Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 8

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kate Kennington Steer

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kate Kennington Steer’s reflection “i am limited.”

A few months ago I wrote these words in response to a series of photographs (some of which are pictured here) I made in collaboration with the Kinship Photography Collective, for their project ‘between bodies’:

information remains
teasingly just out of reach
behind the darkest
bottle-green blur of a hedge
or perhaps a single leaf,
here where size is distorted
and volume compacted.

there are limits to this seeing.
I am limited.

so I am compelled to ask
how meaning might be made
from such seemingly
empty space.
whether I would settle for
even partial revelation
of these enshadowed places,

this mystery
of endarkenment

I apparently need to welcome
if I am to see the light.

for now the gaps and the blanks
have become rest stops,
those breath-gathering places,
the required pause and hiatus …

Writing the lines ‘there are limits to this seeing/I am limited’ was revolutionary for me.  As was the idea of waiting, open to the moment, attentive to what might want to be expressed through me, to receive images that might defy even my own understanding.  Let’s be honest, images which most people would delete.  

Instead my Kinship practice group encouraged me to make my limitations visible, something I don’t recall ever intentionally doing before.  Normally I end up using long telephoto lenses, so I can crop a picture later in order to get nearer my subject.  This sleight of hand is necessary because I do not have legs that will carry me more than a few steps, and most terrain where I want to go is not wheelchair friendly.

en though I call myself a contemplative photographer I realised how influenced I remain by the learned mores of the commercial photography we see around us from every screen and billboard. This teaches me to remove myself from the picture.  After all, much of being disabled, or chronically ill, or maybe just being downright poor, isn’t glamorous or photogenic or newsworthy.  We have made a society which turns away from the homeless woman at the end of our home street, whereas to watch survivors of war or famine flee to distant refugee camps is palatable, at least for a short time.  Yet, which picture do I pray over?  Which picture stirs me to action, to enter the struggle for systemic equality where we all might flourish?  Which picture persuades me to save my planet in every way I can – today, right here, right now?

I am limited – by energy, by time, by financial hardship, by pain, by immobility.  I often find I cannot reach far enough to see ‘round’ the pillar or post or person in front of me.  So why do I pretend otherwise?  Why do I too often give up, frustrated?  Isn’t the work of acceptance and surrender, which is at the core of contemplative spirituality, meant to include the way I make my art as well?  Sometimes the person will move and the view opens up.  But often it does not.  And seeing from a wheelchair often dictates that one sees from a limited plane, particularly when it hurts to point a camera up to a too bright sky or to bend down to allow the perfume of the lilies to imbue the lens.  

There is just no point me wasting my precious energy longing to be a mountain-top landscape photographer!   Let that be the work of others.  So, what is my work?   I tell my soul: find a way to show that the possibilities of the things which limit you are endless.  They are no bar to creating, but rather the frame that others might need to see if they are to see the world through another’s eyes.  They may not be beautiful or easy to see. It may require longer looking. But there is a gleam here, a shape there, a colour tone which surprises and a blank which puzzles.  All are routes into and through the darkness; all are dark joys, dark hopes.

And then I tell my soul, now look for those whose ways of seeing and creating might join with yours.  Look for the collaborators and curators and co-creationists.  And when you find them (and you will), ask them: will you let your limits meet mine for a while and shall we watch our edges dance and see what what might be birthed in their play?

Kate Kennington Steer is a disabled writer, photographer and visual artist.  Visit imageintoikon.com , ‘acts of daily seeing’ on Facebook, or @katekenningtonsteer on Instagram and YouTube.

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Kinship with Creation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Warm New Year blessings to you! We are delighted to return after a time of rest and begin the year with our Contemplative Prayer Service tomorrow, January 6th. We will continue our exploration of the principles of the Monk Manifesto with this month’s theme of Kinship with Creation.

Principle 4: I commit to cultivating awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish.

These prayers of concern are excerpted from Day 1 Morning Prayer from the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle.

Help us, O Creator God, to see the world as your sanctuary shimmering with your sacred presence. Inspire us to protect this living cathedral in all the ways needed to support its flourishing.

We pray for the courage and fortitude to transform our patterns of daily life, individually and collectively, in ways that honor our kinship with the church of creation. Help us and our leaders to see how necessary radical change is in the way we live our lives and move into a life-giving future for all beings.

O Sacred One, we pray that we might find your Presence within Creation that surrounds us. May each stone, each plant, each river, each star speak to our hearts of your Glory and your Presence with us.

Join Simon de Voil and me for our Prayer Service tomorrow with guest musician Deidre Ní Chinnéide.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image paid license with Canva

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Christmas and New Year Blessings ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Christmas Blessing*

This blessing dances at the doorway
of light and dark, knows both as sacred:
fertile womb space, miracle of blooming.

This blessing breathes
through those moments of labor
when you too birth the holy
into this fragile, luminous, hurting world

as Mary did two thousand years ago,
eyes wide, hands gripping,
waters breaking like crashing waves
of the primordial sea
sending a prayer through time
that echoes still,
pulsing like starlight
in an enormous sky.

This blessing rests a hand
on the back of the lonely
disoriented
lost
hungry
despairing
persecuted
to say your humanity is not an obstacle
but a threshold, to remind you
that the wound is a portal
through which your gifts pour forth,
that raw ache you feel
is the terrible wonder of being alive
calling you into a communion
of veil-lifters, catching glimpses
of a world where the greeds
and horrors are turned upside down.

This blessing comes as an Annunciation:
the world needs *you* wild edge-dweller
where the wind cries out,
where the stone endures,

your hands a bowl,
your heart a cave,
your eyes a mirror,
bringing a drink of water,
an ancient song,
a shimmering light
reflecting all that we miss
in days of rushing.

This blessing creates a resting place
to gather your strength
between the diastole and systole
of the heart,
to learn to trust
in roses and pomegranate,
in sparrows and dragonflies,
in the electricity of the storm.

This blessing says:
know this birthing is not
once and for all
but again and again,
erupting like moonlight between
bare branches,
like a hearth fire lit for
all who have been exiled.
This blessing calls you home.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

This has been a wonderful year and we continue to be so deeply grateful to every single one of you who shows up in various ways to support our programs and participate with our community. And we are committed to continue showing up for you in the new year with lots of wonderful programs like our contemplative prayer services (our January 6th theme is kinship with creation), the companion retreat for my newest book A Midwinter God, and a Lent retreat on the women mystics. We also have a brand new prayer cycle coming later in the spring on Cultivating Seeds of Liberation. 

We are delighted to walk the way of the monk and the path of the artist together. We witness to a different way of being in the world, one rooted in slowness, spaciousness, deep love, and profound care. 

Whatever and however you celebrate the winter holy days, the whole team at Abbey of the Arts – Christine, John, Melinda, and our amazing Wisdom Council – wish you blessings of peace and new birthing. 

We will be taking a break from our daily newsletters from now until January 4th.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*Blessing written by Christine for a book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026) 

Photo Paid License with Canva

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Winter Solstice Blessing ~ A Love from Your Online Abbess

Winter Solstice*

Holy One of the turning earth,
we watch the daily pilgrimage of the sun
as its journey grows shorter and shorter.
Bears, bats, and hedgehogs rest
while swallows and swifts have
already migrated south again.
Cold air, bare branches, blankets and shawls,
the growing quiet calls us to our own retreat.
Then a bell rings out across the hemisphere,
the diminishment pauses, then slowly shifts
and we imagine our ancestors standing
in the heart of winter’s cold darkness
with faces upward in awe each year
as your brilliance begins
to brighten the sky for longer each day,
gold beams tumbling like treasure.
We know on this day the light will grow again,
a tiny seed at first, then a shy blooming.
Help us to see our own inner seasons
of darkness and light as the necessary gifts
they are of rest and illumination.
May we become this light for others,
to be a promise of radiance emerging
from every place that feels cold and dark.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I love the quiet invitation of this time of year to descend into stillness. I will be leading an event this Friday for the Winter Solstice with my wonderful friends Deirdre Ní Chinnéide and Simon de Voil who are both deeply enriched by the Celtic imagination and spirit. 

We will be honoring the ancient invitation to listen for the call in the heart of the fertile darkness. Imagine the ancient Irish – over 5000 years ago – constructing Newgrange and many other stone monuments aligned with the solstices and equinoxes. It is powerful to feel our connection to them by pausing and listening for the gifts this time of year brings. 

This reflection is excerpted from our Sacred Seasons online retreat for the Celtic Wheel of the Year:

The Winter Solstice is another profound moment of pause and turning in the great cycle of the year. In Galway our apartment windows face east and south, so one of the great gifts I experience through the seasons is watching the sun make her pilgrimage across the horizon from summer solstice to winter solstice. It is quite a long journey, and on December 21st she will rest at her point furthest south, appearing to stand still for three days before making the return journey again in the long walk toward summer.  It is a rhythm of journey, pause, and return, again and again. It reminds me a great deal of walking a labyrinth and the way I follow the path inward, pause and receive the gifts at the center, and then begin to move more fully out into the world carrying the light that is growing.

I love winter, especially Irish winters which are so rainy and grey, so conducive to lighting candles and making a cup of tea.  I adore the bare branches that reach up to the sky, their stark beauty, the way they reveal the basics.  I love the quietness of winter, fewer people outside.

When we recognize that spring and summer always lead to autumn and winter, in our own lives we will perhaps resist the times of releasing and resting that come to us.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
-Wendell Berry

This poem speaks to me most pointedly about what embracing the darkness means. It does not mean carrying a light into the dark, it means walking right into the darkness and exploring its landscape so that our other senses become heightened and attuned to the sound of seeds jostling deep beneath the black soil, to hear the slow in and out breath of animals in hibernation, to feel our own heartbeats and the heartbeats of those we love, to experience the pulsing of womb-sounds within us just before the water gets ready to break.

Winter invites me to rest and contemplation, to making time for quiet walks in the few hours of light.  The God of winter invites me into a healing rhythm of rest and renewal, of deep listening in the midst of stillness, of trusting the seeds sprouting deep within that have been planted.  There is a harshness to this winter God as well, winter speaks to me of loss, it is the landscape of my grief in all its beauty and sorrow.

The God of winter is also the God of breaking through into the heart of that dark season with the glorious illumination of the Christ child. We too are invited to ponder what is incubating within us and how we are bringing the holy to birth in our lives. 

Join us on Friday for a mini-retreat to honor this sacred threshold moment. On Wednesday Therese Taylor-Stinson will lead Centering Prayer.

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

P.S. For our dancing monks in the Southern Hemisphere a blessing for the Summer Solstice is available here.

*Blessing written by Christine for a book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026) 

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End of Year Giving

Your donations help us make what we do fully accessible to all who desire to be a part of this virtual monastery and gathering of kindred spirits. It is because of your generosity that we are able to offer many free resources – such as our prayer cycles, book club, and scholarship fund – to nourish everyone, regardless of financial capacity. Your donations to Abbey of the Arts also help fund free and reduced fee options on our sliding scale for programs, as well as offer additional scholarships to all who are in need of greater financial support. 

Read about our commitment to financial access here.

We are currently at work on our 6th Prayer Cycle on the theme of Cultivating Seeds of Liberation which will be published in the spring. If you have the means, please consider supporting the work of the Abbey in your end of year giving. We are grateful for contributions in any amount.

U.S. donors can get a tax deductible receipt for financial donations submitted through Fractured Atlas.

Donate to Support Our Ministry here.

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Melanie-Préjean Sullivan

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melanie-Préjean Sullivan’s reflection on her morning prayer practice.

I have always been a student of spirituality. From the time I could read, my life was filled with books on the lives of saints and anything I could find on religious sisters.  Over the years, a few happy situations helped me to discern a different call― to research and teaching, to counseling, and eventually to campus ministry. But there was always a lingering desire to lead a more “religious” life.

When I retired from nearly twenty years as a university minister, I planned to enter the new phase of my life with a renewed commitment to seeking the Divine more intentionally, to increase my attention to the Sacred. I met more often with my Spiritual Director and naturally returned to reading and to setting aside more time for reflection.  My desire to pursue monastic practices and creative endeavors was grounded in the Rule of St. Benedict and two very thought-provoking commentaries on that Rule.  One of them was The Artist’s Rule that I decided to re-read, to embark on its twelve-week journey, and to reconnect with the Abbey of the Arts. I soon discovered several other of Christine’s books, all of which increased my dedication to more deliberate monastic practices.     

During the pandemic I spent hours writing reflections and eventually published a type of memoir on discernment and interreligious encounters, with each short essay prompting questions for my readers to answer. It became clear to me early in my writing that I needed to establish a prayerful daily routine before any of my fingers touched the keys. The following is a summary of the simple routine I have maintained over the last six years:

My first prayer of the day begins by making small circles with my ankles, before my feet touch the floor. I thank God for bringing me safely through the night and for my ability to walk, to move, and to function with only a few of the aches and pains of aging. When I approach my living room bay window, I carefully open each of the three blinds and remember with gratitude all the lives that brought them to be.

I thank God for the foresters and the trees for the wooden slats; I thank the cotton farmers and spinners for the cord that opens them.  And even though some say the dinosaurs aren’t the source of the petroleum that made the plastic possible for the tips, I thank God for the dinosaurs, too, while not forgetting the painters and those who installed the blinds for us. 

In the kitchen, I prepare a cup of tea and recall the women I saw from afar in Kotagiri bending gently over the bushes. Their dedication and those like them all over the world who harvest only the finest leaves, who dry, and process them make it easy for me to prepare such a delicious beginning to my day. The flavored tea I prefer also has bergamot and vanilla essence, so there are other trees, plants, and workers to remember.

At the table, the cup made by a skillful, talented potter has been filled with tea and infused with honey from local hives. I give God thanks for beekeepers and those working for the safety of future crops. I open my prayer book.  Psalms wash over me as the fragrance of the tea settles my thoughts and helps to prepare me for the day. I often open another book or two to gather additional short thoughts that I will ponder (or invite to “shimmer” a bit, as Christine often advises). I might jot down a brief reflection, but I usually simply carry the thoughts out of doors. 

My walk adds several thousand steps to satisfy my health goals, but mostly it is a time of quiet percolation as the mourning doves, cardinals, and squirrels greet me. An occasional deer on alert freezes in the meadow near my home; I make brief eye contact to acknowledge her land and turn gently away to bring her some calm.

My monastic practice means that each of the ordinary parts of my ordinary mornings are touched by remembrance, thanksgiving, and openness to the Spirit. My morning prayer begins before my first steps and ends after a long walk. It sets the day into motion with gratitude for all I have been given, for all those who have made my life what it is.

At the end of each week, I read the posts from Christine and give thanks for Abbey of the Arts. They encourage me to remember that I can be a monk in the world and grow in my love for God and all Her creation. 

Melanie-Préjean Sullivan, DMin is an interspiritual chaplain in Louisville, Kentucky.  She also teaches and leads retreats on spirituality, religious history, and discernment (the subject of her doctoral research). In 2022, she published her spiritual memoir, An Apartment Next to the Angels, found through her website MysticPeregrine.com.

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Community + Give Me a Word ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Friendship and Community*

God of friendship
I come to know your love and care
through the embodied presence of others.
Weave me together with kindred spirits,
knit me more closely with friends of the soul,
cultivate in me a kinship with humanity
so that I recognize my struggles and joys in others.
In my loneliness reveal to me this communion
and may I be a solace to others who ache for connection.
Transform me through conversation and loving presence.
Help me to see how I am part of a great circle
of pilgrims, witnesses, ancestors, and mystics
who guide me to true connection with You.
Gather me into your great wide heart,
so I might discover I am never separate
but always held in love.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today we offer the prayers of concern written by Valerie Allen from our Monk in the World Prayer Cycle Day 3 on the theme of community. This prayer cycle explores the principles of the Monk Manifesto.

Monk Manifesto Principle 3: I commit to cultivating community by finding kindred spirits along the path, soul friends with whom I can share my deepest longings, and mentors who can offer guidance and wisdom for the journey.

“God of the yearning ones, we pray for those who long to belong but who struggle to build meaningful and nurturing friendships. Soothe their loneliness and pain with the healing caress of your love. Increase our sensitivity to others and create a space in our hearts for those we find hard to love.  As you embrace us in all our diversity, may our relationships mirror your compassion and acceptance.”

The prayers cycles are a free resource. We are also delighted to offer an 8-week Monk in the World self-study course to further guide you in exploring the principles of the Monk Manifesto.

Every December we come together as a community with our Give Me a Word blog post gathering. We are pleased to offer the 35 day Give Me a Word Self-Study retreat designed to help you contemplate what holiness is birthing within your soul. Each day there will be a different practice offered to inspire, challenge, and support you in listening for the word that wants to be spoken to your heart. Use code GMAW20 to take 20% off.

PLUS – Share your word in the comments section of this blog post, offer loving witness to other dancing monks sharing their journey, and be entered into a prize drawing.

Tomorrow Simon and I will be joined by guest musician Te Martin for our contemplative prayer service on the theme of community. 

On December 20th, I will be joined by dear friends Simon de Voil and Deirdre Ní Chinnéide for a rich retreat to honor the winter solstice. 

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*Blessing written by Christine for a book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026) 

Community Artwork © Quynh Nguyen

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Monk in the World Guest Post: Laurie vandenHurk

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Laurie vandenHurk’s reflection Mindfulness of everyday life – caring for children.

Quote: Thich Nhat Hanh, “If you touch one thing with deep awareness you touch everything.” (1.)

“Look out,” said the sign, so Jasper stopped to look out at the view. I stopped too. As I waited for Jasper, I felt a call to wake up and look out, to come out of my interior funk/fog and be present, mindful and fully embodied in the moment.

Last summer we had a working holiday, (read holy-days). We took our grandchildren camping and hiking. It was a holy time because hiking in the wilderness grounds and connects me with the vastness, beauty and power of the Ever-Creating Spirit. It was a mindful time because the intensity of child care forced me be to be fully present in the moment. There was no time or energy for anything else.

Our spiritual practices need to fit our lives and work for us. The Holy One is available and accessible to all, and not just to intellectuals, or to those whose time of life or vocation allow for sitting in silence. Healthy spirituality is not about achievement; rather, it is being open to the gifts of life. Hiking with the grandchildren helped me to recognize spiritual practices that open me to gifts of life.

Trappist and Benedictine monks consider their daily work to be part of their spiritual discipline. Hiking, like walking, jogging, dancing, gardening, farming, TaiChi and so on are also embodied spiritual practices. My usual morning spiritual practice is meditation on Scripture which is not at all embodied. On the trail I use all my senses. Sometimes it feels good; sometimes it is uncomfortable, like when my shoes and socks are soaked through with rain. Part of the spiritual practice is to be aware and open to the sensations.

For the space of the hours I spend with children, I recognize that I am totally mindful and engaged. Child-care is an exercise in mindfulness. During our hike-camp I was reminded how much energy it takes for parents to be present and attentive 24/7. It has been many years since we had the full-time care of young children and I found my usual spiritual practices not fitting with the full immersion into childcare. For my peace of mind, I needed some strategies for dealing with conflict and wounded pride.

I re-visited that classic parenting book, “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk.” (2) Their philosophy resonates with me: children are real people with legitimate reasons for their behaviour. Relating to children requires listening, imagination, understanding and empathy. A key take-away for me is “ears can’t hear until emotions are accepted.”

Spiritual practices across traditions give insight on practicing this simple understanding. Non-attachment taught in Buddhism does NOT mean we are not attached and don’t care about our children. Rather it means that our children’s fears, wounds, dreams and victories are not ours. By removing our own emotions from a situation, we are better able to hear our children and accept their emotions. Obvious, but still true, humour helps diffuse a tense situation.

Classic teachings on meditation encourage practitioners to sit in silence. Thomas Keating recommends twenty minutes of silence twice a day. (3.) Even 20 minutes of uninterrupted silence is unrealistic for many parents of young children. Some of us will brush off the value of this practice. Others will feel worse about themselves because they can’t achieve it. There is a middle way which is to recognize and use the silence of moments. Mental health practitioners and others encourage us to notice and pause in the moment between a stimulus and a response.

Between every screaming child and my reaction there is a fraction of a moment. In the same way we tell children to count to ten before lashing out in anger, spiritual wisdom encourages us to live into that moment, that pause. The goal and hope is to remove my wounded pride from my reactions so I can respond to a child’s pain and not the chaos they’ve created in my space.

When I step back, I am able to observe my grandparenting with coolness, outside of the heat of the moment. That is, I can understand their upsets and observe my triggered responses. The authors of “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk,” make it sound so simple. When we look at living mindfully as a spiritual practice of parenting, we recognize that it is not simple and practice doesn’t make perfect. We will make mistakes.

Let us not get so bogged down on a bad moment that we miss the next glowing moment of discovery and joy. Mindfulness as a parent (or grandparent) need not be a separate spiritual exercise but a deep awareness of the miracle of the moment. Mindfulness as a grandparent means for me to pause and “look out,” and celebrate who a child is today, because next week they will already be a different and equally beautiful child.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1409..., Adele and Mazlish, Elaine. “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk.” Publisher: Scribner, February 2012. The version I own was published by Avon Books, A division of Hearst Corporation. New York. 1980Keating, Thomas. “Contemplative Prayer” 3 CDs produced by Sounds True. Boulder Colorado. 1995.

Laurie vandenHurk writes as a partner, grandparent, and care-giver from her years of experience in facilitating community development, spirituality and  bereavement, with people of all ages and widely diverse circumstances, including 10 years in Tanzania. Laurie is a trained Spiritual director of The Haden Institute.

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A Spirituality of Blessing for Advent ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Paradise*

Sacred Source of Joy,
help us to see glimpses
of heaven all around us,
in the urgency of each spring’s blooming,
in the simple gifts of water
to bathe in and drink,
in our morning tea or coffee,
steam rising in prayer,
in the dog’s pleading eyes,
or the warm embrace of a friend,
in the food which nourishes us
and the herbs given freely for healing.
May we behold the way
sunlight illumines and moonlight glows,
may we treasure moments of laughter.
May we see Paradise shimmering forth
wherever we look, savoring moments
of ease and hope in whatever forms they take,
to strengthen and nourish us,
to share a vision of Eden with the world.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

To cultivate a spirituality of blessing means to hold practices like gratitude, generosity, wonder, awe, joy, and delight at what it means to be human. Blessing reminds us of the Paradise that lies hidden at the heart of everything if we only have eyes to see. 

It means to expand our awareness of the sheer gift that life is. To remember that there is always enough, an overflowing abundance of grace, but humans in their patterns of greed and grasping perpetuate a narrative of scarcity and withhold resources from those in need. 

To be a blessing to the world means to hold this sense of profound gratitude for all that is, to allow our capacity for love and wonder to grow, while also resisting those who want to shape a narrow world of suffering. 

When we attend to the beauty of the most ordinary of moments, we remember that the sacred that dwells here among us. Advent is a season to celebrate the incarnation, how the divine became enfleshed in a human body, entering as a vulnerable infant. 

The journey to this holy birth is filled with danger and threat, but the season of Advent honors the birthing that happens in the midst of the growing darkness. The feast of Christmas invites a holy pause to wonder at this joy given form. 

To bless something is to acknowledge its innate sacredness. To bless another is to weave them into a community of care and concern. Blessing is also an act of solidarity, to say to another, I am praying for you, I am celebrating you, I am grieving with you, and I know the Holy One is praying, celebrating, and grieving with us. Indeed, the act of blessing is to acknowledge God as the Source of Love and our care and kindess for one another and all creatures.  

Our Advent retreat starts today and is filled with rich gifts that invite you to wonder and pause and bless. We will begin the journey with a 2-hour live online gathering tomorrow, December 2nd, where I will be joined by Sybil MacBeth who will guide us in the simple yet profound practice of praying in color. 

Then throughout the days of Advent there will be scripture reflections from my husband John, blessing practice videos from some of our Wisdom Council members, and three guest teacher conversations I have with Anna Blaedel and Robert Monson of enfleshed (a website dedicated to creating meaningful prayer and blessings for those on the margins), Rabbi Zari Weiss, and Imam Jamal Rahman. Join us!

With great and growing love, 

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*Blessing written by Christine for a book of blessings (due to be published in spring 2026) 

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Give Me a Word 2025

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to the divine and to their own inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner’s fire and be stripped down to one’s holy essence. The desert was a threshold place where you emerged different than when you entered.

Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word – this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. This practice is connected to lectio divina, where we approach the sacred texts with the same request – “give me a word” we ask – something to nourish me, challenge me, a word I can wrestle with and grow into. The word which chooses us has the potential to transform us.

What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?

Share your word in the comments section below by January 3, 2025 and you are automatically entered for the prize drawing (prizes listed below).

Join our Give Me a Word Self-Study Retreat for guidance and inspiration.

This retreat is designed to help you contemplate what holiness is birthing within your soul. Each day there will be a different practice offered to inspire, challenge, and support you in listening for the word that wants to be spoken to your heart.

The practices are not about resolutions or goal setting, they are not about achieving more in the new year or accomplishing tasks or goals. They are about listening for what is calling to you in a particular season of life. They ask us to trust a greater wisdom at work in the world than our own egos.

Through this retreat, you will be invited to release your thinking mind and enter into a space of receiving. 

Learn more here. Use code GMAW20 to take 20% off through December 31st.

WIN A PRIZE – RANDOM DRAWING GIVEAWAY ENTER BY JANUARY 3rd!One person wins a space in the mini-retreat Holding Paradox: A Retreat with St. Brigid led by Simon de VoilTwo people win a space in our upcoming A Midwinter God retreatTwo people win a space each in their choice of Self-Study retreatsThree people win a Dancing Monk MedallionPlease share your word with us in the comments below

(and it would be wonderful if you included a sentence about what it means for you)

Subscribe to the Abbey of the Arts newsletter to receive ongoing inspiration in your in-box. You can choose daily, weekly, or monthly. Share the love with others and invite them to participate. Then stay tuned – on January 5th we will announce the prize winners!

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