Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 33

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 “Christian Mindfulness Practice.”

It started with the hunger I heard around me for more authentic, rooted, present lives. Seminary students and church folks, directees and retreat participants, all longing to be present in their actual lives instead of rushing from one thing to the next. They were hungry for lives less curated and edited and more authentic and real. I began to trace two thousand years of Christian mindfulness practice as a doorway into present, authentic lives.

What I didn’t expect was that, in the midst of my explorations, my husband would be diagnosed with fronto-temporal dementia, a journey that took us both into living deeply with God in the present moment, because the present was the only moment we had. Especially for me, Christian mindfulness practice became an invitation to see and receive what is in this moment instead of what wasn’t or what I had expected for this season of our lives. As I lost more and more of my husband and the life we’d known together, mindfulness became a way to live the dementia journey deeply and not miss a moment along the way. 

Getting Started: 4 Step Mindfulness Practice

We have everything we need to get started, our breath and our body. Think of this 4 step practice like a recipe, a method to experiment and play with.

Attentive BreathingAttentive EmbodimentAcknowledgementDiscovery

1. Attentive breathing (30 seconds)

First, breathe slowly and deeply. As you breathe, notice your breathing, the feel of your chest as it rises and falls, the sensation of air in your nose and lungs. Take your time to breathe in and out purposefully. Fully experience your body breathing. This first step you already do as a gift God has given you. You do not have to choose each time you take a breath. Your body chooses that for you! You can choose to breathe in an attentive and mindful way. 

2. Embodiment (30 seconds)              

Continue to breathe mindfully and let your breathing fill your whole body. Visualize the oxygen filling your lungs, then your torso, then your arms and legs, providing life-giving oxygen throughout your blood stream from the tip of your head down to your toes. Focus your attention as you continue breathing, noticing what arises in your body – sensations or feelings, perhaps a tightness here or a warm tingle there. Simple noticing is all that is required. Don’t analyze, justify or fix any of these sensations. Christians believe our bodies are blessed, consecrated by God who became flesh to dwell with us. Our en-flesh-ment connects us to God who meets us where we are, in our bodies, right here, right now. 

3. Acknowledgement (30 seconds)

Third, acknowledge whatever arises from your mindful breathing and embodiment. Acknowledge the thoughts, feelings, sensations or attitudes that are in you right now. Whether it is positive or negative, whether you like it or don’t like it, acknowledge what is. We spend a lot of energy every day trying to avoid, deny, repress or reject what is actually happening in our bodies. In this moment acknowledge what is there, arising in your breathing and embodiment. Some call this non-judgmental observing. Others call it prayerful attentiveness. 

This step of mindfulness is an invitation to step out of the cycle of reactivity that often drives thoughts and behaviors. Not only are we prone to reactivity, but the world around us often eggs it on. Instead of reacting to what arises in our breathing and body, the step of acknowledgement allows us to see the truth of what is and hold it before God. 

This is the paying prayerful attention part of Christian mindfulness. We pay prayerful attention to what is with an open heart to discover what God might be up to. We are open to discovery more than judgment, to listening more than speaking. As you hold all that arises before God, let God hold it with you. God is right here, right now, in your breathing and embodiment. As you acknowledge what is, also acknowledge God’s sharing in it with you. 

If you wish, visualize yourself with Jesus, together holding what you have noticed. Experience God’s loving gaze upon it all in this moment. 

4. Discovery (30 seconds)

As you acknowledge whatever arises, holding it within God’s presence, see what you discover. Do thoughts or feelings shift shapes? Increase or diminish? Does a sensation move elsewhere in your body? See what you discover with God. 

So dive in! Step into prayerful acknowledgement of what is right here, right now, with God.

(some sections adapted from Amy’s book, Right Here, Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness, Abingdon Press, 2017)

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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New Year Blessings and Gratitude ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

For the last 14 years we have hosted our annual Give Me a Word mini-retreat and invitation for you to share your word for the year with our community. You can find out more about it at this post.

Some years my word comes quickly and some years it demands a lot more listening and waiting until I receive it. Sometimes I feel certain the word is shimmering and other times I am uncertain and so hold whatever seems to come lightly and with openness. 

As many of you know the first half of last year was a challenge for my health. I started with Covid in January 2022, then my very dear aunt died suddenly, and I was unable to be with her at her passing, and in March 2022 I travelled to Vienna, Austria to have major surgery. Thankfully I healed well from that. On my return I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea which was a huge relief to get at the root of some of my fatigue. 

I had a quiet summer, resting and recovering slowly. I travelled in September to Slovenia, a trip that was postponed originally due to the pandemic and a place where one of my ancestral lines came from. It was my first time there and, in many ways, a most magical trip. I spent two days with a wonderful researcher who showed me various towns my ancestors lived in, and I got to visit the grave of Theresia Zohrer, my great great great grandmother. There were many other delightful discoveries and synchronicities along the way. I loved Ljubljana, the charming capital, and the rest of Slovenia, a beautiful country with a big commitment to ecology and earth-renewing practices. 

When I returned from that trip however, I got quite sick with a bronchial virus for two weeks. Following that some other medical issues emerged and flared. Nothing life-threatening, thankfully, but things that are a bit challenging. 

Please be assured that I am getting the medical care I need and exploring various options with my doctors. Also know that I have cleared a lot of space for myself. I am resting a great deal and really allowing myself to be with all that my body is saying to me. It has been sweet as well to open even more to the grief over losing my aunt and feeling her and my mother keenly present with me in this challenging season. 

I share this whole litany of ailments not for sympathy, my spirits are doing well in the midst of all of this. More so I want you to know that we all have our vulnerable seasons, and our contemplative practice is not a shield against struggle. It can certainly help in coping and enduring and discovering the grace at the heart of it all, but it will never exempt us from our humanity. 

This whole year I have been meditating a lot with the Black Madonna in the form of Our Lady of the Underworld and with Sister Death (named so affectionately by St. Francis). Both for my aunt who crossed that threshold, and for myself who certainly has a lot of living I still want to do but feels drawn like those ancient monks to remember my fragility and to let that bring a luminosity to my days. Benedict instructs us to “keep death daily before your eyes.” The icon above was commissioned from Marcy Hall after I woke from a dream last spring where I knew she had to become part of our dancing monk series. 

The Black Madonna song in the video above was commissioned by Abbey of the Arts from Soyinka Rahim, a long-time friend and powerful singer. She also created the dance you see in the video, and she and Betsey (who produces our albums and dance videos) worked with a community in Uganda they are connected with to teach them the dance as well. The result is the interweaving of this footage through this beautiful and potent video. 

The Underworld journey – sometimes called the Dark Night of the soul – comes for each of us and is ultimately in service of stripping away our old attachments and coming to greater clarity about what is ours to do in this world and how we are to be. The Black Madonna is a guide and companion during that disorienting time. 

Each morning I wake so grateful for the gift of another day of loving, of watching the light change through the hours, of pondering the big questions of life. Even those days when I have to spend much of it horizontal, I open my heart to dreamtime and trust that in this fallowness a newness will eventually emerge. 

I think part of this is certainly being in that menopausal season and passing 50 a couple of years ago. Both my parents died in their early 60s so there is an intensifying desire in me to live fully even when that sometimes means just taking one breath at a time. 

One of the greatest gifts of this season is this sense of harvesting and distilling the abundance of my life. My years of study and practice, the struggles and times of wrestling. As we get older, if we are paying attention, that which we no longer need is stripped away. Sometimes this happens in a slow willing release on our part and sometimes there is a sudden stripping. This is part of death and the underworld’s gift to us, plunging into the essence of what feels most vital in our lives. When we come to realize how time is fleeting, we can let go of that which no longer brings us alive. Time is also slow and spacious, and we can nurture that expansiveness by slowing down and bringing full attention to it all.

I was listening to a talk online and one of the women speaking used the word distillation and when I heard it, it shimmered for me. It made something flutter inside me, a certain sense of rightness, a yes to this holy direction. That is sometimes how the word arrives. You pray and you open and you discern, and then suddenly you hear someone say something that may have nothing to do with your prayers, but a single word shines in the midst of it all. 

Distillation for me means continuing to lavish my body with care, nourishing my friendships and support system with time and care, and also tending to this beautiful community, the work of my heart and you, my fellow pilgrims, monks, and artists. I am grateful for it all. 

Death and life are intimately intertwined. The old and the new braided together. We live in what feel like end times but emerging all around us is a new vision as well. May this year ahead bring you clarity around your part in bringing that to birth. 

Please note: Our monthly contemplative prayer service is being postponed until January 9th due to Simon and me both being under the weather this week! If you have already registered for the original date (Jan 2nd) your registration automatically transfers forward and the event will be recorded.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Sister Death dancing monk icon from Marcy Hall (available for purchase on Etsy)

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A Christmas Blessing

This blessing dances at the doorway
of light and dark, knows both as sacred:
fertile womb space, miracle of blooming.

This blessing breathes
through those moments of labor
when you too birth the holy
into this fragile, luminous, hurting world

as Mary did two thousand years ago,
eyes wide, hands gripping,
waters breaking like crashing waves
of the primordial sea
sending a prayer through time
that echoes still,
pulsing like starlight
in an enormous sky.

This blessing rests a hand
on the back of the lonely
disoriented
lost
hungry
despairing
persecuted
to say your humanity is not an obstacle
but a threshold, to remind you
that the wound is a portal
through which your gifts pour forth,
that raw ache you feel
is the terrible wonder of being alive
calling you into a communion
of veil-lifters, catching glimpses
of a world where the greeds
and horrors are turned upside down.

This blessing comes as an Annunciation:
the world needs *you* wild edge-dweller
where the wind cries out,
where the stone endures,

your hands a bowl,
your heart a cave,
your eyes a mirror,
bringing a drink of water,
an ancient song,
a shimmering light
reflecting all that we miss
in days of rushing.

This blessing creates a resting place
to gather your strength
between the diastole and systole
of the heart,
to learn to trust
in roses and pomegranate,
in sparrows and dragonflies,
in the electricity of the storm.

This blessing says:
know this birthing is not
once and for all
but again and again,
erupting like moonlight between
bare branches,
like a hearth fire lit for
all who have been exiled.
This blessing calls you home.

with love from Christine Valters Paintner
online Abbess at AbbeyoftheArts.com

Here is a PDF version:

A-Christmas-BlessingDownload

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Kirk Byron Jones

We are delighted to offer this post by Kirk Byron Jones, author of the Soul Talk: How to Have the Most Important Conversation of All and Holy Play: The Joyful Adventure of Unleashing Your Divine Purpose. Soul Talk is our featured book this December in our Lift Every Voice Book Club. Listen to our conversation with Kirk here. 

We’d like to offer this poem by Kirk as an invitation into the holy pause of the season. It was originally published on his Facebook page Yes to Grace.

Nothing is SomethingGoing,going,going.Slowing,slowing,slowing.Stop. Being at easeis healingandrestorative.Nothingin emptyspacesis something.

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the second son to the late Frederick and Ora Mae Jones, Kirk Byron Jones is a graduate of Loyola University and Andover Newton Theological School, and holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Emory University and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Drew University.

Dr. Jones began preaching at age 12, and has served as a pastor for over thirty years. He was the founding minister of Beacon Light Baptist Church in New Orleans, and Senior Minister at Calvary Baptist Church, Chester, PA; Ebenezer Baptist Church, Boston, MA; and the First Baptist Churches of Randolph and Tewksbury MA. He presently serves as Senior Pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Lynn, Massachusetts. Throughout his pastoral ministry, Rev. Jones has served on various religious and civic committees at the local and national level.

Dr. Jones is the author of many books for clergy, and all persons seeking spiritual growth in a changing and challenging world including Soul Talk: How to Have the Most Important Conversation of All. Visit Kirk online at KirkBJones.com

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Coming Home + Prayer Cycle Day 7

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

In November and December, we have been releasing our brand new 7-day prayer cycle of morning and evening prayers on the theme of The Soul of a Pilgrim. The audio podcasts for Day 7 morning and evening prayer (the final day!) are being released today on the theme of Coming Home. This is one of the many free resources we offer to our community to help support your contemplative practice and prayer. (If you are able to support this work financially in any way, we gratefully accept contributions at this link.) 

This reflection on the practice of coming home is excerpted and adapted from my book The Soul of a Pilgrim:

The point of traveling is notto arrive but to return homeladen with pollen you shall work upinto honey the mind feeds on.–R.S. Thomas

Ultimately the pilgrimage leads us back home again.  We always return bearing gifts for the community.  We are always called back to share what we have been given with others.  This will look different for each of us.  

We all long for home.  Certainly The Wizard of Oz, that great archetypal film, invited us to remember that the power to go home is always with us.  And while some physical places and landscapes feel more like home to us, it is always in service to us discovering the primal home within each one of us. 

What would it be like to move through the world, and no matter where you found yourself, you recognized yourself as fully at home?

As you continue forward, remember your companions along the way.  Remember those pilgrims who have traveled alongside of you, as well as the thousands of souls who have traveled ahead of you and those still to come.  

Consider how you might stay with a caravan of kindred spirits to support you in the ongoing pilgrimage of life, whether a wise spiritual guide or a small faith community or making it a practice to regularly call upon your spiritual and blood ancestors.

As R.S. Thomas writes, the point of all this traveling is not to “arrive.” The moment we think we have arrived somewhere in this lifetime is the moment we have fallen deep into the wilderness of self-delusion.  

Return home in these coming days carrying this image of the pollen you have received during your pilgrimage that you can transform into honey. Especially in these final days of Advent, as we await the gift of the holy birth into our lives. 

What is the sweet nectar that will continue to sustain you?  What are the practices which you commit yourself to in the days ahead as we celebrate God becoming flesh?

Our featured book this month is Soul Talk by Rev Kirk Byron Jones. We had such a lovely conversation with him. He describes the soul as “God’s everlasting laughter in you. Your soul is God’s Spirit in your spirit, filled to overflowing with lavish love, grace, and outrageous joy. More than anything else, your soul wants you to know how much you are madly adored by God in the mad hope that you will live from acceptance and not foracceptance.” What a beautiful and inspiring description. Kirk also says that God is “always and forever dreaming your joy” and describes soul pleasure as holy. 

This is the call of this season of sacred anticipation too: To return home to that great Dreamer of our holy and outrageous joy.

Join Simon de Voil tomorrow for Taize-Inspired Sacred Chant and on Tuesday we are hosting the Scottish poet Kenneth Steven for a Winter Solstice Poetry Reading.

We will be taking a break from the weekly newsletters next Sunday for the Feast of Christmas so wish you an abundance of blessings for holy birthing!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

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Spiritual Wanderlust Podcast Interview

Christine Valters Paintner was interview by Kelly Deutsch on the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast.

Together we dive into:

Why Mary has so many names
Christine’s favorite name of Mary at this season in her life (it may surprise you!)
How Christine ended up the abbess of an online monastery
How her love for Jungian thought intersects with her Catholic spirituality
How the passing of her own mother birthed a book on Mary
Mary as warrior (an image in stark contrast to the placid woman in blue we usually see!)
What was Hildegard’s favorite name for Mary, and what it has to do with the divine spark!

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Hildy Tail: The Birth of the Messiah (Matthew 1:18-25)

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. 

Nollaig Shona! 

I’m Hildy (Abbey of the Arts’s monk-ey mascot) and that opening phrase is Irish for “Happy Christmas” (Merry Christmas, for Americans) . . . which is appropriate as you’re about to read my take on a Biblical story that is central to the Christmas story. 

I love the Biblical stories about baby Jesus, partially because I love the Christmas seasons so much, but also because the stories are so well known that most of us don’t think about too often . . . or at least not too deeply . . . and so, ironically, are not very well know after all. If you’re like me, you tend to just accept it and get on with our holiday preparations. But not this year!

Today, I’m going to talk about Matthew’s version of the Infancy Narrative (the one with the magi and the star, not Luke’s version with the shepherds). Don’t panic! I’m going to skip over the long genealogy. (I said it was a bit too boring for one of my essays here and John got a bit defensive and went into a long explanation as to why its important . . . No disrespect to the Holy Family Tree, but we’re skipping it today. Besides, all that family stuff was last month’s theme and were moving on.)

Right. So the story starts off simply enough: a woman is engaged to a man. All very traditional and straight forward and . . . sorry to say . . . dull. But then PLOT TWIST: the woman is pregnant “by the Holy Spirit.” The man tries to call the whole thing off quietly, not for his own sake but for hers. It’s a (and I’m sorry if this sounds blasphemous) bizarre situation that Joseph finds himself in (doubly so for poor Mary) and his very calm and compassionate response is equally bizarre . . . and beautiful. 

What’s weird, isn’t that the marriage didn’t go according to the norms of the day (that happens all the time, all throughout history). And it’s not weird that Joseph tried to do the right thing and not expose Mary to public scorn (people tend to try to do the right thing and Joseph is described as being “a righteous man” so of course he isn’t vengeful or mean about any of this). No, what’s weird is *how* Joseph is informed about what’s going on, with the Holy Spirit and all the Messiah stuff.

An angel tells Joseph that the child in Mary’s womb is special, by way of a dream. The Annunciation and Mary being told that she’s pregnant gets a lot of press (and rightly so), but Joseph’s encounter with an angel . . . crickets. He’s regulated to being an extra (or “background performer” as they’re now called) in a story where he otherwise would’ve been the leading male. He doesn’t even get any lines! It’s not like he was unable to speak; there’s a few people in scripture who can’t speak and that’s pointed out. Here . . . nope.

I mean . . . obviously Mary’s vision of the angel Gabriel is the one that starts the whole ball rolling and is therefore more significant. And Mary does carry the Christ child for nine months. And it’s Mary that goes through labour. And, let’s face it, Mary’s role in all this is WAY bigger than little auld Joey’s. But still . . . it’s not insignificant. 

It’s Joseph’s family tree (yes, the one I insisted on skipping over earlier) that’s the reason the Holy Family goes to Bethlehem where Jesus is born in accordance to the prophecy. And it’s the messages received AND BELIEVED by Joseph that help the Holy Family escape to Egypt before they are killed by the jealous King Herod. 

And it’s Joseph’s trust in the messages he receives that I want to focus on here. He had every reason to leave Mary, who was pregnant by someone (or in this case something) other than by him. And even when he believes the angel in his dream, he still would have had reason to step away. If God was involved with creating the child, surely a lone man wasn’t needed to raise or care for the child. And what about the sheer magnitude of the responsibility of raising such a special child? I think I can honestly say that I’d at least think about running as far away from all that as possible. And yet, Joseph’s “yes” to God’s calling is lost, overshadowed (rightly or wrongly?) by Mary’s “yes.”

But as far as the story is concerned, Joseph (much like Mary) doesn’t balk at the challenge . . . no, invitation . . . to be part of something so great. Sure, Joseph is a descendant of King David and can trace his lineage all the way back to Abraham (Alright, John! You were right, the family tree thing is important), but Joseph is so far removed from all that royal blood to be insignificant. He’s just a carpenter, a simple man, humble and righteous. 

He just wants a family of his own. And when that family turns out to be different from what’s expected, from what’s considered “traditional” . . . he accepts it all, with grace and dignity.

How has your family, your life, turned out differently (and perhaps far better) than you planned or expected?

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Janeen Adil

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Janeen Adil’s reflection on the holiness of food.

Farmland surrounded the small Midwestern towns where my parents grew up. Families there typically had a vegetable garden, including the Victory Gardens of the Second World War era. When my parents married, moved to Connecticut, and began raising a family, a large garden out back became a permanent fixture. Dad tended the plot, Mom tended what it produced, and we kids helped when and where needed. We were living in a farming community that had been established over 250 years ago, and having one’s hands in the soil was simply a way of life.

Now, as an adult, I remain grateful to my parents for my own hands-on experiences of nature’s growth cycles. I’ve felt comfortable in my knowledge of where my food comes from: seed to harvest, production to table. My knowledge was comfortable, that is, until I took part in a spiritual exercise centered on that most universal and necessary of activities: eating.

One Sunday, our then-pastor invited us into a unique time of worship. Referring to it as an experience of mindful eating, he had—with some good help—transformed a small, basement church fellowship hall into new life. We were greeted by tables carefully set with nice plates and small bowls of enticing foods. Strings of lights brightened the space; a curated playlist of reflective tunes softened the background.

The pastor led us through nearly an hour of encounter with our food. Grounded in holiness, we contemplated the morsels set before us. Where had they come from? What had been the interactions between nature and humans to produce this bounty?

Before that morning, I had studied and participated in various Christian spiritual practices regarding food, from fasting to feasting, from mindfulness to contemplation. There was also the “slow food” movement, which invited people to pay attention to their food, as did the call to “eat locally.” Overarching all the focus on food, I saw, was gratitude. In consuming what was offered, we presented grateful hearts to God; for me, this harkened back to a daily, familial grace we took turns praying at the dinner table.

This time, though, in the church basement, something happened. I was caught unawares: In a moment of crystallized recognition, I saw the utter miracle of something as commonplace as bread. Words cannot properly frame the insight I was granted. Suffice to say that in my mind’s eye and on an intimate level, I followed the progression through a grain of wheat’s germination to its maturity. Each step involved the long work of transformation, as innumerable cells reproduced and grew to fulfillment.

Then came the harvest and the milling of flour, mixing of ingredients, baking, and the distribution of the finished products to local grocery shelves. All along the way, the processes of nature and the work of many, many human hands combined to make this bread—a food both simple and wondrous—possible. Yes, there was holiness here, and mystery.

Benedictine monk Br. David Steindl-Rast has discussed these layers of connections around our food. In a 2015 interview with Krista Tippett for her “On Being” radio show, he shared this:

I remember, the grace that Buddhists pray before a meal starts with the words “Innumerable beings brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us.” And when you put that into practice and look at what’s there at your table, on your plate, there is no end to connectedness.

Since that day, I’ve tried to carry this heightened awareness forward. I’ve always been drawn to food’s colors—say, the sunset hues of a blood orange, or the green shadings in a single leaf of romaine. Now, though, I also seek to remember the intricate dance that brought my food into being: to remember, to wonder at the utter miracle of it all, and to rejoice with thanks.

I’ve been helped in this by a pastor friend who recently taught me a simple contemplation for eating, one I share now with my fellow monks in the world.

As you take your first bite, linger… ask God to feed your spirit, just as your body is now being fed.

And as you take your last bite, linger… give God thanks for the blessing of the earth, soil and sun, for the labor that brought the food to you, and for the blessing of the food itself.

It’s far too easy to take our food for granted. May we instead acknowledge the works of nature and the works of human hands that supply “our daily bread” and in so doing, offer gratitude for the grace of the miracles involved.

Janeen R. Adil is a spiritual director, writer, and teacher; within the United Church of Christ, she is a Commissioned Minister of Christian Spirituality. Through her freelance business Hungry Soul Ministries, she offers workshops, retreats, and direction. She lives in eastern PA, in a farmhouse built by English/Welsh Quakers over 200 years ago.

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Give Me a Word 2023 + Prayer Cycle Day 6

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

In November and December, we are releasing our brand new 7-day prayer cycle of morning and evening prayers on the theme of Soul of a Pilgrim. The audio podcasts for Day 6 morning and evening prayer are being released today on the theme of Beginning Again! This is one of the many free resources we offer to our community to help support your contemplative practice and prayer. (If you are able to support this work financially in any way, we gratefully accept contributions at this link.)

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to the divine and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner’s fire and be stripped down to one’s holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered.

Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word – this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – “give me a word” we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into. The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.

What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?

As in past years, we are offering all Abbey newsletter subscribers a gift: a free 12-day online mini-retreat with a suggested practice for each day to help your word choose you and to deepen into your word once it has found you. Even if you participated last year, you are more than welcome to register again.

Subscribe to our email newsletter and you will receive a link to start your mini-retreat today. Your information will never be shared or sold. (If you are already subscribed to the newsletter, look for the link in the Sunday, December 11th email and at the bottom of each Sunday following).

Share your word in the comments section here by January 5, 2023 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing.

One person wins a space in our Lent retreat on A Different Kind of FastThree people win a space each in their choice of self-study retreatsFive people win their choice of one of our digital albumsSeven people win one of our Dancing Monk Medallions

Share the love with others and invite them to participate by subscribing to the newsletter. Then stay tuned – on January 8th we will announce the prize winners!

Please join Therese for Centering Prayer on Wednesday to embrace the stillness of the season and Melinda on Thursday for a yoga nidra practice inspired by the season’s invitation to slow down and rest. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Kathleen Deyer Bolduc

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kathleen Deyer Bolduc’s reflection “Mary’s Message: Say Yes to Breaking Open.”

I sit in my study, depleted. I have no energy to write or pray or meditate. I light a candle that sits next to an image of Mary I keep close, knowing she understands what it is like, as a mother, to experience a broken heart. 

I take a few deep breaths and simply sit in her presence.

She stands, eyes cast down, face thin and pale. Mother Mary, who cradled the Son of God in her arms. The fear! The joy! The expectancy! The submissive spirit, casting reputation to the wind!

Nine months to wonder—who will he look like? What kind of personality will he have? What will his mission be? 

Eighteen years of boyhood—skinned knees. Tears. Games of tag and hide’n’seek. Building forts in olive trees. Learning woodwork at Joseph’s knee. 

And then, seemingly overnight, her little boy is a man. She wants to keep him close but he’s ready to move on, move out, lean into his destiny. It’s so hard to let him go, having to live the mystery of what God has in store for him.  

Did Mary know of the suffering ahead? Would she have said “yes” if she did? Would she have agreed to stand beneath that cross?

Hand on heart, without a word, Mary relays a message to me:

I know it’s hard, living with adult sons with autism, chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. I know there are days you feel like giving up. Listen to me, Kathy. Keep on saying yes when you want to scream no. 

Your heart, like mine, is large enough to contain a universe of joy and tears. Remember the gift my Son sent to live within your heart—the Holy Spirit, Breath of God—who brooded over the chaos as God considered his artist’s palette before the work of creation.

Yes, Mary whispers. I weep. You weep. God weeps. Jesus weeps. Spirit weeps. We weep over wrong turns and bad choices; rejection and unkind words; mental and physical illness; autism and the need for full-time caregivers; caregivers who become a part of your family and bring their own personalities, trials and tribulations to the table.

Yes  means not only accepting the suffering that comes with deep love; it also means opening your heart to the effervescent joy that erupts in perceiving ALL that God has wrought—woodpeckers pounding, rivers rushing, birds serenading, squirrels chattering, rain running in rivulets down the road, leaves letting go—God’s creative power all around you and within you—in this heart that breaks open again and again.

Reach down and pick up an acorn, Kathy. Know that it’s only with the breaking open that seeds break forth in green shoots tenacious enough to form a mighty oak!

In my imagination I walk under the oak trees that line Cove Creek, my favorite vacation spot. Leaves crunch under my feet as I walk, and I bend down to pick up a single acorn. Holding it gently in my palm, I turn it this way and that, meditating on the world it holds within itself. I listen again to Mary’s quiet voice. 

Know that it’s only with the breaking open that seeds break forth in green shoots tenacious enough to form a mighty oak!

A poem arises, unbidden, and I open my eyes to copy it in my journal before it’s lost:

Standing on TiptoeAll creation waits with eager longing Waiting to witness Each unique and glorious creation come to wholeness, complete as God envisioned Tightly enclosed seeds gradually opened Borne on wind, carried by waters Planted, rooted, greening Unfurled flags unveiled Nothing is, that wasn’t first imagined in the mind of God Nothing is, that wasn’t first seen, created and called by name Nothing is, without love first pouring Itself Out

Break me open, Lord. Let me trust, like Mary, that you are there in the midst of ALL of it—the mud and the mire, the dying to self, the cracked relationships. As I meditate on the acorn that Mary pointed me toward this morning, let me walk forward as a bearer of your greening power, tender shoots growing out of the wounds I’ve struggled to understand and accept. Let me trust that you are working within my family members, each one unique and beautiful and called by name, a universe unfolding, unfurling, all in your precious time. 

Kathleen Deyer Bolduc is a spiritual director, author, and founder of Cloudland, a contemplative retreat center. Her books, including The Spiritual Art of Raising Children with Disabilities, contain faith lessons learned parenting a son with autism, and finding healing and restoration through the spiritual disciplines. KathleenBolduc.com

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