Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 78

Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea and Stone: Participant Poems ~ Cyndera Quackenbush

In April, 18 creative souls gathered with us for our retreat on Inismor – Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea and Stone. We had a wonderful group with participants from all over the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia. I am delighted to share some of their poems. Pour a cup of tea, imagine yourself on a windswept limestone island in the Atlantic, and savor for a while.

From Cyndera Quackenbush

Wind

You came in Spring

What seed survived your incessant stirrings?

Plenty -

Yet you swept away all falsehood

A wind-whipped cleansing

Of all not Rooted

Branches, no longer reaching,

Betray their trunks

Totaling city cars with their wayward weight

Meanwhile you sing with insistent whistling

Through the Open Gate

Invisible, you are known outside

Heard Inside

The effects are visible

Especially in my hair

Like the soul, you cannot be seen

While we witness your presence everywhere

Fire (11 Illuminated Forms)

            Inspired by Mark S. Burrows poem “Nine Forms of Light”

Light between Leaves,

Shimmering with Breeze

Light within Bird Wings

And in the Song that She Sings

Light in the Rainbow Grass Dew

Light in the Sky’s Eternal Blue

Light on the Rooftop

Lights in the Car Lot

Light on the Surface of Stone

Light in the Ringing Telephone

Light is in this Place,

Eyes Closed,

The Sun upon my Face

Water

In Praise of Laundry

The washing machine is a Womb

I could sleep to its sounds of churning

Vibrations of cycle changes

There are secret crevices

Where the fairy liquids go

And then

The waters flow-

A musical medley of clothes

Through a sea portal window

Out come the lavender scented parcels

They look like wet, wilted infants

Ready for the wear of life

I smell each one,

hold it close

And place it lovingly in the dryer

These Clothes,

Creations of daily identity

Will meet here again

Stones

St.Ones

At Midnight

The Moonlight

Spills through stone slits

Onto altar slabs

In illuminated dark,

I make out Heart

My fingers finding

the silk of stone

It used to be,

These entities could be a He or She -

This stone says She to me

Lips open to sky

She sings a soft stone song

How She,

A stone chosen, begins again

While doing nothing at all

The Big Dipper,

Found in this framed night filled with stars,

Reminds these roofless walls

Of the Possible, Possible

Promise

Of surrendering

To the Moon and Structures of God

Cyndera Quackenbush, MA, is a storyteller, educator and Reflection Card Reader in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the creator of the Story Through Stone Reflection Card Deck, that features naturally occurring billion year-old imagery from rocks found in her native Mojave Desert. With the development of the Story Through Stone Reflection Card Reading Method, she assists individuals in uncovering their deeply known truths and insights with imagination and intuition. Find out more at StoryThroughStone.org

Jubilee Time (John’s reflection) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

In honor of our upcoming sabbatical year, this week we hear from John Valters Paintner about the scriptural roots of Sabbath and Jubilee:

The biblical Jubilee is a big, if rarely discussed topic. So, we’re going to back up a bit and get a good running start at it from a point that is far more familiar with all of us.

One of the Ten Commandments is to “keep holy the Sabbath” (Exodus 20:8-11 & Deuteronomy 5:12-15). There is controversy, or at least vigorous debate, over the most basic of details. Catholics and Protestants don’t agree as to which number of the Decalogue it is. There is also the debate over which day of the week it should be practiced.

But at its core, the Sabbath is meant to be a day of freedom. It is freedom both from and for something. It is freedom from work, the labour of our earthly existence. And it is freedom for time to focus on our spiritual existence. It is not, as Pharaoh accused Moses and the Israelites, a day to be lazy and do nothing. It is a day to reconnect with the spiritual side of life.

The trouble comes in trying to figure out the correct balance. Despite our spiritual natures, we are still physical beings and there are certain tasks that still need to be performed. And so the debate rages on throughout the centuries on denominational and personal levels as to what should or shouldn’t be prohibited on the holy day.

Even Jesus ran afoul of proper Sabbath observance.

That gives me comfort, as it is a Commandment I’ve always wrestled with as an adult. When I worked in parish ministry, Sabbath was a very busy day . . . even if it was religious by nature. And then when I was a religion teacher, the weekend was my downtime and the last thing I wanted to focus on what work . . . again, even if it was religious by nature. At first, I was too busy with spiritual matters to rest. And then I was too busy resting to go about anything of spiritual matter. My Sabbath work/reflect ratio has never been what I’d consider correct, at least for me.

My personal dissatisfaction around this issue hasn’t gotten much better now. As a self-employed business owner, I find myself quoting a certain fictional Dowager Countess (if for very different reasons), “What is a . . . weekend?”

So yes, keeping holy the Sabbath isn’t easy. But before we can discuss the once (maybe twice) in a lifetime Jubilee year, we need to come to terms with the weekly Sabbath. Don’t panic; you don’t need to have perfect Sabbath observance to “graduate” onto the next level. Like all of life and spiritual practice, we’re all a work-in-progress.

We’re not big on hard and fast rules at the Abbey of the Arts; we’re very intentionally not dogmatic in that way. We’re much more in favour of offering guidelines to help you create a spiritual rhythm that is right for you. (Not that we’re preaching moral relativisms. We trust you to make the correct decisions for yourself, as we gently push your boundaries.)

So with that in mind, let’s start simple. Just pick a day of the week. Any day will do. Fewer and fewer of us are working 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday schedules and so the weekend may not be ideal for you to take a day of holy rest. There’s no need to set yourself up for failure before you begin. Next, maybe it’s not a full day to start. Maybe you divide up the day into half or even quarter days throughout the week. Start small and get some momentum going.

I won’t get into the debate over what is considered “work.” It’s very arbitrary and can seem, at first, to be a bit silly. In some religious communities a lot of work goes into not working. Some of that may seem like a cheat or a dodge, but that’s only at first glance. At the heart of the debate over minute definitions of work is the bigger question of who is really in charge.

And that brings us to the Sabbatical and Jubilee Year. It’s difficult enough to arrange one’s life for six days a week so as to be able to take the seventh day off. But to scale that up to take off an entire year . . . that’s something that takes a while to even get one’s head around.

When Leviticus, chapter twenty-five, speaks of the Sabbatical and Jubilee Year, much emphasis is placed on not worrying about how one will survive. We are told that God will provide enough in the previous year’s harvest to cover not just the Sabbatical or Jubilee Year, but the one after while the new harvest ripens. And that’s a radical concept that is difficult for most of us to accept: life will continue without our personal involvement and oversight.

There are a lot of other really remarkable instructions in this section of the Book of Leviticus about economic freedom for those previously oppressed by the system and quite a bit about land redistribution, but that is for a larger societal discussion. Our concern today is the personal.

Christine and I have done a lot of planning in preparation of our Sabbatical. It wasn’t easy to decide to stop offering programs for a year. But we felt the time was right to rebalance ourselves. We’ve found ourselves so busy with our work at the Abbey of the Arts that we haven’t taken enough time to contemplate on the work.

It will be a time of freedom for us. It will be a time free from leading programs. And it will be a time free for contemplating our future, both personally and professionally.

–John Valters Paintner

If this newsletter is meaningful to you and you’d like to support its daily and weekly maintenance during our upcoming sabbatical year, along with the website and other programs offered for free we’d love for you to consider supporting us from a small one-time donation to a monthly offering for the year, there are lots of options at this link. If a financial donation isn’t possible at this time, we treasure your blessings and prayers for this time of rest and dreaming into the future.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Jan Blencowe

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Jan Blencowe's reflection "Drawing the Book of Creation."

The quietest pond edge, the still winter woods or the silent desert floor are never really quiet, though it does take a certain kind of listening and seeing to become aware of the life there.

I have always had a very strong and sacred connection to nature, even (perhaps especially) as a child. In those younger years it seemed easy to converse and commune with the aliveness of nature.

As so often happens with some of the wondrous things of childhood, like the capacity for play and friendships with trees, that ability grew dimmer as I got older.

One day in a moment of deep understanding I saw that my longing to be connected to nature was just that, a longing. I realized that I actually knew very little about nature.

The trees in my yard, the birds, and the weeds were strangers to me. They each had a name, a story. Yet, beyond being able to recognize a pine tree, or knowing that the red bird was a cardinal, I knew very little about the things that lived around me.

The desire to reforge that childhood connection to nature and broaden my knowledge took hold. Yet, I sensed that learning their names and classifications was not what I was looking for.

I desired not an “I – it” relationship, but rather the deeper “I – Thou” relationship that Martin Buber wrote about.

Gardening was one way I began to learn about nature. Keeping a nature journal was another. I began my nature journal in my garden with plants that were familiar.

Creating drawings right in the midst of nature, as the sun warmed by back I had the opportunity to learn from mother nature herself. I saw first hand what was living, breathing and growing right on the same parcel of land that I was living, breathing and growing on.

Tuning my eyes and ears to nature I could observe the dramatic sweep of a life cycle, as well as the minute changes that take place day by day throughout the seasons.

One of the most profound discoveries I made through keeping sketches in a nature journal was understanding my own place in creation. It was astonishing to see how my very presence and actions changed, for better or worse, the environment around me.

As  Mechtild of Magdeburg, wrote, “The day of my awakening was the day I saw, and knew I saw, all things in God and God in all things.”

Hours of quiet and solitude, sketchbook and pen in hand, became a school of spirituality for me. I sat at the feet of the Creator, revealed to me in the guise of a tree, a great stone or the rolling waves of the sea.

I began to cultivate a friendship with trees, stones, insects and weeds.

This friendship and intimacy with nature was in fact just another facet of communion with the Divine. In nature I was able to find the archetypal Earth Mother and recognize those feminine aspects within God, too.

One of the most compelling lessons I’ve learned is that matter is not separate from spirit but rather infused with it. The aliveness of all things in nature began to dawn clearly in me, allowing  a deeper more penetrating way of seeing. A way of seeing that perceives both the outward appearance and the inward life.

Drawing provides a special way to slow down. It gave me new eyes to observe the smallest and the greatest, from the tiniest moss to Venus in the morning sky, to the shifting winds and the eclipse of the sun.

The amazing rhythms of migration, procreation and death became the framework for my understanding of how life unfolds.  Nature is a profound teacher and her wisdom plays itself out moment by moment, year after year .

What I gain from this type of creative practice in nature is something experiential, a process of becoming aware of the unity of all that is.

Through nature journaling I’ve been given a sense of belonging, and a certainty that what can feel out of control is always held within something greater that orders our existence. This has made the acceptance of what can seem harsh realities like accident, injury and death easier.

Nature survives these things in so many amazing ways, and I am strengthened by watching how persistently and beautifully she recovers from her wounds. Ultimately, for me, it is understanding the integration of all experiences through grace, that has been the greatest gift of observing and drawing in my nature journal.

Jan Blencowe is an artist, creative depth coach, and retreat leader. She helps women use art and nature to heal their past so they can design their future.  She is the creator of the online courses Beginning a Nature Journal and The EarthWise Way, a sacred journey through the Celtic year.

Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea and Stone: Participant Poems ~ Cathy Roby

In April, 18 creative souls gathered with us for our retreat on Inismor – Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea and Stone. We had a wonderful group with participants from all over the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia. I am delighted to share some of their poems. Pour a cup of tea, imagine yourself on a windswept limestone island in the Atlantic, and savor for a while.

From Cathy Roby

Benedictions…

Blessed be the birds that sing God’s glory

Blessed be the flowers waking up to Spring

Blessed be the land that grounds my spirit

Blessed be the stones that hold the stories

Blessed be the wind blowing in new life

Blessed be the sea refreshing my soul

Blessed be the Spirit, gracing my day.

Sufficient

Praise you for the times when the holy wells seem to run dry

Praise you for the clouds in life, when sunny days would be easier

Praise you for times of confusion, when you ask me to be patient with the process and trust

Praise you for the mystery around trials that come my way

Praise you for gently reminding me I am not in charge, you are

Praise you for your grace, sufficient for each day on this journey…

Invitation

You invite me Lord into the Holy Well of your heart, my heart

It looks dark and uncertain at times but you say “cup your hands and drink in my grace, refresh yourself and be patient, the beauty will happen.”

Cathy has been in the ministry of teaching, leading retreats and contemplative days of prayer for the past 30 years. She is currently on the teaching team as well as an Interviewer for the Called & Gifted program through the Diocese of Orange and St. Catherine of Siena Institute and is certified Spiritual Director. One of her passions is leading others closer to the heart of God through transformational teaching and recognizing their individual call through their gifting.

Cathy has been married to her husband Jim for 40 years and they have three wonderful children. They reside in Laguna Niguel, CA.

How to Be a Pilgrim (new poetry video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

How to Be a Pilgrim

Air travel is like

ancient pilgrims walking on their

knees, flight delays and narrow seats

offer their own kind of penance.

You jettison excess baggage,

leaving behind the heavy makeup case,

knowing the rain will

wash you free of artifice.

Books you wanted to carry left too,

no more outside words needed,

then go old beliefs which keep

you taut and twisted inside.

Blistered feet stumble over rocky

fields covered with wildflowers and you

realize this is your life,

full of sharp stones and color.

Red-breasted robins call forth

the song already inside,

a hundred griefs break open under

dark clouds and downpour.

Rise and fall of elation and exhaustion,

the tides a calendar of unfolding,

a bright star rises and you remember

a loved one waiting miles away.

A new hunger is kindled by the sight of

cows nursing calves in a field,

spying a spotted pony, you forget

the weight and seriousness of things.

Salmon swim across the Atlantic,

up the River Corrib’s rapids to the

wide lake, and you wonder if you have

also been called here for death and birth.

This is why we journey:

to retrieve our lost intimacy with the world,

every creature a herald of poems

that sleep in streams and stones.

‘Missing you’ scrawled on a postcard sent home,

but you don't follow with

‘wish you were here.’

This is a voyage best made alone.

—Christine Valters Paintner

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I wrote this poem several years ago soon after arriving to Ireland and spending time wandering the landscape. It appears in the opening of my book The Soul of a Pilgrim, a book close to my heart because it explores what pilgrimage meant in my life after having embarked on a grand adventure, to see where the Spirit had led us and the challenges along the way.

Now, after having guided pilgrimage groups for the last six years, this all feels all the more true, an invitation to continue to deepen my intimacy with the world around me, to see how the stones and salmon, the birds and the tides, call me to new awareness of what it means to live a meaningful life.

This will be the final poem video for now in the series we have been creating for Dreaming of Stones. There will likely be more in the future as time and resources allow, as it has been an exhilarating project to collaborate with other artists and see how the poem’s layers are revealed in new ways. I deeply appreciate Luke Morgan’s work as a filmmaker on these, and his brother Jake who composed most of the music. I love how each video had its own atmosphere and emotional quality and took me on a journey through the imagery in new ways.

I invite you to read the poem once through slowly and see if there is an image that shimmers for you or sense of invitation that arises from it. Then watch the video and see if there are any other layers that are revealed.

You can order your copy of Dreaming of Stones. I’d be so grateful if you’d consider posting a review to Amazon.com and Goodreads! It helps authors so much in getting their book seen by a wider audience.

Want to dive into sacred poetry with me in Chartres, France? Join me June 10-14, 2019 for a transformative week of reading and writing poetry together (no experience necessary) and the chance to walk an ancient labyrinth. Step onto the threshold where new possibilities beckon.  Register here>>

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Video © Christine Valters Paintner

Call for Submissions: Monk in the World Guest Posts

We welcome you to submit your reflection for possible publication in our Monk in the World guest post series. It is a gift to read how ordinary people are living lives of depth and meaning in the midst of the challenges of real life.

There are so many talented writers and artists in this Abbey community, so this is a chance to share your perspective. The link to the reflection will be included in our weekly newsletter which goes out to thousands of subscribers.

Please follow these instructions carefully:

Please click this link to read a selection of the posts and get a feel for the tone and quality.
Submit your own post of 700-900 words on the general theme of "How do I live as a monk in the world? How do I bring contemplative presence to my work and/or family?" It works best if you focus your reflection on one aspect of your life or a practice you have, or you might reflect on how someone from the monastic tradition has inspired you. We invite reflections on the practice of living contemplatively.
Please include a head shot and brief bio written in the third person (50 words max). You are welcome to include 1-2 additional images if they help to illustrate your reflection in meaningful ways. All images should be your own. Please make sure the file size of each the images is smaller than 1MB. You can resize your image for free here.
We will be accepting submissions between now and June 20th for publication sometime in the fall of 2019 and beyond (depending on the number of submissions). We reserve the right to make edits to the content as needed (or to request you to make edits) and submitting your reflection does not guarantee publication on the Abbey blog, but we will do our best to include as many of you as possible.
Email your submission to Melinda by June 20th and include the reflection pasted into the body of your email and attach your photo(s).

We will be back in touch with you at the latest by early August to let you know if your post is accepted, if edits are needed, and/or when we have scheduled your post to appear.

Featured Poet Series: Barbara Crooker

We are launching a new series this spring with poets whose work we love and want to feature!

Our next poet is Barbara Crooker, whose work is deeply inspired by paying attention to how God whispers in the world.  You can hear Barbara reading her poem "Sanctus" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Sanctus.m4a



Peeps

In those last few months my mother didn’t want to eat, this woman

who made everything from scratch, and who said of her appetite,

I eat like a bricklayer. Now she listlessly stirred the food

around her plate, sometimes picking up a piece of chicken,

then looking at it as if to say, What is this? Wouldn’t put

it in her mouth. But Peeps! Marshmallow Peeps! Spun sugar

and air, molded in clever forms: a row of ghosts, a line

of pumpkins, a bevy of bunnies, a flock of tiny chicks,

sometimes in improbable colors like purple and blue. . . .

One day, she turned over her tray, closed her mouth, looked up

at me like a defiant child, and said, I’m not eating this stuff.

Where’s my Peeps?

When it was over, the hospice chaplain said some words

in my back yard, under the wisteria arch. The air was full

of twinkling white butterflies, in love with the wild oregano.

Blue-green fronds of Russian sage waved in front of the Star

Gazer lilies, and a single finch lit on a pink coneflower, and stayed.

When there were no more words or tears, I ripped open

the last packet of Peeps, tore their little marshmallow bodies,

their sugary blood on my hands, and gave a piece to each

of us. It melted, grainy fluff on our tongues, and it was good.

from Gold

Themes of Her Work

In my new book, Some Glad Morning, coming out in the fall 2019, from the University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press in the Pitt Poetry Series, I find I’m exploring transience.  Here, in the final decade (s) of my life (I may be past my sell-by date already, according to some acutuarial charts), the hardest part is loss, losing friends, losing the body’s capabilities, etc.  I worried that the manuscript had too many elegies, but as I read it over, I realized it also had a fair amount of joy (hence the title).  I live by this quote from Wendell Berry, “Be joyful though you have considered all of the facts.”

The Books of Kells: Chi/Rho

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript

of the four Gospels, created in around 800 AD.

The Chi/Rho page consists of the Greek letters

chi and rho that were used in medieval times

to abbreviate the word "Christ."

With quills and ink of iron gall on folded vellum,

monks in their cells labored in hives of stone,

producing pages that glistened like honey,

sweetening the word of God. On this page, the chi

commands the eye, its arm swooping to the left

in an elegant scrawl, the smaller rho and iota

nestled to the right. Knotwork fills each letter

to the brim. Three angels fly from the crossed

arms, heaven and earth intertwined, coiled spirals

connected by curves. Despite the gleam, no gold

is used, just layers of color built up like enamel.

In the interstices, creatures of air: birds and moths;

creatures of sea: fish and otters; creatures of land:

cats and mice. For the whole world was holy,

not just parts of it. The world was the Book of God.

The alphabet shimmered and buzzed with beauty.

from The Book of Kells

Poetry and the Sacred

It is my ardent belief that most of us are sleepwalking through our “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver), looking down at our phones, spending hours on social media (photos of the moon instead of going outside and looking at the moon), etc.  Reading and writing poetry is the opposite of this; it’s paying attention.  And attention is, I think, a form of prayer.  Frank Lloyd Wright said, “I believe in God, only I spell it ‘Nature’," and, for me, that’s where I feel God the most, outside in the woods, fields, gardens, rather than in a church (although I’m a regular church-goer). I try to write outside whenever I can, especially when I’m in residence at a colony, which has been part of my practice.  I’ve tried to have two weeks or so every couple of years, and during that time, all I do is read, write, and take walks.  And pay attention to everything that shows up (I believe in serendipity), whether it’s an inchworm, a conversation at dinner, a painting (artists usually have open studios), or a piece of music (there are often concerts or  musicians performing after dinner).  I try to be open to everything, as that’s how, I think, God whispers.

Ireland

A brown hare washes her face

in the lane while the hare in the moon

looks on. The hare in the moon

carries an egg, new cycle of life

that comes in the spring. But now,

it’s autumn, the sky closing in,

fir trees inking footprints

on the gray silk sky. A luminous sky,

tattered with crows. Two swans,

ruffled lilies, float in the lake’s bright bowl.

Some fairy’s touched all the trees overnight,

turned them orange, yellow, and red. All of

the green fields are clotted with sheep. What

is the world, but the body of God?

from The Book of Kells

About Barbara Crooker

Barbara Crooker's work has appeared in many journals, including The Christian Century, America, Sojourners, Saint Katherine Review, Perspectives, Literature and Belief, The Cresset, Tiferet, Spiritus, Assisi, Dappled Things, Ruminate, Rock & Sling, Relief, Seminary Ridge Review, The Anglican Theological Review,and anthologies such as The Bedford Introduction to Literature and  Imago Dei:  Poems from Christianity and Literature. She is a recipient of the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and the author of twelve chapbooks and nine full-length books of poetry; The Book of Kells is the most recent, with Some Glad Morning coming out in the Pitt Poetry Series (University of Pittsburgh Press) in the fall, 2019.  She is a poetry editor for Italian American and lives and works in rural northeastern Pennyslvania.

 

Order Barbara Crooker's Books

The Book of Kells

Gold: (Poiema Poetry)

Radiance: Poems

More

(using the Amazon links above help to support the Abbey scholarship fund at no additional cost to you)

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.

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Writing on the Wild Edges Participant Poem: Patia Carque

At the end of April, 15 creative souls gathered with us for our retreat on Inismor – Writing on the Wild Edges of the World. We had a wonderful group with participants from all over the U.S., Canada, and South Africa. I am delighted to share some of their poems over these next few weeks. Pour a cup of tea, imagine yourself on a windswept limestone island in the Atlantic, and savor for a while.

From Patia Carque

Inismore

Embraced by waves, winds, anion

the Isle will do the work.

She’ll lift, kiss, nourish you

while cows graze her hilly breasts.

She’ll hear your pilgrim prayer

as you step upon her stones,

as your heart sings songs of presence,

as she gently heals your wounds.

You have been invited to explore

your place of resurrection in this world.

You will listen in her stillness.

You will see a world that shimmers.

You will name your beasts and passions

with a voice that is your own.

She will spin you dizzy till you grasp

your vulnerability.

She’ll receive the ribbons of your wishes

on her Hawthorne trees.

When you fall, her arms will catch you

with her thickets and her thorns

until you cease your struggle

reaching out to others’ hands.

Inverted cups of penitents

poured out upon the rocks

are lifted up, creation blessed

with echoes of the past.

Ascend the hills, release the bees.

There is a time to fight.

Dance round bright fires, spring is here

to celebrate new life.

Come to the door now with yourself

a spiral well descending.

With courage draw a clear, cool drink

as darkness brings a new beginning.

Hear the Island whisper to the wisdom of your soul.

You are loved and gifted. May creation make you whole.

Patia Carque retired two years ago after thirty years of ministry within the United Church of Christ (UCC).  She is currently living in St Petersburg, FL, where she seeks her “place of resurrection” as a poet, writer, and all she is being invited to be.  She sends joy, love and creativity to you, with gratitude for her recent pilgrimage Writing on the Wild Edges in Inismore, and asks for your prayers on her journey.

Please Help Support Our Jubilee Year ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Contemplative rhythms are essential here at Abbey of the Arts, both in terms of what we teach as well as what we practice. Each week we try to take a Sabbath day as a time to celebrate the lavish gift of rest. Each summer we take a month of sabbatical time to refresh and renew our bodies and spirits.

We both long for a longer time of sabbatical. If we still worked in a university or church setting this might be built in to the financial support, but since we are entirely self-supporting taking this needed time to step back and listen for the deeper call demands more planning and outside financial support.

About a year ago we realized that since we were coming up on our 50thbirthdays in 2020 (Christine and John’s birthdays are a day apart – June 23 and June 24 – same year of birth) that we might take the opportunity to live into the biblical practice of Jubilee. Because the Jubilee is the 50thyear we realized that when we turn 49 is the start of our Jubilee year and this happens for us in June 2019 when we will begin a year of sabbatical.

Jubilee is a time of sabbatical but also a time to let the land lie fallow, for the forgiveness of debt, and for freedom for everyone in the land. It is a time for us to lie fallow for a while, and pay attention to the ways we have enslaved ourselves through busyness and productivity. It is an invitation into deeper listening and allowing new visions to emerge.

Mostly we want time to be at home in Galway and to rest and write. Writing is our first love for both of us and often gets squeezed between everything else we do. To have open and uninterrupted time to write will be a tremendous gift. We do have some travel planned, a retreat together to begin our experience, and some ancestral travel which has been so core to Christine’s spiritual practice for many years.

We have been saving money for this time. Taking a year off demands a lot of courage, to risk our financial well-being and trust that the Spirit and our community will help us to meet our needs. Because we would like to keep our website going and the daily and weekly email newsletters, as well as admin assistance for responding to email inquiries, there are a lot of administrative expenses we are seeking support from you for helping to cover.

With this in mind we have created a yearlong online program. The content from the program will come from the writing projects we are both working on, so won’t be added work during our sabbatical, but a chance for us to share with you what we are focusing our attention on.

For Christine, this means writing poetry and completing her book on Sacred Time. For John, he will be sharing some stories featuring Hildy, our mascot monk-ey, that illumine life here in Galway with some playfulness. We are also grateful to our wonderful Wisdom Council, as each member will be offering a mini-retreat to be featured each new moon (12 in all) to invite you into seasonal wisdom.

We hope you’ll consider supporting us in this way if you are able. There are different funding levels, as well as both monthly and one-time commitments.

If you’d like to see the content included for different levels of support please click here>>

If you aren’t able to offer support at this time, we ask for your prayers and blessings that this time be fruitful and offer the space needed for God’s new birthing in our lives to come through.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Adam Webber

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World Guest Post series from the community. Read on for Adam Webber's reflection, "The Lady Loves Me."

Tuesday morning, I wake up grumpy. I don’t want to go to work. Lying in bed, I recite the Breastplate of Saint Patrick to myself: “I arise today through a mighty faith….” I don’t know whether I have a mighty faith this morning or not, but I arise anyway.

In my church office I go over the lectionary readings for next Sunday. I am the pastor of this church, and it is our custom for the pastor to follow the lectionary—to find a theme for the sermon and the service in one or more of these lectionary readings every week. Alas, I’m not finding any inspiration in the lectionary today. I read it, prayerfully, again. Still nothing. I read some commentaries. Nope. I answer emails and phone calls, update the web site, clean up my desk, and fix the paper towel dispenser. I make a visit to a nursing home. Then I think about those readings again. Nada.

In the afternoon I escape for half an hour to the sauna at the municipal gym, and there it hits me, a flash of inspiration. It’s not the inspiration I was looking for, of course; it’s nothing to do with the lectionary readings and, in fact, it’s not a sermon idea at all.

It’s a song.

Actually, it’s just a line or two of a song, just a hook. “The Lady loves me, loves me, loves me day and night,” I sing to myself—and when I sing it, the Lady of whom I sing is God, and the love of which I sing is a joy and a delight. I realize, then, what I’m being called to do. There will be no sermon on Sunday. There will be a song, a new song, and I will write it and share it with the congregation.

From long experience I know that it would be a waste of time to complain to God about this stupid inspiration. I complain to God about this stupid inspiration.

Wednesday morning, I wrestle with doubt. I look back at my sermons from three years ago; isn’t there something there I could recycle? But after dithering for an hour, I take the plunge. I give my church secretary notes for Sunday’s bulletin. In place of the sermon there will be a song, and it will be called “The Lady Loves Me.” Now I just have to write it.

By Wednesday afternoon I have a draft of the lyric. But, musically, I still have only that one line. I take a long walk and sing to myself. The feeling I’m going for is a kind of innocent exuberance—a feeling of being swept away by love. I dance a little as I walk—nobody will see me, skipping along this back road in the wintertime. My song is starting to feel like a pop love song, a seventies love song, and it gravitates to a nice, familiar structure: verse, refrain, verse, refrain, bridge, verse, refrain, refrain. It seems to call for an exuberant seventies-style instrumentation, like a Partridge Family hit.

There are tons of other things to be done this week, of course. A member needs a meal brought, and I bring it. The choir needs to rehearse, and I rehearse with them. The Christmas decorations in the church need to come down, and I help take them down. My family needs dinner, and I cook it. But in between all these duties, I slip away to work on my song.

Thursday night, I’ve started scoring it: at first, it’s just vocals, steel drum, and bass. By Friday I’ve got a full score: rhythm guitar, trumpet, trombone, flute, backup vocals. With a computer sequencer, I lay out all the instrumentation I’ve written and add a drum line. By Saturday morning, it’s ready to go. I record the instrumental parts and practice singing along with them.

At the last minute, I rewrite the ending of the song several times. A true Partridge Family ending would use a repeated refrain that fades out as the applause comes up. But there will probably only be thirty people in church on Sunday. God willing, they'll be enthusiastic, but I’d better not count on a thunderous wave of applause.

Sunday morning, I wake up happy. When I was a kid, I used to lie in bed on Sunday mornings, hoping that my father would forget to get me up for church. (I can’t remember that he ever did, though.) But these days, I’m usually excited about Sundays. It’s like I’ve been cooking up a meal all week, and now I finally get to put it on the table. I pray as I arise:

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me.

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me.

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty faith ….

Thank you, Lady. I love you, too.  I’ll do my best.

You can hear “The Lady Loves Me” at here >>

Adam Brooks Webber is a husband, father, writer, teacher, computer scientist, singer-songwriter, and student of the martial arts. When he was a boy, he couldn’t wait to grow up so that he could A) move away from small-town Illinois, and B) stop going to church. Consequently, he is now a pastor in a small town in Illinois.