Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 131

Monk in the World guest post: Rachel Regenold

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Rachel Regenold's reflection on the way creatures can become our soul friends and spiritual guides:

A Monk with Four Paws

Amos is a monk in the world in disguise with a shaggy coat, four paws, and an irrepressible sweetness. In the nearly seven years since he rescued me – though officially I rescued him by adopting him from a golden retriever rescue – he has taught me the most important lessons of my life. Really, they have been lessons that only the gentlest of guides could teach by modeling them over and over and over again. Which is why he had to be a dog to teach me, because I never would have listened to a human being.

Keep an open heart. Though not immediately noticeable, Amos’s nose and lip are scarred. I imagine the injuries might have been caused by a dog fight because he spent the first four and a half years of his life in a shed and dog run as a backyard breeder’s stud dog. He was always kenneled with a female to inspire coupling. Perhaps a poor match was made. Nonetheless, Amos loves other dogs and assumes that they are all his friends. Somehow he never learned the proper social graces of dogdom though and irritates some newly-met dogs by sniffing just a little too long. They growl or snap and Amos swings his big head away and moves on. He doesn’t hold a grudge. The next day he’ll try to say hello to the very same dog again unless I encourage him to keep moving.

Have faith. Amos was scared of everything when his foster family delivered him to me. Every noise startled him. He parked himself in the middle of my living room floor for the first two days until my neighbor rolled his garbage bin down the driveway for Monday morning pick-up. Amos lumbered behind my love seat and spent the next two weeks there except when I made him come out.

I was pretty certain that I had made a horrible mistake in adopting him when I called a dog trainer named Tonja for help. I explained Amos’s origins and behaviors and that I thought he needed some training one-on-one in my home. “No,” Tonja replied firmly, “this dog needs to be socialized. He needs to be in class around other dogs and people.” She softened a bit, adding, “No matter what this dog has been through, once he learns that you won’t lead him into harm, he’ll do anything you ask.”

This seemed unlikely to me at our first obedience class as Amos sprawled on the cool floor, unwilling to get up, interact, or accept treats. The only time he did get up was to pee behind my chair in front of the whole class, disappointing my hope that at the first class he would surprise me with a miraculous change in behavior.

Instead, Amos waited till the second class. We did our homework that first week and when we arrived at the next class, Amos showed off his new-found ability to sit for a treat when he wasn’t trying to say hello to the other dogs or accepting treats from our trainer’s husband. “He’s like a completely different dog!” Tonja remarked. He was. It took many months for him to become completely comfortable in my home and a whole year to learn how to walk on a leash. But his faith that I would always love him and never lead him into harm made it all possible.

Enjoy the little things. Poet Mary Oliver says, “It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.” I suspect that dogs never disappoint God. Amos is delighted by meal time, going outside, seeing me come home, and chasing squirrels. Every single day.

Some puppy-mill dogs come to love the outdoors after spending their lives in a cage, but Amos decided from early on that indoor life was the best. He hurriedly went potty and on walks so he could go back indoors. This past summer he started sitting in the yard when we went outside. At first I thought he must be giving his arthritic back legs a rest. Then I noticed that as he sat Amos would look around and raise his muzzle to sniff the air as his silky ears fluttered in the wind. He was savoring his time outdoors, I realized. Not a lot of time. Just a moment or two, then he’d meander a little ways and raise his leg to pee before going back inside. And every once in a while he laid down in the yard as I petted him, sometimes even allowing himself to wriggle around on his back. Watching Amos savor the outdoors for the first time in his 11 years is one of my favorite little things.

I dread the day when Amos will teach me the hardest lesson of all – letting go. Then I will have to learn how to live without him.

Rachel and Amos Regenold live in Iowa. In her spare time Rachel enjoys blogging about finding meaning in everyday life at www.iowaseeker.com and studying to be a yoga teacher.  Amos devotes all of his time to helping Rachel be a better human being.

April 30: Yield – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Yield

We are called to yield in each moment to a greater presence at work in our lives. We must surrender our egos and our willfulness for a larger wisdom to move through us.

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

Reflective Question: Can you allow a holy pause and notice where you are “forcing things," and then simply let them go?

 

 

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

April 29: Wild – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Wild

The spiritual journey calls us out into the wild places where God is not tamed and domesticated. We are asked to release our agendas and discover the holy direction for our lives.

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

Reflective Question: How will you answer the invitation to yield your desire to control the unfolding direction of your life?

 

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

April 28: Fullness – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Fullness

God does not call us to one particular path that we scrutinize and discover. God calls us to the fullness of living which can be manifested in a multitude of ways.

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

Reflective Question: Can you learn to trust yourself enough to hear the voice of the Divine calling you to what is truly life-giving?

 

 

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

April 27: Momentum – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Momentum

On a true pilgrimage, we soon discover that the journey has its own rhythm and momentum. We realize, if our hearts are listening, that there are secret destinations that reveal themselves as our path unfolds.

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

Reflective Question: As you set out upon your pilgrimage, can you leave behind your maps and guides, your desire to know beforehand which path to follow, and loosen your grip on plans and certainties?

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

Wandering for the Love of God: Shepherd – Pilgrimage of Resurrection through Creative Practice (a love note)

This is the fourth in a series of eight reflections over the season of Easter on making a pilgrimage of resurrection.

Word for Today: Shepherd

In the gospel reading for this fourth Sunday of Easter, Jesus offers us the image of the good shepherd. Living in Ireland, flocks of sheep are very much a part of the landscape and integral to the farming economy. The “good shepherd” is described as the one who cares deeply for the flock, who is personally invested in the thriving of each and every one. The shepherd is the one who guides to safe pastures.

In the tradition of Celtic monasticism, a very unique practice of pilgrimage arose called peregrinatio. The Irish monks would set sail in a small boat called a coracle, without oar or rudder, and let the winds and current of divine love carry them to the “place of their resurrection.” The river or sea would bring them to a place of rest that they had not chosen themselves. The impulse for the journey was always love. It was a practice of profound trust in the One who guides and shepherds us to the place of new life.

This metaphor for journeying was a powerful one that shaped much of their vision of the way of the Christian spiritual life. Peregrinatio was the call to wander for the love of God. It is a word without precise definition in English and is a very particular kind of pilgrimage rooted in a willingness to yield to holy direction. This wandering was an invitation into letting go of our own agendas and discovering where God was leading.

In this profound practice, God becomes both destination and way, companion and guiding force. God is in the call to the journey, unfolding of the journey, and greets us at the end of the journey.

In 2012, my husband John and I felt a call to a life pilgrimage and sold everything we owned to follow the currents of the Spirit’s guiding. We first spent six months in Vienna, Austria, a place of personal ancestral significance, then close to a month in the little village of Kinvara on the west coast of Ireland. Ultimately our coracle carried us to the city of Galway where we have lived for more than two years now and are finding resurrection in our midst. When people ask why we moved to Ireland, and Galway in particular, all we can say is that we had a sense that Ireland was inviting us to dwell in her landscape without fully knowing why. At the time it felt like a surprise shift in our direction, but I can look back and see clearly the movement of the Spirit at work calling us to a place where our souls and our work could be nourished in ways I couldn’t have imagined. This is why the first impulse is always love. At the time it felt like another great journey of trust and yielding to the currents carrying us forward. Now that we have rooted ourselves in Galway, we feel something very powerful at work that we continue to discover unfolding.

One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from Antonia Machado: “wanderer, there is no road / the way is made by walking.” The scriptures speak of a “way”, but it is not the path of our expectations. It is not the 10-step plan for inner peace. Instead this way calls us to a deeper and more radical trust and to realize that the way is made by walking. Each step is shaped by listening to how the divine presence calls us forward, the direction we take, the choices we make, by how much control we are willing to yield.

Barbara Brown Taylor has a wonderful chapter in her book An Altar in the World about “getting lost.” What would it mean to wander and allow yourself to feel the vulnerability of being a bit lost or disoriented? What new awareness might break in from this softened place? What might happen if we began each day of our pilgrimage with a meditation: while lying in bed in the morning before rising, imagine each part of your body softening, releasing into the currents of the seas or floating on the wind. Then soften your will and see what images rise up from this place. What is the holy direction you feel rise up in you?

The Celts also had a profound practice of blessing each moment. Journeys had their own prayers and blessings. Bless the earth beneath my foot, bless the path I travel, and bless the holy desire which carries me forward. Bless that which I have my heart set on in love and hope, bless the Source of these sacred longings.

Allow your pilgrimage of resurrection to continue to unfold. Let creativity be the practice which carries you on the currents of divine love. Let the one who shepherds us guide you.

At Abbey of the Arts, we are inviting the community to make a commitment to practice creativity daily in celebration of my new book being released in May 2015 The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within (Ave Maria Press). Please join us (details available at this post).

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Click here to read this post at Patheos and share with others>

April 25: Challenge – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Saturday , April 25, 2015 : Challenge

You have responded to the call of pilgrimage in your life and taken a journey out into the wilderness. You will face temptation. The challenge is whether you can stay awake and present enough to notice when this is happening.

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

Reflective Question: What is your favorite form of self-numbing that takes your awareness away from what is happening both within and without? Can you fast from this for the season ahead to stay present to how God is moving through you?

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

April 24: Borderlands – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Borderlands

Thresholds, liminal space, being on the edge, living in the borderlands when we have a spirituality that is committed to exploring these rich places, is the opposite of comfortable, safe, secure, boundaries, rigid, and unquestioned.

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

 Reflective Question: Can you acknowledge that you simply don’t know what is to come? Can you allow yourself to surrender to something bigger and more meaningful, even as it calls us away from familiar patterns that are loved?

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>

Monk in the World guest post: Elle Bieling

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Elle Bieling's reflection on the gift of yin yoga (one of my favorite practices!) and the holiness of the body:

‘Our own theological Church, as we know, has scorned and vilified the body till it has seemed almost a reproach and a shame to have one, yet at the same time has credited it with power to drag the soul to perdition.’ ~ Eliza Farnham (1815-1864)

I don't recall when I first discovered there was a wisdom contained within my physical being. I was raised in a strict Protestant home, where the body was seen as evil, needing to be beaten into submission. The evil of the "sins of the flesh" were ingrained into me. What could be more unholy than the "flesh?"

Yet, intuitively, I always knew that when I included my body in my life's experiences, that my life became richer and fuller. Involving my body imprinted most of my experiences more deeply within me. My body was a living, breathing paradox.

Now I believe, that when Christ became flesh it was to help me understand myself as whole being, inclusive of my physicality. If the Christ indeed understood what it felt like to take on human flesh, certainly then, this can also be viewed as a holy thing? Maybe my body could be a temple after all? Maybe God wasn't external but a part of me and my flesh?

Within my house of human flesh, my temple, is indeed where I turn to find God. I graciously accept my fragile, yet resilient house as a dwelling for my soul. The "energy" that my house contains is there for me to tap into when I need to find Presence. When I access my physical home for wisdom, this is where I personally find God.

The God-given-energy in our bodies is known across cultures. This "breath of life," "wind" or "spirit" is known as Ruah in Hebrew, Pneuma in Greek, Mana in Polynesian, Qi (or Chi) in China and Prana in India and Tibet. Where did we lose this concept?

Now I hold the truth, that just by being alive, and through my breath, I am the embodiment of Spirit! For me, this is a powerful thing. This Spirit within me, within my breath, has become my most beloved of tools to find God.

I often invite my body to be included in my soul's experience. I invite the hate I sometimes feel for my physical ailments and symptoms to be included into my soul's journey. I invite my dislike of my physical appearance to also be included as I work with the body that I have been given. Through the neutrality of my conscious breathing, I invite the release of judgement and the need to change anything.

I invite my body to open to possibilities. My body and my breath help to lead my mind and my soul into places that my mind alone cannot take me, or is too afraid to take me.

Within the rhythm of a contemplative walk, my body lulls my spirit into a calmness that I am unable to achieve with physical stillness. I sense God in my breath and in the movement of my arms and legs. I sense God in the beauty that is all around me, whenever I wander into the out-of-doors. I breath into this Peace and find the stillness within the action, as my breath slows but my body continues its rhythmic movement. As John Muir, the great naturalist says, and I love to quote, "I go out to go in."

I use long-held Yin Yoga poses to access my current state of awareness (or unawareness). If I notice that I need to surrender to what is, I use a forward folding pose, that invites relaxation and the letting go of all effort, to achieve a sweet, long surrender.  Emphasizing my exhale, I release all to which I am clinging.

If I sense that I am unable to see clearly from another's perspective, I use a heart-opening pose to invite in Love and Compassion, to help me release the judgement of others and the judgement of myself for judging. With my chest, arms and heart wide open, I inhale Ruah deeply, down and into the core of my belly, and invite in the Spirit of all Love.

If I feel off kilter, I use a balance pose to find a single point for focus and grounding and to find stability once again. I use my breath If I am fearful or feeling unsupported and I use a restorative pose that fully supports me and comforts me.

But my deepest openings come when I invite my body to help me access my hidden, strongest emotions. For this I use the long and deep, hip opening poses and hold them in the edgy and uncomfortable Yin Yoga fashion. I truly come home to my body when I invite the opening of this most emotional of places – the very core of my being. For me personally, the core of my body through the hips and belly are the true storehouse of everything that I am. When I let down my guarding in this area, transformation happens. I allow my body and my breath to lead me through the process of letting go of it all.

As I hold a shape, I contemplate my many inconsistencies, denials and paradoxes. I see both light and dark, yin and yang, feminine and masculine. I breathe even more deeply.  I remain silent and still, listening to the journey of my soul. I allow myself to be human. I allow the rawness and the glory. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I smile. When the Spirit touches me through this deep release, magic happens. In this silent space, healing happens. The tingling in my body tells me that my body is holy.

Without this holy tool, I would be lost. I am my body, and my body is me and my body is Spirit.

Elle Bieling is a Writer, Registered Nurse, Certified Yin Yoga Teacher and Holistic Health Coach. You can find her at www.BodyWindow.com and www.PilgrimageTraveler.com

April 23: Possibility – Pilgrimage of Resurrection(A Creative Journey through the Easter Season)

Word for Today: Possibility

When we embark on an intentional journey like a pilgrimage, we are making a commitment to live in the space of threshold. Threshold is the liminal place, the place of not knowing how things will turn out. I believe it is the place of possibility.

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

Reflective Question: As you continue on your inner pilgrimage, what are the thresholds of your own life? Which thresholds are calling you to cross but feel difficult to face or challenging to imagine?

Next steps:

Let the word, quote, and question inspire your creative practice (Download the list of daily words here.) Use the hashtag  #soulofapilgrim when sharing on social media.
Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks Facebook group to share your art and writing with others.
Name your commitment to creative practice in the comments at this post (and enter the drawing to win a free copy of The Soul of a Pilgrim.)
Share this post with others and invite them to participate (they can sign up here)
Order a copy of Christine's newest book  The Soul of a Pilgrim

Walk the Ancient Paths: Join us on pilgrimage to sacred landscapes>>