Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 14

Monk in the World Guest Post: Will Boesl

I am delighted to share am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Read on for Will Boesl’s reflection Nonduality and Nonbinary.

For as long as I can remember, I have been told that I am not manly enough. I’ve been picked on, ridiculed, teased. Middle aged men have even used this argument in trying to win over my spouse, saying things like “you could do better.” There’s something about my sensitivity, kindness, and interest in a different kind of expression that throws people off. It’s strange to them that while I present as a man, I would rather listen than talk, or care and serve than dominate.

Though the more I zoom out, the more compassion I have. I can recognize that this has nothing to do with me and everything to do with our culture: we wholeheartedly believe in these imaginary gendered boundary lines.

Here are three things I think nonduality has to teach us about the gender binary.

Wholeness

Nonduality, meaning “not two,” is a kind of wisdom teaching found in all of the world’s mystical traditions. It reminds us that at the core of our being, we are whole. However, nearly all of us have been told that we are in fact not whole when we don’t conform to imaginary gender standards.

“You need to find yourself a real man” said the drunk to my spouse at a local bar across from the town shopping mall. Where does it lead us as a society if the equation of “a real man” equals an absence of femininity?

Wholeness implies that being a real man has absolutely nothing to do with sex or gender. Regardless, we are all invited to integrate all that is within us. To cultivate a capacity to hold many things at once. Wholeness says: Everyone wins as we move away from gender binaries.

In each person there is both masculine and feminine, and most men repress the feminine. I have done that to a very considerable extent…Because God is mother we have to balance the masculine and the feminine in our nature. We must be aware of how we are repressing one aspect of our nature; by allowing it to come up we become whole. – Bede Griffiths

All things carry Yin
yet embrace Yang.
They blend their life breaths
in order to produce harmony. - Tao Te Ching

Inclusivity

The essence of nonduality is inclusivity. While the word “nonduality” has its earliest roots in Eastern religion, the meaning is by no means absent in the West. Whether spiritual lessons are taught via Zen koans or Christian parables, the “answer” to life’s biggest questions are often presented as a both/and.

The shame that I’ve experienced in regards to gender is so deep that it’s actually quite difficult to share these stories. Childhood messages tell me it’s safer to hide than to be seen. However, with the help of a lot of people, I’m fortunate to be at a point where I’d rather be seen for who I am than be accepted for someone I’m not. Nobody should have to hide their true self.

Inclusivity tells me that my feelings are valid. Regardless of our sex or gender, this radical acceptance reminds us that even darkness and sadness belongs. Inclusivity says: To live beyond the gender binary means to welcome all parts of ourselves and others.

There is a space within the heart in which all space is contained. Both heaven and earth are contained with it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars. Everything that exists is contained in that “City of Brahman”, all beings and all desires. – Chandogya Upanishad

Uncertainty

Nonduality is a release from the gripping control of our dualistic mind which feeds on certainty. Sadly, certainty leads to unkindness.

If it weren’t for family obligations, there would’ve been absolutely no chance that my spouse and I were at this bar. We were visiting my hometown for the holiday and accepted a family invitation to go out late one night. Days after my experience with these “real men” a friend of mine asked, “Why didn’t you reach out to your family for support?!”

As someone who identifies as gender nonbinary, the reality is that it’s not safe for me to share this with everyone, including family. While I don’t want to hide who I am, I also need to protect myself. It’s really hard to comprehend, yet it’s something I have to hold.

A dualistic mind cannot fully understand God, love, or even family. We cannot reason our way to peace. It has to be an experience, a shift in seeing and being. Nonduality gives us the permission to not know.

The measure of one’s spiritual maturity is their comfortability with uncertainty. Instead of needing an answer for everything, what happens when we lean into uncertainty? What happens when we recognize the limits of gender and simply live into a new way forward, heart first? Uncertainty says: Sometimes, your mind is the last to arrive.

When you forget all your dualistic ideas, everything becomes your teacher, and everything can be the object of worship. When everything exists within your big mind, all dualistic relationships drop away. There is no distinction between heaven and earth, man and woman, teacher and disciple. – Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

May you truly love yourself and others,
express yourself in ways that are true to you,
and be seen for who you are and not what you aren’t.

For more, listen to my song Blue and Pink. 

Will Boesl, MA (they/them) is a spiritual director and musician. They earned their Masters in Spiritual Formation with a focus in spiritual direction and creativity from Seminary of the Southwest (Austin, TX). Integrating their vocation of deep listening, Will is passionate about the connection between spirituality and creative expression. 

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Soul of a Pilgrim Video Prayer Cycle Day 6 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Blessing for Beginning Again*

Spirit of the fresh morning air,
allow us to see all the places where newness
is being born into the world,
the bud of a flower just breaking open its petals,
the turning of the sea’s tides,
a gaze into the eyes of another
and seeing their beauty,
the river stone being rubbed smooth.
Help us to remember
that we are always being called to begin again,
like the Prodigal One returning home
to a loving parent’s embrace,
hold our shame or heartache
at wandering so far from you,
reveal to us the feast
you prepare where tables are piled high
with the sweetest of fruits.

Dearest monks and artists,

Today we share with you the Day 6 video podcasts for our Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle. The theme for Morning and Evening prayer is The Practice of Beginning Again. 

We all experience moments when we need to pause and reflect, when we feel far away from our spiritual practice and need to remember the monastic commitment to conversion. 

Conversion in monastic tradition is never a once-and-for-all event. Instead it is always a process of unfolding, ripening, emerging, arising.

I like to think about this commitment to conversion as always being surprised by God, always remembering that God’s imagination is far greater than our own. We let ourselves be moved by something unexpected, a momentary awareness of beauty or grace.

Do you ever have those moments when you are suddenly caught in the emotion of a past story you thought you had worked through already? “That again?” You might ask yourself. But the expectation that we somehow work through an issue and then are done with it is a very linear way of approaching life, when I would suggest our experience is much more of a spiral. We come around again and again to the very same things that cause us to stumble, but each time we see them from a new perspective.

As monks in the world, we are always on the path, always growing, we never fully arrive and so we always have more to learn. Being a monk in the world is not something we simply become once and for all. It means being committed to the process of discovery, it is the ongoing transformation of a lifetime. We recognize that we are always a beginner in life. When we think we have everything figured out, cynicism and cleverness clouds our vision.

Conversion calls us to a radical kind of humility, where we recognize that we simply do not know, we aren’t in control, that at the heart of everything is a great Mystery. Only when we surrender to that kind of radical unknowing can we be transformed. Only when each moment of life breaks us open with wonder and awe are we on the way.

This is one of the reasons I am drawn to the practice of the expressive arts. Art-making becomes a pilgrimage or path of discovery. As I listen each moment to the creative impulse, I let go of what I think whatever I am creating should look like. I let go of my orientation toward creating a beautiful product and let the journey take me where it will. This is a wonderful way to practice this for life as well.

Honoring our limits as creatures can be deeply liberating. Giving up our demanding inner perfectionism can be freeing. How often do I resist beginning a creative project because of my fear that it will not live up to the image in my mind? Humility invites me to release those expectations and enter into the call of my gift knowing that it may look very differently from my imagining. Recognizing our flaws in gentle and compassionate ways can bind us closer to others. We must have patience with the unfolding of our lives and the world. God’s kingdom unfolds in God’s own time. We discover that we are not solely responsible for saving the world. Acknowledging our limits, can liberate us from our compulsions and frantic busyness and lead us towards recognizing our interdependence. Each of our gifts contributes to the whole.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: 

“If the Angel deigns to come it will because you have convinced her, not by tears but by your humble resolve to be always beginning; to be a beginner.”

Bringing the mind and heart of a beginner to our lives helps us to discover the wisdom inherent in each moment. When we let go of our desire to be clever or successful or create beautiful things we may begin to open to the sacred truth of our experience as it is, not how we want it to be.

Wonder is at the heart of conversion, letting ourselves be moved by life, letting ourselves be surprised by God, letting ourselves be open to the grace of the moment.

We are having our big annual summer sale on our self-study retreats. With over 20 to choose from, there are many options to support you in your own commitment to beginning again, whether through a new spiritual practice or creative longing. Use code SUMMER20 to take 20% of any retreat.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

*Blessing for Beginning Again is by Christine Valters Paintner from the Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Jenny Taylor

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jenny Taylor’s reflection “Inspiration on the not-so-wild edge of Suffolk.”

Spending nine days on virtual pilgrimage in the company of “dancing monks”, and guided by Christine Valters Paintner’s hypnotic meditations, has stirred something deep in me. As our world yields to the implacable advance of the digital revolution, the real becomes not just more important, but more sacramental. The real is held for ever in the life-giving embrace of the places and stories, the stones and the springs of our spiritual past. And it is to them and to our ancestors that we must I also believe, turn back, if we are to save our souls.

After forty years in London, I returned to Suffolk where I was born, and which was once called “Selig”. The Pilgrimage has caused me to reconnect with what that means. It is Anglo-Saxon for “holy” or blessed.  It became, as is the way of these things, “silly Suffolk”, and I think that’s delightfully playful.  There is a surprising Celtic connection too, but I’ll come to that in a moment.  Suffolk probably got the nickname “selig” because there were so many churches and monasteries in the county. And the reason for that was partly because it was one of the first places in these islands to have a Christian King – Raedwald of Sutton Hoo fame – and was also very rich from the wool trade.  But there may be even more to it than that.

Thanks to the Pilgrimage, I’ve become attentive to these things.  The place I live in was built to benefit from the springs that rise up in the cliffs here.  This is a former spa town on the very edge of Suffolk. But our Edwardian forebears, in their drive to attract London holiday-makers, seem to have ignored the inherent spiritual attraction of these springs.  Imagine my delight then, last week, when my eyes were opened to a well in the grounds, a tiny sacred well, formed from one of the springs, created quietly by our gardener! It is set about with duckweed – a magical herb of great value to animals.  And it is edged by driftwood found on the shore below, and stone statues. 

One of the three friends who joined me during that unforgettable nine days, who is drawn to “wild edges”, joined me in going to the well each day after the retreats.  We sprinkled our hurting places – our heads and hearts – with its water.  I realized that the elements are everywhere, speaking to me of the enduring reality of God’s love and the life force all around.  I am never alone when I have wind, and water, the sea’s constant yearning for the shore, and the creatures that speak to me of my kinship with all that is. I need never feel disconnected or oppressed. All these things are sacraments of hope and presence.

And now, thanks to the Abbey of the Arts, I’m more fed by that than ever. So much so that friends and I are planning a pilgrim way-station ourselves, near the new King Charles Coastal Path that will run near here. Someone wants to bequeath their home for this. Others have long dreamed of serving the new housing estates with “spiritual wells”. Walking in the elements, in the way of the ancestors, connecting with each other and with the past, may lead many back to the selig in their lives.

And the other Celtic connection? St Fursey, one of the “Four Comely Saints”, who was baptised by Brendan, was the first recorded Irish missionary to East Anglia. He arrived in the 630s, and was given land by the king to establish an abbey here.  

Dr Jenny M Taylor has had a career as a writer, and journalist.  Her forthcoming book Saving Journalism: The Rise, Demise and Survival of the News will be published by Pippa Rann Books this autumn. Her previous book A Wild Constraint is available from Bloomsbury Publishing.   JennyTaylor.media

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Stretching of the Heart with St. Columba ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

Today we release the video podcast for Day 5 of our Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle. The theme for morning and evening prayer is The Practice of Being Uncomfortable and Embracing the Unknown.

Pilgrimage always demands something from us. If we are not challenged by it, then we are merely on a trip or a vacation. 

This Friday, I will be leading an online retreat with two dear friends, Simon de Voil and Kenneth Steven. The retreat is titled Stretching of the Heart: A Celtic Mini-Retreat on St. Columba (known as Columcille in Ireland) and we will explore the ways pilgrimage calls us to new adventures but also to leave behind things and people we love. 

The feast of St. Columba (known as Columcille in Ireland) is a week from today on June 9th. 

He was born in County Donegal and is one of the three patron saints of Ireland (in addition to St Patrick and St Brigid). His birth was foretold in his mother’s dream of a youth receiving a radiant cloak which spread over Ireland and Scotland. 

He came from a family of Kings, but at an early age was sent to a monastery where he gave up his royalty and went on to found many monasteries across Ireland, including in Derry, Durrow, and Kells, and as far west as the Burren in Co Clare where there is still a holy well dedicated to him. He was also a poet and an artist who did illumination, including perhaps even some of those in the Book of Kells. 

Columcille experienced a call to leave Ireland and become an exile. He knew a great deal about loss. Soon after I first moved to Ireland I found reference to the “flagstone of loneliness” or the “stone of sorrows” which is a flat stone in County Donegal that St. Columba slept on overnight before he left his beloved Ireland for a pilgrimage by sea which would take him to Iona. It is said that the stone helped to carry his grief over leaving home. 

That image of offering your sorrow to the stones and asking them to help hold that heaviness is so breathtakingly poetic to me. Nature has a way of meeting us in our sadness. The Celtic vision of how Earth and its beings nourish and sustain us in so many ways. 

For many of the Irish monks, this call to exile was an integral part of the peregrinatio journey, to release all that is familiar and make oneself reliant on the hospitality of strangers, to feel your radical dependency on God. 

In the year 563, he traveled with twelve other monks to cross the sea in a coracle and landed on a small island off the coast of Scotland, now known as Iona. It was here that he began his new work and Iona became a heart center for Celtic Christianity and is still thriving today as a vibrant community. 

Join Simon, Kenneth, and me this Friday when we explore Celtic wisdom for the leaving behind and embracing the new. Through song, poetry, meditation, and teaching, Stretching of the Heart: A Celtic Mini-Retreat on St. Columba will be a holy pause of refreshment to enliven your spirit and support you as you continue on your own life pilgrimage. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Lori Kellogg

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Lori’s reflection and view her paintings of the archetypes.

I am training to become a Creatively Fit Coach, and one of the courses is a meditation and painting course entitled Super Soul Flow. Over the last several weeks, I have alternatively participated in a guided meditation and then painted whatever I receive during the meditations. When I received the last one, I suddenly remembered the retreat on the archetypes that Christine led, and realized that I had received the same ones!  It turns out I received images of my archetypes the Warrior, Sage, Healer, and Visionary.   I believe these archetypes have been revealing themselves to me in glimpses and snippets all my life.  I feel so honored that they finally showed me their faces and told me their names.  Their names are Crystabella (Warrior), Terra Sophia (Sage), Little Lori (Visionary), and Seraphina (Healer).

Crystabella (Warrior)Terra Sophia (Sage)Little Lori (Visionary)Seraphina (Healer)

Lori Kellogg calls herself an Expressive and Intuitive Artist. To her, painting is a container for emotions, a medium for prayer and meditation, and a channel for therapeutic healing. She usually does not have a plan as to what she wants to create before she starts painting but allows the work to become.  Lori does not create art as a product to sell, but instead concentrates on the process and healing power of the act of creation.  Lori has no formal art training, her process was developed through her own intuition and trial and error.  Lori is training to be a Certified Creatively Fit Coach and will soon teach workshops and classes on how to tune in to your own creativity.   Lori has been a special education teacher and a social worker in her previous careers.  She serves on the leadership team of her church, LifePath Church, in Newark, Delaware, USA, and teaches a class that she calls Embodied Spirituality that includes guided meditation, imaginative prayer, movement, music, art, and creative writing. To learn more about Lori and her artwork visit her online at Crystabella Studio, on Facebook at Crystabella Studio with Lori Kellogg Expressive and Intuitive Artist or on Instagram @LoriKellArt.  

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Soul of a Pilgrim Video Prayer Cycle Day 4 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Blessing Each Step*

Journeying One,
you help us to navigate the path,
placing one foot in front of the other,
even when the way ahead is not visible.
We set aside our desire for maps, GPS, and guidebooks
and surrender to an inner knowing and direction
sparked by the deepest longings of our hearts.
We know the desire for new life
we feel has been kindled by you.
May we surrender our need to steer the course
and let every step we take carry us into
greater intimacy with you.
Help us to see others as fellow pilgrims on the way
with their own fears and struggles.
Compel us to reach out a hand
in loving compassion and support
and may we recognize all those holy guides
who disrupt our intended paths
as sparking a new direction on our way.

Dearest monks and artists,

Today we release the video podcasts for Day 4 of our Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle. The practice for morning and evening prayer is Making the Way by Walking. We hope you continue to journey with us step by step, listening for how the way unfolds before you. 

We have also been featuring our Soul of a Pilgrim self-study retreat this month which is an online companion to my book The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within.  

Here is an excerpt from my book inspired by poet Antonio Machado where he writes: “wanderer there is no way, the way is made by walking.” 

On a true pilgrimage, we soon discover that the journey has its own rhythm and momentum.  We soon realize, if our hearts are listening, that there are secret destinations we were unaware of when we began.

When we take off on a journey we want to pack a map so we know where we are going.  We want to have a guide which tells us which path to go and which turns to take.  

We live in a world where we can always know exactly where we are, and precisely where we want to get to. GPS guides us along the road, telling us the turns to make. 

On pilgrimage, we may be tempted to bring maps with us. Not just maps of the actual physical terrain and landscape we want to travel, but also guidebooks for the inner journey, hoping that if we just have some direction we will know exactly where to go.

Machado’s words above have been a kind of mantra for me in recent years.  As my own spiritual path loosens its grip on plans and certainties and moves more deeply into unknowing and mystery, I am discovering the truth that “there is no road / the way is made by walking.” 

Sometimes when I am working with someone in spiritual direction, I hear the longing from them to know the path God is calling them to, to have some certainty they are making the “right” choice. And yet this way of thinking about God is limiting.  I have come to believe that God does not call us to one particular path that we have to scrutinize and discover. 

God calls us to the fullness of living which can be manifested in a multitude of ways.  

We have to listen closely for what is truly life-giving and there lies the struggle.  We resist trusting ourselves.  We tell ourselves stories about why we should stay stuck where we are.

Following the way made by walking means listening for what is life-giving but on the inner pilgrimage also involves descending into the depths of our being, the places where wounds and shame dwells.  We are called to retrieve these lost parts and welcome them back in to the wholeness of who we are.  

This is why many of us never get very far.  The inner voices that criticize and cajole become too loud and so we return to what is comfortable, to what numbs us from claiming a life that is more vital and congruent with our heart’s desires.  

We each have a particular way, and we are responsible for the choices we make which shape the direction of our lives unfolding. At the same time, we are also invited to yield our desire to control that unfolding.  

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.

I think “yielding” is at the heart of the monk in the world as well.  We are called to yield in each moment to a greater presence at work in our lives.  To surrender our egos and our willfulness for a larger wisdom to move through us.

Yielding is about allowing a holy pause and noticing where you are forcing something in your life and letting that go.  It is about smiling gently at all the inner desires to take or seize or grasp, and with that compassionate gaze, allow each of them to dissolve into this endless embrace, yielding to the greater force at work within us.

If you want to deepen your pilgrimage in everyday life, consider registering for the Soul of a Pilgrim self-study retreat. Use code PILGRIM20 for a 20% discount off the regular fee. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, Oblsb, PhD, REACE

*Blessing Each Step is by Christine Valters Paintner and is from the Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle

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New Monk in the World Self-Study Retreat!

We are pleased to announce the release of our revised and expanded Monk in the World retreat! The retreat is an 8 week self-study that explores the principles of The Monk Manifesto. The new version includes:

8 revised written and audio reflections from Christine introducing the theme for the week Updated!8 written scripture reflections from John8 guided meditations from Christine in written and audio format8 video practices from members of our Wisdom Council New! 8 dance prayers from Betsey Beckman8 weekly reflection questions and closing blessingsResources for further contemplation New! Ongoing access to the materials in our private and easy-to-navigate retreat platform on Ruzuku

Registration is offered on a sliding scale and all payments for this program go to support our scholarships to keep the Abbey financially accessible, as well as the creation of our Prayer Cycles, and our Lift Every Voice Book Club.

We are excited to offer the community this rich resource for study and contemplation.

Learn more and register here.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Naimi Gonzalez

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Naimi Gonzalez’s reflection learning to be present through lectio divina.

I am in the beginning stages of learning to be more contemplative in my everyday life.  The impetus to be more thoughtful and present came after years of struggling with racing thoughts.  From the moment I wake up to the moment my head hits the pillow the noise in my head has been fairly constant.

I remember waking up one morning a few months ago realizing that time has flown by and I can barely remember what I had done because I would be fluttering from one task to another, one thought to another. The days were slipping through my fingers like sand, leaving me feeling frustrated that I could not recall what I had done: moments of laughter and joy with friends were gone because I could not be present enough to savor the joy of each day. 

I was tired of living a life that was speeding by and turned to a close friend known for her love of contemplation and living in the moment. I explained to her that I was frustrated with my inability to live in the present moment and the advice given on social media often consisted of, “learn to pause.” 

I told her, “if I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t be in this position.” 

She listened and offered me numerous suggestions: “What if you did a guided meditation?” 

“Absolutely not. Meditation makes me more anxious, not less.” 

“What if you went on a walk and physically touched the environment around you,” she persisted.

“In this heat? I barely want to go bring in the trash cans. It is too hot. And before you suggest it, in a few months it will be too cold. ”

“You like to be doing something, how about finding a craft where you can engage your hands while focusing on being present?” She asked.

I quickly shut down that idea: “I tried pottery for five seconds, then I got so mad that the object wasn’t coming out perfectly that I made my teacher finish the project for me. Same thing happened during a sewing class. And a knitting class. My sister tried to show me how to make jewelry but that somehow required math and counting.  Listen, if I have to count higher than 20, I don’t want to do it.” 

Finally, my friend, knowing that I have a passion and love for Scripture, asked me to try lectio divina.

I begrudgingly responded, “Sounds like meditation but with more steps. But I will give it a try. Can I at least write down my thoughts?” I still needed to be doing something.

At first, this was difficult. I love reading Scripture but usually, it’s for a specific purpose: such as in preparation for a sermon or talk that I am giving.

Trying to pause and focus on Scripture alone was a challenge. I would read a verse and automatically my mind would start thinking and processing: “this passage was probably written during ____  BCE or CE. The historical context was probably x,y,z.”

Every time my mind started to race, I turned my attention to the passage and practiced letting my thoughts go. Not repress them, I quickly found out the more I tried repress my thoughts the more my mind wandered.  But instead I acknowledged the existence of my thoughts and then focused on the task at hand. The hardest step of lectio divina was the final contemplation step. Initially I spent the least amount of time on this aspect of lectio divina: I would spend about a minute or so before I had to get up and do something. The urge to move was, at first, overwhelming. 

But now, as this is part of my daily practice I find the urge to move slowly dissipates. I find that I can spend longer periods of time just pausing and existing. Before it felt as if I was at the mercy of my racing mind: helpless to live in the present moment and doomed to be running from one thought to the next. 

Now, I feel a measure of control.  Do I need to obsess about a work project due in five days at this exact moment? No, actually. I can deal with it during my working hours. Do I need to wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about the latest tiktok drama between two people who I don’t know? No, I don’t need to get involved in the constant bickering and conflict of social media. 

The ability to pause my racing thoughts means that I remember my days more. I remember the joke my coworker made that had the whole office laughing. I remember the taste of the delicious milkshake I ordered. I remember and conjure up how the sun feels as it touches my arms. I relish the soft fur of my neighborhood cat that insists on being petted. 

In addition, my prayers to God feel more intentional and less one-sided. Before prayer was just me offering God a random stream of consciousness, now being able to pause enables me to witness the ways in which God speaks to me. Yes, through Scripture but also through everyday moments that before had slipped me by: the sound of nature in the mornings, the friendly dogs at the park on my way to work, and the caring words of a coworker. 

Naimi Gonzalez (She/They) is a professional nerd. They are Puerto Rican, queer, and nonbinarish. They have a passion for helping other Christians, especially those questioning fundamentalist Christian theology, expand their understanding of God. Their writing can be found at FaithfullyRadicalChristian.substack.com

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Queering Contemplation + Soul of a Pilgrim Video Podcast Day 3 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

Blessings on this Feast of Pentecost! To read a reflection on Pentecost and holy surprise from our archives, please click here. 

Today we release the Day 3 video podcasts for our Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle. The themes for morning and evening prayer are The Practice of Crossing the Threshold. 

On Friday we are hosting Cassidy Hall who will lead a program for us called Queering Contemplation. We invited her to explain what she means by “queering” and how everyone is invited to join us:  

Read the reflection below or listen to Cassidy in an audio version.

Hello dear artists, monks, poets, theologians, wanderers, and/or anyone interested in the contemplative tradition who may not use such language. 

Many paths and identities bring us to contemplation and I want to invite each of you to an Abbey of the Arts event where we wonder together what it might mean to queer the contemplative tradition alongside finding its innate queerness. 

My name is Cassidy Hall and I’m an award-winning filmmaker, podcaster, ordained minister in the UCC (United Church of Christ), and author of the forthcoming book: Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality.

To get a bit more of any understanding of what this time together will look like, I’m going to share an excerpt from chapter one of my forthcoming book. This chapter is titled, Letting Go of the Status Quo: Queering Contemplation.

At first glance, contemplation and queerness may not seem to be related to each other. But through engaging in the contemplative life, I’ve come to learn that contemplation makes me more queer— more curious, wild, weird, fierce, free, embodied, and present. And, in turn, my queerness—in terms of both my sexuality and strangeness—has given my contemplative life more spacious- ness, permission, eroticism, and wonder. My queerness and my contemplative life have become a union of joy, pleasure, and infinite possibility. 

Queer is the way I tilt my head to look at the world. Queerness, in my life, has been not only about sexuality but also about expanse, curiosity, openness, pleasure, weirdness, love, oddity, and liberation. I deeply believe queerness lives in every human in the ways we find ourselves subverting the status quo, forgoing norms, and engaging one another with open hearts and hands. By definition, queerness relates to oddness, strangeness, eccentricity, and unconventionality. While queerness can also relate to non-hetero sexuality or to a gender that is not cisgender (because by its nature queerness refuses categories), this book engages the great expanse of the word. In what ways can all the meanings of queerness awaken contemplation and life itself? 

Because this book and my deeper work are about queering contemplation, it’s important to consider what it means to queer something. In my understanding of queer theory—as a philosophy and study of lives and expressions disentangled from heteronormativity—I am seeking to disentangle my own experience of contemplation from the grasp of Western Christian expressions formed in heteronormativity, patriarchy, and Eurocentricity/ whiteness. In my exploration of contemplation and mysticism, I hope to cultivate a conversation around the topics of strangeness, oddity, liberation, love, delight, and wonder—disentangled from manipulation, power, abuse, and violence. And these pivots take time. It is a continual process to disentangle ourselves from these dominative foundations; it takes time for us to find our own way and own voice in contemplative life. 

Join Cassidy for Queering Contemplation, an online mini-retreat this Friday!

We are delighted that Therese Taylor Stinson will be leading our monthly Centering Prayer group on Wednesday. Please join a lovely circle of kindred souls. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

P.S. There was an error in one of the links to the prayer cycle last week. Click here for The Soul of a Pilgrim Day 2.

Citations:

Reprinted with permission from Queering Contemplation: Finding Queerness in the Roots and Future of Contemplative Spirituality by Cassidy Hall copyright © 2024 Broadleaf Books. 

Music in audio is by Daniele Musto and titled Into the Deep.

Image from Paid Canva License

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Kate Kennington Steer

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kate Kennington Steer’s reflection Heart of Stone.

I arrived at February 2023 in a post-viral fatigue fug, feeling beset by depression, with my ‘tank’ utterly depleted.  Thanks to the Abbey of the Arts scholarship scheme, I was able to join a group of monks making a Lent pilgrimage online, exploring what it might mean to make ‘A Different Kind of Fast’, led by our Abbess and a wonderful, multi-disciplinary team  Each week ended with an invitation to practice a creative act of integration and reflection. At the end of week two, Christine’s ‘creative ritual’ encouraged us to make an earth mandala.  I live with chronic illness so although I wasn’t well enough to go for a contemplative walk/wheel, I could make a semi-circle of seven steps from my studio door.  I had moved to a new house in the summer of 2022, and I was still very much dreaming about what my frost-bound English garden might become, but I was staggered to collect the (previously unseen) objects which form this mandala.  To find so many expressions of ‘here’, ’home’, and ‘gift’, which previous inhabitants or visitors had left for me to find, and within such a small area, was (literally) eye-opening.  During the course of Holy Week, as I sat in turn with different elements from the mandala, I was drawn to the stones repeatedly, and in particular, to the painted stone which had been half-buried, dropped down the side of a raised bed.   As I sat touching and looking at its’ curves, edges and facets I found a vision which led to a painting; and as I sat on, words and phrases for a poem arrived.  In this stone, already such a vivid symbol of ‘enough’, (one of the recurring themes of the retreat, and synchronistically, my word for this year), time and space, past and future, met in order to become embodied, enfleshed in me: in me being here in this place, at this time, to host, as well as hold in trust for, whoever will come to my door, old and young, strangers and angels alike.  From being depleted and depressed, the ‘simple’ act of holding a stone allowed Spirit to open a universe to me: a universe full of abundant Grace; a universe where resurrection is happening all around me but also – crucially – within me; where the soil itself is my waiting and willing partner in the acts of radical hospitality and co-creation I hope are to come.

5/6.4.23    – ‘hold’

a child played here - when?
in geologic time just now,

before I arrived

other, smaller, hands made crayon or paints
scrawl marks on a large pebble,
an unlikely native inhabitant of this Surrey soil,
probably an outcast displaced from a distant shore,
a migrant adorned with outlandish colours
not easily found in late English Winter grey,
nor yet even in early Spring, just past the equinox,
where mud prevails and soggèd, bogged lawns
defy the dandelions’ wild bloomings;

a gift left behind

causing me to wonder who,
(why?), planted this stone
for me discover in this earth, raised and
barricaded by scarred scaffolding planks,
then submerged, now resurrected
as tactile prayer
where thumbs fit to shadowed hollows
and an angel’s wing emerges from the scaling
caused by uneven erosion,
(both destruction and purification),
as it gently snags a finger’s pad
passing over and under,

and - as if just like that -
by friction
eons pour benediction
into this grief-swelled hand,

cupped,
waiting.

Kate Kennington Steer is a writer, photographer and visual artist.  Visit imageintoikon.com , ‘acts of daily seeing’ on Facebook, or @katekenningtonsteer on Instagram and YouTube.

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