Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 74

Featured Poet: Br. Paul Quenon

Last spring we launched a series with poets whose work we love and want to feature and will continue it moving forward.

Our next poet is Paul Quenon whose work is inspired by his monastic community, the natural environment, and most recently, personal experiences in meditation.Read his poetry and discover more about the connections he makes between poetry and the sacred.

This rather recent poem is based on my meditation practice which is mainly a matter of being present to the moment. God is in the actual and much else too.

Seashell of Time

This moment, cast up on your shoreline,

is from the sea of time.

Hold it to your ear and listen.

The whole ocean is inside sounding.

Within each moment

tides of hours are surging.

Within each hour fathoms of years.

Do not discard this present moment.

It curls inward to resounding canyons.

Hold the precious conch shell awhile and listen.

It's awash with centuries beneath centuries awash.

As a child you could not understand how the whole ocean could be inside a conch shell. As one adult in meditation, you know of totality within the particular.

Recent Developments in His Writing

Until now most of my poetry has been about my monastic environment and about natural life surrounding us in this Kentucky countryside. One of my books: Bells of the Hours (Fons Vitae, Louisville) had to do with the liturgical day and the frequent sound of tower bells.  My latest book: Amounting to Nothing (Paraclete Press) ventures into a more metaphysical terrain at times, but still mostly abides among "a community of creatures".

Recently, since that book was completed, I am focusing on personal experiences in meditation. I have avoided this in the past since it can lead to bad poetry. Perhaps the time is ripe to cross that barrier and to speak of what the present moment of awareness is telling me. It may either speak of my awareness of God or bespeak the awareness God is speaking in me.

Some of this has been influenced by Meister Eckhart's Book of the Heart by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows. It comes from my desire to be true to the actual experience of prayer with no glamorizing or pretense. It sometimes leads me to express belief in things I didn't know I believed, and sometimes to say what I have long believed but never had words of my own to express.

Walking Meditation

I drift bare footed in dew drenched grass

wandering a crop of crosses

where monks who preceded

await my reception

outside of time.

I sense kind acquaintance

as each step presses in grass

soles to souls

assembled below

and above

outside of space.

The wash of dew is

cleansing, peace, and pleasure.

This brief moment waits

that blink upon time and space

of eternity's all encompassing

eye.

That blink of eternity's eye

Encompassing all

Space and time.

That blink of eternity's

All-encompassing eye

Upon time and space.

Poetry and the Sacred

Poetry, when it is real poetry, will take me beyond myself. It may or may not bring me to an awareness of the sacred, but at least it leads to an enlargement of my mind. To that extent it is a preparation for the divine. It may go no further than preparation. If I get an inkling it is going towards something transcendent I like to take it there without forcing it. At times it is better to leave higher things implicit, assuming that will speak for itself—leave the reader with an attuned ear to get the overtones.

Poetry is a discipline of its own, and prayer and meditation is another discipline of its own. You must respect the nature of each one. They stand in relationship with one another as analogies and can be of mutual assistance. But they can cause mutual interference as well. In practice, I suspend the urge to write during my period of meditation, so as to keep the integrity of that focus and that intention. Words are set aside to keep the single pointed mind.

Occasionally something in this simple and open-minded awareness might call for words. The words might be complaint about the evident barrenness of that experience or might as easily turn to comfort and gratitude that such is the way things are. It all pivots on how faith is responding.

There are times when the sacred may lead you to poetry, and there are other times when poetry leads you to the sacred. The crucial thing is to let that come spontaneously. Let it unfold itself as time unfolds which cannot be hurried or slowed. If I set out to make a poem sacred it will likely be a dud, forced, over-religious, a posture. A poem should be what it wants to be and will be implicitly holy if it is good.

The old farmers say you can hear corn growing in the night, and I borrow the expression for snowmelt and sun light. This is in my book: Afternoons with Emily – i.e. Dickenson, with Black Moss Press, Ontario.

Restless Silence

The enclosure wall runs the field,

ducks behind some pines

skirts the forest, dips and rises,

gently drops, then disappears.

Beyond, I can hear snow

melting in the woods.

What am I waiting for?

What enlightenment is in the sun

reflecting off the icy lake,

wearing it to a thin slick?

Dry grass in the wet field

is dusty with sunlight.

What is the grass waiting for?

A pigeon leaves a tree for another tree.

I can hear the sun

grazing the dusty grass,

until a breeze interrupts briefly

then settles for . . . a something . . .

Was it here already and gone?

Or was it only here

so I would come and wait?

Why this sadness when,

yielding to restlessness,

I rise and abandon what

never knows abandonment?

I must confess the urge to go write all this down is what made me restless.

About Paul Quenon

Paul Quenon has been a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky since 1958. He received some encouragement in writing from his Novice Master Thomas Merton, and began publishing in 1995. His earlier poetry was with Black Moss Press in Ontario. Fons Vitae in Louisville has published Monkswear and Bells of the Hours. His memoir In Praise of the Useless Life is with Ave Maria Press.

Paraclete Press has published selected poems: Unquiet Vigil and most recently more poems Amounting to Nothing.

 

Dreaming of Stones

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones has just been published by Paraclete Press.

The poems in Dreaming of Stones are about what endures: hope and desire, changing seasons, wild places, love, and the wisdom of mystics. Inspired by the poet's time living in Ireland these readings invite you into deeper ways of seeing the world. They have an incantational quality. Drawing on her commitment as a Benedictine oblate, the poems arise out of a practice of sitting in silence and lectio divina, in which life becomes the holy text.

Monk in the World: Hospitality 5 ~ Suggestions for Practice ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

Today I offer a suggestion for practicing hospitality in your life.

Begin by pausing for a few moments and connecting to your breath.  Gently draw your awareness down to your heart center and take some time to notice what you are feeling right now.  See if you can make space for the truth of your experience without judgment or trying to change it.  Then bring to your awareness what the mystics across traditions tell us – that the infinite compassion of God burns in our hearts.  Breathe it in and allow it to fill you and your experience.  Anytime you are feeling tender or hurt, allow some inner space to fill with compassion.  Then extend that compassion to someone in your life whom you love.  Then see if you can imagine this sacred compassion filling someone whom you find difficult.

How does this help you in your offering of hospitality to the stranger within and without?

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Elaine Breckenridge

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Elaine Breckenridge's reflection "Chickens and Kinship."

A few years ago, I signed the Monk Manifesto and pledged myself to "The Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks." I took the commitment seriously and adopted the Manifesto as my new Rule of Life. Most recently, the Spirit has given me an opportunity to go more deeply into practicing point four: "I commit to cultivating an awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things and letting go of what does not help nature to flourish."

I have always been attracted to the kinship with creation theme which is found in Celtic Christian writings–both in the ancient and contemporary texts. As an Episcopal priest, I have sought to incorporate more images of nature when designing liturgies, using a variety of Celtic texts to connect the worship with God's creation. I have enjoyed reading the stories of the saints and their special relationships with animals. However, the only embodied kinship I experienced with animals took place on St. Francis Day when it was my job to bless animals. It was fun to play with a kitten, pat puppy dogs or pose with a horse.

But it was only kinship for a day. Most of my practice of Celtic Spirituality has consisted of reading books in an arm chair in my living room, or, writing reflections at my computer for Abbey online classes. That has changed.

This spring I retired. I gave up my full-time ministry in a congregation and a suburban lifestyle, seriously downsized and moved to an island. The house we are currently renting is half the size and without many of the amenities to which I have become accustomed. Most inconveniently, there is no garbage disposal! I have never lived without a garbage disposal. The prospect was unpleasant as I did not want to begin composting. Fortunately, my son offered an alternative. He lives on a working farm just ten minutes away and has given me a chicken bucket. I save all of our food scraps for the bucket. He picks it up weekly, takes it to his chickens and leaves me with a clean bucket for the next week. The first time he brought us an empty bucket, he also brought a dozen eggs from the very chickens I had agreed to help support. They were and are the best eggs I have ever had in my life!

That prompted my visit to meet these chickens. I saw their home and helped to collect eggs from the nests. On that visit, I watched them strutting around a pile of food but not eating. Apparently, they had been given old bread from a local bakery. A day later, my son picked up my chicken bucket and I soon received a text and the following photo from my son, "Mom, the chickens really like your bucket!" They do appear to be feasting!

The first week of my life without a garbage disposal was soon transformed into my life with saving and blessing foods scraps for our chickens. I feel free to say "our" because I contribute to their diet by recycling our food waste. (I am pleased to say that my bucket continues to be a favorite!) And by my purchasing the eggs (and other farm products as well) I am also supporting the work and indeed the ministry of this farm. They are in the process of creating a little Eden, caring for the Earth and in turn contributing to the wellbeing of the humans who buy their food. And I am an active participant in this circle of life.

The circle has expanded. I have practiced a letting go of many of my creature comforts in this new environment. I am more conscious of the water and electricity I use. I am buying organic and eschewing plastics. We are trying a little gardening. I am taking small steps towards reducing my carbon footprint on the planet.

And I am spending more time outdoors and have taken up both forest and Puget Sound bathing. I now have a sense of my personal kinship with creation. I am not just practicing. I am living as a Celtic Christian and a disorderly, dancing monk. It is a joy to have traded in my living room arm chair for a beach chair on Camano Island.

Elaine Breckenridge is a dancing monk and retired Episcopal priest living on Camano Island, Washington in Puget Sound. Currently she is doing some supply work for the Diocese of Olympia but is mostly enjoying forest and beach walks and shopping at local Farmers Markets. Her passions are the music of Kristopher E. Lindquist (Kelmusic.com), yoga and living the Abbey of the Arts Monk Manifesto.

Monk in the World: Hospitality 4 ~ Guided Meditation from Christine (with AUDIO MP3)~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2-Hospitality-Monk-in-the-World-Welcoming-Prayer.mp3

 

This practice of Welcoming Prayer was originally developed by Contemplative Outreach's late master teacher Mary Mrozowski, it is based largely on the teaching and wisdom of Fr. Thomas Keating and an eighteenth century work titled Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade.

I will give you a brief overview of the practice and then suggest you move through the experience in your own time and pace.

There are three main movements to the process of the Welcoming Prayer

Focus and sink in
Welcome
Let go

We begin the practice by allowing some time to move your focus and attention to your body.  Allow some time to breathe and connect with what you are experiencing.  Notice both physical pain as well as emotions.  Bring your full awareness to whatever the experience is, without trying to change it.  Notice how you experience this in your body.  If you feel sad, how is that manifested in your body?

Don't try to change anything. Just stay present.

Focusing doesn't mean psychoanalyzing. This is not about trying to discover why you feel the way you do, or justifying your feelings.

This first step is the key to whole practice. By becoming physically aware of this energy as sensation in your body, you can stay in the present, welcoming it which is the second movement.

When you feel fully immersed in the feeling or experience, you begin to practice this inner hospitality and say very gently: "Welcome, anger" or "Welcome pain, welcome."

The goal of this practice isn't to get rid of the experience you're having, but to not let it take your awareness from being fully present to yourself and this moment.

What often happens is that we experience something we consider "negative" and then we begin to immediately resist the feeling.  We may distract ourselves or try to figure out what is wrong. But these responses simply move us further away from an experience of this moment in time.

By embracing the thing you once defended yourself against, or ran from, you are actually disarming it, removing its power to hurt you or chase you back into our smaller self.  You open yourself to hear the wisdom it might have to offer, to reveal what it is trying to say to you.

When we bring ourselves fully present to our experience, a remarkable thing happens.  We find the courage and strength to stay with the moment.  We surrender the desires of the small self to the capacity of the true or authentic self, the inner witness I discussed in part one.  The authentic self already has a connection to the divine, and is able to be fully present to whatever is happening from a place of calm and compassion.  You can stay with your experience no matter its physical or psychological impact.

In this practice we stay present, welcoming it in, but don't identify it. We come to recognize that this experience doesn't define the whole of who we are.  We are not made up entirely of our grief just as we are not fully defined by joy.

This act of welcome isn't about condoning the situation that caused the physical or emotional pain.  Surrender isn't about accepting illness or rejection or pain inflicted by another as somehow just the way life is.  You are welcoming in the feelings the experience triggers for you and letting them have some space within.  This is surrender as an inner attitude rather than outer practice.  Sometimes the events of our lives demand our resistance, sometimes we are called to say no.  But the feelings we experience, these need room within our inner guest house because paradoxically it is only by inviting them in that we are no longer controlled by them.  Once you are in right alignment with your inner experience, then you can discern freely how to respond to the outside world of experience.  You choose from a place of centeredness and consciousness rather than reactivity.

The third step is letting go, but the temptation might be to move here too quickly. The real work of Welcoming Prayer is in those first two steps, staying with the experience and welcoming it in until the wall of resistance begins to come down on its own.  When you feel this inner fighting of the experience dissolve, then you can begin to practice letting go.  This is just for now, because as human beings we will continue to encounter the difficult emotions.  This is not a final, forever renunciation of your anger or fear; it's simply a way of gently waving farewell as the emotion starts to recede.

If you feel resistance to the letting go, don't pretend, simply accept where you are right now and bring some compassion to yourself.

To let go you might say something simple like I let go of my anger and give it over to God.

The creator of the Welcoming Prayer used this prayer:

I let go my desire for security and survival.
I let go my desire for affection and esteem
I let go my desire for control and power.
I let go my desire to change the situation.

When my inner experience is welcomed in, God can transform it for my own deepening.

If we practice this regularly you might begin to notice that throughout your day there are moments when an inner experience arises that you want to resist. You can simply bring your compassionate awareness to this process and instead of distracting yourself from the feeling, simply pray the word "welcome" and allow the divine compassion to flow through you, offering the gift of transforming grace.

Welcoming prayer helps us to cultivate our ability to live with the truth of this moment, and to accept whatever is happening right now.

Take some time right now, begin with a few minutes. Focus on what you are experiencing without changing it.  Once you name the feeling, Welcome it in.  Stay with it as long as you need to, seeing if you can simply accept this as the truth of your life in this moment.  Then when you feel a bit of release around your resistance, practice letting go, not holding on to whatever this was, knowing that each moment brings its own grace and truth.

Blessings as you go forward with inner hospitality.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Featured Poet: Susan Miller

Last spring we launched a series with poets whose work we love and want to feature and will continue it moving forward.

Our next poet is Susan Miller, whose work is inspired by the sacred in relationship. Read her poetry and discover more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

Et In Arcadia Ego

For Anya Krugovoy Silver

Yesterday a new Tom Waits song

was released, and I thought

of you. In a different world

we would have met up this October,

our heads together over a cafe table,

and we could have sung it

like schoolgirls singing the anthem

of their country--not Russia,

not America, but the country of those

who joke about death and carry

a St. Agatha prayer-card wherever

they go. In April your hair

was growing back, and you wore

red and black earrings that swung

like pendulums over our lunch.

You ordered a giant cup of coffee.

I ordered a giant sugar bomb.

The sun warmed our walk

through Central Park, and we linked arms

talking about how much making out

is okay for a 14-year-old, being moms.

It was and was not an ordinary day.

Now I am the only one

who remembers how slowly we walked,

how I returned you to the apartment

because you feared

getting dizzy alone.

I've been trying to pray more,

reading your poems.

I painted my nails red

because of you, letting the chips show.

I walk through the house, wishing

you would haunt me the way you said

your dead friends would sit with you

during chemo. One more time

I would sing to you bella ciao, bella ciao,

bella ciao.

Originally published in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, 2019

Themes of Her Work

My main theme currently--in just about every aspect of my life--is grief. In the past six years I've lost a number of deeply beloved friends, including my official sponsor for conversion to Catholicism, my unofficial sponsor for conversion, one of my early mentors in poetry, one of my most recent mentors in poetry, and my grandmother. I've spent the entire last year in rumination. I haven't been writing so much as preparing to write--I'll be traveling to Mexico this summer to start a book of essays about death in Mexican art and culture. I expect poetry will follow as well.

Poetry and the Sacred

Poetry, like all acts of witness, allows the reader to enter into another's perspective. Reading poetry can help develop empathy and a deeper communion with others. If there is anything that brings me closer to the sacred, it's the effort to grow closer to other human beings. I often write poetry because my reading inspires that impulse. I'm not always in touch with my faith; my mind is likely to be distracted or cloudy. But reading (and I'm a reader first) can center me again, because I'm asking questions and trying to enter into some kind of wisdom. In my twenties, I spent a year reading Ecclesiastes everywhere--on the subway, in my room, at lunch, between classes. I read it because I needed it. It wasn't just because it was the Bible--it seemed to hold both sensuous music and sere truths, a poetry that was totally dire but would inevitably seduce you anyway. Artists I admire often tell difficult truths in beautiful ways--Colette, Gwendolyn Brooks, Eliot Weinberger, Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, Denis Johnson, Anya Krugovoy Silver, George Saunders, Sturgill Simpson, Mark Doty, Werner Herzog, Tom Waits, Marie Ponsot, Jerry Harp, Yehoshua November… plus the usual suspects (Hopkins, O'Connor.)

A Vision

Last night I dreamed the church in winter.

Crowds of people filled the pews, laden

with armloads of roses and larkspur,

each with a tray of lit candles. St. Claire

loosened all her blonde hair in a pew

in the front of the sanctuary, and I knew

St. Francis nestled between friends somewhere.

The priest told us In this dark hour of the year

we light candles to dispel the vision of evil,

which shadows us whenever we forget to turn

towards the light.Directly I could feel

beside me the grey one on his ashen horse,

his face obscured under his tattered hood,

and felt the wind of his galloping, but

my candle's flame did not flicker.

You must make your own light, the Father said,

and as I raised my head I saw every man

and woman, every child, clean and naked,

brighter than the glow of a thousand candles.

Originally published in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2016, and in Communion of Saints.

About Susan Miller

Susan L. Miller is the author of Communion of Saints: Poems (Paraclete Press.) She has twice received Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes for poetry, and has poems in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion, and Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press) and St. Peter's B-List: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints (Ave Maria Press.) Her poems have been published in Commonweal, Black Warrior Review, Meridian, Iowa Review, Los Angeles Review, Image, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and other literary journals. Essays have been published on the Sick Pilgrim blog. Because she is a student of Marie Ponsot, she has also had poems published in several volumes of Still Against War. She teaches at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Recent Articles:

The Catholic Imagination: What's Actually on Display in the Met's Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part I

Dress Like a Saint: What's Actually on Display in the Met's Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part II

Vatican Treasures: What's Actually on Display in the Met's Heavenly Bodies Exhibit, Part III

Dreaming of Stones

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones has just been published by Paraclete Press.

The poems in Dreaming of Stones are about what endures: hope and desire, changing seasons, wild places, love, and the wisdom of mystics. Inspired by the poet's time living in Ireland these readings invite you into deeper ways of seeing the world. They have an incantational quality. Drawing on her commitment as a Benedictine oblate, the poems arise out of a practice of sitting in silence and lectio divina, in which life becomes the holy text.

Monk in the World: Hospitality 3 – Reflection by Christine + AUDIO ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2-Monk-in-the-World-Hospitality.mp3

St. Benedict in chapter 53 of his Rule writes:

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ,

for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35).

The core of this idea was that everyone who comes to the door of the monastery, and by extension the door of our lives—the poor, the traveler, those of a different religion, social class, or education — should be welcomed in, not just as an honored guest, but as a revelation of the sacred.  For Benedict, our encounter with the stranger – the unknown, the unexpected, the foreign elements that spark our fear – are precisely the places where we are most likely to encounter God.  This is a practice of outer hospitality.

There is another dimension to this practice that we sometimes might be tempted to forget, which is inner hospitality.  Within each of us we have a multitude of feelings, experiences, inner selves, that we would prefer to close the door on.  We have many inner strangers knocking at the door of our hearts.  How many times have I refused to welcome in grief or anger, the scary new dream, the part of myself that doesn't seem to fit with the others?

Becoming a monk in the world means cultivating the ability to welcome in the whole spectrum of our inner experience and develop compassion for all the parts of ourselves. When we are able to embrace all of who we are, we are far more likely able to welcome in what is strange or uncomfortable in others.

We each contain a Self with the capital S, which is the true heart of who we are, beneath all of the roles and identities we play. It is sometimes called the inner witness, and is that place within us that can calmly observe what happens within us and can be with the thoughts that come up and the stories we tell ourselves. The witness brings curiosity and compassion.  In religious traditions the mystics tell us this is the place where we encounter the divine within.

The early desert monks would say "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." The cell is both an internal and external place.  We carry our monastic cell with us everywhere we go.  It is a symbol for the place within our hearts where we wrestle with our inner struggles and encounter God's presence in the midst of the wrestling.

In the desert tradition, when we enter the cave of our heart we encounter the passions which might also be described as habits of being which developed from a core wound, often from childhood.  These wounds distort the reality of who we are and lead us to compulsive acts.  They need to be tended and healed which is challenging because they connect us to our deepest vulnerability.  In one strand of the desert tradition, passions were viewed as something negative, to be eradicated from the soul, and we sometimes read about the language of doing battle with them.

However, the dominant teaching for the desert mothers and fathers was that the passions were considered something positive – natural and neutral impulses whose source is God, but in our human efforts to suppress them their energy becomes misdirected. Some of the language used is "knowing the passions" where knowing means loving and embracing, the goal is to illumine them, rather than eliminate them; we don't seek to destroy them, but figure them.

One of the desert fathers, Abba Isaiah claims that all of the passions including anger, jealousy, and lust are given to us by God with a particular and sacred purpose. Coming to know these passions, how they were formed, and what they desire, is a healing experience.  We begin to reclaim all the parts of ourselves in the service of wholeness.

This is a quote from John Chryssavgis from his book In the Heart of the Desert:

"If God is right there in the midst of our struggle, then our aim is to stay there.  We are to remain in the cell, to stay on the road, not to forego the journey or forget the darkness. It is all too easy for us to overlook the importance of struggle, preferring instead to secure peace and rest, or presuming to reach the stage of love prematurely.  It is always easier to allow things to pass by, to go on without examination and effort.  Yet, struggling means living.  It is a way of fully living life and not merely observing it.  It takes much time and a great effort to unite the disparate, disjointed, and divided parts of the self into an integrated whole.  During this time and in this effort, the virtue of struggle was one of the non-negotiables in the spiritual way of the desert.  The Desert Fathers and Mothers speak too us with authority, because they are in fact our fellow travelers.  They never claim to have arrived, they never indicate having completed the journey."

This practice of inner hospitality means welcoming in whatever it is we are experiencing as having the possibility of wisdom for us.  Hospitality is a lifetime journey, we don't one day figure it out and no longer have to struggle with our impulses and desires.  But we can learn not to resist them and find ways to enter into dialogue with them so we deepen and grow into spiritual maturity.

In the monastic tradition there is a commitment to conversion which means that we recognize that we are always on the way, that we have never fully arrived.  The temptation of the spiritual life is to avoid pain, to believe that being "spiritual" means always being full of peace and grace when in fact the whole teaching of the desert tradition focuses on the need to stay fully present to the often challenging and painful internal dynamics that happen within us.

How do you welcome in the range of your feelings without being swept away by them?  One way to do this is by cultivating your inner witness and connecting regularly with your calm, non-anxious, compassionate core Self. Meditation practice can nurture our ability to sit and observe the rise and fall of our inner lives without resisting or seizing any particular moment.  When we offer ourselves the space to simply be with whatever is happening inside, without judgment, we begin to see that each of those feelings passes with time.  Through art and journaling we can engage in an active dialogue with these parts of ourselves we find threatening or depleting.

The guided meditation for this principle which we'll explore next week introduces a prayer form called welcoming prayer in which you practice noticing when you resist an inner voice or shut your inner door on it, take some time to intentionally invite this voice inside to the table.  Ask it what it has come to tell you.  Listen past the first layer which may sound ugly or painful and tend to the deeper layers underneath.  This takes time, much like growing in intimacy with a friend.  Our rejected selves will need some coaxing.

When we choose to receive guests as a window into the sacred presence, we are choosing to live and relate from a more intentional and reverential place. We have practiced being present to the sacred in each hour and each object around us, now we bring that attention even more consciously within.  When we engage in a dynamic encounter with what we are fearful of, it releases its power on us and new wisdom and energy is released.  It is in this place of hospitality to the unknown where we encounter God.

Pay attention to the feelings and experiences inside of you that you want to reject. Becoming a monk in the world means honoring these as gifts and treasures for our spiritual ripening.  And most important of all, keep showing up to practice.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo© Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World: Hospitality 1 – Reflection by Christine + AUDIO ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2-Monk-in-the-World-Hospitality.mp3

St. Benedict in chapter 53 of his Rule writes:

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ,

for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35).

The core of this idea was that everyone who comes to the door of the monastery, and by extension the door of our lives—the poor, the traveler, those of a different religion, social class, or education — should be welcomed in, not just as an honored guest, but as a revelation of the sacred.  For Benedict, our encounter with the stranger – the unknown, the unexpected, the foreign elements that spark our fear – are precisely the places where we are most likely to encounter God.  This is a practice of outer hospitality.

There is another dimension to this practice that we sometimes might be tempted to forget, which is inner hospitality.  Within each of us we have a multitude of feelings, experiences, inner selves, that we would prefer to close the door on.  We have many inner strangers knocking at the door of our hearts.  How many times have I refused to welcome in grief or anger, the scary new dream, the part of myself that doesn't seem to fit with the others?

Becoming a monk in the world means cultivating the ability to welcome in the whole spectrum of our inner experience and develop compassion for all the parts of ourselves. When we are able to embrace all of who we are, we are far more likely able to welcome in what is strange or uncomfortable in others.

We each contain a Self with the capital S, which is the true heart of who we are, beneath all of the roles and identities we play. It is sometimes called the inner witness, and is that place within us that can calmly observe what happens within us and can be with the thoughts that come up and the stories we tell ourselves. The witness brings curiosity and compassion.  In religious traditions the mystics tell us this is the place where we encounter the divine within.

The early desert monks would say "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." The cell is both an internal and external place.  We carry our monastic cell with us everywhere we go.  It is a symbol for the place within our hearts where we wrestle with our inner struggles and encounter God's presence in the midst of the wrestling.

In the desert tradition, when we enter the cave of our heart we encounter the passions which might also be described as habits of being which developed from a core wound, often from childhood.  These wounds distort the reality of who we are and lead us to compulsive acts.  They need to be tended and healed which is challenging because they connect us to our deepest vulnerability.  In one strand of the desert tradition, passions were viewed as something negative, to be eradicated from the soul, and we sometimes read about the language of doing battle with them.

However, the dominant teaching for the desert mothers and fathers was that the passions were considered something positive – natural and neutral impulses whose source is God, but in our human efforts to suppress them their energy becomes misdirected. Some of the language used is "knowing the passions" where knowing means loving and embracing, the goal is to illumine them, rather than eliminate them; we don't seek to destroy them, but figure them.

One of the desert fathers, Abba Isaiah claims that all of the passions including anger, jealousy, and lust are given to us by God with a particular and sacred purpose. Coming to know these passions, how they were formed, and what they desire, is a healing experience.  We begin to reclaim all the parts of ourselves in the service of wholeness.

This is a quote from John Chryssavgis from his book In the Heart of the Desert:

"If God is right there in the midst of our struggle, then our aim is to stay there.  We are to remain in the cell, to stay on the road, not to forego the journey or forget the darkness. It is all too easy for us to overlook the importance of struggle, preferring instead to secure peace and rest, or presuming to reach the stage of love prematurely.  It is always easier to allow things to pass by, to go on without examination and effort.  Yet, struggling means living.  It is a way of fully living life and not merely observing it.  It takes much time and a great effort to unite the disparate, disjointed, and divided parts of the self into an integrated whole.  During this time and in this effort, the virtue of struggle was one of the non-negotiables in the spiritual way of the desert.  The Desert Fathers and Mothers speak too us with authority, because they are in fact our fellow travelers.  They never claim to have arrived, they never indicate having completed the journey."

This practice of inner hospitality means welcoming in whatever it is we are experiencing as having the possibility of wisdom for us.  Hospitality is a lifetime journey, we don't one day figure it out and no longer have to struggle with our impulses and desires.  But we can learn not to resist them and find ways to enter into dialogue with them so we deepen and grow into spiritual maturity.

In the monastic tradition there is a commitment to conversion which means that we recognize that we are always on the way, that we have never fully arrived.  The temptation of the spiritual life is to avoid pain, to believe that being "spiritual" means always being full of peace and grace when in fact the whole teaching of the desert tradition focuses on the need to stay fully present to the often challenging and painful internal dynamics that happen within us.

How do you welcome in the range of your feelings without being swept away by them?  One way to do this is by cultivating your inner witness and connecting regularly with your calm, non-anxious, compassionate core Self. Meditation practice can nurture our ability to sit and observe the rise and fall of our inner lives without resisting or seizing any particular moment.  When we offer ourselves the space to simply be with whatever is happening inside, without judgment, we begin to see that each of those feelings passes with time.  Through art and journaling we can engage in an active dialogue with these parts of ourselves we find threatening or depleting.

The guided meditation for this principle which we'll explore next week introduces a prayer form called welcoming prayer in which you practice noticing when you resist an inner voice or shut your inner door on it, take some time to intentionally invite this voice inside to the table.  Ask it what it has come to tell you.  Listen past the first layer which may sound ugly or painful and tend to the deeper layers underneath.  This takes time, much like growing in intimacy with a friend.  Our rejected selves will need some coaxing.

When we choose to receive guests as a window into the sacred presence, we are choosing to live and relate from a more intentional and reverential place. We have practiced being present to the sacred in each hour and each object around us, now we bring that attention even more consciously within.  When we engage in a dynamic encounter with what we are fearful of, it releases its power on us and new wisdom and energy is released.  It is in this place of hospitality to the unknown where we encounter God.

Pay attention to the feelings and experiences inside of you that you want to reject. Becoming a monk in the world means honoring these as gifts and treasures for our spiritual ripening.  And most important of all, keep showing up to practice.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo© Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Celeste Boudreaux

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Celeste Boudreaux's reflection "Healing Art."

For Celeste

I see you, though you try to hide

Blending into the wall

Daughter of a defective mother

(Whose empty eyes betray her lipstick toothed smile)

You lurk in the corner, timid and sad and skinny

Child of a deceptive poverty

Cinderella's colorless little sister

Dwelling in the big house, eating ashes

Bearing in silence your public shame and private anguish

Called to be the strong one, the good one

Who needs nothing, demands nothing, receives nothing

Mother's caretaker during her final years

Of agonizing unraveling

Forgive those who looked away in discomfort

Who did nothing, made no inquires

Waited until after the final, successful disaster

To offer any help

For I see you

And I'm telling you

I see a brave and resilient child

Not needless, but worthy of compassion

Not invisible, but beautiful with color and texture

Not deserted, but secretly upheld

Not unscarred, but admirably capable of growth

Sweet girl

Unfold a little

Relax, smile, be silly

Receive my love

Accept these tender tears

You will not slide into the abyss

Because I will hold you tight

On Good Friday, 1975, when I was 16, I came home from my after school job and found my mother's body. She had attempted suicide twice before. Before I had left for my after school job, she had said goodbye to me at the front door to the apartment, and now she was laid out on the bed not breathing.

Naturally, this was a defining trauma of my life, but it was merely the culmination of a childhood of pain and deprivation. After my parents' divorce, my stern grandmother had taken charge and imposed her harsh discipline on me and my five siblings.

When I was 13, our family was broken up again, and my uncles put me in an apartment with my mother. Now I had to become the mom, doing the cooking and grocery shopping and worrying about paying the bills. My tortured mother swirled within the vortex of her own inner turmoil, swinging between extreme agitation and debilitating depressions, until that terrible Friday.

As an adult, I staved off my own depression by maintaining a discipline of positivity, denying my own pain. I had internalized my grandmother's relentless standards and productivity ethic. This served me well until I found myself flat on my back with a tangle of health problems made substantially worse by extreme stress, overwork, and debilitating anxiety.

At this point of desperation, God began to lead me on a path of healing through art. I started drawing simple pictures of me as a little girl and Jesus as my father: rocking in his lap; twirling myself dizzy and landing in his outstretched arms; sitting cross-legged in a field weaving a clover flower crown as he sits nearby, smiling as he watches me play. I drew all the tender interactions that I missed during my girlhood, the moments that would have told me that I was a much loved and cherished child, that I had permission to play and express joy, and that he delighted in me just being myself. Drawing these pictures was a kind of meditation, a way of spending time with those images, of transforming them by some strange alchemy into the reality of memory, and thus starting to heal my little girl's heart.

One day as I struggled with my anxiety, I was inspired to write a lullaby, as if Jesus my father was singing it to my toddler self, crying hysterically in my crib. "Sweet little baby girl," he sang, "Daddy's here…you are heard, never fear." Later, I wrote "For Celeste," a poem to my teen self. It seemed that God was leading me to speak the language of my child self at different ages: a lullaby to comfort a baby, drawings for a young girl, and now a poem for a teen who had written poetry at that age so long ago.

Recently, I have begun making collages that express aspects of myself, such as The Good Little Girl, pictured at the beginning. I expected that I would be done with it by now, but I have found that deep healing comes in stages, one layer at a time.

As a monk in the world, I am learning that I can only truly know and love God in proportion to how well I know and love myself. If I do not extend to myself the grace and compassion that he extends to me, then I will not be able to be present to others in a deep and meaningful way.

I close with a poem for all those who have walked through pain and disillusionment away from a broken ideal towards a more humble and graced reality.

Eve's Journey

Exiled from the garden of perfection

I journey on my forced march

Fearful and desperate

Searching, clutching, clinging

For any bit of comfort and control

Hiding in loneliness and sorrow

Learning to bury it deeply, deeply

And soldier on in pride of self reliance

Teased and blessed by glimpses of glory

Amidst the mustiness of decay

I catch a whiff of honeysuckle

Lost Eden peeks through a fallen world

Can I say yes to both pain and beauty

Is less than perfect good enough

Does God hold more dear the broken and mending heart

Celeste Boudreaux lives in Houston, Texas. In addition to her day job as a university administrator, she is a spiritual director and one who sees beauty and expresses it through photography, painting, drawing and poetry. She also loves yoga, walks in nature, and butterfly gardening.

Monk in the World: Hospitality 2 – Scriptural Reflection by John – A Note from Your Online Prior

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

Genesis 18:1-15

A Son Promised to Abraham and Sarah

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, 'My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.' So they said, 'Do as you have said.' And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, 'Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.' Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, 'Where is your wife Sarah?' And he said, 'There, in the tent.' Then one said, 'I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.' And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?' The LORD said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh, and say, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.' But Sarah denied, saying, 'I did not laugh'; for she was afraid. He said, 'Oh yes, you did laugh.'

Background

When we first meet Abraham & Sarah, they are known as Abram & Sarai. They are Semitic nomads from near the ancient city of Ur. They receive a call from God to travel west to a new land, where by virtue of their relationship with this God, they will be the foundation for a great nation.

It's a great leap of faith for the couple to trust this new God's promises. And yet, they go. Abram takes just not his wife, but their flocks and servants and Abram's nephew, Lot. Abram & Sarai have many adventures, both in getting to and living in the "Promised Land." It is years before God finally makes a formal covenant with them, where they are renamed Abraham & Sarah and God promises to give them so many decedents as to be near impossible to count.

Only it has been several years, Abraham & Sarah are still childless at 99 and 89 (respectively). Sarah, understandably grows impatient and takes matters into her own hands. She asks Abraham to take her handmaiden, Hagar, as a concubine to serve as a surrogate mother. Abraham agrees and Ishmael is born. Unfortunately, marital tension also entered the family at this point and Abraham & Sarah are anything but kind to the new mother and child.

Oddly enough, it is at one of the lowest points in the personal journeys of Abraham & Sarah that God reappears to once again offer promise and blessing to the couple who so recently proved less than worthy. But when the three strangers (angels in disguise) visit Abraham & Sarah, it is an opportunity of redemption.

Abraham & Sarah go out of their way to offer hospitality to the strangers. They insist that the three stay with them. There is a frantic pass to the narrative where Abraham & Sarah hurry about preparing an impromptu banquet for the three strangers. This is the foundation of our faith at their best: sacrificing their time and treasure for the benefit of others, without expectation of reward.

And yet, they are rewarded. These messengers from heaven not only renew God's promise to Abraham & Sarah, but give a specific time line: Sarah will have a child in a year's time. (At 89, Sarah can't help but laugh out loud at the notion of getting pregnant and giving birth at her advanced years. This is why her son is named Isaac, or Laughter.)

Reflection

Christine and I have not been blessed with children. But we have been blessed with family. In particular, our parents cared and nurtured us. We grew up in loving, if at times strict homes. Our parents made sure we received excellent educations and supported us along our way to adulthood. And when they died, tragically young, we both inherited enough money to afford a good home of our own.

I don't say this to brag, in large part because I know we were fortunate. We moved to Seattle before the housing price boom and left just as it started taking off. And even though our parents died too young, they left us a bit of the financial rewards of their life's work.

We are extremely grateful for our home and so wish to share the blessing of its space with others. And so, our apartment in Galway (affectionately names 'An Nead' – Irish for 'The Nest') has become host to pilgrims and friends. Our Galway-based pilgrimages meet in our living room most evenings for the week to share reflections and insights with one another. Our kitchen/dining room has held many a dinner party for friends. Game nights and evenings with friends have burst over onto our terrace. Our home has also been a make-shift rehearsal space for many a theatrical production and a film set on more than one occasion.

As much of an introvert as I am, loving most to curl up on the couch in the evening with my wife and dog, some of my fondest memories over the past year or so has been watching pilgrims, artists, and friends mingle and play and relax in our home.

With great and growing love,

John

John Valters Paintner, MTS

Monk in the World: Hospitality 1 – Scriptural Reflection by John – A Note from Your Online Prior

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

During this Jubilee year of sabbatical we are revisiting our Monk Manifesto by moving slowly through the Monk in the World retreat materials together every Sunday. Each week will offer new reflections on the theme and every six weeks will introduce a new principle.

Principle Two: I commit to radical acts of hospitality by welcoming the stranger both without and within. I recognize that when I make space inside my heart for the unclaimed parts of myself, I cultivate compassion and the ability to accept those places in others.

Genesis 18:1-15

A Son Promised to Abraham and Sarah

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, 'My lord, if I find favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.' So they said, 'Do as you have said.' And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, 'Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.' Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

They said to him, 'Where is your wife Sarah?' And he said, 'There, in the tent.' Then one said, 'I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.' And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, 'After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?' The LORD said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh, and say, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.' But Sarah denied, saying, 'I did not laugh'; for she was afraid. He said, 'Oh yes, you did laugh.'

Background

When we first meet Abraham & Sarah, they are known as Abram & Sarai. They are Semitic nomads from near the ancient city of Ur. They receive a call from God to travel west to a new land, where by virtue of their relationship with this God, they will be the foundation for a great nation.

It's a great leap of faith for the couple to trust this new God's promises. And yet, they go. Abram takes just not his wife, but their flocks and servants and Abram's nephew, Lot. Abram & Sarai have many adventures, both in getting to and living in the "Promised Land." It is years before God finally makes a formal covenant with them, where they are renamed Abraham & Sarah and God promises to give them so many decedents as to be near impossible to count.

Only it has been several years, Abraham & Sarah are still childless at 99 and 89 (respectively). Sarah, understandably grows impatient and takes matters into her own hands. She asks Abraham to take her handmaiden, Hagar, as a concubine to serve as a surrogate mother. Abraham agrees and Ishmael is born. Unfortunately, marital tension also entered the family at this point and Abraham & Sarah are anything but kind to the new mother and child.

Oddly enough, it is at one of the lowest points in the personal journeys of Abraham & Sarah that God reappears to once again offer promise and blessing to the couple who so recently proved less than worthy. But when the three strangers (angels in disguise) visit Abraham & Sarah, it is an opportunity of redemption.

Abraham & Sarah go out of their way to offer hospitality to the strangers. They insist that the three stay with them. There is a frantic pass to the narrative where Abraham & Sarah hurry about preparing an impromptu banquet for the three strangers. This is the foundation of our faith at their best: sacrificing their time and treasure for the benefit of others, without expectation of reward.

And yet, they are rewarded. These messengers from heaven not only renew God's promise to Abraham & Sarah, but give a specific time line: Sarah will have a child in a year's time. (At 89, Sarah can't help but laugh out loud at the notion of getting pregnant and giving birth at her advanced years. This is why her son is named Isaac, or Laughter.)

Reflection

Christine and I have not been blessed with children. But we have been blessed with family. In particular, our parents cared and nurtured us. We grew up in loving, if at times strict homes. Our parents made sure we received excellent educations and supported us along our way to adulthood. And when they died, tragically young, we both inherited enough money to afford a good home of our own.

I don't say this to brag, in large part because I know we were fortunate. We moved to Seattle before the housing price boom and left just as it started taking off. And even though our parents died too young, they left us a bit of the financial rewards of their life's work.

We are extremely grateful for our home and so wish to share the blessing of its space with others. And so, our apartment in Galway (affectionately names 'An Nead' – Irish for 'The Nest') has become host to pilgrims and friends. Our Galway-based pilgrimages meet in our living room most evenings for the week to share reflections and insights with one another. Our kitchen/dining room has held many a dinner party for friends. Game nights and evenings with friends have burst over onto our terrace. Our home has also been a make-shift rehearsal space for many a theatrical production and a film set on more than one occasion.

As much of an introvert as I am, loving most to curl up on the couch in the evening with my wife and dog, some of my fondest memories over the past year or so has been watching pilgrims, artists, and friends mingle and play and relax in our home.

With great and growing love,

John

John Valters Paintner, MTS