Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 80

Featured Poet: Laurie Klein

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

Our next poet is Laurie Klein whose work is deeply inspired by mystery and the healing that comes from courting holy disruption. You can hear Laurie reading her poem "How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Backyard-Psalmist.mp3



How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist 

Wear shoes with soles like meringue

and pale blue stitching so that

every day you feel ten years old.

Befriend what crawls.

Drink rain, hatless, laughing.

Sit on your heels before anything plush

or vaguely kinetic:

hazel-green kneelers of moss

waving their little parcels

of spores, on hair-trigger stems.

Hushed as St. Kevin cradling the egg,

new-laid, in an upturned palm,

tiptoe past a red-winged blackbird’s nest.

Ponder the strange,

the charged, the dangerous:

taffeta rustle of cottonwood skirts,

Orion’s owl, cruising at dusk,

thunderhead rumble. Bone-deep,

scrimshaw each day’s secret.

Now, lighting the sandalwood candle,

gather each strand you recall

and the blue pen, like a needle.

Suture what you can.

Appeared in Where the Sky Opens

Themes of Her Work

I’m currently thinking of poems as Valentines. I want to name what I love in ways that startle and disrupt and heal. I chase economy with ruthless reverence: a few memorable details, a singular question, the felicitous jolt. Perhaps I’m courting revelation, dazzle amid what dissolves. Feeling compelled by what I can sense— but not say—never stops me from trying! Yes, I trip over my own words, then, eventually, hopefully, cajole all my striving toward tenderness, wherein I can kneel, re-graced. Hostage to nothing. And there, await the passing sacred hem, linen’s whisper brushing against my hand.

Poem for Epiphany

Perhaps, rolled in papyrus

or raw silk,

the jeweled boxes arrive as small thuds,

and gifts imprint the dirt floor.

Were the Magi

quiescent?—a hint of Quaker,

a nod to Zen—with nothing

verbal to treasure or

ever replay in their minds

save eloquent exhalations,

the creak of joints,

be they camels or kings,

the serial tick of straw.

For the marveling patience

of plastic wise men

en route, step-by-step,

to my mother’s crèche (despite

my down-the-stairs drop kicks,

behind her back), I reposition

my knees, atoning, wordless

now, as the star comes for me.

Appeared in Books & Culture, 2016

Poetry and the Sacred

For me, entering the presence of the sacred means embracing mystery. And I adore mystery. Poems I love evoke—and expose—irresistible gaps: within my understanding, between the lines themselves, betwixt soul and Truth’s unerring glance. So I try to inhabit a listening simplicity that borders on innocence, nose out clues. Heaven knows, the last word on just about everything still remains to be said. Often, as a gap narrows into connection, an insight arcs—a comet searing my meager horizon. Is it any wonder “scared” and “sacred” share the same letters?

Centuries ago, trembling Magi parsed the star’s mysterious invitation. The seeking, the gazing, the giving—historically, we call this Epiphany: literally, “to show, to make known, to reveal.” And aren’t these the riches poems offer? An unexplained image shimmers, one step or seemingly light years beyond our reach. We turn toward it, and the primed heart, the even more primal gaze, kindles a devotional reset. Reverence radiates. Gregory Boyle, S.J. tells us, “Awe softens us for the tender glance of God,” which, in turn, graces our glance at life’s enigmas: the sacred waiting for us within others, ourselves, and our work.

I Dream You Ask,

But Where Do I Start?

Unglove the knuckles,

torqued and sore. Let the flesh

dip, then lift, a hand dripping

tears, into the basin,

anchored within a pillar of stone.

Such a kindness, this water,

warmed. Sketch the sign: brow

to breastbone, then shoulder

to shoulder—a recollection,

retraced, like a map. Tell me,

which is graver: the soul's

relief, or its grateful receipt,

re-initialed? Love is an oar

extended, until the lapsed

skiff of a self,

long swamped,

resurfaces chaste, borne

on a christening tide where

memory balloons, everything

new, in one killing swirl

About Laurie

Laurie Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, hymnals, recordings, and recently, on NPR. A past recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and two-time Pushcart nominee, she writes from America’s Inland Northwest. Where the Sky Opens is her debut collection (The Poiema Poetry Series), available at Wipf & Stock (always 20% off retail), and Amazon.Visit Laurie Klein on Facebook, or sample her bimonthly blog at LaurieKleinScribe.com

 

Photo by Dean Davis Photography

Order Laurie Klein's Book

Where the Sky Opens: A Partial Cosmography   (The Poiema Poetry Series)

(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.

[image error]

Cultivating Eyes of the Heart (Part 1) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

The Gospels are filled with stories about seeing, or not seeing, as the case may be.  On the road to Emmaus the disciples are walking with Jesus and breaking bread with him.  We read that their “eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16) When Jesus returns in resurrected form, he is fully embodied, yet hard for them to see clearly.  The disciples do not expect their dear friend to be among them again and so they miss this truth with their limited vision.

We find a similar emphasis on vision in the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration.  The burning light that once appeared to Moses in the bush now radiates from Jesus himself: “His face shone like the sun.”  For the ancient writer Gregory Palamas, it was the disciples who changed at the Transfiguration, not Christ. Christ was transfigured “not by the addition of something he was not, but by the manifestation to his disciples of what he really was. He opened their eyes so that instead of being blind they could see.” Because their perception grew sharper, they were able to behold Christ as he truly is.

This speaks of an invitation to see the world in a different way.  When we rush from thing to thing, never pausing, never allowing space, we see only what we expect to find.  We see to grasp at the information we need. We see the stereotypes embedded in our minds. We miss the opportunity to see beyond what we want. We walk by a thousand ordinary revelations every day in our busyness and preoccupation.

We move through our lives, often at such speed, that our perception of time becomes contorted.  We begin to believe that life is about rushing as fast as we can, about getting as much done as possible. We are essentially skating across life’s surface, exhausted, and disoriented.

The World Breaks In

You may have had an experience where you are moving through a most ordinary day, when suddenly something shifts.  Where there was drudgery and habit, suddenly you become aware of the way sunlight is spilling across the living room rug and your heart breaks open at the splendor of it all.  Or you see a loved one in a new way and revel in their beauty.  Or maybe it is as simple as savoring the steam rising from your morning coffee like incense lifting the longings of your heart.

Contemplative practice calls us to change our perspective and awaken to a different reality, one that is governed by spaciousness, slowness, stillness, and presence.  Contemplation invites us to tend the moments and see what is there, rather than what we expect.

Moments are holy doorways where we are lifted out of time and we encounter the sacred in the most ordinary of acts.  Moments invite us to pause and linger because there is a different sense of time experienced.  Moments are those openings we experience, where time suddenly loses its linear march and seems to wrap us in an experience of the eternal.

We are called to open ourselves to these moments of eternity, or better yet, how we allow the moment to find us. We only need to make ourselves available to them, to receive them as the gifts that they are, rather than seek them out as something we are entitled to have.

(This reflection first appeared in an issue of Weavings journal)

Please join us for our Easter season online retreat when we will practice resurrection through contemplative photography. Details and registration here>>

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: Beverly Dame

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Beverly Dame's reflection on living by and leaving the river.

For five years, I lived on the bank of a small Canadian river.  For someone who had always been a city-dweller even as a child, it was rather like being at camp twelve months a year. The river’s calm waters led us to name our cottage “Stillwaters” because like the psalmist God had led us to them.

The seasons were read on the face of the river. On the coldest days, it froze from bank to bank. In the spring, the snow melt and rain meant rushing to put rocks on the dock so it would not float away. There were the annual comings and goings of geese, the first sighting of their goslings, and then the flocks loudly heading south.

During those years I began a daily ritual. Soon after dawn I would take my camera to the water’s edge to capture the light and color of the moment. Sometimes it was the pinks and violets and golds of the sunrise. At others, it was the shades of white as a fog danced on the surface.  It was art and meditation, a spiritual exercise as well as a creative outlet.

It was at the nearby Abbey of St. Benoit du Lac that I became interested in formally observing the hours of the monastic day, to combine prayer with work and the rest of life. It was a routine that seemed to offer something more than the pattern of my childhood Protestantism. For the monks at the Abbey prayer and worship. They were knit into each day, not confined to Sunday morning.

This was not my first introduction to the monastic life. As with many women of my generation, I had been captivated by the struggles of Audrey Hepburn’s character in “A Nun’s Story.”  In college, I had been fascinated by the lives of the desert mothers, by St. Francis, and by Thomas Merton’s “Seven Story Mountain.” I met my husband at a silent retreat at the convent of All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, Maryland.

As an introvert, the idea of the monastic life has always had great appeal.  In a romantic haze it is easy to forget that for monks and nuns taking the habit means living in community not isolation.  The challenge is to combine a spiritual life with a temporal one; contemplation with action, to be in one place while growing.

In our years on the river I added to the discipline of my morning photography session with 20 minutes of centering prayer. Frequently my husband and I would drive to the Abbey for vespers or the noon mass. On line I discovered the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks and the daily meditations of Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Contemplation and Action.

That life ended in early 2016 when my husband was diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder). He tried to adjust but after three months of a northern winter he found it difficult to breathe indoors or out so we put our riverside home on the market. The fact that it sold in three weeks affirmed our decision to move South.

Between the decision and the actual move, chaos reigned. Each item we touched from plates to paintings, from a lawn mower to my knitting stash required a decision: keep, pitch, donate. The routine of photography/prayer/meditation too often slipped from habit into a good intention.

In the eighteen months since our move to the Gulf Coast of Florida I have often felt like one of the cattails from our riverbank, yanked by my roots and planted in a very different place. Not only am I not beside the river, but the world seems upside down. Summer is the time you stay indoors to escape the heat and humidity not as in the north country where you are outside as much as possible. Winter is the gentle climate not the season of snow and ice  Geese and ducks have been replaced by ibis and herons, pelicans and seagulls; maples by palm trees; wool socks and boots by sandals; our family of muskrats by an alligator named Elvis.

Slowly I am bringing back the rhythm of my spiritual life. While I sometimes skip my twenty minutes of meditation, I am anchored in the worldwide community of the Internet. My morning begins with thoughts from the Abbey of the Arts and Fr. Richard Rohr’s meditation. Sometimes I dip into a daily devotional from the United Church of Christ and listen to Morning Prayer from the Mission of Saint Clare.  Emails and Facebook posts from friends still on my patch of river keep me updated on their lives.  Winter brings the Canadian snowbirds and cans of maple syrup. The discipline of writing, including this meditation, is returning.

And, I am finding a new group of people on the path. Our church has a contemplative prayer group, more than 100 individual opportunities for service as well as daily celebrations of Holy Eucharist.

To borrow the cliché, life is definitely a journey, and not a guided tour. What the past few years have taught me is that the journey can be informed by a framework of prayer and meditation, exploration and discipline, wonder and acceptance. I can be a nun but a nun in the world.

Beverly Dame is a retired communications professional who now lives on the bank of a small lake in Sarasota, Florida. Her photos and writing can be found at A Woman of Enthusiasms.

St. Gobnait and the Place of Her Resurrection (new poem video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

St. Gobnait and the Place of Her Resurrection

On the tiny limestone island

an angel buzzes to Gobnait

in a dream, disrupts her plans,

sends her in search of nine white deer.

She wanders for miles across

sea and land until at last

they appear and rather than

running toward them

she falls gently to wet ground,

sits in silence as light crawls across sky,

lets their long legs approach

and their soft, curious noses surround her.

Breathing slowly, she slides back

onto grass and clover and knows

nothing surpasses this moment,

a heaven of hooves and dew.

Is there a place for each of us,

where we no longer yearn to be elsewhere?

Where our work is to simply soften,

wait, and pay close attention?

She smiles as bees gather eagerly

around her too, wings humming softly

as they collect essence of wildflowers,

transmuting labor into gold.

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

When I moved to Ireland I was familiar with some of the saints like Brigid, Patrick, and Kevin. One of the true delights of living here is being introduced to the many holy figures who lived on this land, who sought the sacred, and worked to serve others.

One of the saints who has most captured my imagination is St. Gobnait. I have been to the two holy sites dedicated to her, one is a tiny stone chapel on the island of Inisheer where she first lived as a hermit. Then later she was called by a dream to seek the place of the nine white deer and create a monastery there. This place is in Ballyvourney, County Cork and is another beautiful site with a huge statues of Gobnait, old stone church buildings, a grave purported to be of her remains, and a holy well. Her story brings together some of what I love about the Celtic tradition – the way that dreams are honored as a sign from God, a call to something new, and the way that animals are considered to be signs of the sacred presence – dreams, signs, symbols, nature, animals all play a significant role in how the early Celtic monks discerned their callings. Gobnait is also the patron saint of bees, another lovely connection as honey has strong healing properties and evokes the sweetness of life.

Soon after I wrote the poem above, I came to know of a wonderful musician named Simon de Voil, who is originally from Scotland and spent time on Iona, and now lives in Port Townsend, WA, not too far from where I lived in Seattle. I fell in love with many of his songs – versions of Deep Peace (based on an old Celtic blessing), Be Still (that amazing psalm), and the Prayer of St. Francis. I shared with him some of my poems to see if he might be inspired to write a song based on one of them. It was a new experiment for me in collaboration with a musician. He was inspired by Gobnait’s story as well, felt a strong kinship to the deer which called to her, and ended up writing a song based on my poem.

I love this song because it takes me on an inward journey through the poem’s story in a way that just reading it doesn’t seem to capture. Then as we moved into this poem video series I knew I wanted this song included.

I invite you to read over the poem slowly, let the story find a place within you to settle. Then play the video below, you could close your eyes and just listen to the song itself at first, and then play it again, this time taking in the images. If the images don’t work for you, stay with what does. This is all a creative experiment! I am so grateful for the many artists with whom I get to work and play.

My collection of poems, Dreaming of Stones, was published this week in the U.S. (coming to other countries very soon!) If you go to this link you can find different ways of ordering a copy for yourself. I would be most grateful for and honored by your support.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

 

 

 

Featured Poet: Susan Millar DuMars

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

Our next poet is Susan Millar DuMars whose work is deeply inspired by the fragility of the human body and the yearning for God. You can hear Susan reading her poem "Undiscovered" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Susan-Millar-DuMars-Undiscovered.mp3



Undiscovered

We lie together quietly

in our big boat of a bed.

His toenail, kneecap, hipbone,

the warm, wet tang of him.

The familiar soft spell

of his voice. Now that I’ve seen death,

I don’t know how anyone

can think there’s a God.

I see what he is seeing:

the final clench of jaw, the last

mute struggle, the leak of colour

starting at the hairline.

The way the lips fall open,

dumb. The nurse tucks a rolled cloth

beneath the chin to close the mouth.

We’re machines, we break down.

Nothing more. Nothing else.

I remember her body

just after – shrunk,

the skin a new skin,

cold and slack as a white sail

on a windless day.

Something had gone. Though we can’t

see the breeze, we know when

it stops blowing. Something had gone.

I only want to know what it was.

Poetry and the Sacred

I was raised to believe in God, but as an adult my faith has taken some pretty hard knocks.  Yet there is a shy, soft part of me that still wants desperately to believe. I am protective of this part, because I imagine it is precisely this – this sense of humility and wonder, this wish to emphasise that which connects us over that which distinguishes us, one from another – this is faith, and this is also the mindset from which poetry is born.

Poems slow us down.  Their rhythm and repetition, the beauty of their sounds make us want to repeat them, like chants, like prayers.  So the words enter our hearts.  There is something Godlike in writing a poem, for by naming things we in a sense bring them into existence.  But poems also do the opposite; they remind us how small we are, tiny integral parts of the whole.  Is not that part of our yearning for God – our need to feel part of something larger than ourselves?

Themes of Her Work

I’ve just put together the manuscript for Naked: New and Selected, due out from Salmon Poetry in March 2019.  This book celebrates my twenty five years as a published poet, so I had to read through all those old poems again.  I was surprised how loyally I’ve stuck to the same themes over those years.  One of these is the fragility of the human body: the phases of our lives, our ideas of beauty, sex (usually playful poems), and then letting go.  What happens when we leave our bodies for the final time? Then the God poems.  Does He exist, and in what form?

If He doesn’t, then for what am I yearning?

Sunday Morning, Lorient 

There’s a man wiping down the carousel

as if it’s the only thing that matters.

Beneath his white rag flattered panels

blush and flash like fallen sections of sky.

There’s an old man up on his balcony

wrapped like something precious in his white robe.

He’s looking at the church across the square.

The air so still he can hear the choir.

A pine cone rattles to the cobbles.

Jackdaws, and the warm wood of this bench

expanding as though with breath.

Small white roses grow on the square,

their fluttering faces like candles.

I need no other cathedral.

In Bed With Anne Sexton

The poem’s not the polish

but the nail

you tell me, your fine-boned feet

in my hair.

My pillow hot.

You’re laughing with your

whole body, clavicle and hips,

thorn nipples, syrup eyes

bright at the foot of my bed.

Ask yourself why

you dream me upside down.

Am I Chaos? you ask.

You’re honest, I answer,

as a fishhook.

You tear the long white beard

off God,

teach me to be naked.

Honesty equals chaos.

Liars are tidy

and the mad walk

in muttering circles.

When I tell the truth

I don’t know what will happen.

Help me, Anne.

But you’re gone

in morning’s milk-light, except

for your chuckle that I feel

beneath my ribs;

your voice calling help yourself, honey.

Help yourself.

 

About Susan

Susan Millar DuMars has published four collections with Salmon Poetry, the most recent of which, Bone Fire, appeared in 2016.  Bone Fire was nominated for the Forward Prize and has been featured on RTE Radio One’s Arena and The Poetry Programme.  She also writes short fiction.  Susan lives in Galway, Ireland where she and her husband Kevin Higgins teach creative writing and have coordinated the acclaimed Over the Edge readings series since 2003.  Susan’s next collection, Naked: New and Selected Poems will be published by Salmon in Spring, 2019.

 

Order Susan Millar DuMars' Books

Naked: New and Selected Poems - due out in late March 2019

Bone Fire

Dreams for Breakfast

Big Pink Umbrella

The God Thing

Dreaming of Stones
(available to pre-order)

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones will be published by Paraclete Press this March.

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.

[image error]

The Feast of St. Patrick and the Spring Equinox ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Holy Mountain*

I want to climb the holy mountain

ascend over weight of stone

and force of gravity, follow the

rise of a wide and cracked earth

toward eternal sky,

measured steps across the sharp path,

rest often to catch my heavy breath.

I want to hear the silence of stone and stars,

lie back on granite's steep rise

face to silver sky's glittering points

where I can taste the galaxies

on my tongue, communion of fire,

then stand on the summit and

look out at the laboring world.

I want to witness earth's slow turning

with early light brushing over me,

a hundred hues

of grey, pink, gold,

speckles of Jackson Pollock light,

then ribbons of mist floating

like white streamers of surrender.

I want to look back down the trail

as if over my past, forgive a thousand tiny

and tremendous transgressions

because now all that matters

is how small I feel under the sky,

even the sparrowhawk takes no notice of me,

how enlarged I feel by knowing this smallness.

I want to be like St. Patrick,

climb the holy mountain full of

promise and direction and knowing,

forty days of fasting aloft among clouds

until my body no longer hungers

and something inside is satisfied

and my restless heart says here,

no longer dreaming of other peaks.

—Christine Valters Paintner

*This poem first appeared in The Galway Review

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.

—Isaiah 35:1-2

I believe deeply that the seasons have a great deal of spiritual wisdom to offer us if we make space to listen. They teach us of the cycles and seasons of the earth and of our own lives. We are invited into the movements of blossoming, fullness, letting go, and rest, over and over again. Just like the lunar cycles of the moon's waxing and waning, so too does the body of the earth call us into this healing rhythm.

The spring equinox is on March 20th when the sun hovers above the equator, and day and night are equal length. This is considered the New Year in Persian tradition as well as the astrological calendar. Spring is a time of balance, renewal, and welcoming new life into the world.

As the northern hemisphere enters the season of blossoming we are called to tend the places of our lives that still long for winter's stillness as well as those places ready to burst forth into the world in a profusion of color. It takes time to see and listen. Around us the world is exploding in a celebration of new life, and we may miss much of it in our seriousness to get the important things of life done.

Poet Lynn Ungar has a wonderful poem titled "Camas Lilies" in which she writes: "And you — what of your rushed and / useful life? Imagine setting it all down — / papers, plans, appointments, everything, / leaving only a note: "Gone to the fields / to be lovely. Be back when I'm through / with blooming." Spring is a time to set aside some of the plans and open ourselves to our own blooming.

There is a playfulness and spontaneity to the season of spring that invites us to join this joyful abandon. As the poet Hafiz writes, spring is a time for singing forth and celebration. We are called to both listen deeply to the blossoming within ourselves as well as to forget ourselves — setting aside all of our seriousness about what we are called to do and simply enter the space of being. In this field of possibility we discover new gifts.

On my daily walks I have seen clusters of crocuses thrusting themselves out from the ground into the brilliant sunlight. The branches of cherry trees begin to hum, preparing to burst forth. Small shoots are pressing outward, anticipating their explosion into a pink spectacle of petals. And in my presence to this dynamic energy I discover places within me humming and bursting forth. I notice my own deep longings wanting to emerge in vibrant ways.

The fertility and flowering of spring speaks of an abundantly creative God who is at the source of the potent life force beating at the heart of the world. Created in God's image, we are called to participate in this generous creativity ourselves. Our own flowering leads us to share our gifts in service to others.

In the Hebrew Scriptures the promise of God's abundance is often conceived of as blossoming in the desert. In that harsh landscape, a flower bursting forth from the dry land is a symbol of divine generosity, fruitfulness, and hope. Hope is a stance of radical openness to the God of newness and possibility. When we hope, we acknowledge that God has an imagination far more expansive than ours.

Six weeks ago we were tending the very early signs of earth’s belly rumbling with this activity beneath the ground. Depending on where you live, you may have felt and seen it, or it may have still been a distant dream.

What are you seeing around you? What are you feeling within?

(This reflection was excerpted from our Sacred Seasons online self-study retreat)

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

P.S. Our southern hemisphere dancing monks can find a reflection on the autumn equinox at this link>>

Photo © Marcy Hall at Rabbit Room Arts (prints are available in her Etsy shop)

Monk in the World Guest Post: Michelle Kobriger

I'm delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World Guest Post Series from the community. Read on for Michelle Kobriger's reflection on the artist and beginning again.

Winter came on hard and fast this year, the colorful autumnal display fading quickly to brown. Days of wind and rain stripped the trees, carpeting my favorite woodsy trail in a thick layer of crunchy leaves. Tromping down the path a day after heavy rains, showers of acorns plopped to the ground like fat raindrops as squirrels scurried to gather the bountiful harvest. I don’t know what it would be like to live in a climate of perpetual green. I’d miss the changing seasons — earth’s way of reminding us life is cyclical, change is constant, routines are meant to be adjusted.

The path of an artist and monk in the world asks us to live close to the earth with reverence for God’s creation; appreciating earth’s wisdom and the gifts she offers to nourish, teach, and delight. In winter, she offers an invitation to slow down; take time to rest and regroup. For me, it’s a time to revel in steamy mugs of tea, long hot baths, and a crackling fire in the fireplace with our cat Benny cuddled beside me. A time to delight in the red flash of cardinals in the birch tree, bare branches transformed to crystalline sculpture, and snowflakes glittering like fairy dust in frigid air.

In my studio, winter affords time to take stock of unfinished projects and abandoned ideas, mindful of Saint Benedict’s advice — I wonder if he was thinking of artists when he said, “Always we begin again.” I wonder if a long deep sigh preceded those words, if they were accompanied by a patient smile, or if there was a hint of exasperation because artists can be so mercurial, so messy: resisting structure, questioning the status quo, asking why, what if, and breaking rules. Good intentions toward discipline and daily practice go up in smoke when the Muse crooks her finger, whispering your name

You might end up with a studio splattered in ink, or a kitchen awash in cake batter and mounds of dirty dishes. There might be stacks of unfinished canvases, half-finished manuscripts, and surfaces littered with the tools and supplies you purchased after a workshop but forgot how to use. Maybe a fabulous dessert recipe destroyed your good intentions toward healthier eating. I like to believe Benedict understands that no matter how many times we try to begin again, the discipline of a daily practice can devolve into an exercise in cat-herding as competing demands for time and attention tug us in different directions. He kindly offers his rule to bring us back on course — again, and again.

In summer, I’m easily distracted by calls to be outdoors. Living in Wisconsin, you can’t help but develop a profound appreciation for the loveliness of warm sunny days. The long hours of daylight call me outside for morning walks and evening walks, followed by strolls through the garden to watch fireflies winking in the bushes. The calendar fills with travel and social events and I lose my place with creative projects. I’m always a little relieved when hints of yellow ochre mute the deep blue-green hues of the summer tree canopy. When the red and orange tones appear and the farmers market bursts with the fullness of the harvest, it’s time to take a deep breath and remember — not only is it okay to begin again, it’s expected and encouraged.

The monk is called to practice radical hospitality — a rule we can apply to the more undisciplined aspects of our bohemian nature.

We’re often the ones standing on the edges where we can see the wider view or the nuanced shades of a situation. We tend to listen more than we speak — but we aren’t afraid to ask questions, or question our assumptions.

The artist’s eye, attuned to the myriad grey tones in pebbles on the shoreline might notice the drooping shoulders and the brave smile that fails to light the eyes of a friend in need of encouragement.

The artistic traits resulting in failure at discipline help us follow Spirit’s nudges to divert from the usual route — nudges that might lead to someone needing a kind word, a bit of advice, or a helping hand. Adjustments to the day’s schedule can always be made when a friend needs help.

I like to think Benedict sees the positive side of our unconventional traits, encourages us to welcome and appreciate them, and congratulates us for the courage to show up for our work.

When we give ourselves permission to begin again, we recognize the value of process over end product and affirm that time spent outside the studio is fundamental to our process. Every season comes with its own brand of magic. Our work is to bring presence to the world we inhabit — in all its beauty and tragedy — to see all the colors in the sunset, hear every note in the birdsong, feel the love and despair of those who walk with us in life.

Then with hands, heart, the tools of our craft, and the grace to begin again, we offer a response.

Michelle Kobriger is a metalsmith and mixed-media artist. At her home in Waukesha, Wisconsin, cooking, gardening, and homemaking offer endless opportunity for creative expression in the spirit of Oscar Wilde’s words: “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

Connemara Illuminated (new poetry video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Connemara Illuminated

A poem is being scribed this morning

across the thick brown bog and

over the gashed granite folds of mountain,

written in spires of gold descending

from the wide bowl of sky

across the breathing heather.

You have to pause to read it,

long enough to hear beneath the relentless

moan of wind

where centuries of voices have whispered

their seeking, feasting, fasting, loving.

You know your singular aloneness

and your place in a communion of stone and sea.

Even as the kestrel’s wings vibrate into the night

sending quills into the damp air,

even as the skylarks and stonechats

attend each day’s awakening

like eager midwives,

this empire of longing writes its script

in fox tracks and memory.

If your life could be just a fraction of this poem

you would never need to utter another word.

—Christine Valters Paintner

(This poem first appeared in Tiferet Journal)

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I am delighted to share another poetry video created by the wonderful Galway-based Morgan Creative. We live just a short drive from the Connemara region and I love this landscape of granite mountains, bog, heather, and sea. It is a very elemental place where the wind howls in winter and strips away anything you might be holding onto too tightly. It is one of my favorite places to go for a hike or just spend some time in meditation along the shoreline.

The poem takes its inspiration from the ancient art of illuminating manuscripts. I love those painstakingly designed texts where monks would bring in image to help deepen the meaning. Illumination referred to the gold that was added to various designs to create a sense of light shining through. Often when I am standing by a wet field in Ireland after a rainy morning, and suddenly the sun breaks through and the field is shimmering and sparkling with light, I imagine that those ancient monks were trying to capture that moment in their work on the manuscripts.

One day while out in the wilds of Connemara, on a day when light and shadow were playing against each other, I began to imagine the land itself as a manuscript that had been illuminated by a divine hand. Then I thought about how my life is also a poem illuminated by unseen forces in the world. “You have to pause to read it” I write in the poem above, how often in our rushed and useful lives do we pause to appreciate the sacred text that is the world, crying out to be read, to be savored?

I invite you to pause now and pour a cup of tea, then give yourself two minutes to watch the video below which includes some gorgeous footage of the Connemara landscape to accompany my reading of the poem:

Feel free to share the video if you feel so inspired. My collection of poems, Dreaming of Stones, is being released in the next several days. If you go to this link you can find different ways of ordering a copy for yourself. I would be most grateful for and honored by your support. And if you feel inspired by sacred poetry to join me in Chartres, France this summer check out this webinar we just recorded to provide you with more details to discern if the experience is calling to you.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Featured Poet: Roselle Angwin

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

Our next poet is Roselle Angwin whose work is deeply inspired by wild places and the natural world. You can hear Roselle reading her poem "River Suite" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/07-River-Suite.mp3



from I Colum Cille: St Columba’s Isle

iv Why we stayed

It’s the glass-blue day

it’s the way light inhabits

the creases, smears colour

that steals your breath.

It’s the unbidden moment

that spells dolphin, otter, seal.

It’s the islands we come to

the islands we’re not.

It’s the white glyphs

that scribble the swell

in the Sound, and the bucking boats

that yield, and do not sink.

It’s the sand so pale

it might be grains of light.

It’s the big Hebridean night

that opens its arms

and drops its creels of stars

towards our upturned faces.

~ Roselle Angwin, A Trick of the Light: poems from Iona

Poetry and the Sacred

Poetry, for me, is essential practice, in both senses of the word ‘essential’: something about peeling away the layers to reveal essential nature under all our habits, roles and conditioning.  Significantly, it offers entry into a more subtle dimension, mediating between worlds: between unknown and more familiar aspects of ourselves; between ourselves and another; between ourselves and the rest of the natural world. It’s a ‘slender thread’, a connecting thread, that continues to keep us alive when all about us seems to be descending into ruin.

The best poetry is transcendent, and always ‘plugs me in’: enables reconnection to the whole, remembering that everything is interconnected.

So I go to poetry to reach beyond ego; to be part of the great family of all-that-is.

As sacred practice, poetry takes me beyond the transient. Poetry transports me, simultaneously bringing me instantly and entirely present through the poem to this moment, this light rain on the skylight, the buzzard that just glided past, daffodils bravely pushing green spikes from hard dark earth – the courage of everything, the cycles, the joy; despite war, poverty, climate change, species’ decline. Heaven on earth. It’s a reminder that there is always beauty and presence, and we’re all in it together.

Themes of Her Work

My latest poetry collection comes from the Isle of Iona, where I lead annual retreats. It’s very much about the sacred within nature. My work is predominantly about our relationship with and reconnection to each other and the other-than-human, and the urgency of our need to find a better way to be with the others who share our planet. I’m utterly passionate about animals, birds, plants, trees, rivers and so on. Most of my courses and writings now have this focus, and I’m currently leading a yearlong ‘Tongues in Trees’ course with the aim of making people’s connection more conscious.

Doublewaters

You could have been squatting here forever

almost grown into bank, or become another

rippling ring of light on the dark river.

Twigs have roosted in your hair; your hands

river-stone-cold. Breath feathers the last of the day.

Where do we go each time we close behind us

the door of the present moment? Who

steps forward and who is left behind?

Who still squats by the water when you’re

long gone into tree, or bird, or sand?

~Roselle Angwin, Looking For Icarus

Almost a Prayer

After we’d trudged so far to the pass at the top

of the island, rain and wind beating our faces,

rising like a single uncluttered thought

from the lochan’s dark mouth a pair of swan,

whoopers, passing through to Siberia,

their curd-white a thickening, a measure

of silence hefted against grey air,

their presence an act of grace, almost a prayer.

~ Roselle Angwin, appears in both All the Missing Names of Love and A Trick of the Light: poems from Iona

 

About Roselle

Poet, author, mythologian and counsellor Roselle Angwin has been leading the holistic ‘Fire in the Head’ creative and reflective writing programme for 28 years on Dartmoor, in Cornwall, on the Isle of Iona and in France. As an eco-writer and eco-psychologist, she also leads ‘The Wild Ways’ outdoor workshops and retreats. Her eleven books include poetry, novels and creative non-fiction.

She’s passionate about wild places and the natural world, as well as the meeting points between inner and outer geographies: imagination, relationship, connection, land. She has been described as ‘a poet of the bright moment... whose own sources of creative inspiration are her native Westcountry, the Scottish islands, and a highly individual blend of Celtic myth and metaphysics, psychology, shamanic and Buddhist thinking’.

Roselle-Angwin.co.uk

TheWildWays.co.uk

Order Roselle Angwin's Books

A Trick of the Light: poems from Iona

 Looking for Icarus

All the Missing Names of Love

Roselle is the author of a number of other works of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction.

Dreaming of Stones
(available to pre-order)

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones will be published by Paraclete Press this March.

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.

7 Pilgrimages You Can Go on Right Now (Part 2) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

There are many ways to practice pilgrimage. You can journey far away to a sacred site, but there are also options within reach of a walk or drive from home, or even within your own imagination. Here are some suggestions:

Make a memory pilgrimage

This invitation is to make a pilgrimage through your memories and can be done sitting or lying down at home. The practice is inspired by St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Examen. Spend time in preparation by looking through old photos. Begin by reading Luke 2:19, where it says, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” This is a pilgrimage of pondering.

Then find a quiet space, slow down your breathing, and drop inward into your imagination. Reflect back on your life and imagine that you are walking through each decade as if on a physical pilgrimage. Honor the journeys you have made. Pay attention to those moments of grace and ease when you felt a profound sense of consolation and love in your life. Let each God-kissed moment rise up, and spend time savoring it and offering a prayer of gratitude for it.

Then shift your awareness and walk through your memories again. This time pay attention to those moments of challenge and discomfort, perhaps even desolation. Let each moment rise up, and honor its role as part of your life story. See if there is anyone you would like to forgive for this experience, including yourself. Ask for God’s companionship in this journey of tenderness and remembering.

To complete the experience, bring your awareness back to the present moment and notice what you have discovered about yourself by remembering these times of both grace and challenge. Take some time to name the gifts of this pilgrimage of memory.

Make a friendship pilgrimage

Choose three friends to visit and schedule time with them, either all in one or three days in a row. Let this be a time of reflection on the gift of friendship in your life and all the ways friends of various kinds have supported you over the years. Consider bringing each of these friends a small gift that symbolizes how they enrich your life or that represents a special shared memory. Spend time together talking about the pilgrimage of each of your lives and how you have become woven together through time. Ask for support and prayer in a situation of your life and ask how you can support your friend as well.

Begin your time of pilgrimage by reading the story of the visitation (Luke 1:39–45), when Mary goes to see her cousin Elizabeth, or the story of David and Jonathan’s friendship (1 Sam. 18:1–4). Ask that your time with friends be blessed as a journey of the heart and that you might make new discoveries together about how God is calling you to be in support of one another.

Peregrin ​ atio

The ancient Irish monks had a very unique approach to pilgrimage. They would set out on a journey for Christ, often by boat without oar or rudder, and let the currents of divine love carry them to the place of their resurrection. This is the place where their gifts and the needs of the community came together and they were able to serve fruitfully.

Instead of a literal journey by boat, you can work with the spirit of this pilgrimage experience by going for a contemplative walk without destination. Begin your pilgrimage by reading the story of Abraham and Sarah being called to leave their homeland in search of a new country (Gen. 12:1–2). Bless this time and release any desire for a goal or outcome. Take some deep breaths to center yourself and see where your feet take you. You aren’t trying to get anywhere, just to be present moment by moment to the call of the Spirit. See where your attention is drawn, pause often, and linger.

Cultivating this as a regular practice helps us to open up to peregrinatio in our daily lives when we are called to release our grasp on the life we think we need and open to the sacred possibilities being offered to us.

Life as pilgrimage

Life itself offers up many opportunities to embark on a pilgrimage journey. Sometimes these are events that don’t feel very welcome in our lives, such as illness or loss of a job or a relationship. When something challenging arises in your life, embrace the perspective of a pilgrim as a way of meeting it in a new way.

Begin your reflection by reading from the Book of Job 38:4–7, which begins with God’s question to Job, “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?” and ends with God’s laying of the cornerstone “while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy.” Taking a pilgrim’s perspective means that in the midst of struggle we search for ways to see how we might be stretched open to new images of God. We might discover the divine abiding with us in ways we hadn’t considered before, through the presence of friends, family members, or companion animals, through silence and meditation, or through being called to pare down your life commitments.

This article also appears in the July 2018 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 83, No. 7, pages 12–17).

Please join us for our Lenten online retreat as we journey through my book The Soul of a Pilgrim together in community. Our pilgrimage begins tomorrow!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner