Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 45

Blessed Feast Day of St. Muirgen(The Mermaid Saint)

[image error]

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I come to the sea to listen to ancient rhythms and the primordial voice. I come because it is exquisite medicine. I come because in another life I was a mermaid or a Selkie, diving beneath the dark surface of the cold water to find new worlds waiting. I come because this adopted home of mine is an island and the edge where sand and shore meet is always a portal. I come because when I sit and watch the waves roll and roil life makes sense, chatter quiets, I can drink from the well of stillness. Most of all I come because this vast vessel of brine holds the tears I have shed, a sign of how much I have loved this life, this world.

The story of Muirgen says that her village was swallowed in a flood and she and her dog dove under the waves and found a cave. As the only survivor the cave became her temple of grieving. It was the alchemical vessel for her transformation. She became mermaid and her loyal companion became otter. Shapeshifters. Taking new form to express the new identity their journey to the underworld bestowed.

Later she is discovered by monks because of the beauty of her singing and made a saint and given the name Muirgen (of the sea). I love that the Irish tradition has such a wide sense of possibilities and holiness.

If you ask is this story true in the sense of did it literally happen then you have a long way still to travel. But if you ask what truth does this point you to in your own life, there you find the glimmer of yourself, your shining face reflected back in the water’s mirror.

What are the great losses of your life? Where have been the caves calling you to enter, to rest, be, mourn, transform? How did this loss change you so profoundly you felt like your world and perspective shifted? Who companioned you during this time? What song do you long to sing?

And perhaps the cave is still calling. Maybe the floods came and stripped what you loved away and you have resisted diving under the surface of the water and are paddling frantically and choking on brine?

The cave is always waiting. There is always a portal before us. Transformation is our true nature. Dive deep my friends.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing monk icon by Marcy Hall at Rabbit Room Arts.

The post Blessed Feast Day of St. Muirgen(The Mermaid Saint) appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Christine’s Reflection on Honoring the Body

Christine has a new reflection published at Bearings journal online on Honoring the Body:

“My story is not a one-way hero’s journey. I have not overcome or done battle; I don’t want to be anybody’s inspiration. Stories that give the impression that one can achieve victory over the body’s vulnerabilities do a great disservice to the collective imagination by pushing away the discomfort of grief. I want my story to reveal that tenderness and surrender instead of fortitude and domination are signs of strength. I want my story to say that yielding to my body’s needs rather than forcing myself onward is a sign of wisdom. “

Read the whole article here.

The post Christine’s Reflection on Honoring the Body appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Noelle Boughton

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Noelle Boughton’s reflection, “My COVID Transformation.”

In early 2021, we’d been hearing for a year that COVID was a global time of transformation. That was certainly my sense going into it the previous March, and I was so excited to see how it would transform my life and that around me. In fact, my spirit was dancing with the possibility of what could be! 

Then I smacked into reality.

I was working in a congregation that had never been online, and suddenly had to mount Lent and Easter. It took time to learn the tools, but we did it. Then I was conscripted to start leading prayer groups and spirituality workshops on top of my frenetic communication job.

By then, both my mom – diagnosed with dementia just before the pandemic began – and younger brother, diagnosed soon after, were going sideways 2,000 kilometers away, in a place I couldn’t go because of lockdown. Two weeks into it, my mom suddenly had to move – and I was thrust, long-distance, into the medical/support system of stabilizing and moving her into care. Just as I was sorting that out, my brother disappeared. The police finally found, and hospitalized, him in a COVID hotspot 800 kilometers further west. His kids and I scrambled to get him to their home and line up the care he’d need for his growing list of health issues. 

It was a wild and crazy time, and I was exhausted. Every time I’d hear that COVID was creating a “global pause”, I’d grit my teeth and snarl: “What pause?” The lives I was responsible for – since it no longer felt like “my life” – were rocketing out of control. Privately, I rued the fact that the pandemic would be over before I’d see any transformation in my life! 

I found a Meet-up hiking group and grounded in long forest treks over a few Saturdays. Then, the morning after Mom was ambulanced to hospital for a potential heart attack and I spent half the night connecting by phone with the medical team since no family was allowed in, I broke my ankle in a pothole while walking in my local park. Suddenly, I was sidelined, too!

It was sobering.

I spent most of my holiday reading under a tree, which I hadn’t done in 50 years! Shoved out of my schedule, I even started writing again. And, one day, sitting in the summer shade, it dawned on me that I finally had the COVID-pause that I’d been craving for five months.

It was the beginning of my transformation. I’d started working with a great life coach just before the pandemic – and she was now calling me into myself. Not the less exhausted, pre-COVID version, but the one with a deep sense of call, which had been ramping up for years as I still felt I had a purpose to fulfill before I died, even though I was still trying to figure out what.

I had some clues. Thirty years ago, I’d been feeling misaligned in another communication job while walking in an urban forest. It was a bitter winter day, but I remember shaking my fist at the sky and yelling at God: “What’s my life about?”

Back came the answer: “Write, learn, teach, and heal.” I’d kept it on my do-list since then and noticed those always put me in “the zone”. But, although I’d trained as a spiritual director and become a published author, I’d been working in communications – and seldom felt soul-satisfied. Now, ruminating under my tree, I realized that living how I’d been wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to go. I had to learn to do things differently. 

My coach was imploring me to live by my intuition – my feminine flow – rather than my masculine “doing”/thinking mode, at which I excelled. I’d relied on my intuition to buy peanut butter or choose a direction when lost, but never to make all of my life-shaping daily decisions. 

As I began to consciously live into my flow, I could feel what I intuitively needed – more meditation, yoga, and sleep, and to get on with my call. We discerned that was returning to doing spiritual coaching and workshops, so I started building an online presence. I’ve now returned to writing, too, as it feels like a fundamental cornerstone.

I’ve also started embracing my limitations, which is oddly freeing. I can’t change life for my family. I can’t interest myself in another communications gig. I can’t even hatch a five-year plan if I want to live by what life coach Martha Beck calls my “north star”. It’s scary – letting go and letting flow – but, as American singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer sings, “If not now, when?”  

Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak that we can be guided as much by the ways that close as those that open for us. I feel the closed doors behind me even as I start gently pressing again on the ones ahead of me to discern where I’m to go next. I’m very much living as a monk in the world now, awaiting Spirit’s alms, which always illuminate my path as it emerges from the fog. Fulfilling my call is still a work in progress, but I’m dancing, again, with the possibility of what life can be.

Noelle Boughton, author of Margaret Laurence: A Gift of Grace, A Spiritual Biography, is a spiritual alignment coach and workshop facilitator who helps mid-life women learn body, mind, and spiritual techniques to tap into their inner wisdom, clarify what will fulfill them, and clear obstacles to achieve it.

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

Introduction to Birthing the Holy: Exploring the Sacred Feminine and Archetypes

Seminary of the Wild recently welcomed Abbey of the Arts online abbess, artist, contemplative, and prolific author, Christine Valters Paintner as a guest Wild Luminary speaker. Christine shares from her new book exploring the archetypes of Mary and the sacred feminine. “The sacred feminine is not at the expense of the masculine. We need both in healthy balance to one another. The feminine values qualities of intuition, dreaming, receiving, and resting among others. We all hold the feminine and masculine within ourselves. Mary offers us many faces of this sacred feminine presence and can help us to cultivate a slower, more intentional way of being in the world.” (from her Nov 2021 monthly “Love Letter” email.)

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE is the online abbess for Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and global community. She is the author of numerous books on contemplative spirituality and creativity, including Earth, Our Original Monastery and two collections of poems. Christine is a Benedictine oblate living in Galway, Ireland, with her husband, John. Together they lead online retreats and prayer experiences at their website AbbeyOfTheArts.com.

The post Introduction to Birthing the Holy: Exploring the Sacred Feminine and Archetypes appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Celtic Wisdom for Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Love Note: 

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

We are thrilled to be offering a virtual Celtic pilgrimage starting January 31st which is the feast of St. Brigid. Journey with us over nine days as we deepen into Celtic wisdom and hear the stories of Brigid, Ciaran, and Gobnait. Each day’s live session (via Zoom) also includes film footage from Brigit’s Garden and two of the Aran Islands as well as our wonderful guides Dara Molloy, Jenny Beale, Deirdre Ni Chinneide, and Pius Murray. (All sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live). Simon de Voil will be joining me to hold our sacred space through music. 

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

The ancient Christian monastic traditions, especially desert, Celtic, and Benedictine, offer great wisdom for the journey of unfolding. They understood that the soul’s ripening is never to be rushed and takes a lifetime of work. The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness. 

We can grow impatient when life doesn’t offer us instant insights or gratification. We call on the wisdom of these monks to accompany us, to teach us what it means to honor the beauty of waiting and attending and witnessing what it is that wants to emerge, rather than what our rational minds want to make happen. The soul always offers us more richness than we can imagine, if we only make space and listen.  

In 2007 my husband John and I traveled to Ireland and I began to fall in love with the path of Irish monasticism. I discovered stories and a way of moving through the world that felt more spiral and less linear, more organic and less structured. The early period of Irish monasticism is quite unique in that it was less influenced by the Roman church and desire for uniformity of practice. The Irish monks integrated Christian teachings with the Druidic wisdom of their ancestors and created a spirituality that was much more earth-honoring and indigenous to the place they lived.

We have found in Ireland an even richer immersion in Irish culture and ways of being in the world, which are decidedly less controlled, structured, and planned than the American ways we are used to. We have learned to embrace an Irish understanding of time with more fluidity. This is challenging at times, but ultimately invites us into a way of being that is more relaxed and spontaneous. Even the lack of street signs invites us sometimes to get lost and disoriented and find our way anew. 

Discernment is essentially a way of listening to our lives and the world around us and responding to the invitations that call us into deeper alignment with our soul’s deep desires and the desires God has for us. When I work in spiritual direction, often people come at a time of discernment and transition. They have been thrust onto a threshold, often not of their own choosing, such as loss of a job or relationship. But sometimes it is born of a sense of needing a change.

Sometimes they are seeking a clear answer, they want to know the path God is calling them to, as if we had to figure out the one right thing. My sense is that God is much more expansive than this, and calls us to what is most life-giving, but this might take several forms, many opportunities and possibilities. Often directees want to know their life’s call, but more often than not, we can only discern what is appropriate for this particular season of our lives. 

Through this journey of the last several years, I have come to embrace words like ripening, organic, yielding, and unfolding as ways of understanding how my soul moves in a holy direction. There hopefully comes a time in our lives when we have to admit that our own plans for our lives are not nearly as interesting as how our lives long to unfold. That these plans are as the poet David Whyte writes “too small for me to live.” That when we follow the threads of synchronicity, dreams, and serendipity we are led to a life that is rich and honoring of our soul’s rhythms, which I have discovered is a slow ripening rather than a fast track to discernment. 

The rhythms of the seasons play a significant role in my own discernment. Honoring the flowering of spring and the fruitfulness of summer, alongside the release of autumn and the stillness of winter, cultivates a way of being in the world that feels deeply reverential of my body and soul’s own natural cycles. We live in a culture that glorifies spring and summer energies, but autumn and winter are just as essential for rhythms of release, rest, and incubation. When we allow the soul’s slow ripening, we honor that we need to come into the fullness of our own sweetness before we pluck the fruit. This takes time and patience.

The Irish tradition is deeply rooted in the landscape and the seasonal rhythms of the year. The year begins in November, as we descend into the womb of darkness. It honors wandering “for the sake of Christ” where a person may take years of journeys before settling into the “place of their resurrection.” Another significant practice is walking the rounds at holy sites. Instead of a linear path straight to blessing oneself at a well, first one must walk the rounds in a “sunwise” direction, in harmony with cosmic forces. Walking the rounds helps us to arrive, to ask permission to be there, and to slowly receive the gifts that come. Dreams show up again and again in the stories of the Irish monks as guidance for the path ahead. 

The ancient Christian monastic traditions, especially desert, Celtic, and Benedictine, offer great wisdom for this journey of unfolding. They understood that the soul’s ripening is never to be rushed and takes a lifetime of work.

If the Celtic way calls to you please join us. We begin January 31st. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

The post Celtic Wisdom for Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Wil Hernandez

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wil Hernandez’s reflection “Stability and Presence.”

About two years ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to spread, I found myself stranded in an unlikely place: a Benedictine Abbey in the southern part of the Philippines. As it turned out it was to become my home for the next two and a half months. Originally, as part of the monastery’s Lenten Recollection during the Holy Week, I was to give a three-part series on the topic of Everyday Spirituality to the general public but because of the lockdown restrictions, I ended up with an intimate audience of ten monks on the subject in which I presumed they are all well-versed: Benedictine spirituality.

I’ve chosen to focus on stability—one of the three core Benedictine values—and arranged my presentation into three points corresponding to each of the first three days of the Holy Week: Centeredness, Commitment, Connectedness. The irony was that here I was addressing the topic of centeredness while feeling very distracted myself in light of my failed attempts to fly back to the U.S. due to several flight cancellations. My teaching on stability has boomeranged back to me on more than one occasion.  With a mixed stance of anxiety and impatience I complained to the abbot each time my efforts to leave the abbey did not pan out in the way I envisioned them. It was tough to be fully present where I was, particularly with some of the people with whom I had to relate (I was staying in the monastic enclosure so I was stuck with the monks and they were stuck with me the whole time!). Bottom line, I struggled to experience a sense of “at-homeness” – a word which Henri Nouwen equates with the concept of real presence. For how could I even be at home with others when I couldn’t even be at home with myself?

One day I came across—rather providentially— this excerpted paragraph from Christine Valters Paintner’s book, Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics, which she posted on Facebook:

In monastic tradition, stability is another of the great virtues . . . . As the desert mothers and fathers knew, you carry yourself wherever you go. So to leave a place to avoid certain dynamics or relationship patterns, you will only discover them again in the next place you arrive.

There was this one relevant question Christine raised which arrested me personally: “What are the patterns and dynamics which you find constantly emerging in your relationships with other people?”  The last two sentences, highlighted in bold, spoke to me directly because of the crucial importance of “beingness”—who we are at our deepest core. As I emphasized during my presentation to the monks, centeredness remains the most solid foundation for any practice of stability since it is rooted in our identity. Either we live out of our true self in God, or out of our false self—or more accurately, our manifold false selves. We always have the choice out of which we will live.

Since all of us are still far from perfect, the broken parts of us will always show forth in our relationships more than anywhere else. As people who are “under construction” in terms of our relational deficits, we carry who we are all the time—whenever and wherever we go. To me this meant: “How I am in the United States with the people I circulate with there will be how I am in this Abbey with the monks I live with in the present time.” It’s only a question of who I want and choose to be—which will determine the health or unhealthiness of my relational patterns.

It’s very easy to put up a good front, or wear a mask, or choose to adapt, or assimilate in a new environment with new people around, but sooner or later, I am bound to relate just as I’ve always related—always within the tensional reality of my own woundedness and healing. Thus, I can be a wounded wounder or a wounded healer, depending upon how and from where I choose to operate. 

Coming to the abbey, I was not oblivious of the fact that I carried with me certain relational wounds, some still raw and unhealed. This recognition was crucial even as I entered into a new set of relationships there. In a number of his writings, Nouwen referred to the trilogy of the false-self dynamics manifested in the erroneous belief that my identity rests on: what I do (performance), what I have (power), and what people say (popularity). The moment I succumb to operating out of any or all of these false identities, my relational dynamics with the people around me on a daily basis will inevitably be affected. In a number of instances, I could recall how my own crises in identity have subtly—and at times overtly—played out, touching on all three abovementioned aspects. 

After reflecting on Christine’s piercing words, I vowed to free myself from any pressure to be someone other than who I truly am. I could not afford to carry an additional internal burden when I was already wrestling with the external burdens brought on by the new reality surrounding me. My musing on inner stability, roused by Christine’s quote, was quite liberating as I forged ahead toward the liminal space God has opened up for me at that time and place. Being thrust into monastic community life on a daily basis for a period of time radically altered the romanticized version that I had subconsciously held before.

I came to this community to teach but instead ended up being taught by the monks, through their living example, the Benedictine virtue of stability. Throughout my time at the abbey, I have come to deepen my understanding of what it’s like to embrace an everyday spirituality. The series of reflections I wrote in my diary serves as a continuing invitation for me to stay present wherever I am. For the essence of our spiritual life is all-encompassing, regardless of the shifting conditions in which we find ourselves locally or abroad, in a monastery or in the marketplace, COVID-19 or no COVID-19. 

At the crux of my seemingly endless struggle while in the abbey, I realized, was my utter inability to yield to what and how God was summoning me to live: not from yesterday nor for tomorrow but within my today; not in faraway California but in the abbey in the southern Philippines, where God had placed me for a season (and for a reason). I expended—and consequently wasted—a lot of energy trying to imagine what life had been and what it could be while glossing over what it simply was in the moment. 

Indeed our life with God is a spirituality of everyday life, which is what constitutes the here and now as it is lived out in the chaos and tangle of our mundane existence. In fact, it’s in the midst of all this—with or without the disruptive impact of a pandemic—that I can apply the ever-relevant core value of stability which is never the exclusive domain of monks and oblates. The life we each live every day in the present moment—in the ordinariness of it all—is the only normal life we can aim for, even when we stumble or fall. As Benedictines are often fond of invoking, “Always we begin again!”

Wil Hernandez, PhD, Obl. OSB, is a Benedictine oblate of Saint Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, California, where he annually conducts retreats on Henri Nouwen—whom he considers his patron saint and whose spirituality he tackles in his four Nouwen books. Wil is a spiritual director and serves as the executive director of CenterQuest, which hosts an international hybrid School of Spiritual Direction [SSD] with a pilot launch program in Asia this 2023-2024. This essay is excerpted from Accidental Monk, the journal he published last year after he got stranded in an abbey in the southern Philippines for two and a half months during the height of the Covid 19 pandemic lockdown.

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

Cultivating a Wild Heart of Connection ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I first met Lindsay Sudeikis at a Spiritual Directors International conference in Seattle in 2019. She was co-leading a workshop on ancestral lineage healing. It was a beautiful program and at the end I went up to introduce myself and thank her for the experience. 

We discovered we had much in common. She was immersed in Catholic mystical practices and traditions (and had been a nun in a contemplative order for a period of her life). Her ancestors were from Lithuania (Baltic like my Latvian ones) and from Ireland where she travels regularly to spend time on these sacred lands. Since then she has come to Ireland several times and has stayed with us twice. I love her passionate spirit and reverence for these sacred pathways, especially those that are deeply Earth-honoring. I am excited to share her gifts with our community. Read on for a reflection from Lindsay about animism and Christian tradition which will be the theme of her retreat next Saturday.  

An animist-oriented Christianity has its roots in being alive, engaged, animated, and relational with all of life; the sea, the stones, and the stardust from whence we’ve come. Animism is a cosmology – a way of orienting – which affirms that all of life is alive, not simply the humans! Anyone can be an animist. I’ve noticed over the years that often folks who are Indigenous have this animist way of being in the world. Here lies the possibility that Jesus of Nazareth, a native Middle Easterner, was an animist. That is to say he engaged with the waters as though his very life depended on them, because it did as do ours! When you sit with the Gospels and contemplate the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, you can really start to feel into the intimacy and relationship he (and John) had with that river. So, what would it look like if we too, following his exemplar way of being in the world, became intimates with a local body of water, a nearby creek, lake, the ocean? What if we could deepen our relationship with the spirits of the water just as we are invited to deepen our relationship with God? It can be a both/and, not an either/or. 

It seems one very loving, tender, and real reason Jesus walked on the earth was to show us a way of being in the world where we could be relational with all of life, not simply with our fellow human beings. He as a native Middle Easterner and as a Hebrew person experienced the landscape of his time in a direct way, not through a screen, but through direct contact with the mountains, for example. He gives some of his most poignant transmissions from the mountains; the Sermon on the Mount, Mount Tabor, and Mount Calvary. In many ancient traditions, the stones and the mountains carry the stories of our world. Even our teeth and bones are made up of these same minerals, the story keepers, if you will. Again, what would it feel like in our lives if we too, communed deeply with the stones and the mountains in the way Jesus did. We could go toward them and just be, listen and receive the transmissions for our own lives and remember our interwoven destinies; with our fellow humans along with the sea, the stardust, and the very earth beneath our feet.

Perhaps an animist-oriented Christianity could bring about the very revolution of tenderness that’s needed in our own times. And to quote the mystic lover and activist Dorothy Day, perhaps “the greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.” I would add that being alive, engaging and seeing the life force in all beings, can help to ignite that revolution, that tender love within our own hearts. Indeed, I honor that the Author of all of Life is “I Am That I Am,” (Exodus 3:14)  and at the same time, I honor that being, aliveness, anima, breath, spirit is to be found, engaged, and in relationship with all of life, with our beloved plant kin, the spirits of the wild, our benevolent ancestors, our fellow human kin, not simply the “I Am!”

Join us for Ways to Tend the Wild Heart: Exploring Christianity through an Animist Lens next Saturday! 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD REACE

Image © Christine Valters Paintner

The post Cultivating a Wild Heart of Connection ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in World Guest Post: Kirsten Keppel

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kirsten Keppel’s reflection on living the Liturgy of the Hours.

I find that living the Liturgy of the Hours through short yet consistent practices of paring and pruning, offering hospitality, and praying briefly can transform a day from an endurance ride to a chance to live and create in God’s garden. One day can hold such power to touch a life.  I learned to do this through a friend’s parting gift to me in spring 2015. 

It was the one Saturday morning that May when the two of us could meet. I tried to make it seem less urgent, saying, “We could do this in June – we don’t have to do now.”            

“No!” Jade[1] insisted. “We’re meeting this Saturday. This is your spiritual growth we’re talking about!” This from a friend who could, and did, easily and routinely forget that we had planned to meet at Starbucks. “So sorry! Slept in! Forgot all about it!” Her text would land in my phone as I stood outside on M Street in Georgetown, Washington, DC, the sunbeams drizzling down my face along with the slow and unfolding realization: Oh. She isn’t going to be coming around that corner soon, after all.              

Regrouping with Jade was never difficult. She was an anam cara. Soul friends may skip the occasional Starbucks, yet remember when to insist on divine appointments.  The last Saturday in May, Memorial Day weekend, of 2015, Jade was for me Dylan Thomas’ “force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” She insisted that we meet so I could untangle an inner bramble. My landlady wanted to come when the phone company came to examine a phone jack, and I was struggling with having to allow that many people in my home at once.            

I am an artful monk in the world, exactly 50/50 extrovert and introvert on the MBTI, a French teacher, a writer, and a filmmaker. Without community, I could never do my heart’s happiest work.  Saint Benedict’s rule of hospitality is clear. In Chapter 53 of his Rule, “The Reception of Guests,” he sets no less than the highest of bars for welcoming others: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35). Proper honor must be shown to all, especially to those who share our faith (Gal 6:10) and to pilgrims.”[2] Every time I visit the Abbaye Saint Benoît du Lac in Québec, hear the monks’ Gregorian chants and taste their other-worldly maple syrup pie, I feel their honor coursing through Lake Memphremagog’s waters.            

In 2015, I was a pilgrim to the new-to-me space of allowing others to enter more intimate places, while still keeping hold of my center. Jade welcomed me on a bench in a blooming garden of a Georgetown neighborhood church. Like Saint Benedict, she got straight to the point.            

“Look at those flowers,” she said, and then locked my eyes in her gaze. “They didn’t ask to be born.  Something made sure that they grew.”            

The silence brought in birdsong.

The sun’s slipstream pushed beneath the petals.            

“It’s unbecoming, isn’t it,” I said, “When I don’t also provide limits. When I don’t also state my needs.”            

“Exactly! And this is all about your becoming,” she smiled. “It’s about becoming more of all that is you. Becoming more Kirsten. All we have is this one day ahead of us! Become more of you in it.”            

I had never considered until then that to become, we might also first have to unbecome. Paring down and pruning are nothing less than God’s own gardening practices. “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-27).            

I walked home and crossed the threshold with levity. Both the phone tech and my landlady were gracious and respectful. The task took 15 minutes. No one scolded me for anything. I offered lemonade and meant it. I texted Jade, “Now this is done and I can start planning Vermont! I am already driving in the mountains, windows down, soul to the air, wild, rugged, alive.”            

She texted back, “Wild! Rugged! Alive!”            

Two days later, Jade’s sister called to tell me that Jade had passed away out of the blue. The words were bewildering; her now-echo vivid.  “All we have is this one day, Kirsten. We just have the next 24 hours and only ever did. This is all about your becoming.”            

Every day, I do what I can to live my worldly version of the monks’ Liturgy of the Hours.  I write morning pages for Matins. The Serenity Prayer becomes Lauds. Because I teach in a Catholic school and can start every class with a short prayer in French with my students, our prayers become Prime, Terce, Sext, and None. I light a candle for Vespers and often also for Compline, where I review the day in my planner, appropriately named the Monk Manual. Keeping to these “short practices” yields a more abundant creative output than the “when I’ll have time” mirage.  It’s harder to remember to pare and prune. One day can hold such power to touch a life. “Wild! Rugged! Alive!” is a mantra offered in gift, a daily reminder to offer hospitality, a strengthener in becoming and unbecoming, and an encouragement to keep to the “little things” that make the hours blessings.

[1] Jade is not her real name; names have been changed to protect privacy.[2] Monastery of Christ in the Desert. “Chapter 53: The Reception of Guests.” Study the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, Monastery of Christ in the Desert, 2021.

[image error]

Kirsten Keppel teaches French at Georgetown Preparatory School in Maryland, USA. She contributes regularly to Ambassador magazine of the National Italian American Foundation and was a 2017 Russo Brothers Italian American Film Forum semifinalist.  She earned her Master of Arts with a concentration in Transformative Language Arts from Goddard College.

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

Give Me a Word – Drawing Winners: A Love Note From Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Thanks to everyone who shared their word with our community!

The practice of listening for a word to guide you into the next season of your life is an ancient one. 

This is an excerpt from my book Desert Fathers and Mothers:

A brother questioned Abba Hierax saying, “Give me a word.  How can I be saved?” The old man said to him, “Sit in your cell, and if you are hungry, eat, if you are thirsty, drink; only do not speak evil of anyone, and you will be saved. (Hierax 1)

A key phrase, repeated often in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, is “Give me a word.”   When a novice approaches one of the ammas or abbas and says “Give me a word,” “he or she is not asking for either a command or a solution, but for a communication that can be received as a stimulus to grow into fuller life.  It is never a theoretical matter, and the elders are scathing about those who want simply something to discuss.” (from Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes.)

We find this phrase repeated throughout the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.  This tradition of asking for a word was a way of seeking something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime.  The “word” was often a short phrase to nourish and challenge the receiver.  A word was meant to be wrestled with and slowly grown into.

A monk once came to Basil of Caesarea and said, “Speak a word, Father”; and Basil replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and the monk went away at once.  Twenty years later he came back and said, “Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me”; and he said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also.

This story demonstrates how a word could be worked on for years at a time.  The word being sought was not a theological explanation or counseling.  It was part of a relationship which had developed and the assumption that this word, when received by the disciple would be life-giving.  It was meant for this person in this moment of their lives.  The word offered was highly contextual and was spoken with simplicity and directness.

As you listen for your own word (or if a word has come, as you let it work the fertile soil of your heart), consider releasing your thinking mind and enter into a space of receiving.  Imagine yourself in the desert and asking for your own life-giving word.  It might come in a time of stillness or it might arrive later in the day in the form of a line of poetry, wise words offered from an unexpected source, a dream symbol, or an image you stumble upon that seizes your imagination.  

I often ask for a word as I take my daily walks. I listen for what the trees and pigeons might have to offer me.  When we receive a word, often it is confirmed through synchronicities that continue to appear to us.

The purpose of the word is to simply hold it in your heart, turning it over and over, pondering, but not analyzing.  Give it space within you to speak.

GIVE ME A WORD WINNERS 

Elaine Power – Bloom: Space in the Virtual Celtic Pilgrimage: The Wisdom of the Irish Saints Brigid, Ciaran, & GobnaitChoice of our self-study online retreats (with 18 to choose from!)Annette Clarke-Coyne – SurrenderKaren Taylor – FullnessHeather Ponting – SoarKathy Curran – KindLaurel Pepin – Prepare: Signed copy of Breath Prayer: An Ancient Practice for the Everyday SacredSue – Joy: Signed copy of The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems by Christine Valters PaintnerSusan Quillman – Possibility: Signed copy of Dreaming of Stones: Poems by Christine Valters Paintner

Get in touch with us at DancingMonk@AbbeyoftheArts.com to claim your prize. If you won a signed book please include your mailing address. 

If you still want to journey through the free 12-day mini-retreat to let your word choose you, you can register here. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

PS – I am so grateful for all your love and prayers and am feeling much better. I give a brief update here.

The post Give Me a Word – Drawing Winners: A Love Note From Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Health Update from Christine

Dear monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I continue to feel deeply grateful for your loving prayers and circle of care. I truly feel held and lifted during this time of illness with COVID-19.

Thankfully I am starting to turn a corner on symptoms. My congestion and coughing are quite a bit better now although I am still very fatigued and sleeping a lot during the day.

If you enrolled in one of our upcoming programs you will have seen that we are cancelling some things and postponing others, all to give myself the most spaciousness for recovery possible. It has been a gift to be able to make these choices for my well-being and feel such support from the community. (One program we definitely are planning to go ahead with is our upcoming Virtual Celtic Pilgrimage starting January 31st). 

I actually have surgery planned at the end of March (not Covid-related) and count that as another gift in terms of timing as it has definitely prompted me to be sure I am fully well before trying to return to usual rhythms of work. It is seductive to try and push a bit now that my symptoms are easing, but I am holding a firm boundary for myself. Rest is the most essential thing.

My hope and desire has been to be as healthy as possible by the time my surgery comes. Now with Covid intruding I feel that desire even more keenly and the commitment to doing what is needed to take exquisite care of this vessel of mine.

If you are sick now or someone you love is, I am sending healing blessings your way. Hopefully if Covid visits you it will be manageable as mine has been. I am incredibly grateful to have contracted it this far into the pandemic and have the gift of the vaccines to help ameliorate the severity alongside other modes of care. It is humbling to know how much suffering and loss this virus has caused.

With great and growing love,

Christine

The post Health Update from Christine appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.