Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 4

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kiki McGrath

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kiki McGrath’s reflection and visual art essay Contemplative and Creative Practice.

For the past year I have been drawing and painting in a copy of Revelations of Divine Love, responding to this visionary text with graphite, oil pastel, and watercolor paint. Inspired by Julian of Norwich’s mystical experiences, I find her medieval life equally compelling: for more than twenty years she lived alone in an anchorhold—a room attached to a church—and wrote what is now the earliest surviving text by a woman in English. She also offered spiritual guidance to pilgrims and visitors, speaking from behind a black window curtain adorned with a white cross. Exploring religious history and finding ways to combine contemplative and creative practice are recurring themes in my artwork. Recently I constructed a temporary enclosure next to a stone chapel; visitors were invited to enter the cell and engage in solitary reflection, reading and writing. The Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage in Washington’s National Cathedral hosted this participatory installation to celebrate the 650th anniversary of Julian’s visions.

Exterior view of the curtained Anchorhold in Washington National Cathedral’s Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage, November 2023.

Writing Practice: transcriptions from the 13th Revelation.

Altered artist book: Revelations of Divine Love, a version from the MS in the British Museum edited by Grace Warrack, 13th edition, 1949. Watercolor and gold paint.

Altered artist book: Revelations of Divine Love, a version from the MS in the British Museum edited by Grace Warrack, 13th edition, 1949. Graphite and oil pastel.

Sewing practice: All shall be well, by Terri Lynn Simpson and Carol Woodside. Textile and thread.

Kiki McGrath is an interdisciplinary artist who works in laundry rooms, monasteries, galleries, and gardens. A recipient of the Grünewald Guild’s Sacred Art Fellowship, she shares her work at KikiMcGrath.com.

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Kiki McGrath appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Writing on the Wild Edges + Prayer Cycle Day 2 Audio Podcast ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

In pre-pandemic times, John and I used to lead pilgrimages in Ireland (and Austria and Germany) and one of my favorites was called Writing on the Wild Edges on the island of Inismor off the coast of Galway. 

The retreat was inspired by the story of St. Brendan, who was known as the navigator because he went on a seven-year journey by sea to find the Island Promised to the Saints. It is a wonderful story of preparations, prayer, discoveries, going in circles, and confronting monsters along the way, before arriving at their destination, and it always resonated with me as an image of the creative process. 

Brendan hears about the island from another monk, who tells him he reached it in just a day’s journey by sea, and that Brendan must go experience its treasures. So Brendan builds a boat, gathers a community of fellow monks and travelers, goes to seek a blessing from St. Enda on Inismor, and then they set off. 

But instead of a day’s journey, it takes them seven long years. They find magical islands like the one where hundreds of white birds are singing the psalms or the island that turns out to be a whale. And they encounter islands with giants and monsters they have to flee. 

Prayer is at the heart of this pilgrimage. They pray the monastic offices as they go. The journey mirrors the liturgical calendar and they keep returning to the same places each year at the same season as before. 

Sometimes we think “going in circles” means wasting time or not being productive. But in the Celtic imagination there is power in circles and spirals. The Irish still have a very non-linear way of being in the world informed by the seasonal rhythms and their intimate connection to the elements. 

I have a love of the creative process and much of my work is helping others to navigate it and find more ways to let it unfold, while tending to the different movements it offers to us. 

When I sit down to write, I need to pray and bless my time. I prepare my tools – even if that is as simple as powering on my laptop, I connect to a community of writers, both across space here in earthly terms, but also to a lineage of writers and creatives across time. 

Writing brings much joy and discovery along the way. I can get lost for hours in the process of it. But then I encounter blocks and judgements and other kinds of inner monsters that divert me from my desired goal. All of this is part of the process and to be welcomed as an opportunity for creative discovery. 

When I write a poem I rarely know how it will end once I start it, because I love listening to how the poem itself wants to unfold. 

And the Island Promised to the Saints might be our goal, whatever that is for each of us – completing a poem or story or manuscript, the dream of earning an income from our writing, or simply learning to show up more fully present to life. But even Brendan, once he reaches this place, is eventually sent back to Ireland to minister and continue setting up monastic communities. We taste the beauty of what we long for and then must return to the work of it all. 

I am delighted to be offering an adapted version of this retreat online starting tomorrow. We will be meeting May 12-16 daily for 90 minutes of live sessions (also recorded) plus additional guided writing prompts each day with Melinda Thomas and invitations to embody the journey with Betsey Beckman. There are also 4 pre-recorded guest teacher conversations with some Irish writers I love about their own creative wisdom: Manchán Magan on the Irish language and stories of the land, poets Kenneth Steven and Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, and memoir writer Kerri ní Dochartaigh. 

May 16th is the Feast of St. Brendan, so it is the perfect week to go on a mini-pilgrimage together in our imagination via the magic of Zoom, setting out across the vast sea with our community of fellow monks and writers for support, and seeing what we discover. 

During the live daily sessions I will be joined by wonderful Celtic musicians like Simon de Voil, Nóirín Ní Riain, and Deirdre Ní Chinnéide.

It is the kind of program you can plan to join each day and make it a writing retreat at home for the week with all the additional content to guide and inspire you. Or you can absolutely save the recordings and move at a slower pace. 

All levels of writing practice are welcome to join us, this is a generative retreat. We will not be critiquing each other’s work, but there is a forum space to share what is emerging for you and anything you are noticing or discovering. 

Please join us for Writing on the Wild Edges!

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

P.S. The audio podcast for Day 2 Morning and Evening Prayer of our Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle, which takes as its theme Vision, is available to listen here or on your favorite podcast platform.

The post Writing on the Wild Edges + Prayer Cycle Day 2 Audio Podcast ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Jamie Alm

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jamie Alm’s reflection on contemplative presence and family life.

How do I live as a monk in the world? How do I bring contemplative presence to my work and/or family?

In my early days of motherhood, I would jealously read about monks with endless hours to contemplate beauty, goodness and truth in the silence of their cloistered lives. I envied their uninterrupted life. It looked so pure, so impenetrable. They lived in a spiritual fortress that could protect the creative contemplative life. 

In those jealous days, my creativity faltered in the face of fear, distraction and busyness. I longed to get away, to be silent and pray for all that I needed to lament and grieve. I resonated with Jesus’ desire to be alone after the violent murder of John the Baptist. But then the five thousand came and they hungered for his stories. Jesus deferred the solitude he desperately needed. He lingered to nourish those who interrupted him. How did he weave and craft such compelling stories from the space of interrupted solitude? How did he create a feast from such a basic offering of 5 loaves and 2 fish?  

I have three vibrant, complicated daughters with perpetual hunger as they navigate this bewildering world. Their needs often manifest as interruption to artistry. It is hard to steal away and find solitude that is essential in cultivating a creative life. I live in a city where there is rarely silence. In the early morning, the birds surrender their songs and harmonize with the train. In the late evening, the thumping cars broadcast loud music and display the power of their engines. These sounds remind me that the city never sleeps. I know this to be true. In the middle of the night, my daughter climbs into my bed and interrupts even this sliver of stillness. There is no place to be alone. 

Slowly, I have learned to cultivate a contemplative life that improvises. I welcome and over-accept these ordinary interruptions, weaving them into the fabric of my life. The improvisational contemplative life demands that I hone the skill of paying attention, forming prayers that the Jesuits call a “long loving look at what is real.” 

Years ago, my daughters and I were at the Tukwila Library, a bustling community space. Here one finds the convergence of people and stories from around the world. Tucked into the corner, behind the picture books and graphic novels, another young mother, wearing hijab, began salat. Her four year old daughter climbed on her bent back, as if the child had just been invited to ascend a portable jungle gym. Swiftly the child gently swung around her mother’s neck becoming an adorning jewel. With her mother’s next movement, the child shifted her position, mounting her mother’s back like a bold horse rider. Submission and power were on full display in that hidden corner of the library. And then the salat was finished and both mother and daughter rose, faces shining. 

These days, I transport myself into the sacred world of that praying mother in the library, learning to steadfastly hold Love’s Gaze throughout each movement of the day. The interruptions— of fighting children, the nuisance of health insurance hotlines, the relentless laundry— form a muddy swirl around me. They demand I welcome the messiness of real life. I host these seemingly unholy moments and invite them to climb or hang or mount or play within my contemplative world. 

The long loving look allows me to slowly see. Where there is sibling conflict, the invitation comes to engage in the catalytic work of conflict and resolution. We grow the practices of listening and peace-making into our messy daily lives. Where there is bureaucracy and paperwork, I listen to the customer service woman on the other side of the phone and remember that she bears the image of the Divine. Where there are piles of laundry, I am invited to embrace quotidian mysteries of work that will never be complete. Rather than resentment, I receive the scent of grace— fresh linens again today. These daily grind moments ground my feet in the muddy mess of life where I am increasingly present to Mystery unfolding in the midst of the daily noise. 

Within this improvisational contemplative life, YES solitude is constantly interrupted AND a verdant landscape is growing. The muddy world of children, bills and chores has formed a robust and complex soil nourishing my creative life. My daughter retells her nightly dreams and they become seeds for growing plot lines. Humble encounters within the grocery store line inspire narrative frameworks, tilling the soil of my hardened heart. Sometimes the urge to create art waits in me like a peony bud ready to burst. The practice of telling healing stories grows like climbing vines, wrapping over my entire life. A garden of creativity flourishes in this life of interruptions. I contemplate this mystery. 

Jamie Alm learns, lives and builds community with her family in southeast Seattle while running an amateur bed and breakfast. She is trained in Speech Language Therapy and Narrative Medicine and is an emerging writer. She loves all things related to words and story. 

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Jamie Alm appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Creative Joy + Prayer Cycle Day 1 Audio Podcast ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Tomorrow Simon de Voil and I are leading our final contemplative prayer service of the season before we take a break until the fall. Our theme is Creative Joy which is the 8th principle of our Monk Manifesto:

I commit to being a dancing monk, cultivating creative joy and letting my body and “heart overflow with the inexpressible delights of love.”

Here is a reflection on creative joy from our Monk in the World online retreat: 

Whether we dance literally or metaphorically, the dance is a symbol for forgetting our self-consciousness and letting ourselves be overcome with the joy and love that beat at the heart of everything. Our whole purpose in following a spiritual path and nurturing these practices in our lives is to expand our inner freedom which expands our capacity for loving the world. Kirk Byron Jones, in his book Soul Talk says that God is “always and forever dreaming your joy.” This is a beautiful image of the Holy One’s desire for us to live into this path of creative joy and to know it as sacred and good. 

As we release the hold of expectations and disappointments, as we stop trying to live into the imagined life and live the one we have been given, we discover a profound inner freedom to make choices out of joy and love, rather than obligation or resentment.

In his book Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura writes that “God’s design in Eden, even before the Fall, was to sing Creation into being and invite God’s creatures to sing with God, to co-create into the Creation.” He goes on to say that the Christian story is about bringing in the New, which is the source of our imagination. We were created to partner with the divine in bringing the world to newness. 

St. Teresa of Avila describes the soul’s journey as moving to our deepest interior, through the rooms of an inner castle to encounter the divine. Claudia Love Mair shares in her book about Teresa, God Alone is Enough, that “when we have come deep enough into the castle, by prayer, to be still with our God, we find sweetness and joy. This is a little piece of heaven right where we are.” We do not need to go on big adventures or travel far distances. The fountain of sacred joy is within us. All the ways we practice coming into deeper intimacy with the divine, is in service of connecting to this profound sense of love and joy which ushers back into connection with the world.  

Howard Thurman reflected that “Every moment is a divine encounter; every facet is an exposure to the boundless energies by which life is sustained and our spirits made whole. Thus, we live joyfully into life and its restraints.” Each moment we can open our hearts to experiencing the life-sustaining love lavished by the divine presence. It is in this commitment to practice and show up for the deeper mysteries of life that we can kindle joy even in the midst of the limitations life brings us.

This does not mean as a contemplative that you need to always be happy. Far from it. Joy is not the same thing as happiness but tapping into a deep well of love. Joy is a deep and abiding presence, whereas happiness is a fleeting quality.

Our capacity for joy is in proportion to our capacity for sorrow, so the more we resist our grief, the more we also resist the treasure of joy available to us in abundant measure. Not the bitterness and resentment that Benedict counsels us to avoid, but the deep wells of sorrow we each carry within our hearts over losses and brokenness, betrayals and wounding. Following our Monk Manifesto second principle of inner hospitality, we are called to welcome in these feelings, and in the process, we carve out space for joy and love as well.

One of the key ways we open a portal to our deepening joy is through creativity and art-making. Dancing, singing, writing, painting, all of these have the potential to connect us to this inner wellspring. Barbara Holmes tells us that we can cross into joy’s embrace through word, song, or movement. “Portals open as the quickening steps of seekers engage a dancing God in a dancing universe. If there is any way to dialogue with the God who created a universe of vibrating and dancing ‘strings,’ perhaps it is through dance.” When we move into a place of surrender and forget our self-consciousness, when we inhabit a song or a poem or a dance, we connect to life in a life-expanding way. 

Please join Simon and me for the contemplative prayer service tomorrow.

If you’d love to have an extended creative infusion, consider joining us for Writing on the Wild Edges (May 12-16), a writing retreat inspired by the voyage of Irish saint Brendan as a creative guide and ending on his feast day. We will also be exploring how the Celtic imagination can open up creativity to us in new ways. 

We are also pleased to release the audio podcast for Day 1 Morning and Evening Prayer: Love from our 6thprayer cycle on Cultivating Seeds of Liberation. Listen here or on your favorite podcast platform such as Apple or Spotify. The prayer cycle is a free resource that includes contributions from many vibrant writers, artists, musicians, and dancers who are compensated for their work. If you have the financial means to support this resource, a donation in any amount is most appreciated and can be made here.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image Paid License with Canva

The post Creative Joy + Prayer Cycle Day 1 Audio Podcast ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle Launch and 20th Anniversary Celebration!

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

Thank you for celebrating the release of our sixth prayer cycle Cultivating Seeds of Liberation and the start of the Abbey’s 20th year! We had a beautiful time gathering in community for prayer, contemplation, story, and song.

The audio podcasts for each day will be released weekly over the next seven weeks with the video podcasts coming in 2026. Listen to Day 1 Morning and Evening Prayer here or on your favorite podcast platform such as Apple or Spotify.

Music for the prayer cycle is available on our album Cultivating Seeds of Liberation: Songs of Justice and Joy. The digital download is available on Bandcamp. It will be released to stream across music platforms in the coming weeks. 

The prayer cycle is a free resource that includes contributions from many vibrant writers, artists, musicians, and dancers who are compensated for their work. If you have the financial means to support this resource, a donation in any amount is most appreciated and can be made here.

The post Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle Launch and 20th Anniversary Celebration! appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Laura J. Collins

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Laura J. Collins’s reflection on practicing biomimicry for spiritual well-being.

Janine Benyus, the founder of the Biomimicry Institute, urges individuals, organizations and even governments to pay close attention to how nature works and learn to emulate its genius to enhance our planet and our lives. She applies her work primarily to technology, but listening to her makes me wonder about our theologies and spiritual practices, as well. Are they drawing on the wisdom of nature?

I work with people and organizations in transition. And my own life, it seems, has been one of constant evolution. Or devolution. But either way, change. We humans often have an aversion to change, even though we recognize its inevitability. Intellectually, we may grok that stagnation leads to sluggishness at best, and more often disease and eventually, death.

Viscerally, though, change makes us anxious.

What might biomimicry teach us in these moments? As I walk through the woods, I notice how trees adapt to injuries they’ve received. Burls, for example, grow in reaction to stress. Years ago, I attended an exhibition at the New York Museum of Craft and Design of creations made of wood turned from burls. Stunning, magical designs emerged from this trauma response.

Difficult change can create the conditions for a new type of beauty. Meditating in the forest reminds me to be patient with the transitions in my life, to trust in the transformations that grow slowly and may seem ugly to me in the beginning.

Like all of nature, trees do eventually die. Have you ever come across a rotting log in the midst of the woods? Known as nurse logs, these fallen trees offer seedlings nutrients and protection, creating the environment for a new generation. Fungi and bacteria break down the wood. As the tree deteriorates, holes in the bark grow and become filled with soil, moss, mushrooms and small plants, all nitrogen-rich organic matter. Over time, the log decays and the seedlings become strong enough to support themselves.

These “dead” trees are teeming with far more life inside them than they ever had when they were “alive”. These fallen trees contain five times more living matter than when they were growing upright.

Deep in the forest, there is always life after death. Resurrection is central to the Christian story, but often we think of it as an event that happened in and for Jesus. Or perhaps we think of it as something that may happen to us when we die. What does earth tell us?

In nature, resurrection happens everywhere, all the time.

What if the resurrection story is not just about Jesus, the great tree that was felled? What if it is a story about the community that rose up from the body of that fallen life? A community that,when it stays true to its roots, grows mosses of compassion, lichen of love, seedlings of sympathy, into a forest of kindness.

The legacies of Buddha, Mohammed, and other great avatars and saints also became seedbeds of spiritual renewal. Living beings who once stood tall upon the earth, they needed to fall and disintegrate for new generations to emerge from the body of their wisdom. In time, each of the emergent communities themselves fall and their decay, in turn, feeds a new creation.

Earth grounds and teaches us. Its adaptation to stress and injury, the way each part of the ecosystem depends on the health of the whole, the cooperative mycelial networks that lie invisibly under our feet, supporting all that we see above the ground. Everything teaches us when we pay attention.

How am I practicing biomimicry for my spiritual well-being? Whether I find myself in a time of blossoming, or a time of seeming decay, I am learning to trust in the wisdom of the burls: my wounds become a source of beauty. I am learning to trust the wisdom of the nurse logs: I don’t have to be reaching for the sky to be abounding with life.

Laura J. Collins, an ordained minister and spiritual counselor, lives in the ancient Blue Ridge Mountains where she offers one-to-one healing Soul Care and leads retreats on eco-spirituality. You can read about her work and upcoming events at LauraJCollins.com

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Laura J. Collins appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

New Prayer Cycle Launch and 20th anniversary celebration! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

We are delighted to be celebrating our 19th anniversary at Abbey of the Arts and launching our 20th year of ministry and service. 

For our 20th year we are planning some lovely offerings and gifts. One of these is our brand new prayer cycle Cultivating Seeds of Liberation with 7 days of morning and evening prayer center around Love, Vision, Hope, Justice, Peace, Joy, and Beauty. Each day includes an audio podcast that will be released weekly beginning next Sunday.

The new prayer cycle was created with the vision of our Wisdom Council to provide a free resource that amplifies our commitment to justice and joy. Daily prayers and blessings were written by Wisdom Council members Claudia Love Mair, Jo-ed Tome, Cassidhe Hart, and Melinda Thomas. The readings are from books we’ve featured in our Lift Every Book Club and center the voices of contemplative writers of color such as Howard Thurman, Cole Arthur Riley, Mihee Kim Kort, Kat Armas, Steven Charleston, and more. Psalm selections are from Christine Robinson and James Block with new interpretations and musical settings by Simon de Voil. 

Here is an excerpt from the Day 1 Prayers of Concern written by Claudia Love Mair: 

Gracious Divine, how can we say we love you, but not creation or humankind when you are the creator of all? How can we cry out for justice for those in far off lands, and ignore the injustices those in our own communities face? So often we are full of contradictions. Give us the will and ability to keep choosing love in both desire and action.

In partnership with Betsey Beckman we have created a companion album Cultivating Seeds of Liberation: Songs of Justice and Joy that includes 25 songs featured in the prayer cycle. The album is available now in Bandcamp.

Join us this Friday, May 2nd for a free event to celebrate the 19th anniversary of Abbey of the Arts and the launch of the prayer cycle and album. Our time together will include selections of blessings and prayers from each day, live performances from some of the musicians who contributed their artistry, and time for reflection.

Stay tuned next Sunday for the release of Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Day 1 audio podcast.

We are thrilled to share the new prayer cycle as an offering to meet the current moment with love, connection, commitment, and community.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

The post New Prayer Cycle Launch and 20th anniversary celebration! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Rochelle Rawson Naylor

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest series from the community. Read on for Rochelle Rawson Naylor’s reflection on the spiritual practice of being in the present moment while caring for a loved one with dementia.

Be where you are. This has been my everyday mantra for myself over the decades of my adult life.  It is what I write inside the cover of my calendar in each new year, and it is below my name on my social media profile pages, so I hold it personally and share it publicly.  

In earlier seasons of life, this reminded me to not be in a hurry for the “next thing” – the better job, the bigger home, the marriage, parenthood, etc.  Sometimes it is about savoring the present moment – the sunset, the croissant, the fresh air, the conversation with a dear friend or loved one.  In times of uncertainty, it leads me once again to this passage from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
And try to love the questions themselves.
Do not seek the answers that 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 gradually, without noticing it,
Live along some distant day
Into the answer.

Living the question steadies and grounds me to be fully present in the moment. It reminds me to breathe, to pause and pay attention to how I’m feeling, to see what in this moment I can be grateful for, to not spiral downward in worry for what the future may bring.

Be where you are. For so long, this has been about being where I am, but I now find myself needing to reflect on what it means for me in this present season of life alongside my husband as his caregiver.  As his dementia progresses, his sense of time becomes more fluid, and his “memory loop” is sometimes only a few minutes long in his continuous “now.”  Sometimes that “now” is a long-ago time recalled once again.  Sometimes he is within a dense fog of confusion uncertain about time or day or month or who I am.  Sometimes he is in the present moment but stuck on repeating the same thought or question.  Sometimes he has imagined an event or conversation that is completely real to him but is not real.  But sometimes he is clearly in current reality and for a time able to engage in the flow of a conversation, and every once in a while, he says or does something that reminds me of the person he used to be, a gift for which I am grateful.

With the progression of his dementia, most of my husband’s long-time close friends have drifted away, and many of the activities that gave meaning and structure to his life have become too difficult or no longer hold his interest.  Hours spent in treasured pursuits have now become minutes that lead to frustration and deep sadness. 

This caregiver journey itself is always in a fog – always unpredictability of what the next moment – the next hour – the next day may bring.  It is even more essential now for me to pay attention to being where I am  – to pause and really be fully present in the moment – to make space to feel what I am feeling – to renew my strength and patience – to keep on keeping on.  But in this present season, there are also times where I need to shift my focus to try to be with my husband in the place he is in that moment – wherever that happens to be.  These are the times when I must put aside “where I am” to “be where he is.”  

Being where he is means having patience to respond neutrally or positively to the same story yet again or a repeated statement or question while keeping a calm tone of voice.  It means trying to listen for what may be behind a far-fetched imagining and either rolling with that version of reality or gently redirecting away.  It means saying how sorry I am when one of his friends doesn’t answer his phone call or respond to his text.  It means saying that it is okay to not keep trying to do the things that used to be so important and now feel meaningless to him.  It means me doing all these things over and over every day, and sometimes annoyance creeps into my voice, unhelpful words come out of my mouth, or my patience runs dry.  Then I realize I need to step away from being in his “now” for a time.    

So, each day I seek balance between being where I am and where he is. At the end of a day when I fell short as caregiver, I know that my husband has already forgotten my failure, so I try to put it aside as well.  At the end of a day when I know that I was present with him as needed and also found room for myself, that is a gift of grace.  And tomorrow I begin again.  

Rochelle Rawson Naylor is a person of faith who grew up in Protestant traditions and is currently a member of a local congregation.  In addition to being a caregiver, she works as a senior program officer at a community foundation in the community where she grew up in Iowa. 

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Rochelle Rawson Naylor appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Easter and the Journey to Joy! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Easter blessings my friends!

We are in the midst of extraordinarily difficult and cruel times and it is essential we do not bypass the profound sacred grief and holy rage we feel. Easter is not about denying these realities. Easter also celebrates how in the midst of our struggles and losses, sometimes life has a way of breaking us open to something new. It calls us to hold fast to life in the midst of so much death. 

Easter invites us to cling tightly to kindness and empathy in the midst of cruelty, to inhabit hope when despair and cynicism is thick in the air, to reach toward others when we feel isolated and alone, to find moments of joy and pleasure when your heart is overwhelmed. 

The practice of resurrection means to keep community, friendship, and radical hospitality central and to cherish life in all of its beauty and delight that still erupts around us when we pay attention. The contemplative path is one lived in resistance to the dominant paradigm, slowing down and valuing ourselves and others not according to our productivity but to our Divine belovedness, lavishing our full attention on another person, being present to the beauty of a flock of birds moving across the sky, these are essential always, but especially now. We must cultivate joy, which is different than the fleeting nature of happiness. Joy is deeply rooted in a sense of trust that the Beloved desires this for us and has given us life to wonder at creation and make sure all bodies and beings have access to joy. Joy does not deny pain, it helps us to endure life’s difficulties. 

I have had ongoing health challenges all of my adult life which intensified for the last few years after I entered menopause. I found myself drained by pain and fatigue. My joy was diminished by the burden of it. 

Two winters ago, out of the womb of fertile darkness, a fairy tale emerged. First it was just the skeleton of a story about the journey to retrieve joy. It had a troll and a dragon, a medicine woman and a wise one, a canine companion, and the protagonist, Sophia. These characters began to dance in my heart. 

Over a few months and into the following summer, the story grew. I take baths most mornings and in that warm cocoon of rest, I would go on journeys in my imagination which worked their way into the story. Even in the midst of illness, I could go on inner adventures and these journeys always delivered me back to joy. The creation of the story about retrieving joy, brought me so much joy in writing it. 

I consider myself primarily a poet and writer of nonfiction. So when the fairy tale arrived it surprised me. And yet I have loved fairy tales for many years, finding in them such depth of wisdom when I take time to really inhabit their worlds. 

I told the story to friends, and they would have tears in their eyes as I reached the end. It felt like there was something here for more than just me. 

I had been following Domenique Serftonein’s work at The Maiden Moose on Instagram for a while. She is an illustrator based in Ireland and I felt she would be perfect to illuminate this story. I was so delighted when she said yes. Over this past winter, each week she would send me sketches and then full color versions of each of the images. More joy came with each email and file opened. 

Fairy tales are about transformation. The protagonist is in a different situation by the end of the story from where they started. Stories can act as metaphors for the things we are struggling with. Fairy tales offer us hope and give us maps to transform from victim of our lives, to empowered sovereign of our stories. 

Now, Journey to Joy is published and I can share the joy with you! 

This isn’t explicitly an Easter story per se, but it is a story about the journey to resurrection in the midst of challenging circumstances. 

Fairy tales have a decidedly spiritual function because they enable us to embody new ways to live and interact with a world that is beyond us. Fairy tales are about transformation and teach us to never give up hope in impossible situations. They invite us in through their simplicity and symbolism, so we can project ourselves onto the story, and help us to be transformed as well. 

My hope in sharing this story is that you read it with an open heart and find yourself in its midst. Sophia, the main character, goes on journeys shaped by the four seasons to claim her song, her power, her wholeness, and her ancestral wisdom. 

My deepest desire is for you to go on the initiations Sophia has to endure so that you might find ways to welcome more joy back into your life. 

You can order the book on Amazon. We eventually hope to have it available on other booksellers and know that Amazon has lots of issues, but for self- and on demand publishing it is one of the easiest ways to release your work into the world. 

I will also be leading a Journey to Joy online mini-retreat over the summer solstice and will be joined by the delightful Te Martin who will be creating songs for this journey. 

Joyful blessings!

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

The post Easter and the Journey to Joy! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Lori DiPrete Brown

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Lori DiPrete Brown’s reflection Hope through Uncertainty: Reflections Drawing on the Writings of Julian of Norwich.

The writings of Julian of Norwich, a cloistered contemplative who lived in14th Century England, recount her mystical experiences and speak about the nature of God and the soul. Julian lived in times of plague, war and social strife, yet she offers a spirituality of hopeful, tender co-creation.  In February and March of 2024 I undertook 30 days of reflection on Julian’s writings which included daily reading, contemplation, writing and illustration. Here I share five of the journal entries, with the hope that readers will be inspired to try this practice, and that together our attentions and reflections can enlarge the mystical circle of creativity, wisdom, contemplation, care and love. 

 The Hazelnut

“I looked at a hazelnut in the palm of my hand and saw with the eye of understanding that God made it, God loves it, and God keeps it.”  (Ch. 5, pp. 8-9)

 The hazelnut is the little thing that Julian of Norwich is famous for. It’s my first day of reflection and as I take in the words, I am tempted to move quickly past it, eager for something new, restless for tomorrow. But when I draw the seed in my own hand – I begin to understand that the metaphor that the whole world is in the hazelnut is a beautiful literal statement too. It’s about life, science, the seed that can regenerate a whole tree. It can survive and evolve over millennia – and it can survive dormancy for a long time too. The hazelnut gives me hope and shows what a kind of teacher Julian is. She wants to take us beyond words, sacred images, and the metaphors themselves – from something, through nothing, to God. But she “mystics gently” as we begin the journey. She lets us have a small, small thing to hold.

Hands

“See that I am all things. See that I do all things. See that I never lift my hands from my work, nor shall ever without end.”  (Ch.11, p. 20)

Throughout her writings Julian asserts that God has a plan, that God is pleased with all creation, and that all creation is good.  It’s a bold and challenging statement of original blessing, and I find myself saying, “but wait”, “but look”, “but that”, “but why?” Yet the wise mystic knew suffering also – her writings speak of dried blood, dead grey skin, life languishing away slowly – she had clear and visceral knowledge of dead bodies, violent death, and the ravages of disease. I look for something to hold onto here and find two lines that, despite other misgivings, I can believe. According to Julian, God says “Behold, I never withdraw my arms from my work.” So perhaps this is the only plan for humanity that there can be. Continual work, care and comfort. Our hands beside God’s, never letting go, never giving up.

Peace is All

“I saw no anger in God, not even for a moment. I saw with certainty that peace is all, and wrath has no place.”  (Ch 49 p. 66)

How do words like peace, safety and blessing take living form? Not light, darkness, water, or fire. These elements already have their places in the metaphorical landscape — and they are capable of much —but that capacity is for both creation and destruction – not a steady undisturbed peace that is never moved to anger. A peace where even justified anger is censured and called on to manifest in tenderness. What if the just rage that I allow myself, is not a necessary step toward peace? How do make it melt and rain away before it forms? Today I am visited by the image of gentle green reeds that rustle in a soft breeze. There can be low music, a quiet chime, as we plant ourselves and reach.

A Marvelous Confusion

 “Throughout our lives we are steadfastly kept is a marvelous confusion of weal and woe. Out of kind goodness God opens the eye of our understanding. Sometimes more, sometimes less.” (Ch. 52, p. 77)

 Life is a marvelous confusion of ups and downs. We wait for the sky to clear, for a steady state of joy and contentment. But instead, these things arise only in brief moments, between hurts, storms, earthquakes, war and death. We roam unsheltered and then we stumble on a place to warm in the sun. We come upon a tree for shade, a stream, wild berries. We give birth to some things without pain and die birthing too – leaving the orphan child to conjure the love she needs out of the air. Joy and sorrow weave together and interrupt each other like bickering sisters. We must learn the art of carrying peace inside, using both memory and forgetting to survive, and loving without fear, in spite of, and because of, the world.

All Shall be Well

The cloven heart. The crown of thorns. the face of God traced in blood and sweat on Veronica’s veil… These are unlikely images for a spirituality and theology of overflowing tenderness and metaphysical complexity. Yet the visions of Julian of Norwich center on this kind of God who stays close when we suffer. This God is everywhere and everyone and every why, when we cannot understand. It is beyond us to know the future, but we can move toward that unknown with hope surrounded by the diffused light of God. That light is relief, both from the despair of noonday sun in the desert, and from the fear we feel in the dark of night. A soft light, a gentle breeze, where we can work and try and hope, sustained by brief moments of certainty here and there. With God’s arms alongside ours, we make and remake the world with unfaltering care. It is in this sense that all is well, all can be well, all will be well, and all shall be well.

Readers may download the complete e-book of “Hope Through Uncertainty: Thirty Days of Reflection Drawing on the Life of Julian of Norwich here.  

Lori DiPrete Brown is a teacher, writer, translator and visual artist whose work focuses on global health and wellbeing, social justice, spirituality and personal transformation. She holds degrees from Yale College, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Divinity School. She is a Benedictine Oblate of the Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, Wisconsin.

Note: The quotations of Julian of Norwich are drawn from Holloway’s Julian of Norwich Showing of Love. The quotations, which are lightly paraphrased in some cases, are cited with chapter and page number.

The post Monk in the World Guest Post: Lori DiPrete Brown appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.