Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 27

Blessing Our Lives ~ A Guest Post at New Eden Ministry

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I am delighted to offer this excerpt from my guest post at New Eden Ministry titled “Blessing Our Lives.”

Blessings can be like warm bread for the hungry, a cold drink for those who thirst. They can offer hope and encouragement, steep us in gratitude, nurture our courage. Blessings bring us present to the grace of each moment. The word comes from the Latin, benedicere, which means to speak well of. Blessings help to remind us of the love and beauty of the Holy One in our lives and assist us to take nothing for granted. They act as maps to navigate our human experience, orienting us back to gratefulness and praise.

Read the rest of the article and the Blessing of the Elements.

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

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Celtic Spirituality Retreat + Day 3 Mary Prayer Cycle ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

We continue this week with the release of our Day 3 Birthing the Holy video podcast that accompanies my book Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal. Day 3 Morning and Evening Prayer take the themes of Star of the Sea and Vessel of Grace. 

Here is an excerpt from Day 3 Morning: Opening Prayer

Stella Maris, Mary, Star of the Sea, we look to the night sky to see your brilliance shining upon the world. Be with us as a guiding light and safe harbour on our journey of surrender and trust. Show us the way to the Self which knows its true direction as we dive beneath the surface to explore our magnificent depths.

Watch the video podcast here. 

We are delighted to be hosting our final retreat in our Mystical Heart series. On Saturday, June 3rd I will be leading an online retreat on St. Kevin, Celtic spirituality, and the love of creation. I am delighted to be joined by two Scottish friends, musician Simon de Voil and poet Kenneth Steven who will add their gifts to our retreat experience.

This is an excerpt from my book The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred on St. Kevin:

The story of St. Kevin and the Blackbird is another one of my favorites of all the Celtic saints. He was a 6thcentury monk and Abbott, and was soul friend to many, including Ciaran of Clomacnoise. After he was ordained, he retreated to a place of solitude, most likely near the Upper Lake at Glendalough where there is a place called “St. Kevin’s bed.” 

He lived there as a hermit for seven years, sleeping on stone and eating very simply, only nuts, herbs, and water. In the writings of his Life, it is said that “the branches and leaves of the trees sometimes sang sweet songs to him, and heavenly music alleviated the severity of his life.” Kevin is known for his intimacy with nature and animals. It is said that when he was an infant and young child, a white cow used to come to offer him milk. Later when he founded his community an otter would bring salmon form the lake to eat. 

One of the most well-known stories about him goes that he would pray every day in a small hut with arms outstretched. The hut was so small though that one arm reached out the window. One day, a blackbird landed in his palm, and slowly built a nest there. Kevin realized what was happening and knew that he could not pull his hand back with this new life being hatched there. So he spent however many days it took for the eggs to be laid, and the tiny birds to hatch, and for them to ready themselves to fly away. 

I love this story because it is such an image of yielding, of surrendering to something that was not in the “plans,” but instead, receiving it as gift. Instead of sitting there in agony trying to figure out how to move the bird, he enters into this moment with great love and hospitality. 

How many times in our lives do we reach out our hands for a particular purpose, and something else arrives? Something that may cause discomfort, something we may want to pull away from, but in our wiser moments we know that this is a holy gift we are invited to receive. 

There are stories of St. Columbanus during his periods of fasting and prayer in places of solitude where he would call the creatures to himself and they ran eagerly toward him.  Esther deWaal in Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition says that “He would summon a squirrel from the tree tops and let it climb all over him, and from time to time its head might be seen peeping through the folds of his robes.”  Animals like bears and wolves, normally feared and hunted, are shown warmth and kindness and respond with mutual respect.

Celtic tradition is full of legends about kinship and intimacy between monks and the wild animals of the forests where they lived.  Sometimes the creatures were the ones to lead hermits to their place of prayer and solitude.  DeWaal tells of St. Brynach who had a dream where an angel told him to go along the bank of the river until he saw “a wild white sow with white piglings” and they would show him the spot for his hermitage.  Often the animal that would show the monk his or her cell would stay on as a companion, sharing life together.  

This is our call in soul friendship as well, to learn how to yield our own agendas and egos and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and transparent in front of another. To show our shadow and tender places, to seek growth knowing that what is kept hidden only festers. When speaking with a soul friend, keep in mind this open palmed approach to life, not needing to hold too tightly to your own façade or persona you present in life. 

Join us next Saturday to immerse ourselves in the wisdom of the Celtic love of creation. 

This Friday I am offering our final Tea with the Abbess before our summer break. You are most welcome to this free event. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Opening Prayer written by Christine Valters Paintner and arranged by Melinda Thomas

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Michael Kroth

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Michael Kroth’s reflection on walking as a keystone, contemplative practice.

Around the mountainAgain flowers, birds, views, windsMy feet hurt, heart beats~Written 8-7-22

Vince and I pulled into the nearly filled parking lot. A thin, serious-looking runner standing behind his open car trunk stretched one leg behind himself, and then the other. Two cars down, a couple pulled mountain bikes off their car racks, swung small hydration packs onto their backs, adjusted their helmets, clipped in their shoes, stepped onto their rides, and rolled toward the closed, chained gate. Looking up, we could see two young men and one woman sauntering down the trail toward us. Higher on the trail, an older man and woman were heading up, both with trekking poles.

It was an early, typical Boise summer day. The sky was light blue with floating white clouds each with just touches of gray highlights. The temperature was cool, but in about an hour we would be glad we wore layers – it would hit the 90’s by the end of the afternoon. We were at the Polecat Loop trailhead. The hike we were starting is just over six miles in length with an elevation gain of around 850 feet. It would take us around two and a half hours to complete. Along the way, we would see and smell and touch wildflowers and sage, and if we were lucky, we might see some deer. 

Up on Polecat Loop
Ten white-tailed deer take their time
While hikers admire.
~Written 3-20-22

The first time I walked – let’s say trudged – this Polecat trail with Vince, I was just barely beginning to hike. It was so challenging I had to stop along the way to catch my breath and rest my legs. 

Last week I finished the Race to Robie Creek® half-marathon for what I think was the fifth, maybe sixth, time. It is often called “the toughest half marathon in the Northwest,” and has an elevation gain of just over 2100 feet. It took me four hours and nine minutes to complete it. Most people (try to) run it, but I walked it the whole way. I finished 1639th out of 1698 finishers. My pace was 18 minutes and 54 seconds a mile, just a bit faster, even with this challenging course, than the three miles an hour Mark Buchanan says is “God speed.” Finishing this half at the age of 70 was exhaustingly exhilarating.

Looking at how I’ve progressed over the years from both a wider and a deeper lens, however, shows how walking has become for me what Charles Duhigg calls a “keystone habit.” “Keystone habits,” Duhigg says, “…start a process that, over time, transforms everything” (p. 100). “The habits that matter most,” Duhigg said, “are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns” (p. 101). 

In that sense, keystone habits are akin to “master virtues,” like humility, which support and cultivate other virtues, such as generosity (see Lavelock et al., 2017), and what have been called “metaskills,” which “can be transferred from one situation to another without losing their effectiveness” (Neumeier, 2013, p. 27). These terms show how one skill, virtue, habit, disposition, or practice can synergistically support, be applied to, and help develop others.

I began walking regularly about eight years ago. I was fortunate to have my buddy Vince as a hiking partner and teacher, and eventually we made Saturday hiking into a regular practice. These days it is rare when we do not walk at least six or seven miles, usually on trails along the Boise foothills or higher. Evolving from this, I now also walk three or four miles a day around our neighborhood.

Snow-lined trails stretching
October blue horizons
A bird floats above
~Written 10-17-21

More than that, this discipline of walking has led toward deep “monk-in-the-world” values and behaviors. For example, walking every day, except for Saturdays almost always by myself, has been an opportunity for deep solitude, silence, and contemplation. I cannot walk around our neighborhood any time of year without vicariously experiencing the divine. The miracle of birth – just yesterday I saw tiny baby ducks swimming with their mother in the pond our dog and I visit most days. The spectacular beauty of nature – right now, within just a few streets of our house, the yellows and blues, and greens and reds and oh-so-many-more colors of flowers and trees and bushes are just emerging – the extraordinary in the ordinary. 

Walking the Camino de Santiago was a natural next step (please excuse my sense of humor here), and on September 1, 2022 I spent my 70th birthday with my son Shane, on the French Way, crossing the border from France to Spain. This year, we are returning to complete another segment of the pilgrimage and over the next few years plan to complete the entire 500-mile pilgrimage.

The trail extends far
Walking over and through clouds
Which change, as I do
~Written 9-13-22, Just back from the Camino

Cara Anthony, writing about her own Camino pilgrimage, contrasts the “the experiences of sacred time, profound friendship and community and connections to nature” to the way current society practices “hypermobility.” Hypermobility, she says, is “the need to travel far, frequently, and fast [which] erodes encounters with landscapes and neighbors and accelerates the mistreatment of both nature and vulnerable members of our communities. Pilgrims who travel the Camino perform an act of resistance to hypermobility and enact a kind of utopia where they re-imagine their connection to the land, to each other, and to the divine.”

Contemplative walking is an antidote to the hypermobility and superficiality of our era.

Walking is a keystone habit for me and is a key to my contemplative life. Walking unlocks mystery, curiosity, gratitude, and wonder. Its fruits, for me and many others, are the call to share the nature of this gift with others. It is no surprise to me that Christine often encourages us to take contemplative walks, to take pictures of what we notice, and to reflect on them.

Single track or road
Perhaps there is no path at all
Still, there’s a way
~Written 8-21-22

*Haikus in this essay were all originally written in my daily journal and inspired by my daily walks. For more about my Haiku practice, see my Monk In The World Guest Post, 11-11-21, https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2020/11/11/29960/). 

References

Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373-395. 

Buchanan, M. (2020). God walk: moving at the speed of your soul. Zondervan. 

Duhigg, C. (2014). Power of habit: why we do what we do in life and business (Random House Trade Paperback Edition ed.). Random House Trade Paperbacks. 

Lavelock, C. R., Worthington, E. L., Griffin, B. J., Garthe, R. C., Elnasseh, A., Davis, D. E., & Hook, J. N. (2017). Still Waters Run Deep: Humility as a Master Virtue. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 45(4), 286-303. 

Neumeier, M. (2013). Metaskills: five talents for the robotic age. New Riders. 

Michael Kroth is Professor of Education at the University of Idaho. He has written or co-authored nine books including Transforming Work: The Five Keys to Achieving Trust, Commitment, and Passion in the Workplace; The Manager as Motivator; Career Development Basics; Managing the Mobile Workforce: Leading, Building, and Sustaining Virtual Teams; Stories of Transformative Learning, and Profound Living: Essays, Images, and Poetry. His most recent books are Framing the Moment: Haiku Conversations, written with Amy Hoppock and Davin Carr-Chellman; Step by Step: Living More Meaningfully, Joyfully, and Deeply Each Day, written with Davin Carr-Chellman and Carol Rogers-Shaw; and Coffee Talk: A Transformational Tale Inspired by The Imitation of Christ, written with Bryan Taylor.

He created and curates the blog site Profound Living With Michael Kroth. You can find it here: ProfoundLiving.live. Michael, Davin Carr-Chellman, and Amy Hoppock have recorded over thirty Haiku Narratives with Amy, Davin, and Michael. You can find them here:  ProfoundLiving.live/haiku-narratives

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Day 2 Mary Prayer Cycle – New Video Podcasts! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Last Spring we created a prayer cycle and audio podcast series to accompany my book Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal. Today we continue our release of the companion video podcasts with Day 2 Morning and Evening Prayer. The full prayer cycle is available here.

Each day of the prayer cycle focuses on thematic and archetypal energies associated with a different name for Mary. Today’s video podcast for Day 2 morning and evening prayer takes as its theme Untier of Knots and Mustafia. In her role as Untier of Knots Mary invites us to consider those places where we are holding on too tightly and open to tenderness and healing. Mustafia is a name for Mary from the Islamic tradition and challenges us to answer our unique calling in the world and heal divisions between those we “other.”

Untier of Knots Closing Blessing (Morning Prayer):

CLOSING BLESSING
Mary, we come to you knotted
in a hundred different ways.
Our hearts are knotted with grief and anger,
our bodies feel knotted with tension,
our minds knotted with anxiety and fear.
We ask you to gently work on those places
of tightness and holding within us,
to loosen them so gently,
so that freedom emerges slowly.
Mary, you are the untier
of all the knots of our lives.
Be with us as we try to release
all of our tangled places:
the frustrations we carry,
the paths that feel like dead ends,
the complexity of relationships.
Help us to soften our hard edges
and yield to your grace.
Allow us to see you at work within us,
slackening and unbinding.
Sustain us in the moments
when all feels like it is unravelling.
Help us to trust your work
and know that we must first come undone
before we can be woven back together again.
Bless us with patience and wisdom;
support us in loosening our steady grip
so we might also prevent more knots
forming in days to come.

OPENING PRAYER: Mustafia (Evening Prayer)

Mary, Mustafia, chosen by God to birth the holy, help us to answer our unique calling in the world. May your love heal divisions with those we “other” and reject based on culture, skin color or belief. Guide us this evening to a path of peace, kindness, and compassion.

We are blessed to work with a gifted team of artists and contemplatives to bring this prayer cycle to you and pray it nourishes you as you journey with Mary and birth the holy in your own life.  If you would like to help support us financially in creating this free resource, we gratefully receive contributions.

Join Therese for Centering Prayer on Wednesday and Melinda for yoga on Thursday 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Closing Blessing written by Christine Valters Paintner from Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and  Renewal used with permission from Ave Maria Press. Opening Prayer written by Christine Valters Paintner and arranged by Melinda Thomas.

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Hildy Tail: Excuses, Excuses, Excuses (Exodus 3:1 – 4:17)

This week we are featuring one of our Hildy Tails. This series of essays were composed last year for our Sustainers Circle. They were dictated to John by the Abbey’s mascot, Hildy the Monk-ey. Hildy is a bit of a free spirit who likes to entertain and doesn’t normally feel constrained by conventional story structure . . . or grammar, in general. She lives by the motto that “all stories are true; some actually happened.” We wanted to share them with you, our wider Abbey community, to give you a small monkey-sized, humorous perspective on some biblical passages and stories of the saints. 

Greetings fellow pilgrims and monks, ‘tis me – Hildy the Abbey of the Arts mascot!

Today I’m going to tackle another weird biblical story and the subject of this particular tale is . . . he’s a big one and I hope not to offend. So let me begin by stating that I love this guy and think that he’s great, like truly great. But like most biblical figures, he’s flawed. Like *really* flawed. But that just makes his redemption all the more remarkable. To go from killer to founding prophet of the Covenant . . . props to Moses. 

But before we get to praising him, let’s deal with that whole “killer” thing. You see, despite what some of Hollywood’s depictions of his origin story, it’s clear that Moses knows he’s a Hebrew. Yes, his mother and sister plot to trick the Pharaoh’s daughter into finding and adopting him, but from the text, Moses clearly knows that he’s a Hebrew. Not only is his birthmother his wet nurse (cleverly planned by his sister and mother – but that’s another story), one day as an adult he sneaks out of the palace to “go visit his people” when he sees an Egyptian foreman beating a Hebrew slave. Moses goes to the defence of the Hebrew and ends up killing the Egyptian. 

At this point, legally speaking, it may only be manslaughter . . . except that Moses hides the body . . . and that always reads “guilty” to a judge and jury. Wee, naïve Moses thinks he’s gotten away with this crime (however you want to categorise it), but the next time he visits the Hebrews, it is clear that others know about the dead Egyptian. (I mean there was at least one other witness and Moses buried the body in the sand . . . like that’s going to stay hidden for long.) So, before his adopted grandfather, the pharaoh, can find out, Moses runs away into the wilderness (he is NOT helping his case here) and never intends to return, under penalty of law and execution.

Moses starts a whole new life in the wilderness: no longer a prince, but a humble shepherd. He marries and has children. Life may be simpler, and perhaps a bit more difficult, what without all the palace servants. But it’s good and Moses has no intention of changing anything and certainly doesn’t ever want to return to where he’s most assuredly wanted for murder.

But then God comes a calling. 

Moses is confronted by a burning bush that is not consumed. So of course, he goes to investigate. And after being told to take off his sandals, for he is on holy ground, he’s instructed by God to go back to Egypt and help rescue the Hebrews from slavery.

And Moses says, “no, thank you” . . . repeatedly.

He’s not to silly as to be so blunt with God, but he does start off with false humility, claiming that he’s a nobody and so he shouldn’t be the one to go. But God tells him that it doesn’t matter who he is, because God will be with him. Moses is just to be the mouthpiece for God. (And let’s not forget that Moses grew up in the Pharaoh’s palace and so is actually better suited than most to go speak to the Pharaoh.)

Next, Moses tries to get clever and claim that he can’t do it, because he doesn’t know God’s name, so nobody is going to believe him, so . . . “thanks, but no thanks; please send someone else.” But God just tells Moses his name. (And THAT is a whole other story; but not a silly one, so we’ll leave it for now . . . other than to say how revelatory the name is!)

At this point, Moses (desperate not to return to Egypt) just gets a bit whingy (that’s Hibernian-English for whiney) and worries aloud that nobody is going to believe him, even if God is speaking through him and he knows Yahweh’s name and . . . “please just send someone else.” So . . . Yahweh gives Moses special powers to demonstrate God’s power and his authority in God’s name. There’s a staff that turns into a snake and he can cause his hand to wither and then heal immediately and . . . and yet, Moses still tries to get out of it.

“But I don’t speak good,” Moses cries. “Fine,” says Yahweh, “you can take your brother Aaron to help you speak to the Pharaoh. Now quit all the belly-achin’ and excuses and GO!”

(I may have paraphrased a few verses above. But . . . sometimes it helps to put things in a more . . . vernacular form . . . to get the meaning across.)

Now, I’m sure you’re all aware of how things turned out: Moses was a great spokesperson for Yahweh and the Hebrews are rescued from slavery and they receive the Covenant and they return to the Promised Land . . . eventually. 

But what I love about this story is just how reluctant, repeatedly, so stubbornly resistant Moses was to heed God’s *very clear* calling. I mean . . . most of us WISH we’d have such a clear sign as the Burning Bush. But when even the mighty figure of Moses is presented with just such an IN YOUR FACE sign . . . he balks and balks and balks. Maybe we should be a bit easier on ourselves when we find ourselves resisting God’s call. And we should definitely take heart knowing how much we can achieve, even if we’re a simple soul who’s far from perfect. 

How can you stop resisting and say “yes” to God’s call in your life?

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Patri Hernandez

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Read on for Patri Hernandez’s reflection “Why the Islands Have Captivated My Heart.”

Feeling I needed to strengthen my spiritual connection to Goddess, I travelled back to the Canary Islands a few years ago and found Her there, waiting for me.

She revealed herself so beautifully and simply! I was born in one of the islands 53 years earlier, but somehow could not understand the nature of the world or the nature of my own heart. Goddess had always been there when I was a child, and I remember feeling Her and Knowing Her but I also remember forgetting Her when I became an adolescent and wanted to know the world more than I wanted to know my Goddess.

In those days I began to covet all the material things of the day. I became educated, learned the human ways, studied, worked, went to parties and just went all out in a very humanly constructed world, trying to define myself. As the years passed and I trusted my mind more and more, the thought of recklessly throwing myself into the deep seas of life was greatly diminished, because I was busy trying to get on top of things, fit in and win a ‘sure bet’ at all costs.

I began to study media and became a writer and a filmmaker but more and more I sought answers from the universe. It was all very attractive but there were times when I felt I was repeating the same day over and over, just changing the form the day took.

How then to understand these many other wonderful secrets within the universe? I needed again to learn to connect with the Goddess. This became particularly important to me because I had family members that were born in the Canary Islands and I wanted to express my motherly love to them, particularly my youngest sister, from a true relationship with my spiritual source. It was from out of this need that I knew I had to go back to the Canary Islands, to learn again about my Goddess. But I wasn’t ready yet.

Years passed, but still I searched. I discovered beautiful spiritual practices such as constant surrender, acceptance of painful emotions, nightly journaling to identify persisting behaviors, asking others for forgiveness, owning past mistakes, daily prayer and meditation, and letting go of any expectations. I had the amazing privilege to learn about the psychic arts, became a teacher and somehow felt more alive, but I was still not being able to complete the state of Being.

Finally, one day, I was able to reach the divine feminine within through deep spiritual practices and honest, intense searching. Feeling far more understood and comfortable with my new spiritual language, and the human world, I then began a three-year process of passionate soul searching.

I remember ever since my repeated visits to the Canaries, They have been a most important part of my life and life path. The first time I returned, I felt as if I was a small child again, naked and cold. I remember being able to see the sea from where I was staying. I was searching for something, for something that was almost out of memory but deep within me at the same time. 

Then, the little girl in me was transformed into an infant hopelessly crying in my mother’s arms and finally into an adult. I have always known I was in the Canaries, at least deep in my heart. Part of me always stayed there. It is my mother’s body that brought me to this world, to this cold and warm island, to my human birth and to my spiritual path. I have had feelings of love over the years, feelings that keep trying to speak to me in various forms.

Now the Canaries have spoken to me once again, that I am one of them and can be found there if I am patient and if I search, but it took a while to meet and to find a connection.

I can hold on to feelings and sensations a little longer, and I am so grateful that I learned to love myself enough to make this journey.

In the meantime, I have also learned to hold on to these feelings, and to turn to my spiritual language, the Canaries, and to write.

Patri Hernandez had a spiritual awakening in the summer of 2017 and now loves to transmit the gifts of Divine Energy via her blog ohmightyhealth.com. Her body of work is a spiritual practice that reveals to others her path to healing, inspiring and motivating them towards radical self-care and ultimately awakening.

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Mary Prayer Cycle – New Video Podcasts! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Last Spring we created a prayer cycle with audio podcasts to accompany my book Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal. I am delighted to share the first companion video podcasts lovingly produced by Betsey Beckman. We will release the video podcast series weekly over the next seven weeks. The full text and audio for the prayer cycle is available here.

Each day of the prayer cycle focuses on the thematic and archetypal energies associated with a different name for Mary. Today’s video podcast for Day 1 Morning and Evening Prayer is on the theme Queen of Angels and Virgin. As Queen of Angels Mary invites us to an awareness of the abiding love and support available at all times. In her aspect as Virgin, Mary calls us to honour our wholeness and say “yes” to the divine spark within. 

The following prayers are excerpted from Day 1 Morning and Evening Prayer.   

OPENING PRAYER (Morning)
We gather this morning to join with the heavenly choir of angels and give thanks for their abiding love. Mary, Queen of Angels, summon the support of the heavenly hosts to guide us on our human journey as we live fully into our holy nature and remember that we are not alone.

PRAYER OF CONCERN (Morning)

Creator God, we thank you that you created angels who can act as messengers, bringing words of life and possibility to us. Forgive us when we expect divine beings to look a certain way and so miss annunciations along our path. Help us to have eyes that can see beyond the surface of things and show us when we are entertaining angels unawares.

READING OF THE NIGHT: Mariann Burke (Evening)

How does the virgin birth happen in each of us as a psychic reality? It happens as we respond throughout life to what urges us to our fullest humanity. What is the Mary ‘part’ within us? . . . . It is the place where God is ‘born’ in us and where we begin to discover and live out of our deepest center.

We are blessed to work with a gifted team of artists and contemplatives to bring this prayer cycle to you and pray it nourishes you as you journey with Mary and birth the holy in your own life.  If you would like to help support us financially in creating this free resource, we gratefully receive contributions.

Join Simon tomorrow for his monthly Taizé-inspired Sacred Chant service. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Block Print © Kreg Yingst

Prayer of Concern written by Polly Paton-Brown

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Patricia Leyko Connelly

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World quest post series from the community. Read on for Patricia Leyko Connelly’s reflection on talking and listening to God.

I remember that as a child of 10 or 12, I used to walk to school and church about 7 blocks to and from my home. 

Sometimes I’d walk with other family members or some neighborhood kids but most of the time I was walking alone. 

On those walks I imagine I would think about many things…maybe “why didn’t I finish my homework” or how much I like helping the nuns after school. 

That’s about the time when I started “talking to God”!   I don’t even know why I even thought that I could do such a thing but perhaps it was because of what I had learned in Catechism class…. the answer to this question; “What is prayer”? , answer “Prayer is the lifting up of our minds and hearts to God.”  Awesome!  I believed it and that’s just what I did!  I lifted my mind and my heart to God, speaking to God whether I was in church or walking to school or church. 

There is a lot in between those days and now; including wanting to be a nun, entering an order, leaving. In the midst of my “wondering and wandering” Vatican ll happened and I experienced the first “Folk Mass” at my parish and knew “I had to do this!”  (And I didn’t even play guitar yet!) So, I joined the Folk group, then learning guitar, leading the Folk group and on to living in a mixed community of 14 Franciscan Friars and 2 Sisters, and I the only lay person, a young single woman. In time I met my husband to be, and we were married at this Retreat House. It was a Franciscan Retreat House and we were living Vatican ll!  

During those days while living in community, again, I would “talk to God.”  Many times, I did this when I was alone with my guitar in chapel I listened for God and spoke to God in song, writing several songs I went on to record 2 albums with this Franciscan Retreat community! I was talking to God; God was speaking to me, and I was listening. One song I wrote and recorded at that time was “Be Still” based on psalm 46. 

Fast forward to about 4 years ago.  Living a more contemplative life here in Vermont without any real opportunities to use my gift of Music again I prayed and asked God,  “How do I share my gifts without music? What do I do now?” I was so used to sharing my faith in song and feeling a real sense of Ministry.  Now what? 

That’s when I felt the desire to go for walks, take my phone and take photographs.  As I set out on my walk I again would “talk to God.” “What do you want me to see? What should I say?” Vermont is so beautiful and so it is very easy to capture a beautiful image of nature.   I often heard of the idea of writing Haiku poems but to be honest it just didn’t appeal to me. Yet I wanted to express myself in some way with the photos that I was taking and what moved my spirit. 

I thought I would try writing in Haiku style, prayers using the 5/7/5 syllables style of poetry. I would take the photo of what moved me and try and remember the prayer or thought that came to mind as I walked. Then I started a Facebook page “Haiku Prayers and Photos” by Pat Leyko Connelly.  I did this almost every day and now have posted well over 300 written all throughout the pandemic and I continue to do so today! 

Most of my writing began in the height of the pandemic and daily as I prayed I gazed at the beautiful print (by artist Kreg Yingst) that I have of Julian of Norwich and I felt connected with her in her solitude of her Anchorage!  Although I wasn’t sealed-in here at my home, my loft here did feel like a place of real solitude where I could pray and still communicate with the world via the internet!  (For good or for ill.) 

It was also meaningful to me to write these prayers in the Haiku style only 3 lines. As a Benedictine Oblate and Lay Associate who loves to talk, it was a good challenge to say or pray in these few lines! With few words! 

And so, on I walked and prayed and shared. 

As time went by and my Haiku prayers and photos accumulated, my years in life started to add up too. I thought and prayed about self-publishing a book of my Haiku prayers and photos, I also had started writing long poems as well and so I had quite a collection. This book is Sacredness Surrounds Us in Every Season released in April!

A sample of one of my Spring Haiku Prayers and Photos: 

Trinity of blooms Roadside blessings unfolding... The gift of seeing

Patricia Leyko Connelly is a retired Music Minister/Parish minister and retreat facilitator now living as a self-taught poet and photographer and a Benedictine Oblate (Lay Associate at Weston Priory in Weston, Vt).

This June Pat and her husband Joe and will celebrate their 45th Wedding Anniversary!  They lived and worked in Northern New Jersey where they raised their two children. About 11 years ago in June, they retired, sold their house, and moved to Weston, Vermont. They had been going to Vermont several times a year for over 40 years to visit the Priory, a Benedictine Monastery famous for the Music of Weston Priory. 

Patricia’s new poetry collection Sacredness Surrounds Us in Every Season is available today.

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Patricia Leyko Connelly appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Watch the Love Holds You Poetry Book Launch Recording

We had a wonderful gathering of dancing monks to help launch my third poetry collection Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions for Times of Uncertainty which releases tomorrow, May 9th. I enjoyed spending this hour of music, storytelling, and poetry with our community. A deep bow of gratitude to Simon de Voil for sharing his gift of song with us.

You can order your copy of Love Holds You here. I am most grateful for your support!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

The post Watch the Love Holds You Poetry Book Launch Recording appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Julian of Norwich in Her Sick Bed ~ A Love Note and Poem Video from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I am delighted to share I have a third poetry collection being published on May 9th from Paraclete Press titled Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions for Times of Uncertainty. 

I have long loved the wisdom of Julian but like many, when the pandemic arrived, she became my patron saint of lockdown and compassionate retreat. She herself lived during times of plague, so knew the fears of times like that. Her gift to me was as a companion during the long quiet days full of the ordinary graces of life. 

Since then I have had my own series of health issues to manage and Julian also knew about wrestling with her body’s needs. I imagine her visionary heart opening to a deeper love of the world lying vulnerable in her bed, beholding the simplest of beauties around her. 

Read this poem slowly and then watch the poem video and see if the images illuminate the poem more for you in being able to see the building itself. If the images distract, close your eyes and listen to me reciting the poem to you. 

*

Julian of Norwich in Her Sick BedThe stone walls stay cool on this late summer afternoon.Bushels of golden apple light tumble through my small window,casting a yellow square on the floor which shifts slowly all day like a tired pilgrim. The tabby cat places herself into this warm glow,sighing each hour as she rises again to follow its journey.A breeze rustles in and I gulp down autumn’s early arrival like being under a waterfall. All day I watch the sun travel, the cat shift, the snail who makes its way up my wall leaving a trail like the tears that streak my face into a map of desire.At night I dream I can fly, slip out the window into the dark liquid sky,feel the night lift me onto her back like a wave cresting and I am suddenly more than these frozen limbs,I can taste the stars, flakes of sea salt sprinkled across black silk. The moon opens her wide mouth as if to sing,then swallows me, takes me inside heruntil I know myself as one who waxes and wanes, who shines brightly and sometimes disappears into darkness.

*

After reading and listening to the poem, allow some time for reflection: 

What has been your experience of illness or forced convalescence?  Do you feel the rhythms of the moon reverberate through your being so that you become one like her, wandering through periods of waxing and waning, becoming and letting go? Can you embrace these nocturnal rhythms as the natural course of your earthly presence and being?

If you want to practice some breath prayer here is a suggestion: 

Breathe in: slow down

Breathe out: and savor

You might close with an affirmation: 

I call on Sister Julian to show me how to slow down and savor the world so I might fall more deeply in love with it.

You can order a copy of Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions for Times of Uncertainty at this link. (Paraclete is offering a 20% discount for pre-orders when you use the code LoveHoldsYou at ).

Love Holds You: Poems and Devotions in Times of Uncertainty, is being launched online tomorrow (Monday) and officially published Tuesday. Please join Simon and me for a free event as I share some of the poems and stories from writing and Simon offers his gift of song. 

This coming Saturday, as a part of our Mystical Heart series, Carl McColman will be leading us in a three-hour retreat on Julian of Norwich on her feast day. Julian embodies the archetype of the anchorite and hermit, seeking solitude in service to greater love. (Click here for a link to a reflection from Carl about Julian’s wisdom). 

Join us tomorrow for the start Visionary, Warrior, Healer, Sage: Archetypes to Navigate an Unravelling World.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Poem Video by Luke and Jake Morgan MorganBrothers.ie

The post Julian of Norwich in Her Sick Bed ~ A Love Note and Poem Video from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.