Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 2

Spiral of the Work ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

We are so delighted to be welcoming Lydia Violet and Te Martin who will lead an online program based on The Work That Reconnects, created by Joanna Macy, on Tuesdays from October 21st – November 11th. This work is so vital in our challenging times, offering us a pathway to be able to name our gratitude, process our grief, be inspired, and offer ourselves in service. 

The following is an excerpt from Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects: 

The Spiral of the Work

Over the years, we have come to see the Work That Reconnects as occurring in a spiral, mapping a journey through four successive stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honoring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New Eyes, and Going Forth. These four stages support one another, and work best in sequence.

The Spiral begins with gratitude, because that quiets the mind and brings us back to source, stimulating our empathy and confidence. Expressing our love for life on Earth, in brief and concrete terms, helps us to be more fully present and grounded for acknowledging the pain we carry for our world.

In honoring our pain, and daring to experience it, we learn the true meaning of compassion: to suffer with. We begin to know the immensity of our heart/mind. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens outward and delivers us into the wider reaches of our collective existence.

Sensing the larger life within us lets us see with new eyes. At this turning point of the work, we know more genuinely our relatedness to all that is. We taste our own power to change and feel the texture of our living connections with past and future generations, as well as with our brother/sister species. 

Then, ever again, we go forth into the actions that call each of us, in keeping with our situation and gifts. We explore the synergistic power available to us as open systems and apply these understandings to our work for social change. We don’t wait for a blueprint or fail-proof scheme, for each step will bring new perspectives and opportunities. Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. 

And the Spiral begins again. In the face of devastation and tragedy, gratitude will hold us steady, especially when we’re scared or tired. 

The nature of the Spiral is fractal. The sequence can repeat itself even within a particular stage of the Spiral. For example, the Seeing with New Eyes stage may reveal to us with greater clarity the horrors being inflicted on the Earth community, bringing up fresh grief and outrage. We may need to honor that pain with a practice or ritual before moving on. 

The lens of the Spiral can reveal patterns of growth in our own understanding and capacity. The Spiral can be discerned over the span of a lifetime or a project, and it can also happen in a day or an hour. 

Excerpt from Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown (permission from New Society Publishers).

Please join Lydia Violet and Te Martin for what promises to be a very rich retreat time of soulful inspiration and connection. Lydia and Te are both gifted musicians and storytellers so this will be a time of deep reflection and practical guidance. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image Paid License from Canva

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Karen Southall Watts

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Karen Southall Watts’s reflection Sturdy Shoes and an Open Mind.

My practice is not new or unique. In fact, I suspect that long before the Transcendentalists began tramping about the woods of New England in the 1800s, humanity was well-versed in the spiritual connection of a nature walk. I know I am not the first to discover the thick quiet of a lonely copse of trees, or the brilliant joy of a rabbit or deer bounding across your path. The woods are full of lessons. The tree felled in a violent storm becomes, with time, a busy new ecosystem of its own. The changing of the seasons turns the once familiar trail into an exciting adventure. 

None of these insights are new. Yet, walking in the woods in the modern age has added layers of social, emotional, and spiritual significance. There are lessons beyond the classic life and death cycle or appreciation of beauty. My rambles through the woods inspire gratitude, and humility, and prick my conscience. 

Most Americans live in urban or suburban areas. Access to a safe place for a nature walk is a privilege that many do not have. Since returning to the US from Canada three years ago, I’ve been lucky enough to live near green spaces. As I’m writing this, I’ve just returned from a walk in the woods, down to a river bank, and I didn’t even have to leave my neighborhood. This is a tremendous luxury, and I am well aware of that fact. While I am walking, I ponder the society that has made this practice such an extravagance. I wonder why we live in a world that insists people work so many hours per week they have no time to adequately rest, or think, or walk. I contemplate the way many Americans must make a special trip to a state or national park to see nature, and how that’s becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to do. On these walks my heart is simultaneously flooded with sorrow and gratitude. 

Then there are the modern logistics of taking such a walk. Though I am seeking quiet, contemplative time, I carry a cell phone. It’s a safety measure, one that was unavailable to generations past. I don’t have to worry about getting lost or having a medical emergency. I can take photos of the amazing things I see. And yet, I know having this technology along changes the character of my experience. I’m alone, but never really disconnected. It’s far beyond Thoreau wandering into town to have dinner with friends or getting donuts delivered. Where does “real” nature begin? Am I missing out on the risk and reward experienced by previous generations when they set out to the woods? 

I’d like to say I walk in the woods every day, but I can’t. The demands of life mean I need to hold down a job, sometimes two, to pay for my daily bread. The realities of age mean I can’t always face extremes of heat or cold, though cold seems easier to manage.  As I wait for a time in life when my walking and contemplation can be the main focus of my days, I try to encourage the practice in others. I share photos of the wonders I find. I make nature walks part of my Gramma time. I even encourage people, in my professional roles as coach and educator, to add walking in nature to their lives. I believe in this practice. 

For those of us with the blessing of physical mobility, and yes that’s another area I think about while walking, a trip through the woods can be mentally stimulating and spiritually healing all at once. Any old clothes, and any sturdy shoes, and you’re ready to go—ready to step from one world into another. 

“I think it is the best of humanity that goes out to walk. In happy hours, I think all affairs may be wisely postponed for walking.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I stated, it’s not a new practice. It’s not flashy or complex, but a walk in nature remains one of the purest joys of life, and a privilege available to few in the modern world. 

Karen Southall Watts is an author, poet, educator, and consultant living in North Carolina. Karen tries to bring kindness and respect for the dignity of every person into all of her work from poetry to business classes.

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The Work that Reconnects ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Throughout history saints and mystics remind us that we are called to be a loving presence in a world that often feels it is being pulled apart. They also remind us we are called to do this work in relationship. This month I’m excited to welcome seasoned facilitator Lydia Violet Harutoonian accompanied by community song leader Te Martin to lead us in a 4-part series The Work that Reconnects (WTR). WTR is Joanna Macy’s experiential group work that has helped thousands find clarity of vision and emotional sanctuary while living through this precious and precarious moment on our planet. 

Lydia offers this reflection on the work and process they are leading on Tuesdays from October 21st-November 11th.

Since Joanna Macy’s passing, I’ve found myself talking to her more than ever. I’m a bit mystical by nature, but this feels a bit different than speaking to her through the veil. It’s as if her voice has become a part of me over our 16 years together. She’s a pillar in my psyche. Sometimes I hear her laugh, warm and mischievous, and I can  hear her saying, “We are so lucky to be here at this time, what a gift.”

Joanna had that rare ability to make you feel seen in your despair and then effortlessly uncover your enduring love of this world. And The Work That Reconnects, the group work she developed over many decades, has always felt like a hearty balance of what I need in order to learn how to be here for the adventure of these times. It’s like part therapy, part warrior training, part cosmic pep talk. It’s a way of staying awake in the world without losing your mind (or at least, not losing it alone).

What I love most about Joanna’s work is how unapologetically human it is. She never tried to tidy up the mess of emotions that come with facing what’s happening to the Earth. Instead, she treated our grief, our outrage, and our confusion as sacred data. Our pain for the world, she said, is evidence of our interconnection—it’s the proof that we belong to each other. I remember the first time I heard that, it hit me like someone had cracked open a window in a stuffy room. Suddenly, my sorrow wasn’t a sign that something was wrong with me—it was a sign that something was right.

And still, there are days when the news feels like a full-time assault on the nervous system. Joanna’s framework—the Three Dimensions of the Great Turning—has been my map when I lose the plot. There’s Holding Actions, where people show up to slow down harm and defend life and justice (the ones leading boycotts and blocking arms shipments). There are New and Remembered Life-Affirming Systems, where we experiment with ways of supporting life that don’t require destroying the planet. And then there’s Shifts In Consciousness, the subtle but radical work of changing how we see ourselves and what we think is possible. I love this model because it’s generous, everyone’s got a part in creating ecosystems of repair on this planet.

Since her passing, I’ve been thinking about what it means to keep this work alive. The truth is, Joanna never wanted us just to memorize her teachings; she wanted us to practice them. The Work That Reconnects isn’t a program—it’s a living process that continues to unfold as long as people are willing to face reality together with open hearts. Every time a group gathers to share their fears, gratitude, and wild hopes for the future, the work continues.

And yes, I miss her. Her sparkle, her fearless honesty, her ferocious courage, she was truly a compass in my life. But I also feel her here—in the cracks of our conversations, in the moments when someone dares to say, “This is hard,” and someone else nods with understanding. 

So perhaps the real legacy of Joanna Macy isn’t just her words, but the way they continue to work on us. The Work That Reconnects doesn’t end—it composts, renews, and sprouts in unexpected places. It’s still doing its work, reminding us that even in chaos there’s beauty, and the stubborn will to care for this world anyway.

Join Lydia and Te for The Work That Reconnects on Tuesdays October 21st – November 11th.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Tarja Cajudo

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Tarja Cajudo’s reflection on the spirituality of being an elder sister, an Ate.

I am an Ate (pronounced Ah-teh), the eldest sister. People who speak Tagalog use “Ate” as an honorific, a title in front of the names of our older female relatives. We always use it for an older girl or woman because Tagalog is a language that values age. Sometimes “Ate” replaces the elder sister’s name entirely. The Ate of a family is named through the irreplaceable relationship she has with her younger siblings.  

In March 2020, my mother’s only older sister, her Ate, got sick. The city of Manila was in emergency COVID lock-down.  By ambulance was the only way anyone was allowed to leave home. None of my aunt’s family were allowed to go to the hospital with her. She arrived alone at the hospital that had no room for her. She stayed overnight on a gurney in the hallway. By the time any family could get on the phone with her, she could no longer speak—she had been intubated overnight.  Then, alone in that hallway, without speaking to any family, she died. And, because nobody who lived outside of Manila could attend the funeral, this Ate, defined by her relationship to her siblings all her life, was buried in the same way she died–out of breath and alone. She was one of the first COVID deaths in Manila.    

Burial Rite I in the BCP (Book of Common Prayer) uses the Psalm, “Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as day; the darkness and the light to thee are both alike.” But the darkness of the pandemic and its layers of political and religious turmoil drowned me. Families who looked like mine, with Ates like my aunt and like me, were being targeted for violence by people who called themselves Christians. Institutions that invoked Christian tenets disregarded the reverence we felt for the life of our elderly. Instead of sustenance, Christianity fed me poison, leaving my spirit open like a wound; never recovering, always painful.  

I felt that Christianity represented a Divinity that did not know the fear of harm based on skin colour or eye shape; who was not with my aunt in her viscerally horrifying final moments; who could not understand the depth of the word Ate. For me, the only healing possible after the tumult of those years was another death of sorts. So, I mourned the institution of Christianity and laid it to rest in my life. I eulogized it:  

“Dear Christianity, I forgive you for the enormous pain you have inflicted on me, on those I love, and on the world. Please forgive me for being angry at individuals when I should have been angry at systems. I love you for the community you’ve always provided me. May you rest in peace.”

Then, I found myself in a new, chthonic darkness where I felt safe and connected. The way one is safe and connected to the mother while in the darkness of the womb. Or the vastness of the universe when enveloped by the black night sky. The way we are connected to the earth when our hands work the black soil of our gardens; or when we splash our feet in the blackness of deep waters.   

I’ve heard it said that a burial looks a lot like a planting. While not every plant survives the winter, from its seeds the earth and sun birth a new generation—different but connected. By mourning and burying Christianity, I found space for the Divine to birth a new, connected way of being for me. Now, the darkness I feel is warm and energetic – like seeds about to sprout.  

Today, my experience of the Divine is like an Ate who delights in me, plays with me, and lives life with me. She has been in the world longer than I have and shows me how to be in it too.  She fiercely protects me and teaches me how to protect those who come after me. This Divine Ate has brown skin and flowing black hair and dark eyes that kiss in the corners. She is responsible for the young and models respect for the elders. She is with my aunt now and watches over all the Ates of the world, as we do our own precious siblings. I pray the Divine continues to inspire me to be my best self, invites me to play, and inculcates in me the fierce protectiveness of the eldest sister.  

Tarja Carjudo is an Ate, an Episcopalian, and an attorney.  She lives in a small town in the American South with her spouse, pug, and cat. 

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St. Francis and the Gift of Song ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Canticle*

They sat in the convent garden
breathing in rosemary and thyme,
Francis ill and frail, his vision obscured.
Clare had lost use of her legs,
both their faces marked
by lines that told stories—
how their chosen poverty
had intensified their love,
had freed them from unnecessary burdens.

They talked for hours,
stretched like a tent above them,
their laughter and weeping
hung in the air like rose garlands,
interrupted by moments of stillness
when they paused and listened
to the way the breeze rustled
the world, coaxing forth its song.
And when sunlight emerged
they turned their faces toward it like daisies,
and when rain poured
they huddled under the roof
to hear how its rhythm echoed their hearts.

As summer turned to autumn,
their conversation circled around endings
and they knew death was stirring
in the leaves falling around them
toward the soft mouth of the earth.

Sometimes under the full moon each rose
from their beds, Clare with help of a sister,
to sit under that vastness of black sky
studded with stars, to consider the infinite.

One morning Clare woke
to the sound of Francis singing outside
by the fountain, barefoot and splashing,
slant of early light
casting rainbows through the air.
She heard his praise of sun and moon,
the light that was her name,
the elements and even Sister Death
and wept with joy at the beauty
of what had emerged from their hours
side by side, wept with grief knowing Francis
would soon slip away,

but now she had a song
that was like a piece of his heart,
and she could almost bear this coming loss,
the birds joining in with their chorus,
the stone walls humming prayers.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Yesterday was the Feast of Saint Francis and tomorrow Simon and Deirdre will be leading our monthly contemplative prayer service celebrating St. Francis and also their love of music. Expect conversations about what music means to each of them, as well as the traditions of singing the psalms on their two beloved islands—Iona and Inismor (one of the Aran Islands). 

I wrote this poem above soon after I found out that Francis had spent some time with Clare toward the end of his life while he was declining with illness. Out of this season of deepened friendship, shared conversation, and savoring the beauty of Assisi, came the song many of us know as Canticle of Creation, a joyful song that celebrates the sun, moon, and stars, and the gift of each of the elements as wise teachers in our lives. I loved imagining the role Clare played in inspiring this song and how Francis in his experience of illness and limitation, saw the universe more expansively than ever before. 

A few weeks ago, I attended a retreat on St. Hildegard of Bingen led by two singers. I have studied Hildegard’s work for years, and was eager to be immersed in her music. At one point in the retreat they put up an image of Hildegard’s vision of the choirs of angels and played singing bowls, immersing us in a glorious sound bath, before inviting us to chant together. For Hildegard the angels are always singing, there is a magnificent harmony of sound ringing through the heavens and when we open our hearts to music, we touch this angelic realm. It was an absolutely ethereal experience. 

I think Francis and Clare must have touched the realm of the angels in those quiet days of conversation and praying the psalms together. I love that Francis’ heart was inspired to create this effusive song that we still sing today. A few years ago, we commissioned Simon to set the Canticle to music.

We are blessed at Abbey of the Arts with many gifted musicians on our Wisdom Council. While I won’t personally be at the prayer service because I am still on sabbatical, I know the time shared with Simon and Deirdre will be rich indeed. You are warmly invited to join them tomorrow, Monday, October 6th as we return to our monthly prayer services after a summer break. It will be a joy to join with community once again. 

May your hearts be opened to the music already unfolding all around you. May you open your voices to join in and sing. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*poem from a forthcoming poetry collection tentatively titled What Enters Through the Open Heart by Christine Valters Paintner

Dancing Monk Icon by Marcy Hall

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Polly Paton-Brown

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wisdom Council member Polly Paton-Brown’s reflection“I wanna be where my feet are.”

November 6th 2024 was a misty day in the part of the UK where I live. As I walked my dogs, everything in the landscape felt muted and still. I was so aware of my many friends in the US who were waking up to a changed reality. The fear and distress of so many came rolling off the internet in waves. As I walked a song by Porter’s Gate kept going through my mind. “I wanna  be where my feet are. The ground below me, is how you hold me.”  

In the seven months that have followed that day, months where the world has changed in shocking and terrifying ways for so many, the words of that song have been my heart’s cry and my deepest prayer. 

‘I wanna be where my feet are.’

It sounds so simple. But as the months went on, I began to realise just how often I wasn’t “where my feet were”.  Not because I didn’t love where I live or because I was trying to escape from life circumstances. I live in a beautiful part of the world, have a beloved partner, a delightful home where we live surrounded by our menagerie of animals and huge rambling garden. It was easy to fall into the trap of looking for a problem. Perhaps some flaw in my lifestyle that was preventing me from really being present in the way I wanted. Perhaps it was the fact I am neurodiverse and the ADHD and sensory processing disorder were the problem. Or maybe it was because of my chronic health issues and the daily dance with pain and fatigue. I am sure that all of those issues do have an impact. But they weren’t really the issue. In fact, the problem was difficult to detect because it was actually a source of great blessing in my life. 

The internet. 

I know, I know. I can hear you chuckling at the irony of me writing about this in a piece that will be shared on-line! For so many of us, the internet has been such a source of blessing. Here in the Abbey of the Arts we have a wonderful community. Our on-line retreats are soul nourishing and take us further on our faith journey. Over the years I have had the privilege of walking with so many of you, witnessing the transformation that happens when we come together. In my own life, the internet has enabled me to take part in courses and offerings with other artists and spiritual seekers from all around the globe, forming real and precious relationships with so many of them. But this very thing that has blessed me immeasurably has also been the reason that I, and I suspect many of you, find it difficult to be “where our feet are”.  

Everyday, every hour, every minute, images and information pour out of our screens. The reality of climate collapse accompanies our coffee time, confronts us as we send messages to friends and bombards us as we seek connection with like minded souls. We know instantly when there is a terrifying storm in Florida, forest fires in California, catastrophic floods in India. The truth about what is happening all over the planet is overwhelming. In the end we feel powerless and burned out and become paralysed or sick from demands that overstretch us.

Things came to a head for me a few months ago. I was pondering the story of the rich young ruler who asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” The question was turning over in my mind as I drove to the farm where I keep my horses. On the way I passed various corpses of animals killed on the road. Several pheasants, a badger, a rabbit and two squirrels. “They are your neighbours,” a voice whispered in my heart. Suddenly the big picture, the global picture faded and I became aware of what was happening in my own neighbourhood. When a local farmer cut down over a hundred trees during nesting season to make it easier to repair his fencing, my thoughts went to the birds who wouldn’t have young that year, the pollinators bereft of blossom and the insects, birds and mammals who would go hungry for lack of berries and fruit. “They are your neighbours.”

As I struggled to find the time to connect with this local community of other-than-humans neighbours, I came across  someone called Gideon Heugh on Substack. Heugh writes a lot about the dangers of living in a technological world.  His words “I’m not anti-tech, but I am hawkishly opposed to anything that makes us less alive. And what is aliveness? Presence. Relationship. Community. Connection: connection to each other, to the wider living world, to our deepest selves—and to something greater than our selves,” landed in a tender part of me. I realised that to truly be where my feet were I had to spend less time being a global citizen and invest my time locally. Taking social media off my phone, I started walking rather than scrolling and began to find out who lived in my neighbourhood. Rather than seeing the birds on our bird feeder as just different species, I started to observe them as individuals. I researched what foods they liked, where and how they nested, starting a creative project where I placed images of the different species on cards and wrote all the information I was learning on the back. But most of all I began to ask them, “What do you need? How can I serve you.”  What I have realised is that they are noticing the shift. That might sound a bit crazy but it is true. The willow warblers stay on the bird feeder whilst I sit nearby rather than flying off in a mad flutter of wings. Jackdaws land on the shed roof near the labyrinth and chatter at me as I walk. Squirrel makes eye contact whilst gorging on the peanuts I put out for him and the birds. And suddenly, I know I belong. Not just to the huge and global. But right here, right now. To THIS place. This community of neighbours. Right where my feet are. 

The Porter’s Gate song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx0mIxxza9I

Gideon Heugh: GideonHeugh.substack.com

Polly Paton-Brown MA UKCP worked for many years as a psychotherapist and trainer in the field of trauma. More recently, Polly’s focus has been on helping people explore their spirituality and prayer,  using creativity and connection with nature. Polly has a particular passion for creating healing dolls as a portal to transformation.

Always a lover of nature, horses and creativity Polly now integrates all of these into her practice. She has trained in Nature Based Practice and Eco-pychology, Environmental Arts, Expressive Arts and Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy. She is a licenced facilitator of Chakradance,  The Art of Allowing , Creative Awakenings and the  Wild Soul Woman Programme.

A member of the Iona Community, Polly was coordinator of their healing ministry for 11 years and when in that role ran regular retreats on the Isle of Iona. She is also a Sister of Belle Coeur.  With roots in the contemplative and monastic traditions, Polly also draws wisdom from other spiritual paths such as Druidry and Sufism. She is passionate to help those wounded by the institutional church restore their image of God and themselves.

Visit Polly’s website here. Polly writes the Wild Soul Calling Substack.

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The Art and Wisdom of Savoring ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

My newest book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year has been published by Broadleaf Books! (You can download a free reflection guide or small group leader’s guide here). 

In 2012, the year we moved to Europe, the word that claimed me was savor. I had been reading In the Company of Rilke by Stephanie Dowrick.  The German poet Rilke has been a teacher of mine for many years but that previous year his wisdom became even more necessary for my life.  Each morning as a part of my daily prayer and journaling time I read a poem of his in German and did my best to translate with my rusty language skills.  Then I read the translation offered and see what nuances I might have missed.

Then I let a kind of lectio divina practice unfold in my prayer where I listen for a word or phrase that shimmers and then sit with what it has to reveal to me.  Sometimes the meaning emerges quickly in the silence, often it ripens over many days.  As I read in Dowrick’s book, she was exploring how a central motivation of Rilke’s poetry is to ponder what it means to live this human life we are given, to discover the inner nature of my particular experience. She wrote: “This familiar life and body will not come again.” And I paused there.

It seemed fairly obvious in writing it, this life and body with which I have grown so fond and familiar are not permanent. I had an encounter with the stark reality of my own mortality in 2010 when I developed a pulmonary embolism and ended up in the hospital. That experience thrust me into a far more intense appreciation for everything in my life.

A phrase rose up in my heart: “savor this life and this body.”  A question began to shimmer for me: What if the meaning of my life is to experience my particular life, my lens on the world, my encounters with grief and loss, delight and joy, but all as my unique story never to be repeated again? What might I discover by remembering this daily? How might my relationship to my own experience and to this wondrous vessel that carries me through it all be transformed if I not just offer gratitude for my life, but savor it with relish, knowing that this moment will never again happen.  And to trust that this moment carries profound wisdom I need to transform my service to the world.

There was so much sweetness that winter after being in the hospital, as I walked hand in hand with my beloved through parks with bare trees, so grateful to be together and be alive,. I found myself deeply in love with this man, in that moment, and I savored the feel of his rough skin against mine. I savored his gaze over at me, so full of love and familiarity. I savored the way his breath made a faint cloud with each exhale on this chilly evening.

Out of this experience with death came a sense of urgency for me in my life. The things I have wanted to do someday, like live overseas, suddenly became much more important to pay attention.

What happens when we delay our dreams, when we push aside the subtle whispers that rise up when we are quiet for a while? How do they lose their vigor and insistency through a haze of indifference, or holding them off?

Our days are truly jewels, each one a treasure, another opportunity to savor the story emerging in my life.  Even the difficult threads, maybe especially the difficult ones.

The root of the word savor comes from the Latin word saporem which means to taste and is also the root of sapient which is the word for wisdom.  Another definition I loved is “to give oneself over to the enjoyment of something.”  When I give myself over to the experience of savoring, wisdom emerges. Savoring calls for a kind of surrender.

Savoring calls me to slowness (I can’t savor quickly), and to spaciousness (I can’t savor everything at once), and to mindfulness (I can’t savor without being fully present).

It also calls for a fierce and wise discernment about how I spend my time and energy.  Now that I know deep in my bones the limits of my life breaths, how do I choose to spend those dazzling hours? What are the experiences ripening within me that long for exploration?

There is also a seasonal quality to savoring – this season, what is right before me, right now, is to be savored. It will rise and fall, come into fullness and then slip away.  When I savor I pay attention to all the moments of that experience without trying to change it.

And finally, there is a tremendous sweetness to this open-hearted way of being in the world. Everything becomes grace because I recognize it could all be different, it could all be gone. Rather than grasp at how I think this moment should be, I savor the way things are. Surrender to the wisdom of this moment.  When we listen for a word to receive, it has power to guide our way of being in the world. 

You can order your copy of Give Me a Word and join us for our online Advent retreat where we will journey through the practices together. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

PS Last week I was joined by Simon de Voil for a launch party to celebrate the book’s release. Our gathering included an overview of the book, contemplative practice, and song. You can watch the recording here.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Katharine Weinmann

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Katharine Weinmann’s reflection and poem Courting the Mystic and the Muse.

Five years ago, with the onset of Covid–19, and grieving the abrupt end of a professional career I had cherished, I found my way to writing poetry. The intensive online retreats hosted by Christine and Abbey of the Arts provided the emotional support, compassionate community, intellectual stimulation, and skillful scaffolding I needed for my self-study into this creative expression. Despite that prolonged period of uncertain, even fearful, solitude, I was inspired to write and make art in the journals I kept with each retreat. Revised, refined and polished, many of those early poems have since been published and several will be included in my forthcoming debut collection, Skyborne Insight, Homemade Love. 

Below is one that emerged from my participation in “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist,” the twelve–week online retreat, first offered in Fall 2020. I owe a debt of gratitude to Christine and the Abbey of the Arts community for providing the creative and contemplative container in which I, and so many, flourished then, and now in these continuously harrowing times. With a deep bow…

Courting the Mystic and the Muse

This ordinary place
My Holy Enough.

This ordinary life
My Holy Everything.

Guide me, oh Beloved, that
my eyes may see the shimmer
to be revealed though photography,

my hand may write the words
to be shared through poem and story,

my hands may prepare the food
to be savoured through home–cooking.

Invite me, oh Beloved, into living
my life as poem and prayer,
and that with Beauty named,
become Holy Alchemy
for love and justice.

Published internationally in literary journals and anthologies, Katharine Weinmann writes poetry, walks long distances, sees beauty in life’s imperfections and photographs its shimmer. She blogs at A Wabi Sabi Life and lives with her husband and their dog, Walker, on the Canadian prairies.

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Give Me a Word ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

My newest book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year has been published by Broadleaf Books! (You can download a free reflection guide or small group leader’s guide here.) 

The dedication to my book reads: 

“For all the ancient and contemporary wild-hearted ammas and abbas who let the desert work its power and who listen for the sacred word of Mystery emerge from within.”

That includes you, especially if you are drawn to the wisdom of the desert and how it can support us in living in challenging times. The ancient abbas and ammas fled to the desert to get away from the excesses of the Christian way they were seeing all around them. They sought a radical transformation to deeper Love. 

A key phrase, repeated often in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, is “Give me a word.” When a novice approaches one of the ammas or abbas and says, “Give me a word,” “he or she is not asking for either a command or a solution, but for a communication that can be received as a stimulus to grow into fuller life.  It is never a theoretical matter, and the elders are scathing about those who want simply something to discuss.”[i]

“A brother questioned Abba Hierax saying, “Give me a word.  How can I be saved?” The old man said to him, “Sit in your cell, and if you are hungry, eat, if you are thirsty, drink; only do not speak evil of anyone, and you will be saved. (Hierax 1)”

We find this phrase repeated throughout the sayings of the desert fathers and mothers. This tradition of asking for a word was a way of seeking something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. A “word” was often a short phrase to nourish and challenge the receiver. A word was meant to be wrestled with and slowly grown into.

“A monk once came to Basil of Caesarea and said, “Speak a word, Father”; and Basil replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and the monk went away at once.  Twenty years later he came back and said, “Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me”; and he said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also.[ii]“

This story demonstrates how a word could be worked on for years at a time. The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counselling. It was part of a relationship which had developed and the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple would be life-giving. It was meant for this person in this moment and season of their lives. 

When you begin your own journey of listening for your word, release your thinking mind and enter into a space of receiving. Ask the wise presences in your life for your own life-giving word. This book invites you to listen in the stillness, to sacred texts, to your life, to dreams, to nature, to your body, to soul friends, to the ancestors. The word might come from reading a poem or story. It might come in a time of stillness or it might arrive later in the day, wise words offered from an unexpected source, a dream symbol, a line from a conversation, or an image you stumble upon that seizes your imagination.

You can order your copy of Give Me a Word and join us for our online Advent retreat where we will journey through the practices together. 

I had a wonderful conversation with Mark Longhurst, Publications Manager at The Center for Action and Contemplation, about the themes of the book. Watch the interview here.

Join us tomorrow, September 22nd for a book launch. During this hour long free event I will share the themes and invitations of the book and lead us in a guided meditation experience. Simon will offer the gift of music. There will also be a chance to win a signed copy of the book or a place in the Advent retreat for those who are able to join us live.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

P.S. The audiobook version of my fairy tale Journey to Joy is now available on Audible!

[i] Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, 50 (Lion Books, 2004) 

[ii] Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers, from the introduction, xxii

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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 Finding My Song, Finding Its Colour.

My heart’s deep-down hunger urges me: Enroll in this skincare formulating course! Signing up honours my wild self and her contours—as organic as that of the skincare organization’s eco-sustainability ethos. Lesson by tasty lesson, my heart and mind are nourished and at peace. 

Even so, self-doubt’s entangling flip-flops set up creative struggles in me—to keep exercising the sign-up trust that’s digestively sustained and strengthened by each formulating lesson.

For St. Hildegard, the recovery of the “original wisdom” already within invites us to call upon the virtues—fruitful practices that include patience, kindness, and compassion—to empower us with the life-sustaining choices that counter our wayward tendencies. When my doubt-trust, vice-virtue entanglements are too hard to handle directly, I turn to creative beading—where my needle-and-thread’s pace eases, and so releases, self-doubt’s power to sabotage my heart’s desires. 

Naming my disorderly self-doubt (and its fear-knots) as energy shared with my faith-trust engagements, like sides of a coin, helps me call forth radical hospitality, a basic monastic action. Welcoming strangers—saboteurs and wildish ones—is an essential practice whose viriditas power invites me into knot-transformations, not fisty-cuffs. As Meister Eckhart asserts: “We are to practice virtue, not possess it.”

Wildness, I note, is not on Hildegard’s list of subconscious virtues and corresponding vices displayed at the Healthy Hildegard website.  Only later will I marvel at the mystery attraction that draws my eye to the Generosity / Bitterness pairing.

*****

First hearing about Hildegard’s viriditas—divine greening power displayed in nature and applied in body and soul metaphors—generates a resonating hum in me. That hum became an invitation to learn to sing the tricky, first line phrasing from one of Hildegard’s songs honouring the Virgin Mary: 

O viridissima virga, 

Ave [O greenest branch, Hail]

I also learn the Abbey song, Viriditas, which starts: 

Let my soul be greening with the Living Light…

When I first hear Hildegard’s phrase ‘Mary as the greenest branch’, that upwelling image becomes a green bead-encrusted branch, whose story is detailed here. That artwork initiated a green-themed series still unfolding.

Even with years of viriditas greenness flowing in, around, and through me, I was brought anew to my own soul-anguished song search, much like the fairy tale Sophia in Abbess Christine’s book Journey to Joy (2025). The tale’s archetypal motifs reach out to touch and teach me. 

How I resonate with the tale’s motifs, such as Sophia’s song search—one enfolding basic human questions: Who am I? What am I here for? 

*****

Based on Hildegard’s original recipe, the digestive bitters tablets promoted on the Healthy Hildegard home page lists six health benefits, including: Improve[s] Skin Care.

What first floors me is learning that the skin’s outermost layer, the epidermis, contains bitter taste receptors! Brief details explain how bitter botanical substances stimulate the skin’s receptors to create a healthy skin barrier. A second link takes me to the 2015 research paper that first published this discovery. That paper reminded me of yesterday’s reading in my skincare formulating course, which underlined the need to support claims for an ingredient’s skincare benefits with scientific evidence.

The pairing of skin-beneficent bitters and supporting research serve as vibrant green signposts. I notice that the formulating journey, like those of contemplative and creative ones, share similar way-markers. All focus more on the lessons of presence, process, and practice than fast-lane destinations. 

Like the way-marking arrows that direct Camino walkers, my signposts help me befriend my formulating doubts. Both my self-doubt and direction-navigating trust need the wild-hearted hand-on-the-shoulder companioning to keep us on course, step-by-pilgrim step. 

*****

The signposts give me pause to reflect. Self-doubt stalled Hildegard’s midlife awakening for a time. Yet Holy Wisdom helped her shift this wearisome weakness sufficiently to redirect its energy into sustaining creative strength. Her subsequent years of multi-faceted fruitfulness exemplify the transformation. Hildegard herself was sustained by the flowing green sap—a model of green-hearted nourishment to comfort and satisfy me—body, soul, and spirit.

“The piety of doubt”, in James K A Smith’s reflection “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s fear”, offer nuances that apply to Hildegard’s doubt-and-faith companionship—and mine. As he notes, “Faith, in Scripture and a long Christian tradition, is bound up with peace, not certainty. In faith one entrusts oneself.” How that resonates with my skincare formulating lessons! A still, small voice sings, Fear not. Your green signposts are trustworthy.

Singing, for Hildegard, is medicine: “Singing softens hard [and fearful] hearts and summons the Holy Spirit.” She urges me: Don’t stop singing!

“What is my song?” I revisit fairy tale Sophia’s question to answer: My song is a three-part harmony of expressive green forms. When the wind asks, “What is your truth?”, I pause—then it comes to me: Green. My truth is green!

This disclosure—surprising then, obvious now—reminds me of Hildegard’s love of Latin wordplays. Wisdom (sapientia) and taste (sapere) share the same root. Her virga (branch) and virgo (virgin) playoffs are matched by a similar Latin game between viridis (green) and veritas (truth) whose volleys coined viriditas.  

My journey’s signposts deepen my wild self’s willingness to become a green ambassador for safe and effective skincare. This third facet—along with my calling to writing and bead and fibre artmaking—opens a three-dimensional space, all equally enriched by viriditas.

Green singer! Green song!

*Image – Green Bugle Bead Mandala 2.5 in/ 6.5 cm diameter, work-in-progress by Sharon Johnson

Sharon Dawn Johnson, of Ottawa, Canada, delights in the interplays of writing, beading/ fibre artistry, and organic skin care formulating. This dynamic threesome nourishes and sustains her creative and contemplative practices.

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