Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 16

St Colman, Solitude, and Pilgrimage ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Pilgrimage Blessing*
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,

On April 23rd, Simon de Voil and I will begin a 9-day virtual Celtic pilgrimage for the feast of Beltaine (May 1st) honoring Saints Colman, Sourney, and Patrick. We have spent many hours over the past year working with our wonderful filmmakers and local guides to bring some more of the sacred sites in the west of Ireland alive for you, our dear community. 

One of the sites dedicated to St. Colman is especially close to my heart. It is a place in the Burren, the limestone landscape across the bay from where I live, which holds a cave, a church ruin, and a holy well, all surrounded by a grove of hazelnut trees. 

Colman was the founder of many monasteries, but at an early point in his life he longed for greater solitude and silence. He went into the forest of the Burren and found a cave where he could settle. When we used to bring pilgrims there, we’d bless ourselves at the well and spend time sitting in silence to listen to the wisdom of wind and stone, of trees and water. 

It is said that Colman also brought three creatures with him—a rooster, a mouse, and a fly. The rooster would wake him for his morning prayers. The mouse would nibble on his ear if he fell back to sleep, and the fly would help him keep his place in his book of prayers. 

Even though Ireland’s landscape and weather are far from desert conditions, because of the impact of the ancient desert ammas and abbas, we still find in Ireland many places with the name dysert (or variations of it) to reflect the wild, solitary places the Irish monks sought out. 

Colman lived in this dysert place for seven years in silent contemplation, allowing the wilderness to teach him. Eventually, through divine intervention, he was called back to community life where he built his monastery, Kilmacduagh (which means “church of Macduagh”) near Gort. It became a large ecclesiastical site that many pilgrims sought out.

Is there a dysert place in your own life? 

Where do you go for a time of retreat? It might be a place in your own home, a retreat center nearby, a beautiful landscape where you go to restore, or a faraway place that has touched your heart with its capacity to reveal the holy. 

Make a commitment to find a day sometime during the next weeks to go away for a time of silence and solitude to simply listen. You can even practice dysert at home for ten minutes each day if that is all that is available to you. Turn off any notifications from your phone or computer, tell others in your house not to disturb you, and give yourself time to sit and listen. 

You may not hear anything at first, or you may hear the birds outside, the whir of car engines going by, the rustle of neighbors on their way out the door. Instead of fighting these as distractions, bring the art of blessing to each of these sounds. Bless the birds, the people in their cars wherever they are headed, the neighbors whose story you may or may not know. 

Consider joining us for our virtual pilgrimage and creating your own desert and wilderness retreat in the midst of your daily life. 

You are also invited to join Therese Taylor Stinson this Wednesday for our monthly Centering Prayer session for another opportunity to practice silence and stillness with kindred spirits.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

*Pilgrimage Blessing by Christine Valters Paintner from our Soul of a Pilgrim prayer cycle

Dancing Monk Icon © Marcy Hall

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Monk in the World Guest Post Call for Submissions

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

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

Submit your own post from one of the following categories on the general theme of “How do I live as a monk in the world? How do I bring contemplative presence to my work and/or family?” It works best if you focus your reflection on one aspect of your life or a practice you have, or you might reflect on how someone from the monastic tradition has inspired you. The Monk Manifesto is another source of inspiration. We invite reflections on the practice of living contemplatively.

Post categories:

Photo or visual art essay – Please include a one paragraph introduction about what inspired you and how the images relate to contemplative practice. You may submit 3-5 photographs with an optional 100-150 word description of each image. All work must be your own. Please make sure the image size is smaller than 1 MB.Poetry – Please include a one paragraph introduction to your poem or poems about what inspired you and how they relate to contemplative practice. You may submit up to 3 Haikus, 2 short poems (20 lines or less) or one long poem (up to 40 lines). You may also include 1 photograph or illustration. All work and images must be your own.Written reflection – Submit your post of 700-900 words. Please write from your own perspective and experience rather than offering instructions for others to follow. You may include 1-2 images if they help illustrate your reflection in meaningful ways. All images should be your own. Please make sure the image size is smaller than 1 MB.

Please follow these instructions carefully:

Please click this link to read a selection of the posts and get a feel for the tone and quality.Please include a head shot and brief bio written in the third person (50 words max).If your reflection is specific to a season, feast day, or liturgical point in the year, please note that in the subject line of your submission.We will be accepting submissions between now and June 10th for publication sometime in the late summer and fall of 2024 and beyond (depending on the number of submissions). We reserve the right to make edits to the content as needed (or to request you to make edits) and submitting your reflection does not guarantee publication on the Abbey blog, but we will do our best to include as many of you as possible.Email your submission to Melinda by June 10th and include the reflection pasted into the body of your email and attach your photo(s). (Please do not embed your photos in a Word document.)

We will be back in touch with you by late August to let you know if your post is accepted, if edits are needed, and/or when we have scheduled your post to appear.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: CJ Shelton

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for CJ Shelton’s reflection Matching the Beat of the Universe.

In the simple delights of Nature’s repeating cycles there is much comfort and clarity to be found, a reassurance that life will always continue, despite so much uncertainty in our human world. Quietly observing the flora and fauna of the local fields and forests has taught me to pay attention to the wonders and magic nature offers. For me, her reliable rhythms and instinctual patterns can always be counted on, as can her extraordinary ability to adapt to change.

Deep within one of my favourite parks in Ontario, Canada is a grand giant of a White Pine who has weathered many a year with grace and dignity. Although at some point in her long life a lightning strike or fierce windstorm truncated her crown, it is easy to imagine her once towering high above the rest of the forest in her complete and mighty form.

I refer to this tree as a “her” because of the distinct maternal aura she exudes and the fact that many of the younger, smaller pines in the surrounding area are likely her offspring. Under her enormous boughs, of which she seems to lose a few every year, you can look up – way up – and marvel at how much she has seen come and go in these woods. 

Whenever I visit, I take a moment and attempt to wrap my impossibly short arms around her massive girth or align my back with her strong trunk. In doing so I am reminded to stand strong myself yet yield more. To flow with the movement of life rather than against it. To trust that things will work out, regardless of whatever it is I may be struggling with that brought me to seek the counsel of this wise old soul.

As Cheryl Richardson writes, “Nature is like a book we can read, filled with simple wisdom about what it takes to live well. Howling winds that remove dead limbs from trees, waterways that carve new paths through earth and stone, or tiny hummingbirds who return to feast on favorite flowers become fierce and fragile messengers. Clear out the old, says the wind. Stay the course, declares the river, especially when something is hard but important. Return to what feeds you say the hummingbirds … and enjoy every drop.”

Along a similar vein, writer Maria Popova observes that “In a world pocked by cynicism and pummeled by devastating news, to find joy for oneself and spark it in others, to find hope for oneself and spark it in others, is nothing less than a countercultural act of courage and resistance. This is not a matter of denying reality — it is a matter of discovering a parallel reality where joy and hope are equally valid ways of being. To live there is to live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality, beneath the frightful stories we tell ourselves and are told about it.”

With the many “frightful stories” we are subject to these days, it is getting harder and harder to tune negativity out and access that parallel reality where joy and hope reside. But if we look to nature, many doorways into that other world are readily available. To trust in that is to trust that nature is a reflection and a vehicle for the Higher Power that permeates every aspect of it. And to trust that the same Higher Power permeates us as well.

As a quote from Joseph Campbell wisely states, “the goal of our lives is to make our heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match our nature with Nature”. Only then can we, like the trees and the birds, be a trusted and honourable vehicle for something higher to move through us and do good in the world.

My giant White Pine is filled with the honourable essence of “something higher”, something sacred. As is every other aspect of nature where her sacred rhythms are present, from the determined pace of a snapping turtle, to the swooping and fluttering of starlings, to a stream that quickens suddenly to rapids, to the quiet stalwartness of a mighty tree and her offspring. These are what we can tune into to and sync up our own pace with as we seek to counteract fear and uncertainty.

As the mighty pine demonstrates, life is not a race to see who finishes first; it is the cultivation of a slow and steady awareness. The White Pine knows this. She knows her purpose. She finds joy in being stationary and slow; steadfast and true. And she sparks a similar joy in others, which is a truly a “countercultural act of courage and resistance” in a world that must be overwhelmingly frightening in its potential threats to herself and to her children.

In the mighty tree’s reliable rhythms is a panacea for the difficulties she and humans face. She continues to “live enchanted with the underlying wonder of reality”, matching her heartbeat with that of a universe she knows she is an essential part of. She knows her reason for being just as the birds, and the flowers and the rivers do. And as she continues to stand strong, I can take a page from her book of wisdom. I can strive to follow her example, finding joy and hope in a parallel reality, for myself and for others.

CJ Shelton is an Artist and Educator who inspires and guides others on their creative and spiritual journeys. Through her art, teaching and shamanic practices, CJ helps reveal the meaning, magic and mystery of the Great Wheel of Life. To learn more about CJ and view her work visit DancingMoonDesigns.ca.

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Tending Your Wild Heart ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

We are delighted to welcome back our dear friend Lindsay Sudeikis who will lead us in a mini-retreat on Animist Christianity: Tending Your Wild Heart with Our Beloved Plant Kin this Friday, April 12th. Read on for Lindsay’s introduction to connecting with our plant kin. 

Our plant kin! My gut, discerned sense is Jesus and Mary of Nazareth communed consciously and relationally with our plant kin. As they were living 2,000 years ago at a time when folks were more relational with the greens they cooked with, herbs they bathed with, and plants they healed themselves and others with. How can we know this? How about we drop in, connect with Jesus and Mary of Nazareth directly, and then ask each of them about their respective experiences with plants, herbs, trees, what do you think, can we give it a go? 

I imagine many of you have already engaged in this sort of practice. For those of you who have, I’m curious, we’re curious, what did you hear? What transmissions did you receive from the Holies? What whispers did you tune into? For those of you who haven’t engaged in this practice with Jesus and Mary directly, then off we go now. Let’s tune in, listen, and glean their wisdom. 

Take a moment here to bring loving awareness to your breath, feet, and the earth beneath your feet—that deep time. Once you can feel your feet, take your time here, there’s no rush, move up your vessel and bring some loving awareness to where your body’s making contact with where you’re seated, noticing your density if you’re able. Or noticing the chair beneath you holding you or the ground where you’re seated holding you. Ours is a faith that is incarnational, fleshy, embodied, and sensual… Jesus himself most likely brought loving awareness to his flesh, his soma, his nervous system, his density.  “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14). Here continue moving up your vessel and bring loving awareness to your breath, counting three of your out breaths if that’s helpful.  Welcome that primordial breath who weaves through all of life, connecting us with our human kin all around the world and with our plant kin all around the world. 

Now from this more embodied, contemplative place welcome Jesus and Mary of Nazareth into your field of awareness and as you do simply listen in, see if there’s anything either of them want to share with you at this time. Notice when there is an opening, when there is, I want you to inquire with Jesus and Mary directly, what is your relationship with plants, herbs, and trees? Did you, do you commune with them, how so? Here just listen in and notice what comes through. Stay with it and follow their lead. When there’s another opening, ask them, what ruptured this conscious, symbiotic relationship with plants? Why has this relationship seemingly been omitted from Christianity? Here, allow yourself to receive direct wisdom from Jesus and Mary on these matters. 

I wonder why it is our plant kin are not also part of the Biblical canon. The very plant kin who the cosmic Christ and Mary the Theotokos literally bathed with, ate with, healed with, and feasted with! These are just some of the transmissions, historical and mystical, I’ve received. How about you?

Join us this Friday, April 12th to explore your relationship with Jesus, Mary, and our plant kin.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Image © Canva paid licensing

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Arlene Davies-Fuhr

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Arlene Davies-Fuhr’s reflection and poem “Some Days.”

My poem, “Some Days” was recently composed during Forest Church.  The surroundings reached out to me and asked me to ponder what type of day I was having.  A Robin one?  Or a bug under the stone experience?  I felt called  to embrace it all, no matter what, because the variety in life is stunningly beautiful.  And I know my Creator and Sustainer is ever-present with me. 

Some DaysSome days I am soft, green grassco-existing with dandelions and clover.Other days, I am rock. Tough and flinty.Formed by aeons of skin and bone.Blood and preferences of ancestorscourse through me as I move andmeditate and observe the clouds.Some days, I am robin flying freeor wildly bathing. Singing joyouslyfor all to hear. Other days, I am bug beneath the stonerevelling in the dark and coolness alone and happy.Sun or shade, excitement or frustration,I embrace it all.Thank you Loving, Supportive Creator,for life’s diversity and balance.What a privilege to breathe,walk, and write today.

Arlene Davies-Fuhr is a contemplative who appreciates time in nature during Forest Church and also practices daily mindful meditation.  She is part of a United Church congregation in Guelph , Ontario and she has produced a book of contemporary prayer-poems loosely based on thirty psalms.  As well as reading and gardening, Arlene loves playing the djembe, the dulcimer and the ukulele. 

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Practicing Resurrection through the Wisdom of Our Wounds ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Easter Blessing*God of rising, you bring new life to all the places death inhabits. Bless our own dying dreamswith your greening breath,make our dry bones dance,inspire us to sing, revive our bodies so we might become more vibrant, hopeful witnessesto the life’s persistence. We call on Christ’s wisdom to bless and sustain us in the practice of resurrection, of honoring our bodiesand being agents of generous abundance. May all the nets we draw up from the water be overflowing with fish, may our wounds still visible be a sign of healing grace, and may we encounter your presence when we sit at table with strangers.Let our lives be a celebration of all the ways your love thriveswhere once there was only doubt,like the first riot of daffodils in spring.

Dearest monks and artists,

Blessings of the Easter season dear friends. I invite you to consider how you might practice resurrection in these next 50 days. 

I am pondering what it means to practice resurrection in a body that is chronically ill. When Jesus is resurrected his body is still wounded. The holes in his hands are still visible, Thomas is able to put his hand into Jesus’ side. 

This is a staggering revelation. The resurrected body is not about perfection. 

I was having a conversation the other day with Claudia Love Mair and Liuan Huska about Liuan’s beautiful book Hurting Yet Whole (it will be featured for our book club in June and you can listen then, in the meantime I encourage you to buy her book).

Liuan writes: “Being fully human is to inhabit the wild mysteries of our bodies and trust that, because Christ was a body, and still is a body, we don’t need to fear this place. We can say, it is good, because Christ meets us here.” 

This is so beautiful. I love the truth that Jesus experienced the sometimes excruciating pain of this human form and his resurrected body still had its wounds, pointing the way toward something wondrous about them in the resurrected life.

Liuan said in our conversation that our wounds have stories and the three of us began to share about our scars and stretch marks, and some of the invisible wounds we carry. We honored the stories those wounds hold. 

Jesus’ wounds tell the story of his brutal murder at the hands of Empire. But they also say this isn’t the last word.

Our wisdom traditions teach us that pain — whether emotional, physical, mental, or spiritual — can be a doorway. It can be a portal into discovering and inhabiting a much deeper and more aligned way of being in the world. It is a threshold where our wounds become our guides into a profound compassion and embrace of vulnerability.

Many of you live with different kinds of pain. It is not always possible to see the doorway in the midst of the suffering. Sometimes pain annihilates our sense of self. Sometimes we have to sit in the messiness of life and ask for support, a steady hand to companion us until something shifts. If you are in this place, I witness you and hold you in great love and prayer. 

There is much that those of us with chronic illness have to teach the world about bodily vulnerability and the pace of life that is crushing many of us. I am profoundly grateful for coming into the contemplative life when I did and finding a way that treasures me for being, not for my doing.

My wounds have become doorways into wisdom. 

Navigating the medical system can be relentless, exhausting, and completely dispiriting. My weeks are often full of various appointments which demand the little energy I have and often promising new consultants bring little new insight or help. So, I hold profound gratitude each day for my core “team” of health care practitioners who feel like true healers. By this I mean those who are able to be present and listen to my story, and not offer promises of cure, but do give various balms of loving presence while offering their skills in service. Each morning, I pray with their names, offering my thanks for finding such lovely, kind, and generous human beings with hearts for healing, and I ask blessing on their energy and work with others. My wounds weave me into a circle where I can be vulnerable and know that I am not alone. 

There is an abundance of healing medicine in addition to any medication we might take. Sourney, my sweet furry companion is of course an excellent nurse in her own right. John’s support and care means the world to me. My dear and close friends who hold compassionate space for me are vital for my ongoing growth and care. This wondrous community of dancing monks brings me such delight. Then there are the things like baths and massages and gentle yoga which help me to cultivate pleasure in a body that is often in pain. The days I am able to go for a walk, even if that means less energy for other things later, always brings me such gifts of wonder. It is a worthwhile exchange. Being in nature and beholding the sea or the heron’s flight expand my heart. Writing when I am able is another creative joy. I hold these treasures like gold with a heart full of gratitude for moments of beauty. My wounds bring me present to the sparks of wonder. 

Making space for the grief that inevitably arises each time there is a letting go is also essential. I must cultivate joy and gratitude, wonder and delight to help sustain me through the many hours of pain and frustration. But I also lament and cry and let myself be vulnerable, not always holding it all together as is my pattern. Pain is exhausting. Fatigue is so limiting. Being ill and not being able to work as much can be challenging when you need to earn a living. I grow intimate with all the injustices around care in our world. Grieving is essential for honoring these realities. My wounds weep and ask me to feel my grief and express my anger in service of transformation. 

When I am in seasons of having a flare of my illness, I need stronger boundaries to protect my limited and precious energy. There are so many demands on my time and there are many wonderful things I wish I could say yes to but know that ultimately a Sacred No is in service to my overall well-being. Those who are well often like to offer treatment advice which can be exhausting and overwhelming to those with chronic pain and fatigue. My wounds demand that I cultivate slowness and help me to be very clear on what is essential in my life. 

I know it is in these wounded places that my compassion is deepened, and my writing and teaching emerge with much more tenderness and attunement to suffering. My wounds ask me to trust that there is a greater wisdom and current of creativity and love that will help to carry me. 

How will you practice resurrection this Easter season? I invite you to enter into a loving conversation with the wounds you carry and listen for those stories. See if there is wisdom that can help to sustain and enliven you. See if there is wisdom that might bring a small glimmer of resurrection right here and now. 

Please join Simon and me tomorrow for our contemplative prayer service where we will be practicing resurrection together. We will be joined by the lovely Te Martin who will share their gift of song with us. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS Christian Century published my interview on the love of thousands in the article “Our Unseen Companions. Read the interview here.

*Easter Blessing is by Christine Valters Paintner and from a forthcoming book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026). 

Image “Blackberries in Burren, Ireland” © Christine Valters Paintner

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Meg Munro

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Meg Munro’s reflection and paintings on her relationship with the Beloved Mother-Virgin.

I had been despairing that my passion for painting was waning and being replaced with my spiritual longings and pilgrimages. How could this be when I had focused my whole life on being an artist?

The two felt separate and in conflict. Then, in an inspired moment, it occurred to me to put Guadalupe in my painting. 

That is how the Beloved Mother-Virgin came into my paintings, at the time that I was beginning to leave Mexico where I had lived for 30+ years. 

Ave Maria Guadalupe

This is the first Apparition that occurred to me. After I drew the composition, I began to doubt myself and the drawing got put aside. What gave me the right to take this venerated image out of its religious and cultural context? I did not feel she belonged rightfully to me. So, I drew a different one.

The Woman of Light

She is Nuestra Senora de San Juan de los Lagos. Although she is actually the second most venerated and visited Virgin after Guadalupe, she didn’t have as much cultural weight for me. I felt freer to appropriate her. The story is told that she was brought out of the church in order to raise a young girl from the dead. The girl had fallen on the bed of knives in her family’s circus act (17th century). It is said that She (her statue) was already moving around the church at night on her own. And now, she came out of the church to give her re-vivifying self. I put her in the “’weeds” to emphasize just how naturally and “lowly” she appears “outside of the church”.  

Then I could paint Ave Maria Guadalupe. I understood that she is bigger than any cultural or church container. She really could come into my paintings. Around this time I had a meditation experience in which I felt Guadalupe merge into my heart and adopt me as her daughter.

I AM Home

I began I AM Home while I was living in a much reduced space, the guest bedroom at my father’s house. I had my painting table set up and a small bed. I felt that if I couldn’t paint I would just die. Somehow, I had ended up there at the time my father began to need help and my artist life, my whole life really had come to a grinding halt.

I completed the painting in Albuquerque during the summer of 2020 after my father had passed and I moved here. It expresses that I want to feel home inside of myself, within myself. 

Meg Munro is a signature member of the National Watercolor Society. Her award-winning paintings have delighted her collectors for many years. She has painted the marketplaces, people, jungle, towns, and gardens of Mexico. Her Bottlescapes and Butterfly paintings are among her most popular. MegMunro.com

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Holy Week Blessing ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Holy Week Blessing*
Godde of Paradox,
you call us to sit these coming days
in the heart of betrayal, abandonment,
mockery, violence,
to not avert our eyes
but see ourselves in the story.
Travel with us into
the border spaces of unknowing
holding death and life,
the liminal realm of in-between.
As we feel the suffering and loss of Jesus,
let us not rush to resurrection just yet,
but linger a while in mystery.
In this temple of grief,
strip us of our attachments,
the identities we cling to,
the securities we believe in,
disorient us
so we might walk in a new direction,
lift the veils
that dull our senses from the world’s sorrow,
give us courage
to ask questions rather than seek answers,
let loss carve a space within us to let love pour in
into this chalice of the heart.
Bring us into communion
with all those who suffer
from poverty, hunger, war, abuse,
climate crisis, pollution, clearcutting,
the whole of creation groaning
together in labor,
birthing a new possibility,
one only dimly seen
in quiet moments,
a glimmer in the eyes
a song in the throat.

Dearest monks and artists,

Holy Week invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing. Holy Saturday is an invitation to make a conscious passage through the liminal realm of in-between.

I love the wide space of Holy Saturday that lingers between the suffering and death of Jesus on Friday and the vigil Saturday night proclaiming the return of the Easter fire. For me, Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition—the ways we are called to let go of things or people, identities or securities and then wonder what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives. The suffering that we experience because of pain or grief or great sorrow and we don’t know if we will ever grasp joy again. Much of our lives rest in that space between loss and hope. Our lives are full of Holy Saturday experiences.

In their book The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write:

“Easter completes the archetypal pattern at the center of the Christian life: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. Both parts of this pattern are essential: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. When one is emphasized over the other distortion is the result. The two must be affirmed equally.”

Before we rush to resurrection we must dwell fully in the space of unknowing, of holding death and life in tension with each other, to experience that liminal place so that we become familiar with its landscape and one day might accompany others who find themselves there and similarly disoriented. The wisdom of the Triduum is that we must be fully present to both the starkness of Friday and to the Saturday space between, before we can really experience the resurrection. 

We must know the terrible experience of loss wrought again and again in our world so that when the promise of new life dawns we can let it enter into us fully in the space carved by loss. As the great poet of Hafiz reminds us, we must let our loneliness “cut more deep” and “season” us, so that we are reminded of our absolute dependence on the Source of all.

We often try to domesticate God and to make spirituality about happiness or feeling good. We try and tie things up in neat packages. The spiritual journey is about none of these. It demands something of us and calls us to stand in uncomfortable places while the deserts of our lives strip away ego and power and identity. It calls us to embrace the God of wild borderlands.

Threshold space opens us up to life that is vital, intense, and filled with unknowns. Borders and edges are the places of transformation, transformation that makes demands of us. Jesus’ journey in the desert was a willingness to dwell in the border space of that landscape and the walk toward Holy Week often fills me with more questions than answers.

Much of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday places but we spend so much energy resisting, longing for resolution and closure. Our practice this day is to really enter into the liminal zone, to be present to it with every cell of our being.

Make some time this week, and especially on Holy Saturday to sit with all of the paradoxes of life.

Bring yourself as fully present as you can to the discomfort of the experience. 

Rest in the space of waiting and unknowing and resist trying to come up with neat answers or resolutions. 

Imagine yourself on a wild border or standing on a threshold, knowing that you cannot fully embrace what is on the other side until you have let this place shape and form your heart. 

When you notice your attention drifting or your mind starting to analyze, return to your breath and the present moment. Allow yourself to feel whatever arises in this space. 

Honor the mystery.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

*Holy Week Blessing is by Christine Valters Paintner and from a forthcoming book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026). 

Image from the bog in Connemara, Ireland © Christine Valters Paintner

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Sharon Dawn Johnson

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sharon Dawn Johnson’s reflection Yearning For Second Spring.

Seasonal Thresholds

Aroused at first light, the sun peeps over nearby urban rooftops as I open the curtain – rejoicing to greet the Spring Equinox, a thin place for threshold crossings. Greeting the liturgical Hour of Dawn is unusual for me – despite my middle name. What awaits me today? My mind scurries ahead to my fibre arts group meeting. My current artwork-in-process, Yearning For Second Spring, is mostly complete now, I estimate. Following a submission to a mini art show last autumn, I’ve added more beaded flowers and leaves in readiness for our upcoming April show.

Given today’s roofline-limited horizon, I imagine the cottage’s skyscape of pre-dawn star paths and the Milky Way’s touchdown points. The green-flushed trees on light-contoured hills across the lake provide natural horizon markers that show up the city’s artificial counterpoints. Still, I ponder heaven and earth in a seasonal embrace. Thin places offer thick meanings, ones already layered in the pre-dawn pulse that stirs and awakens me today.

The previous winter solstice heralded a very dark season of enforced hibernation and rest to ease my body’s long-accumulating fatigue. Slow down, maybe, but I did not want to hibernate; yet my body’s innate wisdom proved irresistible. A scarry lesson in loss and defeat, and utterly insistent.  

Today’s dawn breathes cautious hope into me, the fresh light flowing into my dark, deep-down yearnings. Thankfully, learning to read my body as a sacred lectio divina text – shimmering, savouring, summoning, stilling – teaches me to heed its story. Is a new Dawn’s spring blossoming truly possible?

Always, We Begin Again (St. Benedict)

Cutting out the tricky-to-handle purple velveteen, I’m conscious of Springtime’s hand on my shoulder. “Trust me”, she whispers, stroking my aching back, “You have time enough…” 

Are you kidding? Do you know how many clockwise steps unfold before me? I don’t want to sass her openly – her loving tone defangs the procrastination-poison of my should critic. But given the list of steps and my fragile body’s need for regular afternoon rest, I pause… 

At my fibre arts meeting, one friend lays Yearning For Second Spring against the purple sleeve of her T-shirt. The work comes fully alive! Yes! The long-awaited answer. I embrace a solution utterly different from the tweaking I’d envisioned. 

The new, purple velveteen sleeve I’m creating transforms temperamental fabric salvaged from a thrift store dress into the support structure repurposed to complete the piece – the exact colour, texture, and weight needed to back and border the beaded fabric. 

The next morning, another member delivers the promised scrap of fuschia silk to be fringed, completing the beaded fabric’s lower edge. In due course, I prepare and paint a new hanging rod. 

To meet October’s mini show deadline, I aimed for good enough. Yet my cramp-knotted fingers recall the many vine sections unstitched in the present moment, then restarted to reposition organically-curving lines. The restitching is motivated by the deep desire to honour the principles and elements of design, not perfection. 

Each restart establishes an enoughness proportionate to the immediate ease of correcting a stitching line. How many times did I unthread and rethread that blessed needle?!

Compare that with April’s demand to unpick Second Spring’s hanging straps, level and reposition them over the new rod – without disturbing the straps’ existing vine and flowers! I should have corrected the artwork’s slant last October when I first detected its out-of-true angle.

My January hibernation project notes return to explore – and accept – the wisdom of enoughness. Yet my work consistently whispers, “I’m not yet complete.” I listen to her yearning but have no idea what is needed – until dusk on the Spring Equinox. 

Slow Ripening

Thirteen seasons and thirty-nine moons mark the waxing and waning processes of Second Spring’s creation. At first, all I feel is the fizz in my fingertips as I adapt and bead a stitch-starter device to make some dramatic 3-D beaded flowers. 

Hooray! It works! This little support structure looks like a mini moon lander and makes the start process so easy. Releasing the flower from its temporary support without damaging either of them is easy too – so long as I cut the right thread!

Bead-by-bead, stitch-by-stitch, green sprouts surface: the realization of my heart’s deep-rooted yearning to flourish anew during the saging seasons that remain to me.

Gerald May’s Dark Night of the Soul amplifies the significance of my yearnings while expanding their larger-storied horizons. The seed of love and desire for the Divine planted within us fuels a “profound motivation”. The yearning that sprouts is due to “the ‘radical incompleteness’ that determines the basic direction in which our life energy moves.” Ah! Is this motivating seed at the core of my spirit’s embodied yearnings?

While lavishing time and attention on Second Spring, I realize that I, too, am an artwork-in-progress, with repurposed life materials being shaped co-creatively in the Master Artist’s skilled hands (Ephesians 2:10). As May observes, intimacy with God “is neither acquired nor received; it is realized… something that can be yearned for, sought after – and with God’s grace – found.”

Psalm 92’s ancient naming of my second spring yearning is sweetness itself: to flourish and fruit in old age, ever full of St. Hildegard’s green viriditas sap. The completion of Yearning For Second Spring bodies forth Dawn’s new blossoming.

Sharon Johnson, a writer and a bead/ fibre artist living in Ottawa, Canada, delights in the interplays between her contemplative and art-making practices. The reciprocal nature of these practices deepens the ways she serves her work so that, in turn, the work can serve the world. 

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Spring Equinox Blessing ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Spring Equinox Blessing*God of balance, we ask your blessing at this thresholdwhen light and dark are equal.Teach us to welcome bothinto our lives, making room for joy and sorrow,for sunlight shimmering and moonlight radiance.As the light continues to grow, and birds and insects begin their migrations,journeying by impulse and intuition,help us to listen to your callto move in a holy direction. Inspire us to celebrate the burgeoning and blossoming of buds all around us as well as within our hearts. Holy Gardener, sustain us in nourishingthis season of growth, cultivate trust in us that we are blooming something the world needs. Let the wondrous colors of creationremind us of the grace in diversity. Ignite our spirits and our feetto enter into this sacred dance of awakening with you.

Dearest monks and artists,

I believe deeply that the seasons have a great deal of spiritual wisdom to offer us if we make space to listen. They teach us of the cycles and seasons of the earth and of our own lives. We are invited into the movements of blossoming, fullness, letting go, and rest, over and over again. Just like the lunar cycles of the moon’s waxing and waning, so too does the body of the earth call us into this healing rhythm.

In the northern hemisphere, the spring equinox is on March 20th when the sun hovers above the equator, and day and night are equal length. Spring is a time of balance, renewal, and welcoming new life into the world.

As the northern hemisphere enters the season of blossoming we are called to tend the places of our lives that still long for winter’s stillness as well as those places ready to burst forth into the world in a profusion of color. It takes time to see and listen. Around us the world is exploding in a celebration of new life, and we may miss much of it in our seriousness to get the important things of life done.

Poet Lynn Ungar has a wonderful poem titled “Camas Lilies” in which she writes: “And you — what of your rushed and / useful life? Imagine setting it all down — / papers, plans, appointments, everything, / leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields / to be lovely. Be back when I’m through / with blooming.” Spring is a time to set aside some of the plans and open ourselves to our own blooming.

There is a playfulness and spontaneity to the season of spring that invites us to join this joyful abandon. As the poet Hafiz writes, spring is a time for singing forth and celebration. We are called to both listen deeply to the blossoming within ourselves as well as to forget ourselves — setting aside all of our seriousness about what we are called to do and simply enter the space of being. In this field of possibility we discover new gifts.

On my daily walks I see clusters of crocuses thrusting themselves out from the ground into the brilliant sunlight. The branches of cherry trees begin to hum, preparing to burst forth. Small shoots are pressing outward, anticipating their explosion into a pink spectacle of petals. And in my presence to this dynamic energy I discover places within me humming and bursting forth. I notice my own deep longings wanting to emerge in vibrant ways.

The fertility and flowering of spring speaks of an abundantly creative God who is at the source of the potent life force beating at the heart of the world. Created in God’s image, we are called to participate in this generous creativity ourselves. Our own flowering leads us to share our gifts in service to others.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the promise of God’s abundance is often conceived of as blossoming in the desert. In that harsh landscape, a flower bursting forth from the dry land is a symbol of divine generosity, fruitfulness, and hope. Hope is a stance of radical openness to the God of newness and possibility. When we hope, we acknowledge that God has an imagination far more expansive than ours.

What are you seeing around you? What are you feeling within?

We are delighted to be hosting Therese Taylor Stinson for our monthly Centering Prayer experience on Wednesday. Join a gathering of kindred spirits for some input from Therese and then time to sit in silence together. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS – If you are in the southern hemisphere, click here for a reflection on the autumn equinox.

PPS – Blessings on this Feast of St. Patrick. You can read a reflection about him at this link.

*Spring Equinox Blessing is by Christine Valters Paintner and from a forthcoming book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026). 

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

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