Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 84

The Sacred Gifts of Poetry ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dreaming of Stones

In the world before waking

I meet a winged one,

feathered, untethered,

who presses in my palm

three precious stones,

like St. Ita in her dream,

but similarities end there,

her with saintliness and certainty,

me asking questions in the dark.

All I know is

I am not crafted from

patience of rock or gravity of earth,

nor flow of river,

I am not otter with

her hours devoted to play.

I am none of these.

At least not yet.

The stones will still be singing

centuries from now,

made smooth by

all kinds of weather.

If I strike them together,

they spark and kindle.

Do I store them as treasures

to secretly admire

on storm-soaked days?

Or wear them as an amulet

around my neck?

When the angel returns to me

in the harsh truth of last morning,

will she ask

what have I endured,

treasured, and sparked?

Will she ask what have I hidden away

and what made visible?

—Christine Valters Paintner (first published in Spiritus journal)

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Each year, John and I lead a weeklong writing retreat on the sacred and magical island of Inismor, off the coast of Connemara in the west of Ireland. We have led this retreat several times and there is something so special about extended time on this small limestone outcropping in the Atlantic Ocean that has been a place for pilgrimage for hundreds of years. We gather together in the mornings for shared ritual and song, lectio divina, and writing practice. We write for the love of it, we write to generate new ideas, we write to discover what we know, and we experiment with some different forms to see what happens when we stretch out of old patterns.

I have always considered myself a writer, first and foremost, since I was a fairly young girl. Perhaps being an only child and an introvert who loved books, drew me into the dance of words and the space between them, and how they can dazzle me into new knowing. I was fortunate to take on a journaling practice in my twenties, inspired by Julia Cameron’s lovely book The Artist’s Way. I was deeply inspired by the illuminated manuscripts and the monks who lovingly and painstakingly copied those words with their beautiful embellishments. I wanted so much to live a creative life in the midst of the work I was called to do in teaching, retreat facilitation, and spiritual direction.

The balance hasn’t always been easy. I went on to graduate school, mostly because I wanted to immerse myself in words and writing, and my hope was that the PhD program would somehow cultivate my writing skills. It did shape me into an academic writer for a long time, and it did give me important tools of scholarship and research which I still draw on far outside the walls of academia.

After finishing my doctoral studies, I was drawn to start writing a blog. Blogging was fairly new then, this was twelve years ago. It forced me to write more succinctly and for a much wider audience than my academic training had encouraged. And of course, that blog became Abbey of the Arts, which in turn became a global community. I am still in awe of how things unfold.

It is a tremendous privilege that I am able to write and publish books that feel meaningful to me and others. I still struggle at times with the “balance” between my own creative work and my time spent teaching and facilitating others, another passion of mine. I stay open to the Spirit at work in these different activities.

When we first moved to Ireland six years ago I started taking poetry classes again to hone my own craft. That has been an exhilarating journey of deepening into my own poetic voice and finding a wonderful community here in Galway of support.

The poem above is inspired by St. Ita. She was one of the women saints and mystics of Ireland and she was a teacher and mentor to St. Brendan, one of the very well known monks of this land. Her feast day is January 15th. Ita had a dream about receiving three stones as a promise to her of what was to come. I loved entering into this moment as the inspiration for the poem that eventually emerged. While I write poems on a number of subjects, the poems I write inspired by particular monks and mystics feel like a doorway of connection to these saints beyond the veil. In writing them I want to connect ordinary people to the lives of these remarkable people and to make them somehow more accessible, to see how their lives and witness might offer guidance for our own.

So I encourage you to sit with the poem above. On our writing retreat we practice lectio divina with poetry, reading a particular poem out loud several times and listening for the word or phrase that shimmers, then letting that unfold in the imagination until we hear an invitation, and then rest into silence. I invite you to consider a version of this process and to see what a poem calls you to see and hear in new ways.

For me, the divine voice speaks so often through the gift of poetry. Poems slow us down, invite us to pause and linger, to repeat words so we can savor them and let them infuse into our very being. They offer the world back to us in a new form, in a new way.

You can pre-order my first full collection of poems titled Dreaming of Stones being published by Paraclete Press and available in March!

If you want to cultivate your own poetry writing, please join me June 10-14, 2019 in Chartres, France for a time of retreat and pilgrimage, journeying the labyrinth, and exploring the sacred gifts of poetry in your own life.

With great and growing love,

Christine

 

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing Monk icon of St Ita  © Marcy Hall at Rabbit Room Arts (prints are available in her Etsy shop)

Monk in the World Guest Post: Peter Nagle

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Peter Nagle's reflection on retiring to the edge.

My life partner Joy and I are from New Hampshire and Ct. We’ve been married 20 years coming up and worked together in our former business: A Private Financial Advisory Firm. It was a 38 year career for me. I always considered what I did a ministry. But both of us longed to find a quieter, more simple life. That opportunity presented itself 3 years ago when, out of nowhere, a larger company offered to buy us out. We took the offer and retired.

Finally we had our chance to live the quiet faithful lives we yearned for, and to live them on the edge.

Though we lived and worked in CT, we had had a home in Hawaii for the winters as well for 6 years. Hawaii (Oahu in our case) is an incredibly beautiful place. Warm, lush, green – I described it as a womb-like place. But we knew we couldn’t retire there. I know this sounds incredible but it’s just too beautiful, too separated from the rest of the world, and as such unchallenging. We needed to be someplace on the edge. Someplace spiritual that would challenge us to become who we were meant to be.

We found that place in Northern New Mexico. I was trained there to be a Spiritual Companion and also attended the Living School there. So we had occasion to come here often. It’s mountains and desert here. Starkly beautiful, with a huge horizon, and not a little danger. If you go out into the desert unprepared, you’re unlikely to come back. The desert is not forgiving. Scripture stories of Jesus going into the desert to pray bring to mind how purifying the desert is. It is definitely living on the edge here, and we love it.

We live like monks really, I’ve said that for years. The atmosphere in our home is soft, quiet, with beautiful sacred music. People always comment how calm and soothing it is in our home.

Joy is a certified yoga instructor and that is a big part of her belief system and life. She teaches Yoga weekly at Dancing in the Desert in El Rito and continues to study her craft very deeply. I am a Spiritual Companion and it is very meaningful to me, to help people sort out their spiritual lives. I have a private practice, and also do spiritual companionship for Richard Rohr’s Living School, as well as for Ghost Ranch.

Together we care for pilgrims that come our way, Joy with her yoga and healthy nutrition, and me with spiritual guidance, and of course, the land. We have a retreat house that is quiet, secluded, and with wonderful views and lovely hikes of all kinds. Our house faces the West and we witness the amazing sunsets nightly. Silence is a close companion here. The kind of silence that allows you to explore your inner depths to discover who you are and what God created you to be.

We also travel the West to witness its incredible beauty and people.

I want to say one other thing. In addition to the desert being on the edge, the people and life here are very much “on the ground”. People live close to the land here, the earth. Many people are poor and have little in the way of material possessions. It’s quite a contrast to Fairfield County CT where we lived for so long. But it feels so much more real here. People are real. They are kind and love to talk story.

We still keep an open mind for our place of resurrection. This may be it, who knows? We are listening for the call and are definitely hearing it now. In the meantime we continue our search, along the edge, with faith and love.

Peter Nagle’s life has been guided by deep faith and spirituality, and he loves to help people with their own spiritual path. Peter is certified as a Spiritual Companion and lives in Ojo Caliente NM with his wife Joy, a yoga instructor. He is a retired financial advisor. He holds a Masters in Religion from Yale Divinity School where he graduated cum laude in 1996. Peter is a Spiritual Companion for Richard Rohr’s Living School Students, and he graduated from that program in 2016. Peter is currently focusing on building his Spiritual Companion practice (also known as Spiritual Direction). He and his wife, Joy, have four daughters and four grandchildren. Visit him online at Soulwork.Faith

 

Feast of Epiphany – Follow the Star ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

The Feast of Epiphany is celebrated today. It is one of my favorite scripture stories as it offers us a series of powerful invitations.

The last few lines of the gospel text, offer us a template for an archetypal journey, that is, one we are all invited to make. We can find ourselves in the text if we have ever longed to follow an inkling into the long night knowing there were gifts awaiting us.

1. Follow the star to where it leads

The story begins with the magi calling upon the grace of night vision.  Navigation in ancient times was largely by stars and constellations. Travelers had to know the night sky and trust the path through darkness and unknowing. As you cross this threshold into the New Year, what is the star beckoning you in the night? As you stand under a black sky of unknowing which star is shimmering? The star might be a particular practice, which when you commit to following it, will guide you in a holy direction. It might be a word to guide you for the year.

2. Embark on the journey, however long or difficult

Herod gathers all his chief priests and scribes to find out more about this holy birth. Instead of searching out for himself, he sends the magi on his behalf. While Herod seeks outside advice and send others, the magi make the journey for themselves. Where are you tempted to trust others to make the journey for you, perhaps in reading books about the spiritual journey but never practicing yourself? How might you own your journey more deeply in the coming year?

3. Open yourself to wonder along the way

The scriptures tell us the magi were “overjoyed at seeing the star.” I like to imagine them practicing this kind of divine wonderment all along the journey there. Moments which spoke to the sacred call. When we lose our sense of wonder our hearts become hardened and cynical, we forget to believe in magical possibilities. As you enter into a new cycle of the earth’s turning, how might you embrace the gift of wonder? What practices open your heart.

4. Bow down at the holy encounters in messy places

When the magi enter the messy, earthy place of the manger, it says they bow down and prostrate themselves. Prostration is an act of humility and honor, as well as full-body connection with the earth. As you encounter the sacred in the most ordinary of places, how might you express this embodied appreciation and honor.

5. Carry your treasures and give them away freely

The magi reveal the gifts they have brought of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold represents the honor brought to a King, frankincense is a connection to the divine by raising our prayers heavenward, and myrrh a holy oil of anointing.  What are the treasures you carry with you into the New Year? How might you offer them even more generously to others in the months to come?

6. Listen to the wisdom of dreams

The magi are warned in a dream not to return to Herod and they listen to this night wisdom. The scriptures are filled with stories of dreams delivering important messages and facilitating discernment. Our own night dreams arrive unbidden laden with mystery and meaning. In the new year, how might you honor these stories which emerge from the darkness and surrender of sleep?

7. Go home by another way

After receiving the gift of the dream, they choose another way home. In truth, after any journey of significance, there is no going back the same way as before. We always return with new awareness if we have been paying attention.  What is the usual path you have traveled which has become suffocating? How this year call forth new directions in your own life? Is there something symbolic of the new way home which you could carry with you like a talisman?

These stories carry ancient treasures for us: guidance and wisdom along the way. Ultimately we turn inward to discover our own call, our own treasures to share, the dreams emerging in silent spaces.

I invite you to find a window of time in these next few days to ponder this story and these questions in your heart and see what insights they awaken for you.

Join us for our New Year online retreat The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred (starts tomorrow!)>>

With great and growing love,

CHRISTINE

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Listen to Christine’s podcast interview on Awakened Woman Self-Care

In this podcast Christine explains why she chose the title The Soul’s Slow Ripening. It called to her because her approach, “… has always been organic and tied to the seasons. The contemplative approach to life is not a quick fix solution. It allows for the season to have its fullness.” Christine also speaks about her move to Ireland, a land rich in sacred history. She shares her stories of mystics and the magic of stones there.

Click here to listen >>

Monk in the World Guest Post: Susan Fish

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Susan Fish's reflection "Stilling the Whirlwind."

“I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women,” wrote Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her classic book, A Gift from the Sea. “I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls—woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life.”

This summer, just as Lindbergh temporarily left her usual life behind to go to the sea, so I left behind my normal occupations—as mother, wife, dog walker, chief cook and bottle-washer—for a very short time to lean toward creativity, contemplation and the saintly life.

I went to Italy. For two days.

The story behind that story involved found days during a business trip to Switzerland, shockingly cheap flights, and the mustering of a great deal of courage to travel on my own to a country whose language I don’t really speak.

Lindbergh speaks for me when she writes, “I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be.” But for a whirlwind two days, yes, perhaps.

I booked a stay in a convent in Florence and my most important destination was to climb the many steps that lead to the 100-year-old San Miniato church in time to listen to the monks sing vespers.

Part of my purpose in this trip was to research a novel, partly set in Florence. I had been once before, and this time I wanted to go alone, to serve my creative project and my soul. I pictured myself moving fast and unencumbered through the streets, carrying only the lightest and most essential of possessions (a toothbrush, a passport and a change of underwear), deciding for myself where I would stop and where I would go.

Instead, I found myself in the midst of the state that Lindbergh calls “torn-to-pieces-hood,” surrounded and slowed by thousands upon thousands of tourists, anxious about getting lost, feeling the foreignness of a foreign city. Even the nuns seemed distracted, busy about many things.

I witnessed those who were centred: the monks who faithfully, daily, performed their offices in the crypt of the church on the hill. The coolness of the marble steps I sat upon and the listening to their voices, whose words I did not understand, but God did—those gave me an hour’s peace. And then I was out in the inner and outer chaos once more.

The last time I had been to Florence, it had been a warm, green, quiet March. Now the city was baked in the intense summer heat, swarming with mosquitos and tourists alike. Contemplation felt improbable, if not impossible, and I wondered how I would think about the trip, how I would write about it.

And then, everything shifted.

Catherine of Siena lived fifty miles and 650 years from today’s Florence.  Lindbergh quotes Catherine, saint and mystic, who says, “The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn.”

It was true for me too. When the city and the tourists became too much for me, that was when I became a monk in the world: I found a small stone doorstep and sat quietly, allowing the noise and the chaos of the world to go by. I let go of my literary agenda that said I needed to visit three museums, two shops, a church and a vertical garden during my 25 hours in the city. I released my disappointment that Florence had not been the magical experience I had remembered. I made myself at home within myself. As Lindbergh says, quoting another writer, I found “the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still.”

As I had imagined, I had darted through the city, boldly, avidly, sucking the marrow out of the experience—a whirlwind on a whirlwind trip. But it was in that stilling of my soul, mind and body, even for a short while, that I was able to be present to God, to myself, to the world around me. I thought of another monk in the world, the prophet Elijah, who looked for and did not find God in the great whirlwind, in the powerful earthquake, or in the fire—only to truly find God in the still small voice that came afterwards.

Susan Fish is a writer and editor who lives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with her husband, three young adult children and one wild dog. She has finished the novel she was researching on her whirlwind trip to Florence. Visit her online at storywell.ca.

New Year Blessings ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Stop by this link to read W.S. Merwin’s poem “To the New Year”

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

I offer you a reprise of my reflection on Embracing Mystery in the New Year: Ten Essential Practices.

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for an unknown God.

-Henri-Frederic Amiel

Who doesn't love the promise of new beginning the New Year offers? St. Benedict described his Rule as a Rule for beginners, reminding us to always begin again. In Buddhism, an essential practice is beginner's mind. When we think we have become an expert at things, especially the spiritual life, we are in trouble.

Living into the mystery of things helps us to release our hold on needing to know the answers. One of the things the monk and artist have in common is a love of mystery, a willingness to sit in the place of tension and paradox until it ripens forth.

New Year's resolutions often come from a place of lack, or of thinking we know how to "fix" ourselves. Unfortunately, they are often fueled by a consumer culture that is eager to have us buy more and more things to improve ourselves. Embracing mystery, on the other hand, honors our profound giftedness and depth and acknowledges that coming to know ourselves and God is a lifetime exploration.

So my invitation to you, dear monks and artists, is to shift your thinking this year. Welcome in ambiguity. Learn to love the holy darkness of mystery. Dance on the fertile edges of life.  Let what you love ripen forth.

Breathe deeply – our breath is our most immediate and vital connection to the life force which sustains us moment by moment. Let yourself be filled with awe and wonder at the marvels of this intimate gift.  Sit for three minutes savoring that you are breathed into.
Embrace night wisdom – one of the great gifts of dreams is that they upend our desire for logic and immerse us in a narrative which reveals the shadows we must wrestle with and the joys which call to us, whether or not they make sense to the waking world.
Dance freely– we live so disconnected from our bodies. Dance has been part of human culture for thousands of years as a way to experience union with ourselves, one another, and the divine. Each day put on one piece of music that you love, close the door, and dance. Pay attention to what rises up in the process. If you resist, even better – dance with your resistance!
Follow the thread– each of us has a unique unfolding story and call in this world. We don't "figure this out" but rather we allow the story to emerge in its own time, tending the symbols and synchronicities which guide us along.
Trust in what you love– following the thread is essentially about cultivating a deep trust in what you love. What are the things that make your heart beat loudly, no matter how at odds they feel with your current life (and perhaps especially so)? Make some room this year to honor what brings you alive.
Let the rhythms of nature guide you– we live our lives in a constant state of stimulation and productivity. We are often exhausted and overwhelmed. When we turn to the natural world we find with each day, each moon cycle, and each season a rhythm of rise and fall, fullness and emptiness. Trying to live all the time in rising or fullness is exhausting. Make some time to embrace the falling and emptiness of life which immerses us in an experience of mystery.
Release what is no longer necessary– we accumulate so many things in our days, perhaps you have discovered at Christmas that you have a new pile of stuff which now requires energy to maintain or worry about. Reflect on what is most essential. Then ask yourself, what are the thoughts, attitudes, or expectations about life which keep you from freedom?  How do you try to control the direction of your life rather the yielding to grace?
Remember that you will die– St. Benedict writes in his Rule to "keep death daily before your eyes." This is never an act of morbid obsession, but a reminder of life's incredible gift. Any of us who have brushed near death, or had loved ones pass away, know this wisdom in profound ways. This is another paradox of the spiritual life: a vibrant relationship to our mortality is essential to a vibrant relationship to life.
Ask for the wisdom of your ancestors– each of us is the inheritor of generations of stories which beat through our blood. Each of us has mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, who wrestled mightily with living a meaningful life. We can call upon this great "cloud of witnesses" to support us in our own wrestling.  We can listen across the veil between worlds.
Open yourself to receiving a word for the year ahead– in quiet moments what are the desires you hear being whispered from your heart? Is there a word or phrase that shimmers forth, inviting you to dwell with it in the months ahead? Something you can grow into and don't fully understand?

Imagine if your New Year's wasn't about fixing or improving, but about deepening and transforming, about embracing the holy mystery at the heart of the world.

What if the year ahead wasn't about growing more certain about things, but about releasing the hold of your thinking mind so something deeper and more fertile could rise up?

What might bloom from such rich soil of your imagination?  How might you create an altar for an unknown God and for the unknown depths of your own beautiful being waiting to be freed?

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Christmas Blessings from the Abbey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

All of us here at the Abbey – John, Christine, and the Abbey Wisdom Council – wish you a most wondrous Christmas feast. This is the time for holy birthing to happen in unlikely places, a time to listen to what rises in the stillness, a time to trust in the darkness that seeds are sprouting deep beneath the fertile earth. We live in a world hungry for such truths. What a gift you each are to be a bearer of this wisdom.

To support this knowing in your own heart, I offer you a few links to holy pauses for beauty:

Christmas Sparrow (a poem by Billy Collins)

Christmas Poem (a poem by Mary Oliver)

How the Light Comes (a blessing for Christmas Day by Jan Richardson)

Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming (a beautiful performance of my favorite song of the season by Gesualdo Six)

Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming (a gorgeous arrangement of this song by J. Sandstrom in an even more contemplative rhythm)

Consider giving yourself the gift of several 5-minute pauses during the frenzy this time of year can bring. During each holy pause read one of the poems or blessings or listen to one of the pieces of music, place your hand on your heart, and remember what the season is really inviting you into. Remember that the incarnation teaches us that we too are holy and Christ takes up dwelling within each of us. All we need to do is pay attention.

For all of those for whom this time of year is especially challenging because of loneliness, family dysfunction, depression, or other struggles, I will be thinking of you in a special way this time of year and sending extra love.

May Christ be born in each of your hearts.

(We will be taking a break this coming week from the daily emails.)

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Monk in the World Guest Post: LeAnne Nesbitt

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for LeAnne Nesbitt's reflection "A Circuitous Journey:  Reflections on Two Years of Mandala Making."

A little over two years ago I was facilitating a SoulCollage® workshop at a women’s retreat and serving as event photographer when I made my way over to take pictures of a mandala workshop also being offered that weekend.  After some basic instruction on the mandala form, participants were asked to go out on the grounds in pairs and work together in silence to collect natural materials and create a mandala from what they had gathered.  The results were exquisite and compelling in a way I could not quite articulate at the time.

Two weeks later, I headed to the mountains for my annual personal silent retreat. With mandalas still on my mind, I decided to try creating one on a makeshift altar I’d set up in the little hermitage where I was staying.  The process was peaceful and meditative. While my hands were occupied with the work, I experienced a felt sense of deep communion with my Creator.

Once home and back to my normal routine, I was out for my Sunday morning walk and found myself mentally scanning the landscape for interesting items and arranging mandalas in my mind’s eye. I couldn’t resist the nudge to gather up a few materials and create another. This time, I shared a photo of it on Instagram along with the hashtag #sundaymorningmandala.  Although I thought I might create a series, I never imagined that it was a practice I would continue every Sunday for nearly two years.

My interest in creativity as a contemplative practice originated many years before on another Sunday morning walk in 2003. Captivated by spectacular Autumn light and color, I immediately ran home to retrieve my camera and through the lens discovered a new way of seeing and a spiritual practice I would come to know as contemplative photography.

It was my interest in contemplative photography that eventually led me to the Abbey of the Arts where I found an online community of kindred spirits who had also made the connection between personal creativity and spiritual life. Photography had also awakened within me a desire for creative expression in other forms, and a longing to lead a more contemplative life.  I found an abundance of support, inspiration, and resources behind the walls of this virtual monastery.

The Monk Manifesto offered by our online Abbess, Christine Valters Paintner, resonated with me deeply and I was encouraged that a rich contemplative life was possible even for those of us who were not able to cloister away into a life devoted to prayer.  Along with joining in commitment to living as a Monk in the World, I began exploring other creative forms such as poetry, painting, collage, and dance as spiritual practice.

While I found great joy and satisfaction in my creative endeavors, it wasn’t until I stumbled upon my natural mandala practice that I understood the unique gifts a focused, sustained creative ritual had to offer.

I have often wondered what it was about the mandala practice that kept me coming back so consistently, week after week, to make this ephemeral offering.  Perhaps the simplest, albeit incomplete, answer is that the practice became my teacher. Each week, fresh insights were revealed, and I began experiencing the mandala as a metaphor that illumined my spiritual walk in myriad ways.  I simply couldn’t let go until I’d completed the curriculum. This is not to imply that I’ve graduated from anything, but I believe the practice facilitated in a beautiful way the “ongoing conversion and transformation” the seventh commitment listed in the Monk Manifesto calls us to.

In fact, when sitting down to write this piece, I reflected once again on the manifesto and soon realized that my mandala practice unintentionally addressed each of the other declarations in some way as I…

Worked in silence and solitude, receptive to the voice of the Divine as I gathered and assembled these creations.
Experienced hospitality towards myself by practicing compassion in the face of my own imperfections and limitations which inevitably extended to others.
Cultivated a community of kindred spirits by sharing the work with others both through posting the mandalas online, and by offering workshops so others could experience the process.
Fostered a kinship with creation through an increased awareness of the natural world, its subtle beauty, and how it changes not only from season to season, but year over year in response to humanity’s careless disregard.
Developed a new understanding of what it meant to be fully present to the work and making it an offering of gratitude.
Incorporated my practice into the rhythm of Sabbath—offering an hour each week even when (and especially when) other obligations made demands on my time.
Experienced creative joy and a heart overflowing with “with the inexpressible delights of love.”

My practice came to an end as spontaneously as it began.  Even though I was still a month shy of my two-year anniversary, I simply stopped. Sensing my motivation to complete four more mandalas seemed mostly in service to egoic notions of perfection, I discerned this to be a final lesson in letting go. Thus, the work felt complete in me. It is difficult to express in words the gifts this practice has given me, but I offer this video montage of my final year of mandala making in hopes it will convey the ineffable. May it be a blessing to you as well.

LeAnne Nesbitt lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She holds certificates in Spiritual Direction and Dream Work from the Haden Institute and is a trained SoulCollage® Facilitator.LeAnne believes in the healing power of images and metaphor,  using dream work, poetry, and a variety of intuitive creative practices to help others connect to inner divine wisdom.She writes about these topics and more on her blog, thecreativecontemplative.com

Feast Day of Thomas Merton ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest Monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Today is the feast day of Thomas Merton and I share with you this excerpt from my book Illuminating the Way: Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics:

“The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.” (Merton in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

I first read this quote several years ago in a Yoga Journal article on the practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence. It stunned me away because I had never before even considered that the busyness of my life might be a form of violence in which I participate. Merton is not writing this to corporate culture, but to peace activists and other well-meaning folks in the church trying to do good things, too many good things.

While I have always been drawn to the contemplative life, I have never quite looked at busyness in the same way again. I work a lot with people in ministry, mostly training them to use the arts and contemplation in their work and for prayer and self-care. When I taught classes in seminaries, I was often shocked and dismayed to see students stretched so far by school demands that there is really no time and space to integrate all the shifts happening in their understanding or to create life-giving patterns for future ministry. It saddens me because seminary is the place where healthy habits and practices for ministry can be set in place. I wish there was more emphasis on self-care and a recognition of the violence we do to ourselves when we, as Merton says, commit to too many projects and demands. Church culture is just as guilty of this, as busy as the corporate world and demands just as much time and energy, and in the name of doing good work, we keep going.

And yet faith communities have an opportunity, really a responsibility, to be a witness to the world of a genuine alternative way of being. This is one of their prophetic tasks. One that doesn’t invest our value solely in what we do and achieve. A way of being that embraces the humility to know when we have reached our limits, and when we need to say no for the sake of greater life.

Merton’s insight into the violent nature of our doing and busyness led me to an epiphany about the contemplative life. So much has been written about the balance between contemplation and action and how contemplative prayer can renew us to continue the hard path towards justice. To be sure this is all true, but what I began to see was the contemplative life itself as a path of justice, a witness to the world of a way of being that releases the bonds of compulsive doing and resists the violence that busyness can unleash on our bodies, our relationships, our communities. We began to explore this last chapter in the connection between the Prophet and the practice of Sabbath.

Indeed, there are so many good things we could do in the world, but investing our energy in the multitude of goods that exist is an enemy of the best, the way that God calls us most deeply to follow – a way that emerges out of who we are and that honors both our gifts and our limitations. Maturity in the spiritual life means knowing what we are both called to do and what we are called not to do. Self-care means good stewardship of the gifts we have been given and the body that is the vessel that offers them.

Creativity is essential to the world, to imagine new possibilities. Yet, so many of us lead lives that are so full, there is barely room for God’s newness to erupt in us, or for us to even recognize those stirrings when they happen. The monastic path offers us guidance in this direction.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Dancing Monk Icon © Marcy Hall RabbitRoomArts

Monk in the World Guest Post: Melinda Thomas

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Melinda Thomas' reflection "The Season of Many Hats."

The other day I was reading through Christine’s latest book The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred and pulling quotes for the daily emails when I came across this gem. “Out of all the many things calling for attention: Which one is it the season for?”

In the season before I had a child my days were long, open spaces for contemplative practice. I journaled and practiced asana in the morning before teaching yoga classes. After lunch and a little rest I settled in for an afternoon of writing and work. When the work was finished, I took my dog for a walk then meditated for 20 – 40 minutes before dinner.

That season is long gone.

Today I find myself in the season of many hats. There’s my mom hat, my working hats, my teaching hat. My daughter, sister, and friend hats. My writing hat. My self-care hat. And my contemplative hat which seems to be growing smaller by the day. Some hats I want to wear are tucked away in boxes and stowed somewhere in my closet waiting for the season to change.

I lament their storage.

But when I ask myself the question “What is it the season for?” I feel liberated. I am reminded of the power of choice and freed from my need to do it all. Just because I have a child doesn’t mean I have to wear the mom hat. I could neglect my son, but I choose not to. Just because I’ve been teaching for over a decade and people seem to like my classes doesn’t mean I have to keep teaching. I could stop, but I choose not to.

The list goes on.

Truth is, I rather like my hat collection and think I’d be bored without it.

Back to the shrinking contemplative hat. I only call it shrinking because the actual minutes I devote to what might be called formal practice has reduced significantly. My 90 minute yoga practice is 30 – 45. My 40 minute meditation is but a few breaths at the end of asana, a moment’s pause before getting out of the car before work or picking up my son after. My daily journaling is sporadic.

The list goes on.

I tell myself that while practice is important because it keeps me rooted in what is essential it is equally important to keep it in proportion to the rest of my responsibilities.

Which is why I love yoga and the Rule of St. Benedict. They make it clear that practice is vital and should be responsive to the seasons. But more than that they prescribe the inner stance to be taken whether formal practice occurs or not. Thirty minutes of meditation, recitation of psalms, twisting and folding and opening the body are of no use unless I am also willing to live into the messiness of trying to be a good person.

As a little girl, when I had trouble falling asleep I would listen to books on tape. The Borrower’s is not my favorite story of all time but I listened to it often because of the narrator’s soothing English accent. After only a few minutes she got to the part about the family of people no larger than four inches tall “borrowing” hatpins.

“Butn’t hatpins?” asks the little girl to whom the story is being told.

“A hatpin, is a very useful weapon.”

And off I went to sleep.

It occurs to me that perhaps my small in duration practices this season are like hatpins. Useful little things that keep whatever hat I’m wearing squarely on my head, vertical of my heart, and easy to remove and reset when the hat inevitably slips in front of my eyes.

Which it will. Often. I’ll get overwhelmed, overworked, tired, snippy, anxious. That’s part of the season too. But what practice teaches me is that whatever state I’m in, I can take off the hat, take a breath, put the hat back on, secure the pin and remember that underneath it all, I am still me. Living this season, choosing how to respond, and loving being so very free.

Melinda Thomas is a mother, writer and yoga instructor living in North Carolina. She is also the administrative assistant for the Abbey and finds great joy in being connected to this community. You can read more of her work at TheHouseHoldersPath.com