, your knowledge, relationships and your life.

Whatever we are made to do, from inside there is holy music rising to help us on our way, and we shall come to life as we learn to sing it, acknowledging that the sledgehammer, the robin, the car alarm and the world’s gossipy old ladies all have their songs to sing as well. At these times of interruption and frustration, we can feel whacked out of kilter and dissonant, and we must allow those shadow feelings to birth compassion and the giving of space to others. There must be an acceptance and a waiting for this too to pass, and a stilling till we can let our song swell again.

Such moments are perhaps geared to bring forth a generosity of spirit, a hospitality in our surroundings and sound waves, the very air a harbour of welcome. But I’m not quite there yet and at times the bazooka urge is fearsomely great. I want my quiet and I want it now! So I will practice what I preach and sit across from my sulking inner contemplative, and smile at her, and hold her hands whilst we both breathe deep and admit our desire for the tide to hurry, laughing at our own stupidity and hugging our own humanity, and hearing more notes to sing.

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a writer and contemplative with a passion for prayer and the edification of women. She longs to draw others into deeper relationships with the Lord. Keren is the author of Positive Sisterhood, a handbook for living out Christian feminism, and you can connect with her at www.kerendibbenswyatt.com

 

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Vienna Monk in the World Pilgrimage – November 12-20, 2016

Join us in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria where we will stay in a Benedictine guesthouse right in the city center. The Advent markets will be going up around town, illuminating Vienna with a festive atmosphere. We will make journeys out to see other beautiful monasteries as well including Cistercian, Augustinian, and Benedictine. This is a city to make both the monk and artist’s hearts delight!

Click here for more details and to register>>

We offer pilgrimages to Ireland, Germany, and Austria. You can visit our calendar to see other dates and if a program is full, email us to be added to the waiting list.

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