Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 21

Monk in the World Guest Post: Amy Oden

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Amy Oden’s reflection on the power of the contemplative stance during a time of disorientation.

It hit me first in my stomach, a gut punch I was not braced for: news that I would no longer be needed to teach a load of courses that I had, in one way or another, taught for almost 35 years.  On one level, I knew this time would come. In fact, it needed to come. It was healthy and in the nature of things to pass the torch to the next generation.  What’s more, I’d become more and more clear that I no longer really wanted to teach content-heavy courses, preferring instead courses that allowed me to accompany students in spiritual formation.

But I hadn’t realized it would happen now, this day I received the news.  The shock stunned me, reverberating to my core. As I regained my breath, I began slow breathing, trusting breath to return me to myself. 

The wisdom of the contemplative stance is precisely this: it roots us in ourselves, the real-life, true self where the image of God resides. When I can inhabit this contemplative way of being, I can slow down, experience the love that holds my life and gain eyes to see and ears to hear God’s own heartbeat, right here, even in the midst of this disorientation.

But I couldn’t stay there for long. My mind raced to figure out how to fill that now-empty space in my calendar.  Should I text friends to see if they needed anyone to teach in the fall? Or send out emails to let folks know I was available? Maybe I could be a regular classroom aid in our public schools or work at the library. I began to craft a plan of action to ensure a full schedule for continuity of my work and identity.

Again, the contemplative posture nudged me to pause here, too. Perhaps this empty space was also an open space? Perhaps what appeared to be the end of this teaching load was also an invitation to simply stop and pay attention? What might it be like to not jump into action, to not start planning replacement activities but instead, to simply sit with this and listen?

Living as a monk in the world, for me, means trusting contemplative listening and presence to offer me a deeper path, a wisdom path, that my eager, managerial mind would never propose.

In this case, it meant attentive breathing. Then pausing to pay attention and this helped me be more available for the poem that would fall into my lap a few days later.  It became a place to linger during this season of disorientation. By David Wagoner, the poem “Lost” offered me a resting place called Here while I waited, feeling lost in my own life, before setting out again.

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside youAre not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,. . . Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.(David Wagoner, Collected Poems, 1956-1976)

I want to stand still. Here. Ask permission to know Here and be known. And let the forest find me.

I want to live in this poem a while. I want to trust that what first seemed to be a terrifying cliff’s edge might also be a fertile place or an abyss where I might learn to soar. If I have eyes to see. The contemplative life offers me those eyes. 

For me, in this season, living as a monk in the world, looks like this:

Pause. Breathe. Pay attention.

Lean in to poetry, words that invite me beyond words.

So I can listen to what is, now.

Born and raised on the prairies of Oklahoma, Amy Oden has found her spiritual home under the wide-open sky. Amy is a seminary professor, retreat leader and spiritual director. Her passion is introducing ancient practices for following Jesus into the world today. For more about Amy, go to amyoden.com

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BIBOLOVE InterPlay Experience + Prayer Cycle Day 5 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims, 

Today we release Day 5 of our Love of Thousands prayer cycle. Click the links above for morning and evening prayer on the themes of the Grieving Our Losses and Ancestral Pilgrimage.

This Friday we are offering a BIBOLOVE InterPlay Experience, led by Soyinka Rahim. Soyinka will invite us into a powerful space of amplifying love in the world through meditation, affirmation, visualization, and gentle movement.

Here is an introduction to the experience from Soyinka.

Hi! BIBOLOVE.Us
peace ,love, joy, happiness, health, grace, and ease people of the world

My name is Soyinka Rahim, GSP.  I’m a Grassroots Spiritual Practitioner,
I am inviting you into a BIBOLOVE.Us practice

BIBOLOVE means “Breathe in, Breathe out LOVE.” We are vessels for love’s breath.
We are love, created by love, to create love, honoring SPIRITLOVE that moves through and around us and all things all the time. Knowing and believing we are love ignites a Supremelove that allows us to love and be loved.

In a moment of my depression, I did not want to live this life, and I asked SPIRITLOVE for a lifeline. Mama said God is a three-letter word for Love.
I asked SPIRITLOVE to give me something to live for, which then I was given: “BIBOLOVE, Soyinka. Breathe in love, Soyinka. Breathe out love, Soyinka.”

I enjoy sharing my gifts as a facilitator of Love in various settings including,
One-on-ones for spiritual direction
Family reunions for intergenerational interactive play
Openings and closings of small and large organizational meetings
Conferences – as weaver, weaving BIBOLOVE practices

I love to create and lead Affirmation Movement Meditations – for individual bodies and the collective body – celebrating SPIRITLOVE that connects all hearts and souls to A LOVESUPREME.

I love finding colorful ways to communicate my message. Four hearts – blue, red, green, and yellow –  is another way to write BIBO.  Add four more red hearts – and you have BIBOLOVE.  

 Blue heart – Our breath
 Red heart – Our selflove
 Green heart – Our earth
 Gold heart – Our highest frequency, which is A SUPREMELOVE.
 Our heart and soul connections.

I love traveling nationally and internationally, leading what I call BIBOLOVE.Us (.Us represents us!)
I lead –
Collective Breaths
Affirmation Movement Meditations
Storytelling
Reminders that we are the love we are waiting for.

We are all creative beings, artists of the world, breathing, talking, singing, walking, moving, dancing, directing our callings, having spiritual experiences in bodies, sharing our stories. We’re all created by the creator to create.
 
When we shine our lights of love, we see that we are all gifts of love.
 
An Affirmation Movement Meditation
I share:
 
“I’m a gift,
you’re a gift.
Together we create melodies with harmonies.
We’re making peace for the world to see.
 
When people experience the BIBOLOVE.Us Affirmation Movement Meditations, we are all reminded that we are one in divine order.
 
I am really excited to celebrate our heart and soul connection to A LOVESUPREME with Abbey of the Arts in November’s retreat.  Come PPP – Pray, Play, and Part-ay with your BIBOLOVE practitioner!  

Read the rest of Soyinka’s reflection and poem about BIBOLOVE.Us

Please join us Friday for a BIBOLOVE InterPlay Experience. We are also delighted to be hosting our monthly Centering Prayer session with Therese Taylor-Stinson on Wednesday. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Image © Soyinka Rahim

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Roger Butts

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Roger Butts’s reflection and poem I Will Look. And I Will Sing.

After decades of playing tennis, my knees hurt. After being in the car driving down a Colorado interstate, my back aches. My eyes don’t see so well after being alive 58 years. Sometimes I wonder how my arthritis will play out over time. I’m a hospital chaplain. I know this old body decomposes. I know it gets creaky. Some of us are in wheelchairs and are behind walkers. Some of us are spritely and young. We all have such gifts and talents and dreams and visions. And we are tied to these vessels we call our bodies. What a wild ride. And so when I wake up I do a little body prayer, checking in with all these different parts of my body. And I remind each what their role is in helping me to notice the sacred event in each thing I encounter.

I Will Look. And I Will Sing​.​Today, I will hold my eyeball, gently in my hand.First, of course I’ll say thank you.This is enough. But then I’ll remind eyeballThat all we see today is more sacred than we can guess.I will hold my tongue.Help me sing today a song of praise:“God In that slimy frog and that blazing sunWe love and adore you.”And I will hold my heart,My beat and beating heart,And say, “Thank you. You can look too. You know I can’t see without you.”I will take my hands in my hands.And I will hold and bless them. “Look how youEngage the world. Look how you help.You can look too. I can’t see without you.”And today I will hold my feet in my hands.Caress and knead and bless.You’ve taken us to such great places,Without you, who even am I?And I will look. And I will sing.And I’ll beat. And I’ll touch.And I’ll dance and I’ll dance some more.What other prayer would suffice?

Roger Butts is a hospital chaplain in Colorado. He wrote Seeds of Devotion. While he is a Unitarian Universalist, his beloved Marta Fioriti is a pastor in the United Church of Christ. They have two black labs and three young adult children.

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BIBOLOVE.US Reflection & InterPlay Experience from Soyinka Rahim

On Friday, November 17th we are offering a BIBOLOVE InterPlay Experience, led by Soyinka Rahim. Soyinka will invite us into a powerful space of amplifying love in the world through meditation, affirmation, visualization, and gentle movement.

Here is an introduction to the experience from Soyinka.

Hi! BIBOLOVE.Us
peace, love, joy, happiness, health, grace, and ease people of the world

My name is Soyinka Rahim, GSP.  I’m a Grassroots Spiritual Practitioner,
I am inviting you into a BIBOLOVE.Us practice

BIBOLOVE means “Breathe in, Breathe out LOVE.” We are vessels for love’s breath.
We are love, created by love, to create love, honoring SPIRITLOVE that moves through and around us and all things all the time. Knowing and believing we are love ignites a Supremelove that allows us to love and be loved.

In a moment of my depression, I did not want to live this life, and I asked SPIRITLOVE for a lifeline. Mama said God is a three-letter word for Love.
I asked SPIRITLOVE to give me something to live for, which then I was given: “BIBOLOVE, Soyinka. Breathe in love, Soyinka. Breathe out love, Soyinka.”

I enjoy sharing my gifts as a facilitator of Love in various settings including,
One-on-ones for spiritual direction
Family reunions for intergenerational interactive play
Openings and closings of small and large organizational meetings
Conferences – as weaver, weaving BIBOLOVE practices

I love to create and lead Affirmation Movement Meditations – for individual bodies and the collective body – celebrating SPIRITLOVE that connects all hearts and souls to A LOVESUPREME.

I love finding colorful ways to communicate my message. Four hearts – blue, red, green, and yellow –  is another way to write BIBO.  Add four more red hearts – and you have BIBOLOVE.  

 Blue heart – Our breath
 Red heart – Our selflove
 Green heart – Our earth
 Gold heart – Our highest frequency, which is A SUPREMELOVE.
 Our heart and soul connections.

I love traveling nationally and internationally, leading what I call BIBOLOVE.Us (.Us represents us!)
I lead –
Collective Breaths
Affirmation Movement Meditations
Storytelling
Reminders that we are the love we are waiting for.

I wrote this poem:

Loving, grieving
at the crossroads,
hmmm,
Reminding me to remind you to remind me
to remind us:
Trust
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE.
When traumatized by people
and life's worldly events,
Loving, grieving at the crossroads.
Immersed in rude disrespectful laws
designed from wicked minds to dim lights, break spirits
shatter
hearts.
Loving, grieving at the crossroads hmmm.
Lovelights Shining through the cracks
reminding me to remind you to remind me
to remind us
We are LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE.
Pulling from ancestral dreams on how to be
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE.
Earth roots deep at the crossroads,
Loving, grieving
Souls
soaring growing
Wind
breathing, speaking life through bodies
illuminating bright
beaming paths of
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOVE.
Water swirling through veins
Loving, grieving
meetings at the crossroads, hmmm,
Reminding me to remind you to remind me
to remind us
We are one.
Breathing, grieving, living, loving soul from one source
A LOVESUPREME, A LOVESUPREME, A LOVESUPREME.
I AM LOVE
I LOVE
I AM LOVED.
Loving, grieving at the crossroads
112922SR, GSP
Through life's heartbreaks, what do our bodies need while living in a world of hatred, murder, greed, unjust laws, fear, traumatized people, and anxieties?

Seven words to remind us
We are love
We love
We are loved : Peace, Love, Joy, Happiness, Health, Grace, & Ease.

May our bodies overflow with PLJHHG&E in all our relations as we flounder, wiggling, and growing, taking necessary actions to better understand how to love and love again, to love and be loved.

We are all creative beings, artists of the world, breathing, talking, singing, walking, moving, dancing, directing our callings, having spiritual experiences in bodies, sharing our stories. We're all created by the creator to create.

When we shine our lights of love, we see that we are all gifts of love.

An Affirmation Movement Meditation
I share:

“I'm a gift,
you’re a gift.
Together we create melodies with harmonies.
We're making peace for the world to see.

When people experience the BIBOLOVE.Us Affirmation Movement Meditations, we are all reminded that we are one in divine order.

I am really excited to celebrate our heart and soul connection to A LOVESUPREME with Abbey of the Arts in November’s retreat. Come PPP - Pray, Play, and Part-ay with your BIBOLOVE practitioner!

Soyinka Rahim, GSP
BIBOLOVE.Us PLJHHGE
LOOOOOVE World Power
Please join us Friday, November 17th for a BIBOLOVE InterPlay Experience.

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The Blessings of the Ancestors + Prayer Cycle Day 4 ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

“This morning, let the great cloud of witnesses be as near to us as our breathing, help us to feel the presence of our wise and well ancestors pulsing within us. Help us to feel their abundant blessing on our lives as they grieve with us and celebrate our joys. We ask them to bless our feet and guide us on our path ahead.” 

(Opening prayer for Day 4 Morning of the Love of Thousands prayer cycle) 

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, 

Today we release Day 4 of our Love of Thousands prayer cycle. Click the links above for morning and evening prayer on the themes of the Blessings of the Ancestors and Healing the Wounds of Generations. 

I offer you another excerpt from my book The Love of Thousands:

We have largely lost a sense of regular connection to our ancestors, especially those that may have died before we were even born. Like the saints, our wise and well ancestors can be a source of tremendous wisdom and support as we move through this life. Those who are not fully vibrant at death, we can help bring healing to. 

We communicate with ancestors much in the way we would communicate with angels and saints- through dreams, visions, synchronicity, nature, ritual, and imagination. We call upon them through prayer, we honor them through ritual offerings, and we ask them for guidance. 

Henri Nouwen wrote: “Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.” This is an intentional act of cultivating relationship. 

For some of us, when we think about ancestors our thoughts may immediately turn toward a dysfunctional family system or a legacy of pain and wounding we carry in our family line. Perhaps you had a very toxic family system and so the thought of naming blessings seems ridiculous or too much of a stretch. Rest assured we will be working with some ways to bring healing to our family lines. But first I want to invite us to ponder the blessing of our ancestors. 

If we consider that saints are those who are wise and well and have lived into their truest and deepest selves in the service of love, we might be able to imagine that some of our ancestors also reached this state of illuminated living in their lifetimes or beyond the veil. 

Perhaps you were adopted and never knew your birth family. It might help as well to consider our ancestors not just of blood and bone, but also of spiritual lineage, of creative lineage, or other vocational inspiration. Let us consider that our ancestors also bless us in innumerable ways as well. 

We can get consumed by the healing work that needs to happen, indeed it is a lifelong journey. But much like the wisdom of Somatic Experiencing, a field of work to address trauma that begins with resourcing ourselves and finding pleasure as a portal to grace, we can begin with naming the blessings our ancestors have bestowed upon us as a way of grounding ourselves in the gifts of our genetic and spiritual lines.  

The first fundamental blessing we can offer gratitude for is the gift of life itself. No matter what kind of family we came from, no matter how much suffering was caused, there is the fundamental impulse toward life which we can celebrate. 

We can give thanks for being here, being fully alive, and even having the privilege of taking time to do this healing work. To go on a retreat in daily life. To ponder what makes our lives meaningful. Many of our ancestors never had that luxury. Many worked very long hours for little reward and were never able to pause and ask themselves how their own generational connection could bring more wisdom to their lives. 

I like to remember as well that in the midst of my ancestors’ struggles there was at least some resilience and courage developed that I have inherited. I may never know what they went through exactly, but I can sometimes feel their sturdiness and how they endured. They too lived through times of war and plague.

Sometimes when I go outside at night and can see the brilliance of the stars, I remember that my ancestors also had moments of wonder and awe standing with face upturned toward the vast expanse of the universe.  I remember that they too had moments of delight, of joy, of dancing, no matter how hard their lives were. 

Join Simon, Deirdre, and me tomorrow for our Contemplative Prayer Service where we will be honoring the ancestors together. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS For more resources for this season of remembrance read my interview in the National Catholic Reporter, interview in Our Sunday Visitor, and article on All Soul’s Day in Religion News Service. I was also interviewed on the Three Association Podcast about art & creativity in spiritual direction. Listen here.

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

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Christine Interviewed on Our Sunday Visitor

Christine was interviewed by Charles Camosy on Our Sunday Visitor about her book The Love of Thousands. Here is an excerpt:

Charlie Camosy: I suppose I am not the first to suggest that one of the fundamental challenges that a book like “The Love of Thousands” faces is the fact that consumerist Western culture has been largely “disenchanted.” That is, many of us find it very difficult even to take seriously the ideas at the center of your book.

Christine Valters Paintner: Indeed, one of the reasons such a book is needed at this time is precisely because the capitalist consumer culture we swim in deadens us to anything beneath the surface. From the relentless push of busyness to the endless striving for achievement and acquisition, so many are exhausted and don’t even realize it.

Often what happens is there is a rupture in this way of being — an illness or a loss — which slows us down long enough to examine our patterns. It might help spark the question: “Is there more to my life than this?”

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Inspiration for connecting with ancestors on this All Soul’s Day

Christine published an article with Religion News Service titled This All Souls’ Day, experience moments of connection with those who have gone before us. Here is an excerpt:

In Celtic tradition there are many moments considered to be a “thin time,” which means that heaven and earth feel closer and we might experience moments of connection to those who have gone before us in ways that we don’t usually.

These moments include the daily portals of dawn and dusk as the world moves from dark to light and back to dark again. They also include the eight threshold moments of the year, which are the solstices, the equinoxes and the cross-quarter days that fall between the solstices and equinoxes. Of these eight, Samhain, which falls on Nov. 1, is considered to be the thinnest time, when the ancestors and spirits walk among us. The door between the spiritual and the physical is even further open than at other times.

Samhain is the start of the dark half of the year. It is the season of rest, incubation and mystery. It is the season of dreamtime and the perfect time of year to open your heart to connect with those who journeyed before you. Winter invites us to gather inside, grow still with the landscape and listen for the voices we may not hear during other times of the year. These may be the sounds of our own inner wisdom or the voices of those who came before us.

Read the rest of the article and gather inspiration for this season of remembrance.

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Christine Interviewed about The Love of Thousands in the National Catholic Reporter

Christine was recently interviewed by the National Catholic Reporter about her book The Love of Thousands and building bridges beyond the veil. Here is an excerpt:

NCR: In your introduction you mention that this book began as an exploration of your relationship to your ancestors. How did that circle widen for you to include the angels and the saints?

Paintner: I’ve had a long devotion and relationship to various saints — Hildegard of Bingen being the prime one, and also Benedict because I’m a Benedictine oblate. But when I was working with the ancestors, I suddenly realized that some of them can be wounded, but many of them are what we would call wise and well. I realized that the only difference between the saints and the wise and well ancestors is a matter of church teaching, in terms of who is an official saint and who is not. It helps me to feel a connection to my spiritual ancestors. 

When I was working with the ancestors and the saints and thinking about how we connect across the veil to these beings who only want to reach out to us in love, I realized I had to include the angels as well. There’s a cemetery in Vienna where my father and my grandparents are buried, and I love to walk there. There are lots of big stone angels there that feel like they have the density to meet me in my struggles.

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Christine Interviewed on the Three Association Podcast

Christine was interviewed by Maria Tattu Bowen and Vanessa Carusoon on the Three Association: A Supervision Podcast for Spiritual Direction to discuss the ways art and creativity can bring fresh awareness, freedom, and delight to the practices of supervision and spiritual direction.

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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 “A Holy Balance.”

Grieving the loss of my professional vocation due to Covid and needing to find my footing with the world’s unravelling, I enrolled in the Abbey of the Arts Fall 2020 intensive online retreat, “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist.” During a session of Lectio Divina in which Christine read Ecclesiastes 3, A Time for Everything, I reflected in my journal:

“… Humming to the Byrd’s musical interpretation, I’m struck by what comes to me as its “Holy Balance.” A description of the human condition that both with and beyond the literality of each phrase lies every possibility of human behaviour, in perpetuity. 
… So, while I feel a deep and disturbing dread with what is unfolding in the world, sensing a deep, inarticulate foreshadowing, I must remember and have faith in the long, unseeable, unknowable view.” 

It is from this experience and my immersion in the retreat that this poem arose.

A Holy Balance
the sharp edge
of salvation’s knife

on one side, my denials,
distractions and despairs desperate
when whittled away
by wordless worry

on the other side, singular
moments of a measured slicing
through life’s liminal veil

cutting a hole in the noise within

then divine wisdom
echoing from thine
to mine

then a holy balance poised silent,
full and surrendered

Katharine Weinmann is a seeker whose travels and reading of mystics and poets shapes the container from which her words and images emerge, revealing beauty in her imperfect, sometimes broken, mostly well-lived and much loved life. A published poet and photographer, Katharine is co-editor of the online quarterly, Sage-ing: The Journal of Creative Aging.

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