Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 23

Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Starting in a week, we will be offering a completely revised and updated version of an online companion retreat to my book Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice. This book and program remains an ongoing favorite of many dancing monks and it felt like time to revisit this material and invite in some wonderful guest teachers to help illuminate the content further. 

I am sharing an excerpt here to invite you to consider how receiving the gift of images might help you cultivate your inner monk and artist: 

My journey with photography began when I was a very young girl.  My maternal grandparents owned a chain of photography stores called Fitts Photo Supply in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire and so I have owned a camera for as long as I can remember.  

It wasn’t until I began to embrace monastic spirituality in my late twenties when I began to experience photography consciously as a contemplative practice.  It has always been a way for me to see more deeply, but my awareness of how this was an experience of prayer and often an encounter with the sacred presence emerged over time.  I began to see photography as a way to slow down and gaze deeply, noticing things I missed in my rushed life.  The camera can provide an encounter with the eternal moment – that place where we suddenly become so present to what we are gazing upon that we lose track of time and we allow eternity to break in.

I began publishing my photos on my website in a prayerful and reflective context. I discovered I was inviting people into a contemplative space with me visually, asking them to pause on a particular moment in time and see an aspect of the holy in that image.

Photography is often seen as a tool to be used for far-flung journeys and the recording of family events.  These are really valuable, but a photographic journey can also be taken right in your own neighborhood – as close as the block you live on – as a way of discovering the everyday places you inhabit in new ways.  

Photography as a spiritual practice combines the active art of image-taking with the contemplative nature and open-heartedness of prayer.  It cultivates what I call sacred seeing or seeing with “the eyes of the heart” (Ephesians 1:18). This kind of seeing is our ability to receive the world around us at a deeper level than surface realities.  

When we focus on the process of art-making, rather than the product, the creative journey can become one of discovering how God is moving through our lives and how we are being invited to respond.  This book offers an invitation to transform photography into a spiritual practice, deepening our relationship to God, to the world around us, and to ourselves. 

Mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade says the word “moment” comes from the Latin root momentus, which means to move.  We are moved when we touch the eternal and timeless.  There is a sense of spaciousness in moments.  Art and spiritual practice are how we find this moment of eternity, or even better, how we allow the moment to find us.  There are many moments waiting for us each day, prodding at our consciousness, inviting us to abandon our carefully constructed plans and defenses.  The task of the artist is to cultivate the ability to see these eternal moments again and again.  In this way, we are all invited to become artists.

Please join us for the Eyes of the Heart 8-week online retreat with guest teachers John Valters Paintner, Claudia Love Mair, Amanda Dillon, and Aisling Richmond. 

Simon and I are delighted to return tomorrow with our monthly prayer services. Our theme will be inspired by Teilhard de Chardin’s quote about “the breathing together of all things” and by the music of our guest musician this month Spencer LaJoye. Spencer will be sharing their powerful Plowshare Prayer as well as a couple of other beautiful songs. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS We had a delightful time at our September Tea with the Abbess gathering where we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels with an archangel meditation and movement video, looked at upcoming programs, and had a little Q&A chat. Watch the recording here.

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September Tea with the Abbess

Note: Click CC to turn closed captions on or off.

We had a delightful time at our September Tea with the Abbess gathering where we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels with an archangel meditation and movement video, looked at upcoming programs, and had a little Q&A chat.

Registration for our Sustainers Circle closes Saturday, September 30th. There are several levels of programming to choose from if you have the means to do so. Your support helps us create free offerings such as the Prayer Cycles and book club, and affords us the ability to offer scholarships and financial assistance to keep our offerings accessible.

Join Simon and me for the return of our Contemplative Prayer Service this Monday, October 2nd. Our theme is “The Breathing Together of All Things” and we are delighted to welcome special guest Spencer LaJoye who will share their music with us.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Jean Wise

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jean Wise’s reflection Linger with the Questions.

For Christmas, my daughter gave me an online subscription to a story sharing software program. This package includes weekly story prompts for the recipient to respond and share a story from their life. At the end of the year, we would receive a hardcover book with all the stories collected in a legacy, keepsake compilation.

Each Monday a thought-provoking, memory-stirring question pops into my email. What was your dad like when you were a child? What was your first big trip? Write about one of your best days you remember. You have the option each week to choose a different question but so far, I haven’t gone that route. But one week’s question almost became the first switch.

What was the best job you’ve ever had? 

Surprisingly I found this a difficult question to answer. It would have been easier to find a new question, but one thing I have learned on my spiritual journey as monk in the world is when something stirs or jars my spirit, brings me tears, or causes me to pause – I better pay attention. A life lesson will soon be revealed.  

So I lingered with the question. I let the question rest, then rise like leaven dough. I revisited past jobs enjoying some memories and naming the sorrows rising from others. I remembered what each position taught me and how the people and work shaped me.

This question brought a delightful conversation between my husband and me. He is more of the pessimist, yet he recalled and relished in the joyful memories. Me, the optimistic one, wallowed in dark difficult recollections that still stirred up anxiety and nausea.  

He observed I never considered my roles as wife, mother and grandmother in my search for the answer. We debated the definition of “job” and for a time I felt guilty I didn’t name those parts of me as my favorite, but I felt there was more to learn from a different answer.

The true epiphany arrived several days later.

What was the best job I’ve ever had? The one I hold now. My position of Deacon in my church and as a writer. Walking as a companion with others as a spiritual director and playing and creating with letters and words matches my core calling. This is who God created me to be. A strong sense of puzzle pieces fitting together precisely. All my other jobs were good for that time in my life, but today’s work aligns best with my soul.

An ah-ha moment filled with joy, contentment, and peace.  A life-giving awareness I would have lost if I had ran from that question.  

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” Rilke

Taking time to identify and explore questions is a valuable spiritual practice. Questions are invitations to options and increase curiosity on my journey. They serve as lights to guide next steps in discernment. I begin to see what may wait unnoticed along my path.  

Questions provide clarity as I struggle to articulate what is going on within my heart. They help me name my doubts and obstacles. Questions are tools for living fully and wholeheartedly. 

Noticing what stops me from asking questions is another approach to this practice. Is it fear? Questions peel off protective layers that may lead me to let go of false narratives and ego driven pride. Staying with the question can create a safe space where stories can be held and explored leading to healing.

I have learned the importance of knowing when to not to ask questions. Some questions would be too sensitive right after a loss or trying experience. I find in these raw times, silence helps more that questioning. Identifying my emotions instead of trying to understand them.  Asking why often appears but just echoes instead of being helpful. Maybe the better question during difficult times is what do I need right now?  

The season of life affects my questions too. Opportunities for exploring start with each new year, new decade, and/or new beginning.  Reflecting upon the memories and times of my life and holding questions show insight and wisdom. What is a story from my life that represents who I really am or what to be or represents my current need/pain? What was the biggest challenge, the biggest joy? 

Questions help us sift through our values and dreams too.  Am I living the way I know deep inside I want to live? What kind of legacy do I want to leave? How do I want to live in my remaining time?  

As I became more comfortable with staying with the questions, I started to gather them in my journal as prompts and guideposts along the way. What is prayer like for me right now?

What habits and practices are sustaining for me in my spiritual walk? 

Questions are wonderful guides for our spiritual journeys.  Listen. Learn. Linger with the questions.

Jean Wise is a writer, spiritual director and Deacon for her local parish. She writes weekly on her blog, HealthySpirituality.org. She is an RN who has discovered her calling to nurture others – as she practiced in nursing and now as she helps others grow closer to God.

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Sustainers Circle, Abundance, and Gratitude

Gratitude Blessing Spirit of Generosity,we come to you with hearts overflowing with gratitudefor your abundant creation.As we awaken each morning, help us to remember this day is a gift,this breath is grace,this life a wonder. Remind us with every flower we see,every act of kindness,every moment of connection to something so much biggerthan ourselves,to whisper thank you. Cultivate in us a sense of aweand trust in your lavish grace. Let each word of thanks we offer expand our heartsuntil delight inhabits usand we know loveas our sustenance.(A blessing from a book Christine is working on)

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

One of the things that makes contemplative life so counter-cultural is the active resistance against living a life of busyness and exhaustion, of not making that a badge of pride, of making time to ponder, to be more present, and to live life more slowly and attentively. 

We are surrounded by messages of scarcity and so our anxiety gets fuelled. One of the most profound practices to resist this kind of anxiety, to fast from its hold on me, is the practice of Sabbath. Walter Brueggemann, in his wonderful book Sabbath as Resistance, writes that the practice of Sabbath emerges from the Exodus story, where the Israelites are freed from the relentless labor and productivity of the Pharaoh-system in which the people are enslaved and full of the anxiety that deprivation brings.

Yahweh enters in and liberates them from this exhaustion, commanding that they take rest each week. Today, we essentially live in this self-made, insatiable Pharaoh-system. We are not literally enslaved the way the Israelites were, but we are symbolically enslaved to a system which does not care for our well-being. So weary are we, so burdened by consumer debt, working long hours with very little time off. 

So many take pride in wearing the badge of “busy.” So many are stretched thin to the very edges of their resources and capacity.

When we practice Sabbath, we are making a visible statement that our lives are not defined by this perpetual anxiety. At the heart of this relationship is a God who celebrates the gift of rest and abundance. But, Brueggemann says we are so beholden to “accomplishing and achieving and possessing” that we refuse the gift of simply being given to us.

The Israelites, and we ourselves, must leave Egypt and our enslavement to be able to dance and sing in freedom the way Miriam did with her timbrel after crossing the red sea. Dance is a celebratory act—not “productive” but restorative. When we don’t allow ourselves the gift of Sabbath rest, we deny the foundational joy that is our birthright as children of God. To dance in freedom is a prophetic act.

We are called to regularly cease, to trust the world will continue on without us, and to know this embodiment of grace and gift is revolutionary. Nothing else needs to be done. We fool ourselves so easily into thinking if we only work hard enough, we will earn our freedom. But the practice of freedom comes now, amid the demands of the world. 

Thomas Merton wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander: “Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.” This is a thoroughly monastic vision, to recognize that paradise or heaven is not some reality after we die, but a living presence now. Capitalism tells us the opposite, that we can buy paradise if we only work hard enough. 

This experience of divine abundance can make us feel both immense – connected to this lavish extravagance – and small, meaning human and limited in our capacity to fully understand. 

If you are in a position in life to practice financial generosity to support our programs, the doors to our Sustainers Circle will be open for registration until the end of this month (Saturday!). Thank you to everyone who has joined us and helps us to support our many free offerings and scholarship support. We believe this contemplative path should be as accessible as possible and are grateful for those who are able to help us with this. 

If you are U.S.-based and prefer to give a tax-deductible donation without any programs included, please visit our Donation page to find out how you can do this through our fiscal sponsorship. 

I am excited to be hosting a free event on Thursday – join me for the return of Tea with the Abbess on the eve of the Feast of the Archangels! In my newest book The Love of Thousands, I have a whole chapter on the archangels and how they might support us in our spiritual journeys. This informal 45-minute session will include a guided meditation, an update on our upcoming programs, and time for questions. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

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Dancing Monk Icon Cards: Remnant and Extras Sale

We know many of you love our dancing monk icons created by artist Marcy Hall and have appreciated having sets of cards produced. This has become a bit more challenging over time as we continually add to our collection of images and some of you have our original sets of cards (which came either in a plastic wrapper or a green gauze bag and were shipped from Ireland) and some of you have the boxed set (which came in a custom box with a printed guide and were shipped from Seattle in the U.S.). 

Currently we are not going to be producing more sets of cards for the time being until we get a new system in place. We know this is disappointing for many of you, especially those of you who may be missing some of the images. You are able to order individual images as postcards and greeting cards at our Red Bubble shop. 

However, we do have some extra cards from our original sets that are the result of overprinting. These are the sets that came in wrappers or a bag from Ireland (NOT the boxed sets which are larger size). 

Here is what is available and once these are gone, we will not reprint until we get more clarity on the best way to move forward. 

Remnant Sale

We have 20 sets of icon card completion packs which include the following 9 images:

Harriet TubmanMeister EckhartMechtild of MagdeburgIgnatius of LoyolaArchangels Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, UrielDesmond TutuOscar RomeroSt. Guinefort the GreyhoundAngela of Foligno

These sets are on sale for USD$15 + $5 shipping. The card sets will all ship from Ireland on October 2nd.  **Note: If you don’t have a PayPal account, chose pay with debit or credit card then enter your email. You can also deselect create a PayPal account and check out as a guest.

Surplus Cards

In addition, we have a few cards where the printer made an error and produced a large number of extras. 

If you would be interested in 50 or more of these single designs please get in touch with us. We ask that these not be resold, but they can be distributed at retreats and other programs as a gift to your participants. 

Let us know which card you would like and how many (minimum 50 per request) along with the shipping address. We will let you know a price to include shipping. 

St. Muirgen — 322Abba Anthony the Great — 219Melangell of Powys — 236Sister Thea Bowman — 208Julian of Norwich — 229Clare of Assisi — 227Nicholas Black Elk — 202Please Note:

The card sets will all ship from Ireland on October 2nd. 

To see all the images, please visit this page.

To order individual images as prints, journals, greeting cards, or postcards, please visit our Red Bubble shop. 

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Andrew Lang

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Andrew Lang’s reflection Opening our Posture to the Sacrament of the Present Moment.

I sat atop the rocky Washington beach, watching the waves of the Puget Sound coming and crashing against the shoreline. Somewhere in the distance, a small boat had just steered itself through the passage, making its way to who knows where. The memory is faded by now, but I like to think it was the Victoria Clipper on its twice-daily trip, carrying people up and down the channel to and from British Columbia.

I had been there for hours, watching as the tide came in, moving closer and closer to where I perched myself, with my shoes and a book off to one side. The blue-green waterline was still many yards away, my bare feet not yet in danger of being overtaken, although I carefully minded it so as to not be surprised. Looking out beyond the rhythmic crashing and splashing of the waves, my eyes found themselves transfixed by a patch of calm about fifty feet offshore. It seemed such an odd reality that just past the turbulent activities of the right-before-me, there lived a space of such gentle stillness. I wondered what the critters swimming around thought of it: was it a peaceful oasis before the coming chaos? Was it a warning to turn back now to avoid rapid delivery to the shore? Or was it a gathering place for some school of young fish learning to navigate through the environment they call home?

It was as I stared deeply at this mysterious space that my imagination took me somewhere I had not yet been before, which seems to be one of the great benefits of beholding beauty. I imagined the body of water before me as an ever-expanding body of my ancestors, stretching back to the beginning of time, composed of all that had come before me. Its depths filled by protons, neutrons, and electrons just as I was, I became overwhelmed by a sense of cosmic kinship, as if I were witnessing a great family reunion. These same building blocks of life that manifested in everything I saw around me also helped to create me, which meant we were in some way biologically related, interconnected as part of a bizarre and peculiar web of being. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s exclamation of “we are all stardust!” fluttered into my ears as if being spoken directly to me by the waves.

I imagined my Grandpa Gayle; my Grandma Alyce; my great-great-great-great Grandma Neely. Each of these people, with all of their own stories and narrative and fears, their own shadows and picadillos – all of us united through time and space by a curious and mysterious atomic bond. Sitting there, I experienced a part of what it means to embody a contemplative presence: to bear witness to the wonder of it all for as long as the moment will allow us.

But as it tends to do, the moment began to slip away as quickly as it had come and though I tried to cling to it, the normal wanderings of my mind crept back in regardless of my wishes. I lingered at the water’s edge, contemplating my experience, trying to draw conclusions where I could, but soon a family with young children pranced along the rocks and all hope for deeper thoughts disappeared. I watched as the adventurous young ones looked for beach crabs, investigated the multitudinous communities of mussels hanging onto the larger rocks, and laughed with joy as they discovered more of the world around them. Wasn’t it Mary Oliver who said we all have a place in this “family of things?” Here I sat at the feet of my ancestors, listening for their words of wisdom while partaking in the sacrament of the present moment.

I still try to make sense of what exactly I experienced that day as I sat and watched the waters. It seems as if I had ever-so-briefly seen beyond some sort of veil. Or perhaps there is no veil at all and I simply looked deeper than I ever had at what is always waiting to be seen: a momentary taste of that which is infinite and always present, a bit of eternal truth hidden in the expansive and connective nature of Life.

Andrew Lang is an educator in the Pacific Northwest, an alumnus of Richard Rohr’s Living School for Action and Contemplation, and author of Unmasking the Inner Critic: Lessons for Living an Unconstricted Life. Along with writing regularly, he facilitates workshops helping people to navigate their inner lives and explore their sense of identity, spirituality, and community. You can find more of his writings and offerings at www.AndrewGLang.com.

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Update on Writing Projects ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I thought I would share with you some of the writing projects I am involved in at the moment. This has been a very fruitful time for books with my poetry collection Love Holds You coming out last spring from Paraclete Press, then The Love of Thousands on honoring angels, saints, and ancestors being published in August from Ave Maria Press, and I have a book coming out in January 2024 with Broadleaf Books titled A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding Our True Hungers in Lent which is now available for pre-order. 

Right now, I am finalizing the edits to my manuscript A Midwinter God to submit to Ave Maria Press. Many of you have told me how much you appreciate the online retreat we offer on making the underworld journey and befriending the darkness so I am excited to bring it together into book form which will be published in fall of 2024. An essential part of what we are about at the Abbey is welcoming in the full spectrum of our human experience, the radical hospitality of which St. Benedict and the desert elders write so beautifully about. 

Once I have that turned in later this month, I will be focusing on two more projects – the first is a book of blessings I have been slowly compiling over the last year or so. I share the new blessings I write weekly with our Sustainers Circle and I really look forward to sharing this as a resource for prayer and ritual in book form (although probably not until 2025). If there is a blessing you would especially love to read, send us a note and let us know your suggestion. 

And last, but certainly not least, I am working on a book tentatively called Women on the Threshold: Wisdom from the Medieval Women Mystics for Midlife and Beyond. As I move through my own season of midlife and menopause, I became curious about those women mystics from medieval times who lived a relatively long life and dealt with their own midlife transitions, including illness and losses, as well as new creative birthings later in life. 

After some time of listening and discernment, the seven women who have called to me are Hildegard of Bingen, Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Marguerite D’Oingt, and Angela of Foligno. These women lived in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and England. I love that there is a mix of the familiar and some who are much less so. I am very excited to be inviting in their wisdom to speak to me in a very particular way over this next season of life and to share that with you in retreat form and in writing. 

We are delighted to have Therese Taylor Stinson returning this Wednesday to lead our monthly Centering Prayer series. All are welcome to this informal time of teaching and practice together. Therese is a treasured Wisdom Council member, spiritual director, contemplative teacher, and author of several books including Walking the Way of Harriet Tubman: Public Mystic and Freedom Fighter which is our featured book this month for the Lift Every Voice book club. I wholeheartedly encourage you to order a copy of her book and read it for a rich perspective on what a public mystic is and the journey toward greater inner and outer freedom. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS For those in the Northern hemisphere you can read a reflection about the Autumn equinox here or the Spring equinox for our friends in the Southern hemisphere.

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Valerie Hess

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Read on for Valerie Hess’s reflection on living fully as who God created her to be.

Breathe. Breathe again. Stop. Look. Listen. Pay attention. You are in liminal space. Breathe. This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf (see 2 Chronicles 20:17).

These are words I say to myself when I find myself “ramping up” into anxiety or multi-tasking overdrive as I try to reign in internal chaos through external order. I used to pride myself on my ability to work quickly, be efficient, multi-task. Yet, today, my husband will remind me of something or someone from years ago and I can’t remember it or them, or only remember vaguely. I have what is called “wasn’t fully present to the event or person back then and so of course I can’t really remember it today”! This is not yet a medically recognized condition but will be soon, I’m sure.

I have always been a “slow learner,” a “late-bloomer.” I often don’t make good first impressions because I am a big personality that can be impetuous and overpowering, intimidating even.  (A friend once lovingly told me that the reason I play a pipe organ is that it is the only thing bigger than my personality! I am a full-blown Enneagram 4.) 

Yet, with the help of the Abbey of the Arts’ daily meditations, retreats, and books, through making art, music, and poetry, in learning to slow down, to breathe, to notice, to listen to my body, I am finally, in my late 60s, becoming a more calm, grounded, spacious person. 

My big artistic personality isn’t wrong, a message from childhood I am still healing from, but more like a “river in flood stage that needs to be gently returned to its natural banks.” Instead of “flooding the landscape,” I am being invited to nurture gently, to flow in ways that don’t wreak havoc along the way. In short, to take my essence and harness it through healing disciplines into a life-giving source.

Remarkably, in learning to dial down my intensity several notches, my creativity is blossoming in ways it hasn’t in the past. To create poems, stories, paintings, and musical compositions, I have to slow down.  And in slowing down, hidden gifts in my soul are coming out of hiding. Ali Baba’s cave has nothing on the treasures deep within me. My “open sesame” to these deep cave rooms in my soul has been to face, even embrace the unknown and breathe into it instead of closing my eyes and holding my breath. I’ve discovered it is possible to go years without really breathing and that that is not a good way to live.

I am learning to trust my “gut instincts” more after years of being silenced for saying “but the emperor has no clothes!” It wasn’t safe then to stop-look-listen, to admit aloud or to myself that what I saw or experienced was at odds from what I was being told had actually happened. 

The Abbey has helped me quit trying to outrun my nightmares but rather to stand, face them, and ask them what they have to teach me. This has not been easy at times. The shame and anger have nearly overwhelmed me but I go back to the 2 Chronicles verse quoted above and, like a small child, put my hand in God’s as we together walk back into the darkness, this time to really see, to be present, to honestly assess what happened, to learn not to react in “sideways” responses but to acknowledge the truth, the pain, the sorrow.  

I am learning that I don’t have to prove myself by doing. Slowly, I am accepting that my being is enough in all the ways that really count and that when the doing flows organically out of my being vs. trying to prove that I have worth by doing something successfully, my creative output has a depth to it that is hard to explain.

For me, being a monk in the world is learning to be fully who God created me to be. It is learning that I can glorify God by living fully into the beloved child I am and always have been. And when I live fully, I automatically give people around me permission to be fully who they were created to be. It is a form of witnessing to the goodness of God without necessarily using words. To continue on this healing and creative path is my commitment to God, myself, the Abbey, and the world.

Valerie E. Hess is a published author and poet, musician, painter, pearl knotter, mother and grandmother. She lives with her husband near Missoula, Montana.

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Yoga and the Creative Spirit ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This coming Friday, September 15th Abbey Program Coordinator Melinda Thomas will be leading a mini-retreat on Yoga and the Creative Spirit. Melinda has been with the Abbey for almost ten years and has taught monthly classes (now available as a self-study) and workshops, contributed to our retreats, and moderates the Sustainers Circle forum. Read on for Melinda’s reflection on the relationship between yoga and creativity. 

“There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves. When we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.” ~ Julia Cameron

About a year or so ago my young child asked “Who created the world?” My mother, whom we call Amma, answered “Creation isn’t finished.” This struck me as such a beautiful, wise truth and I use it whenever the topic arises. Because it’s true. Creation isn’t finished. It’s an ongoing, moment to moment (hopefully) joyful act. And we get to be a part of it! How very wonderful; how very cheering. 

Whether we know it or not we are always participating in the formation of the world. Each breath, each choice, each conversation. Each meal prepared or step taken, or moment of repose is an act of creating our existence. The key word here is participation. This is not something we do alone. We join with our fellow humans, with birds and trees and flowers to shape the matrix of being. And the great Creator pulses and flows within it all. 

There are many terms for this in yoga. Shakti refers to the animating principle of life. It’s associated with the feminine and what we might call the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition. In the Tantric yoga philosophy that informed my training it is said that the One creates for the sheer joy of it. This is called the lila of life. 

Going further there are said to be 5 acts of Shiva Nataraj – the Lord of the Dance: creation, sustenance, dissolution, concealment, and revelation. I love how beautifully this aligns with the wisdom Christine offers that “words such as ripening, organic, yielding, and unfolding [are] ways of understanding how our souls move in a holy direction.”*

We create, we are sustained, we yield, we let go. What is concealed is revealed through attention to life’s unfolding.

Each moment is an invitation. In a yoga practice one invitation is to connect awareness to the movement of body and breath through postures (asanas), as a way to align ourselves with the dance of creation. Every pose becomes a way to focus on the indwelling creative life force. What we do on the yoga mat holds the potential to transform our lives off the mat as we grow in our capacity to pay attention and choose how to respond with moment to moment awareness.

The expressive arts invite us to move out of the linear, thinking mind, and into a deeper intuitive knowing that pours out from the creative energy at the core of being.

In the mini-retreat I am leading this Friday, September 15th we will combine yoga asanas with a creative invitation to free energy and attention, and express the deep longings of the creative spirit in the moment. The first hour of our time together will be a gentle movement practice and the second hour will include mandala collage, journaling, and a meditative rest to integrate it all. 

No yoga experience is necessary. I will offer modifications. All bodies are welcome. Join us!

With great and growing love,

Christine and Melinda

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD and Melinda Thomas E-RYT

* from The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred

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Dancing Monk Icon Cards, Prints and Journals

Dancing Monk Cards, Prints, and Journals

We are pleased to offer our beloved Dancing Monk icons now available as prints, cards, and journals with the dancing monk, mystic, or saint of your choice through on demand printing with Redbubble. A portion of the proceeds goes to support Marcy Hall, the gifted artist who painted each icon. 

Browse cards, prints, and journals.

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