Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 5

Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today we begin Holy Week and observe the transformative journey toward Easter and Resurrection. Before we jump to Resurrection it is important to sit with the landscape of grief and holy pause. On Friday, April 18th, Wisdom Council Member, psychospiritual therapist, and interfaith spiritual companion Melissa Layer will lead us in the mini-retreat Ripened (S)aging: A Good Friday Invitation for Exploration of Grief, Loss & Mortality in Our Wisdom Years. Good Friday’s potent themes of death and resurrection are compelling portals holding symbolic metaphors that offer an expanded opportunity for wisdom in our eldering years. Melissa offers us this reflection.

The spring peeper frog chorus in the pond is pulsing rhythmically in the chilly night, beneath a starry sky and winking slice of moon. I am walking to my car after co-facilitating a group conversation dedicated to exploring life review and the stories beneath our stories. The Spring Equinox and Ostara have just occurred; Lent is unfolding. I marvel at the miracle of the tiny frogs – how did they survive the cold winter beneath the decomposing muck of last season’s verdant greenery?  

Inside the old grange, the discussion was rich and deep. Those present were in midlife and beyond.  We gathered in a circle of candlelight, welcoming an intimate and contemplative spaciousness. Our threaded words wove a colorful tapestry, unfurling in vulnerable sharing – row upon row of grief and gratitude; regrets and joys; ruptures and forgiveness; fear and courageousness; holding on and letting go. “At my age I feel ashamed to admit that I don’t know who I am these days. I need you to help me hear and see myself,” a hesitant 82 year old had admitted.

I placed my father’s WWII brass Army compass in the communal centerpiece we created. Having survived both Normandy and Battle of the Bulge, Dad carried secrets never disclosed until the last month of his life. “I’ve always felt guilty that I lived while others around me died,” he told me, his voice husky with an admission I had never heard from him before. He shared a black and white photo of himself, barely 18 years old, that a Time Life photographer took of him as he walked off the battlefield. What pierced my heart were his dark eyes, so flat and vacant, as he looked directly into the photographer’s lens. “We called that the ‘Thousand Yard Stare’”, Dad explained. I told him we have a word for that now: PTSD. We spoke, then, of regrets and the impossibility of do-overs and how, perhaps, those regrets could be fertile offerings to inform the living we have left. “I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t survived”, I told Dad, reaching for his calloused hand.  

Dad’s compass reminds me of a true north within myself, what I call my “inner GPS” – Spirit’s unwavering guidance indicator. I keep the compass on my dresser altar, next to a small brass hour glass that mom kept on the kitchen windowsill of my childhood home. Sometimes I pause and tip the hourglass. How quickly the grains of sand stream to the bottom!  As I enter my 7th decade, I pause these days in the forest and debate whether to explore the faint game trail disappearing into shadowed woods or the well-trod path with clear signage. I ponder risk, safety, exploration, adventure, fear, and how to stay curious.    

My body’s aging landscape is a terrain of peaks and valleys where loss and grief have carved their own winding pathways; my limbs and trunk bearing evidence of where winds have been fierce and lightning has struck. I midwifed my parents and a beloved husband through death’s portal. I surrendered a breast to an early stage cancer. As a hospice grief counselor, I listened with the ear of my heart to hundreds of tear soaked voices. Aware of my own compassion fatigue and the importance of tenderly holding myself, I sometimes feel like one of those cracked Japanese bowls that are carefully mended with gold resin (the art of Kintsugi). And I remember Frances Weller’s words, “Grief is an act of protest that declares our refusal to live numb and small… Grief is necessary to the vitality of the soul…grief is suffused with life-force.” What a paradox!  

I also remember Hildegard’s veriditas, describing the green and growing life force. I behold it in the up thrusting blades of new grass and spring’s fragrant white trillium blooming in shaded mossy pockets of the forest. On a dusk bike ride, I pause to watch newborn twin black calves hiding shyly beside their mother. I see the limping but determined steps of the elderly farmer pushing the wheelbarrow of last summer’s golden hay to the herd who waits expectantly for him. A pair of bald eagles have returned once again to their nest in the top of the old tree in the cows’ pasture, their call and response to one another mingling with the mooing of the cattle.

Tonight I sit for a few moments on the weathered bench at the edge of the pond and feel the primordial thrumming in my body as the peepers beckon me to cross the threshold of another season. The ancient wheel is turning around and within me. Christine Valters Painter writes in Midwinter God about the time between Good Friday and Easter with its Holy Saturday invitation:  “… that liminal space between the death and the rising when we are called to sit in the space of unknowing… It is only when we come into full spiritual maturity that we can hold the truth of life’s devastation and suffering alongside the tremendous beauty and wonder of life as well.”   

Join us this Friday, April 18th. Calling upon the gifts of poetry (including our own poem-making), journaling invitations, and visio divina reflections, we will break open death and resurrection as invitations to personal meaning-making and transformation in our eldering journeys.  

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Trillium Photo by Melissa Layer

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Amy Oden

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Amy Oden’s reflection on silence in academic settings.

As a professor I live much of my life with students in learning and discovery. This happens in physical classrooms, outside classrooms, in retreat settings and in virtual spaces. I’m noticing how my contemplative journey continues to shape and transform my teaching. My monk-in-the-world speaks into course design and class sessions, drawing my attention to the rhythms we inhabit together as learners. Life with students has been a wonderful place to experiment with the ways rhythms cultivate our common life and discovery.  

For the past few years, I’ve played with rhythms by introducing silence into learning spaces where traditionally it has been assumed that “learning equals talking.” By simply challenging this assumption, that learning happens only when we are talking, silence has been transformative both for me and for my students.

I notice changes in me as I have introduced silence into the classroom. First, I’ve learned that I can take risks.  Holding silence in an academic environment has felt very risky. The assumption that learning only happens with words is widespread and longstanding. To not fill the space with words risks irresponsible pedagogy and downright shirking of one’s duty. What I know in my inner being, however, is that students deserve to be exposed to this ancient wisdom, that when we listen with silence we learn surprising things.

Perhaps more profoundly for me personally has been that as I sit with silence in the classroom, I release my own expectations about learning and even – radical for me — relax my attachment to course “content,” all the material I think I’m supposed to cover. Silence itself becomes course content. 

As I release expectations about covering content, I become more relaxed and more present to students as well as myself. I’m more able to attune to my own presence and thereby also to student learning, to student questions and curiosities. These are all connected. 

Taking risks with silence in academic settings has been possible for me because of my own contemplative journey into silence.  Over the years, silence has become a centerpiece of my daily life rhythm, welcoming me into deeper listening, deeper holding what is and into deeper love. I’ve discovered how rich and fertile silence is. I’ve found that silence as something as well as nothing, presence as well as absence, full as well as empty. 

Silence has been transformative for students, too. At first, silence is a bit jarring, as students enter it unsure how to be with it. It’s been pretty amazing to see students relax and learn to rest in the silence. As they sink into silence, they slow down, attending more closely to the discoveries unfolding within them. Their learning seems to root more deeply and concretely in real places in their lives. 

Soon enough, as we integrate silence into our rhythms, students become more curious about their inner listening, less likely to jump to quick conclusions and more able to linger and wonder, as learning becomes more exploration than consumption, more interactive than passive.

In addition, students become more curious about their peers and their peers’ learning. As students get more comfortable in silence, they are more able to sit with their peers’ wonderings. They are not as quick to give advice, try to fix or gloss over one another’s realities. Classroom engagement deepens with greater capacity to hold tensions, explore unknowns and allow others their own pace of discovery.

Students report that this practice of silence within an academic environment is life-changing for them.  I often hear, “Why haven’t we been taught this before?” Their academic formation has focused primarily on the cognitive and on speech. Expanding learning beyond these categories through silence opens students up to greater possibilities they are excited to pursue. 

I also hear, “This completely changes how I experience learning in my other classes and in my wider life” and “I’m no longer just trying to figure out what the professor wants and instead owning learning for myself.”

I’m grateful to have these spaces to live into the wisdom of contemplative practices. I’m learning, along with students, to “Above all, trust in the slow work of God” (Teilhard de Chardin). May it be so.

Born and raised on the prairies of Oklahoma, Amy has found her spiritual home under the wide-open sky. Her passion is to introduce spiritual practices that can ground and nourish lives to follow Jesus into the world. She has been a seminary professor for 35 years, walking alongside students. For the last 10 years, she has focused on spiritual formation and direction.

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Conversion, Wonder, and Being Surprised by God ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Tomorrow, April 7th, Simon and I will be joined by guest musician Richard Bruxvoort Colligan for our monthly Contemplative Prayer Service. Our theme this month is the 7th principle of the Monk Manifesto, Conversion. Here is an excerpt from our Monk in the World self-study retreat.

Principle 7:  I commit to a lifetime of ongoing conversion and transformation, recognizing that I am always on a journey with both gifts and limitations.

Conversion is one of the central commitments which Benedictine monks make. The other two are obedience and stability which have to do with listening deeply for God’s voice in the world and committing to staying put even in the midst of conflict or struggle.

Conversion for me means to always allow myself to be surprised by God. It invites me to a sense of wonder and awe and recognizing that God’s imagination is far wider than my own.

One of Benedict’s principles in his Rule is that we always begin again, and he describes the Rule as for “beginners.” This beginner’s mind and heart are central to conversion. As contemplatives, we are always on the path, always growing, we never fully arrive and so we always have more to learn.

Conversion in monastic tradition is never a once-and-for-all event. Instead, it is always a process of unfolding, ripening, emerging, arising. I like to think about this commitment to conversion as always being surprised by God, always remembering that God’s imagination is far greater than our own. Through conversion we commit to opening our eyes again and again, seeing what is deep below the surface of everyday life. We let ourselves be moved by something unexpected, a momentary awareness of beauty or grace.

Do you ever have those moments when you are suddenly caught in the emotion of a past story you thought you had worked through already? “That again?” You might ask yourself. But the expectation that we somehow work through an issue and then are done with it is a very linear way of approaching life, when I would suggest our experience is much more of a spiral. We come around again and again to the very same things that cause us to stumble, but each time we see them from a new perspective. 

Bringing the mind and heart of a beginner to our lives helps us to discover the wisdom inherent in each moment. When we let go of our desire to be clever or successful or create beautiful things we may begin to open to the sacred truth of our experience as it is, not how we want it to be. 

Wonder is at the heart of conversion, letting ourselves be moved by life, surprised by God, and open to the grace of the moment. 

Expectation can preclude the opportunity for discovery. When we try to reach a goal, we become fixated on it and we miss the process. Beginner’s mind is the practice of coming to an experience with an openness and willingness to be transformed. Art is one way to reconnect us with our childlike sense of wonder. When we engage art as prayer we can remember that play is also an act of prayer, praising God out of sheer delight. We can learn to take ourselves – our art and our spirituality – a little less seriously.

Join Simon, Richard and me tomorrow for our Contemplative Prayer Service and explore what conversion is calling you to in your life during this season. 

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

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Monk in the World Guest Post: JoRene Byers

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for JoRene Byers’s reflection and poem “New Moon, Beloved Darkness”.

I wrote this poem after setting aside time to prayfully gather the beautiful symbolic elements, and lighting the candles in a sacred manner for the mandala. Every step is taken with gentle awareness:  asking first, giving thanks, offering the beauty and fragrance of the incense of herbs, spices, flowers, fruit, and flame. The generosity of the more than human world always humbles and comforts me. This gathering returns me to my best self, and gives me a way to honor the changing seasons of earth and heart, from grief to joy to deep peace.

New Moon, Beloved Darkness

This is the elegant time
of perfumed thoughts,
when dreams are sent into the ethers
and the sky rains down starlight
to kiss the eyelids of devotees
everywhere.

Fragrant ginger and nutmeg
warm the fire of possibility.
A wish may be fulfilled
and singing heard again.
The tea leaves whisper of
sirens and firelight.

The moon grows now,
as my dreams take root
to flourish
and nourish,
and become real to the touch.

This is the bounty of the moon,
the roots setting forth
so the tendrils
can grow into the light,
the light that loves
unendingly.

JoRene Byers lives in the High Desert, grateful for the visitations of the holy ones: hawks, quail, Mountain Bluebirds, Northern Flickers and coyotes; clouds and dancing stars. Her poetry has been translated into Chinese for Poetry Hall.  Visit:  Hoffman Center for the Arts and Instagram.com/terry.jorene  

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Feast of Sister Thea Bowman ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today is the feast day of Sister Thea Bowman, an amazing woman whose vibrancy still radiates to us today, calling us to shine our lights in a world that is often hard to bear. Even in the midst of a slow and painful death from cancer, she embodied joyful living, knowing that joy and delight must be cultivated in the midst of injustice and suffering. 

These last few months we have been creating a resource and sharing it with our Sustainers Circle. For each of our dancing monk icons (created by the wonderful Marcy Hall) we are developing a resource for creativity and prayer. Our amazing program coordinator, Melinda Thomas, is writing the creative invitations and prayers for these reflections. Next year – as we celebrate our 20th year – we will be formatting all 42 of these into a book with full color icon pages and ways to joyfully engage each dancing monk. 

Here is the one for Sister Thea: 

March 30th – Sister Thea Bowman (1937-1990)

I want to live until I die.

Born in Mississippi, Thea Bowman converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of nine years old and later joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. Thea earned an MA and PhD in English. She was a teacher, a scholar, and an evangelist. She was instrumental in creating an African American Catholic hymnal and the foundation of the National Black Sisters Conference. In her later years, Sister Bowman became a much sought-after speaker on spirituality and faith and was known for her joyous, vibrant spirit and love of music and dancing as a spiritual practice.

Sister Thea Bowman invites you to consider:

What brings you the fullness of life?

Creative Invitation

“This Little Light of Mine” was one of Sr. Thea Bowman’s signature songs. Search online, through a music app, or your own collection for a recording of this song. (Consider this version from the 100 Voices of Gospel). As you listen, invite your body to move in response to the playful tune. Maybe your hands clap along, maybe you dance, tap your feet, or sing along. Notice what inner state this song inspires. Consider sharing it with a trusted friend or family member. 

Prayer

Illuminating God, you have given each of us a light in our hearts. In the chaos of the world it is easy to forget that we have gifts to share. Like Sr. Thea Bowman we are called to offer our unique time and talents. When life feels dim, awaken our vision to the light of others working for justice and peace. As we step into our own luminosity, our radiant hearts shine like beacons for no other purpose than joy. Even so, we know that when we stand in our light, we invite others to experience their own jubilation. We dance together in your shimmering Love.

“I Will Live Until I Die” Musical by ValLimar Jansen

In February we offered a Zoom showing of the musical “I Will Live Until I Die” written and starring ValLimar Jansen. The recording is of a live performance from Seattle in 2024 produced by ValLimar and our own Betsey Beckman. A number of you have asked if there is a way to share this recording with the community. I am pleased to announce that we have put together a procedure to offer one-time showings on a donation basis directly to ValLimar shares this rich expression while protecting the artistic integrity of her work. If you are interested in bringing Sr. Thea to your community please email us.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Dancing Monk Icon © Marcy Hall

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A Midwinter God Named a Best Spiritual Book of 2024

Christine’s book A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness was named A Best Spiritual Book of 2024 by Spirituality & Practice!

Jon M. Sweeney of Spirituality & Practice also wrote a lovely review.

“No one combines teaching wisdom with spiritual practice quite like Christine Valters Paintner does in her books. This one is designed for anyone who’s grieving a loss and desires to thread that loss through their lives for meaning.”

~ Jon M. Sweeney, Read the full review at Spirituality & Practice

The post appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Monk in the World Guest Post: Susan Miller Setiawan

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Susan Miller Setiawan’s reflection “the way is made by walking.”

This past April, my partner and I returned from Indonesia, where we had spent the previous 4 months leading a semester abroad for the small liberal arts college where I work.  Soon after we returned, a friend asked me how I was doing.  “Well,” I found myself saying, “I feel like my soul is still back in Indonesia.”

I knew right away that I didn’t say that because Indonesia is filled with warm & lovely people or because I love the culture & the geography there (although it is, and I do).  The statement wasn’t about missing Indonesia.  Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure at first why those words seemed to pop out without any forethought. 

I pondered this for a while and realized here’s the deal: we spent 35 hours traveling home.  We flew from Bali to Qatar, on to Dallas-Ft. Worth, and finally to South Bend, spending over 24 hours in the air in addition to lay-overs in airports.  We left 90-degree sunny weather in the southern hemisphere and arrived to 45-degree rain in the northern hemisphere.  We traveled through 13 time zones.  

There is nothing natural about the speed at which Ben & I traveled around the world a few months ago.  Yet as I thought about this, I began to realize that “traveling fast” is not an event reserved only for plane travel around the world.  In so many ways, nearly every day I outpace my natural traveling speed.  I hop in my car to go across town to work.  I head out to a specialty store in the next town because they have an ingredient for a dish I want to make.  I drive to a nearby walking trail to meet up with a friend (oh, the irony of driving somewhere to walk).

Concerned with mindless fossil fuel use and the faster pace of life in the US, I began to experiment with walking four miles to and from work several times a week, and I discovered several wonderful things.  First, rather than feeling frustrated with the time it takes to walk to and from work, the act of lacing my shoes and walking through town resulted in a calmer frame of mind.  I hadn’t realized that I felt so busy until that feeling lifted as I began each walk.  For the next 75 minutes, I knew right where I would be: here on this path from one end of Goshen to the other.  I suddenly felt as though there would be enough time for all the tasks which needed to be done.  This still puzzles me; logic tells me that I am using *more* time when I walk which decreases the amount of time I have for other things.  Yet, my gut feeling—my inner instinct—was the exact opposite.  There suddenly seemed enough time for everything.

A second benefit that I quickly recognized was an unusual sense of physical well-being.  For me, there is a clear difference in how my body responds between a 2-mile walk and a 4-mile walk.  I’m not walking for exercise, per se (in fact, I like to think of it as “sauntering”), but the endorphins seem to run a bit thicker in the longer walks, and they begin running even earlier than usual (oh, that brain of ours, laying down neurons for things we do over and over again).  As I cross College Avenue and start up 8th Street, I have a sense of quiet joy and energy running through my body.  

The faith community to which I belong sometimes uses the phrase, “the way is made by walking.”  I cannot always think my way into new habits or ways of being in the world; it is the practices and experiments of living in this world that help me fashion a life that feels full of meaning and joy.  This is an ongoing life practice, and it is clear to me that it will never be “finished.”  For now, the act of walking is simultaneously an experiment in “making the way by walking” and a method of making conscious choices about how I use my time, energy, and my portion of fossil fuels at this time in my life.  I wonder where it will take me and how it will shape my life.  

Among other things, Susan Miller Setiawan (she/her) spends her time teaching, gardening, baking sourdough bread & speculoos cookies, walking to work, repainting various rooms in her house, reading, and playing trivial pursuit.  She and her partner Ben enjoy their 3 young adult children, a daughter-in-law, 2 unruly dogs, and a cat named Sushi. 

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Blessing for Theotokos (God-Bearer) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Note: Click cc turn closed captions on or off.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This Tuesday is the Feast of the Annunciation and I want to share an adapted excerpt from my book Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal. My book explores 31 archetypes of Mary and this one is on the Greek image of Theotokos.

During these difficult days with uncertainty and suffering everywhere, we can call upon Mary as God-bearer to remind us that we too are called to birth the holy. 

Theotokos:  She Who Gave Birth to God 

Theotokos means God-bearer. There is a beautiful fullness to that image. Mary as the one who could bear the divine within her very womb. Who nourished and nurtured the Christ child for nine months within her. To bear God is to have great courage and wisdom. 

In the Greek Eastern Orthodox tradition, Theotokos is one of the traditional names or titles for Mary and literally translates to “God-bearer.” The term is also used to refer to icons of Mary as Mother with child. 

Mother is one of the great archetypes that exists across time and cultures. She is the source of life and nourishment, of unconditional love and care, the generous flow of abundance and grace. We see this archetype alive in images of the divine as the Great Mother, whether Mother Nature, Gaia, or a Goddess figure as well as in sacred images like Mary’s role as mother of the incarnate God. She is the abundant provision of care and nurture. 

Theologian Elizabeth Johnson, in her book Truly Our Sister, writes: “Mary’s mothering has the potential to promote the ‘ripeness of maturity’ that enhances the dignity of all women who nurture and serve the life of others, whether biologically or in other ways. . . we are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” At the heart of the image of God-bearer is a calling to each of us to embrace this vocation in our lives as well. 

The Mother archetype is the one who supports us in giving birth to what is gestating within. She calls forth the power to birth and sustain life, whether a child or a creative vision. Sometimes through birth we are also called to experience a death of some kind, and the Mother accompanies us here as well. These are the times when the Mother is often activated, when we begin to discover our inner resources available through her. While the Mother is associated with the female gender, she is present in each of us, however we identity our own genders.

Call on Theotokos

Mary as Mother and God-bearer supports us in giving birth to what is gestating within our own bodies and spirits. She calls forth the power to birth and sustain life, whether a child or a creative vision.

We can call on Mary in those moments of laboring, of crying out in pain wondering if this journey is worth it, of feeling the intense emotions that arise in making ourselves so vulnerable and exposed. She knows these experiences intimately herself. Mary holds us through it all, comforts us, cares for us, and models the process of holy birthing for us. She stays by our side until our sacred creation has been released into the world. She helps us to gaze with loving wonder at all we are able to imagine and offer through our creative actions. 

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Theotokos icon by Kreg Yingst. Blessing video by Abbey of the Arts with footage from Canva.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Melinda Thomas

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abbey Program Coordinator Melinda Thomas’s reflection and poem Synonym.

It is my great privilege to serve the Abbey as Program Coordinator and get to know all of you, our dear, dancing monks. One of our guiding principles is a commitment to community. As an introvert and someone who often finds it difficult to reach out, I value the wisdom of how there are different ways to be in community. Whether we gather online or in person, in groups of 2 or groups of 20, when we meet with intention and hospitality, we are in community. Another guiding principle for me is seeking out beauty as a revelation of the Divine. You remind me of this daily in our Facebook group, programs, guest posts, and emails. Thank you!

The poem I offer to you today was originally published on my Substack, The Journal of Elements and Seasons. It was written in October 2024, just after Helene devastated parts of my beloved Western North Carolina, and a month before the 2024 election in the US. Writing the piece spoke to me of the immense importance of beauty and community that is essential for this moment. It’s called Synonym.

Synonym

In the early morning a heron
stalks through the marsh. The
fog is a dense mystery whispering
an incantation, tattooing itself on my bones.

It was only a glimpse; a scene
between colonial houses
we passed on the way to school.

Like the heron I stalk this moment
when the sublime pierced my heart with beauty;
a synonym for Divine.

A cranberry bog and a haunted
forest on the opposite shore lit with a
rapture of moon and stars shimmering their
way into the space between my cells.

It was only a glimpse; a scene
we passed on the way to a Christmas fair;
a scene I have tried and failed to paint a hundred times;
another synonym for Divine.

Beauty makes it easy to believe in a God
with a creative heart that must also be
the origin of love. But when the floodwaters

rise and children are handed guns, forced
to flee a thousand times and pray for death
because there is no food, and mothers

have eyes vacant with the nearness of
apocalypse, I wonder, Where is the heron?
Where is the rapture of moonlight?

A teenager on the radio speaks of their orchestra of refugees
because art is necessary for the human heart. Community;
a synonym for Divine.

Melinda Thomas, E-RYT 500 is the Program Coordinator for Abbey of the Arts providing program and logistical support, forum facilitation, and yoga. She also offer prayers and other content contributions to the Prayer Cycles and retreats. Melinda is an experienced yoga teacher and has been studying and practicing yoga for more than twenty-five years. In each of her classes and workshops Melinda weaves spiritual and contemplative themes into accessible, alignment based movement practice. Her aim is to honor the spiritual foundation of yoga in conversation with monastic and contemplative wisdom that offers participants a safe, inclusive, and integrated experience. Melinda is a writer and the author of Sacred Balance: Aligning Body and Spirit Through Yoga and the Benedictine Way. She lives in North Carolina with her son and their cat. She writes The Journal of Elements and Seasons on Substack. Visit her website.

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Earth Psalter: Writing Psalms for the Anthropocene ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This Friday we are delighted to welcome Wisdom Council member Cassidhe Hart and her teaching partner Grant Showalter-Swanson for a creative mini-retreat on Earth Psalter: Writing Psalms for the Anthropocene. Read on for their reflection on this spiritual practice.

My (Cassidhe’s) family moved frequently as a child, and as a soul who even then longed for a monastic sense of stability, I was often overwhelmed by the constant change in setting. When I was about 11 years old, I remember comforting myself with bible verses such as Genesis 8:22 about the regularity of the seasons and the way these consistent cycles hold us all in the midst of uncertainty and change. The rhythms of nature could be my stable home when the rest of my surroundings could not.

Global climate change has upended that, of course. What was once predictable in my home biome—the trillium and trout lilies emerge in April, the grass doesn’t get particularly crunchy until the August heat, the ground is frozen and solid in January—is now anyone’s guess. All these shifts have left me feeling unmoored on a planet that is supposed to feel like home, and I grieve for the ecosystems I was once familiar with but now don’t recognize. 

This particular grief, this emotional or existential distress caused by environmental distress, has a new name: solastalgia. Much of the movement for climate justice has been focused, rightly so, on policy change and environmental protection. We live in the geological age termed “the anthropocene,” a period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and the earth as a whole, and there is understandable urgency to shift the direction of this influence. However, as we all grapple with fear and solastalgia, we experience overwhelm, despair, and even paralysis. We find ourselves in need of soul practices that support our spirits for the work of walking through this crisis with strength and integrity. 

The Psalms have been handed down to us as poems that express the breadth of human emotional experience and of our relationship to the Divine. Throughout the centuries, the faithful have turned to these poems, finding comfort, challenge, and affirmation in their words.  In traditional monastic settings, the psalms were chanted in prayers throughout the day, often moving through the cycle of all 150 over the course of a month. When you pray the psalms this often, the language of them gets into your bones; their forms become a scaffold and their conventions a tool for personal prayer and expression. 

Earth Psalter offers the practice of composing and re-writing psalms in the form of personal poems as another pathway for engaging the Divine. Given the emphasis on figurative language and imagery within poetry, poetic imagination provides a unique window into the ineffable mystery of the Divine. In his article, “Poetry and the Christian,” Karl Rahner claims that “the practice of perceiving the poetic word is a presupposition to hearing the word of God…. In its inmost essence, the poetic is a prerequisite for Christianity.” In a world and culture that tends to make meaning through linear and literal reason, Rahner reminds us of the necessity of poetic reason in naming the mystery of God. The practice of composing or re-writing psalms offered in this retreat provides an opportunity to connect intimately and imaginatively with the Divine, and its ecological lens offers a contextual and liturgical way to connect our faith to our ecosystems and to move toward holistic action. 

This retreat isn’t just for writers or ecologists. In fact, it is designed specifically with everyday people in mind. You don’t have to be a scientist to experience the devastating impacts of climate change, and you don’t have to be a writer to understand the power of verbal love and lament. We all are inhabitants of our ecosystems and woven into the suffering and celebration of the world around us. The Greek word at the root of “ecology” means “household,” after all; the Earth, as Christine reminds us, is our original monastery, the household to which we all belong and in which we seek flourishing.

Earth Psalter: Writing Psalms for the Anthropocene provides an opportunity to channel our ecological fears, longings, and loves into transformative prayer practices. Our environment may be changing in ways that leave us confused and adrift, but it is through deeper, more honest connection, rather than disengagement, that we are able to ground ourselves in a sense of unchanging belonging.

This retreat will include 20-25 minutes of writing with an option to share in a small break out group or savor extended writing and reflection time. Join us this Friday, March 21st!

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

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