Christine Valters Paintner's Blog, page 97

Wisdom of the Body Interview with Guest Teacher Jamie Marich

Starting January 8, 2018 we will be offering a 10-week online retreat for women – The Wisdom of the Body: An Online Companion Retreat to the Book.

This retreat is for every woman who wants to reclaim her body as sacred, heal a lifetime of thoughts and judgments, offer compassion and love to this tender vessel, and remember that the incarnation means this body is holy. With weekly live webinars (recorded if you miss them), a vibrant and lovingly facilitated forum for sharing your experiences, and weekly offerings from some wonderful guest teachers.

For the next three weeks, Christine Valters Paintner will be hosting video interviews with our guest teachers so you can get to know their wonderful work a bit more and get a taste of what our online program will offer you.

We begin with Dr. Jamie Marich, Ph.D., LPCC-S, LICDC-CS, REAT, RMT who travels internationally speaking on topics related to EMDR, trauma, addiction, expressive arts, LGBTQ issues, spirituality and mindfulness while maintaining a private practice in her home base of Warren, OH. Jamie is the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness expressive arts practice and the author of several books including: EMDR Made Simple: 4 Approaches for Using EMDR with Every Client (2011), Trauma and the Twelve Steps: A Complete Guide for Recovery Enhancement (2012), Trauma Made Simple: Competencies in Assessment, Treatment, and Working with Survivors, Dancing Mindfulness: A Creative Path to Healing and Transformation (2015 with foreword by Christine Valters Paintner), and EMDR Therapy and Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care (2017). You can read Jamie's guest post for the Abbey here>>

Pour yourself a cup of tea and settle in for this half-hour conversation about the wisdom of the body and the gifts that come from tending to it with compassion.

Register here: The Wisdom of the Body: An Online Companion Retreat to the Book

We are offering a special early discount price before December 8th!

Monk in the World Guest Post: Janelle Harvey

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Janelle Harvey's reflection, The Language of Feathers.

On a cold winter day, after discovering the truth and severity of your daughter’s drug addiction, you might find yourself running into the woods seeking the comfort and presence and help of God in that place of solitude and solace. Desperate tears will freeze on your cheeks as you sob a prayer to God: Help! Please! Protection! The words won’t matter; you will have turned all your attention to God. Sorrow, hope, and fear will pour out of you in groanings too deep for words. There will be no proper prayers, no lighting of candles, no folding of hands, no phone calls to begin a prayer chain . . . it will be just you with your heart broken wide open with the deep love of a mother for her child. Possibly years of accumulated shame will be your companion as well. Questions will plague you about what you might have done wrong, how you didn’t protect her well, pray enough, see the signs, deal with your own issues in time, etc etc. You might cry for a long time. You might have fallen to your knees by now, with your forehead touching the frozen dirt and dead leaves of the forest floor.

If you find yourself here, feeling more alone than you ever have before, you are in the right place. Eventually your sobbing will subside. Feeling utterly spent, you will begin to hear the quiet woods as the home of God where you are welcome, instead of as a hiding place. Suddenly, you will feel a Presence. Warm, safe, comforting. You will hear your breathing return to its natural rhythm. As you come to the remembrance that any real control you’ve ever had over the safety of your loved ones has only been imagined, and that God is and always has been our Protector and Healer, you might very well hear yourself uttering one last request: God . . . please let me know You’re with me. As you raise your swollen eyes from the ground, you might see a bright red cardinal feather flutter gently to the ground in front of your face, landing on the tiny patch of earth your forehead just vacated. If you see this feather, you will feel something ignite in your spirit–a connection to the Divine. Pain will be overshadowed by wonder, as, in one instant, you will know with such clarity and conviction that God, who made and inhabits All That Is, is speaking to you. You will just know. Beloved, I am with you. I love you. I will never leave you. Everything will be ok. Trust Me.

My friend, if you see that feather and hear that voice, I’m warning you . . . in a matter of seconds or minutes, you might feel tempted to doubt it is Real. Or divine. Or for you. As you pick up the perfect red feather, your mind might flirt with the word “coincidence” or even the word “crazy.” The old raspy voice of shame inside your head might challenge, “Why would God talk to you? Who do you think you are?” You might be tempted to leave the feather in the woods where it gracefully landed. Don’t. Pick it up. Carry it home. Tape it to your mirror. And when you look at your reflection and see the feather, don’t be scared to answer the question you were asked that day in the woods . . . "Who do you think you are?” Look boldly into the feathered mirror, and answer, “I am the Beloved of God” or “I am the one God sees and knows intimately” or “I hear God’s voice.” Jesus tells us, “My sheep hear my voice.” Yes, they do. Sometimes we hear a voice, and other times God speaks through a feather. Or a hawk. Or a deer. Or a burning bush. Or the word of a stranger. God’s creative communication has no limits, no boundaries; we are only bound by our lack of openness.

A few years later, you might have learned a thing or two about God’s faithfulness. You might trust your own sense of “hearing” a little more, as your feather collection has increased. Soon your bathroom mirror might be beautifully framed in feathers of every kind and color. You might find yourself in the chair of a tattoo parlor, holding out your wrist, hearing the question of the tattoo artist. “Why do you want a feather on your wrist?” You might want to shrug or say it’s a long story. You might be tempted to quickly slip your hand back in your pocket and run out the door. Don’t. Instead, remind yourself of the day in the woods when God introduced you to this new language of feathers. Remember God’s intimate love for you and creative ways of speaking just to you. Think of your daughter who was protected and grew in strength, courage, and kindness. Once you are full of these remembrances, look at the tattoo artist, and if you’d like, without explanation or apology, answer her question. “God speaks to me in feathers.”

Janelle Harvey is a writer, nature-enthusiast, spiritual director, and mother of four. She currently serves as a facilitator in the Tending the Holy spiritual direction program for Christos Chicago. She strives to live authentically as a contemplative in the world and to help others do the same. Many days she can be found walking in the woods, where she finds it easiest to connect with God.

 

 

Sacramentality of the Senses ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

The Catholic Mass, which is my own home tradition, is often described as “smells and bells.” A full liturgy will often meet and inspire every one of our senses: the scent of incense rising, bells ringing, stained glass windows, singing songs, embracing another at the kiss of peace, eating the bread and drinking wine.

I have always loved the Catholic idea of sacramentality, which means that physical things participate in and reveal the presence of the holy. The liturgy with all of its sensual dimensions is sacramental, the marriage union between two lovers is sacramental, the holy oil of anointing used in healing is sacramental, this bread and wine become flesh and blood is sacramental.

And then there are of course the more ordinary everyday sacraments. The sacramentality of our own flesh which allows us to be present in this world and receive its gifts through our senses.

If we ponder the monastery setting, we might imagine the soaring arches of the cloisters, the fragrant garden in the center providing herbs and medicine for healing and a taste of Eden in their midst, and the songs rising at the Hours for prayer. There is a profound honoring of the way these sensual delights can bring us closer to God.

To have a sacramental spirituality is to honor that our senses are doorways into the holy. When we bring ourselves intentionally to an experience and let ourselves receive it through our senses, the richness of it and the multi-dimensionality of it shimmers forth.

There is even a tradition in Christian spirituality of what are called the “spiritual senses.” The senses were seen as so essential to receiving the gift of the sacred in the world, that there was believed to be parallel interior senses to the exterior ones. There was spiritual vision which was the ability to see God beneath the surface of things. There was spiritual hearing which was the capacity to hear God underneath the noises and distractions. Each sense, including taste, smell, and touch, were imagined as having these inner counterparts, and when cultivated, offered us the ability to encounter God in the flesh and blood reality of the world.

The root of the word savor comes from the Latin word saporem which means to taste and is also the root of sapient which is the word for wisdom. Another definition I love is "to give oneself over to the enjoyment of something." When I give myself over to the experience of savoring, wisdom emerges. Savoring calls for a kind of surrender. We have all kinds of stories in our minds about why we perhaps shouldn’t give ourselves over to enjoyment, whether out of guilt or shame or a sense of fear out of what might happen. Yet we are called to yield to the goodness of life, to bask in it. It is an affirmation and celebration of God’s creation and an echo of “that’s good” from Genesis.

Savoring calls me to slowness: I can't savor quickly.

Savoring calls me to spaciousness: I can't savor everything at once.

Savoring calls me to mindfulness: I can't savor without being fully present.

It also calls for a fierce and wise discernment about how I spend my time and energy. Now that I know deep in my bones the limits of my life breaths, how do I choose to spend those dazzling hours? What are the experiences ripening within me that long for exploration? Do I want to waste my time skating on the surface of things, in a breathless rush to get everything done when all I need is here in this moment?

There is also a seasonal quality to savoring – this season, what is right before me, right now, is to be savored. It will rise and fall, come into fullness and then slip away. When I savor I pay attention to all the moments of that experience without trying to change it.

And finally, there is a tremendous sweetness to this open-hearted way of being in the world. Everything becomes grace because I recognize it could all be different, it could all be gone. Rather than grasp at how I think this moment should be, I savor the way things are.

(excerpted and adapted from The Wisdom of the Body – we will be offering an online companion retreat to this book in the new year, details at this link)

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Writing on the Wild Edges: Participant Poems (Tanya Stark Loretto)

This past October we led one of our Writing on the Wild Edges retreats on the beautiful island of Inismor off the coast of Galway. We will be sharing some of the writing which participants gave us permission to share here in the next few weeks. Up next are poems by Tanya Stark Loretto.

Dreamscape

The land of Éire has seeped into my being,

Permeating my dreams.

I wander through her paths,

Surrounded by rocks, cliffs, fields, bogs,

A multiplicity of hues- grays, greens, lavenders, and browns.

I wander and wander,

Often not knowing where I am going,

And yet I am not afraid,

To be without a destination,

I am living unknowing,

Because it feels like I am on my way, in some way,

To where I am meant to be,

To my place of resurrection,

Somewhere that I cannot know,

Yet somehow connected to my time in this land of Éire,

This place that permeates my dreams.

Ocean Pondering at Inishmore’s Worm Hole

Sitting on a flat rock

Overlooking the sea

I sit in awe of the ocean’s majesty.

The sea’s rhythmical flowing in a multiplicity of directions,

Shaped by grandmother moon,

Her mysterious currents

Erode and shape all that she touches,

Mists rise as she smashes rocky cliffs-

I can smell the briny air,

And feel her fine droplets on my body,

Sea plants and creatures are held in her ocean being,

She, like a womb, nourishes and carries all within her,

And I am in awe,

Pondering her strength, her being, her witness,

The sea’s presence-

A gift to the earth,

A gift to me.

Inishmore: Island of Sacred Sound

Sitting on a limestone rock overlooking the sea on Inishmore

I listen

And listen.

Accustomed to city noise

All fighting for attention,

Here on Inishmore

I’m given a gift of simple audio.

Wind and bird songs predominate.

Closing my eyes I realize that there is a bird symphony

And I don’t recognize many of the instruments.

No matter, the songs blend into a kaleidoscope of beauty

For my ears,

My being.

Wind is felt and heard, as it moves over the landscape, my body, my implements-

Sound waves and air movements blend into a multisensory experience,

Becoming one with birdsong

And other earth based sounds,

Each one an important part of the divine chorus.

The divine song of Inishmore,

An island of simple audio,

Sacred Sound.

Teachers Beyond Time

Anchorites’ harsh lives –

Beyond my twenty-first century privileged understandings.

Animals, straw, mud, rocks,

Wind, rain, and birds

Are her regular companions

In her simple beehive hut sanctuary.

She calls to me across time as I lay in my soft bed with a full belly:

I hear my beehive anchorite speak simple, basic words of wisdom:

Surrender

See

Be open

Accept

Believe

I humbly receive these words

And ask for her guidance

In leaving my gilded, cluttered, complicated life

For a more simple, beehive like, prayer-filled life.

Grieving on Inishmore

(This poem was written on Inishmore as Tanya was grieving her 24 year old son's sudden and recent death.)

Walking through my grief on the paths of Inishmore,

I hear the island speak.

I wander from holy place to holy space,

Often losing my way,

But somehow finding exactly where I am meant to be.

As my feet hit the ground, Inishmore’s rocks cry out,

Millennial stone witnesses of suffering and joy

Inviting me to know that they stand with me,

And the others.

The island winds resonate with my inner chaos

And teach me to breathe,

Breathe and flow

Through my grief.

The seabirds on her shores

Give me permission to screech and howl,

Fly and float,

As I need to.

Inishmore's grasses bowed down from the winds

Speak of bending while living harshness,

Teaching me to surrender,

Be.

Her holy wells bubble up from the quiet earth

Inviting me to be open to receiving blessings

At all times and places.

Her creatures are briefly curious to visitors and then return to what is important,

Inviting me to remember what and who are most important,

What and who give me life.

Inishmore’s lovely scent of turf fires,

Tightens my chest,

Calling me to center myself on hearth,

Heart.

Her rains cry with me,

Raindrops pelting my face, entering my mouth and eyes.

The rain tears enter my body,

Uniting my heart with this beautiful island.

Walking through my grief on the paths of Inishmore

The island speaks wisdom and healing through all that she is,

And I walk in gratitude for the many steps that I have taken

On this beloved, wild, Celtic Island.

Copyright, October, 2017

Tanya Stark Loretto is a spiritual director/companion and retreat facilitator.  She is very curious about how people make meaning in their lives, especially through the arts and other spiritual practices.  She lives with her husband, dog, and several "boomeranging" adult children in Vancouver BC, Canada. Visit her website here>>

Monk in the World Guest Post: Pat Butler

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Pat Butler's reflection, Thirsty Walls. 

As veteran homeowners know, the work never ends. Nor does spiritual work. And as this novice homeowner discovered, one can inform the other in a monastic practice of restoration: renovations!

Wall prep seemed to go on forever as I peeled wallpaper, cleaned and scrubbed glue, repaired cracks and spackled dings, sanded, preparing the walls to receive paint. I prayed through the work—for help, strength, knowledge, protection—in this new monastic cell, with a new spiritual discipline.

I smoothed hardened drips of paint that had run their course, ending their history as mine began, taking possession of this house. The work stretched on, one tedious wall after another, and my thorny relationship with the walls grew. It seemed the wallpaper glue would never dissolve, despite repeated soakings and a multitude of products. I tossed sacrificial offerings into the dumpster each day: sponges, sandpaper, rubber gloves, broken fingernails, and cleaning products.

Disruptions stalled the work: injuries, travel, lack of finances. Would it ever end? Were there short cuts? I searched You Tube, googled products, consulted with other homeowners, and made daily pilgrimages to the home improvement stores.

Weeks turned into months. By month two, I scrubbed with a lament from the psalms: How long O Lord!? There came a swift response:

How long to you think restoration takes?

A glimpse of God’s heart for the careful, painstaking work of restoration sobered me. I scrubbed on; each day a new day of reckoning. What else would the walls say?

Go the distance. Do it right.

I studied more, consulted more, reworked the budget, learned to wait for help, finances, or a pulled muscle to heal.

Old photos in cracked frames, gently removed from the walls, confounded me at the happiness portrayed but left behind. Were these walls abandoned, like the photos? Why?

Tell me a story, walls.

Erase the past; better: redeem it. Whose walls are these now? 

I learned to caress the walls, feeling for imperfections invisible to the eye, exposed to fingertips, inevitably revealed if paint went up prematurely. Daily I inspected, groomed, a monkey mother with her infants. I began to fall in love with the walls as part of my new home, supporting, protecting, demarcating space.

Eventually, each wall yielded up a beautifully smooth surface, ready to receive paint. A final inspection for flaws, one final consultation with helpers, and a photo to record the process. I gathered paint chips with names like Plum Dandy, Ionic Ivory and Obstinate Orange. Selecting, painting samples, making choices, commitments. Praying over the walls, writing Scriptures, blessings and prayers on them—and then—color!  One wall at a time.

Still the walls spoke.

Forgive.

Forgive the laziness, neglect, shortcuts, mistakes, lack of care or craftsmanship, which has created so much work for me.

Holy Week: another friend came to help. I’m thankful for companions on the journey. They weren’t always available, and I learned to shoulder more responsibility. A spiritual discipline is practiced by the individual, even in community. And some spiritual journeys are made alone, as Christ learned in Gethsemane. Ultimately, no one else could do my job. No one else could walk my walk. No one could or would love or prep these walls quite like me.

A thankless job I grew to thank God for, because I have a home, unlike so many. I want these walls to be ready to receive anyone who comes. And I want to hear all the words the walls want to speak, if I give them the time.

Good Friday: at the end of our week, exhausted, backs aching, we stopped for lunch. I made a power meal to keep our energy up, but after eating, we slumped in our chairs more likely to nap than press on.

“Let’s move before we fall asleep!”

I jumped up—consecration to the task!—asking God for renewed strength.

Two coats of primer later, I was finally splashing on color in my bedroom:  Cornflower Blue. I bent over, trying for the third time to reach a hard corner. The first coat was soaking in faster than I could paint, leaving a blotchy patchwork behind me. “These walls are thirsty!” I sighed.

I thirst.

The very verse I had read that morning! Fully awake now, I straightened. Speak, Lord. Your servant is listening . . . 

As the walls soaked up the paint, my mind soaked up images of a crucified Christ, dying: what were his thoughts? Of physical thirst, no doubt. But spiritual thirst as well? Thirsting to go home, for an end to suffering, for his Father, thirsting to obey, to fulfill his call.

Thirsting for his creation, for each one of us. Thirsting to make the rough places smooth and fill gaps, to remove what is stubbornly glued to us. To redeem histories, and add color. To prepare a place for us, and bring us home.

I yearned for this thirst. I prayed for it, as I continued with Cornflower Blue, preparing an earthbound place, sacred space for myself and others. No short cuts.

One could say I’m simply renovating a house, but that’s the external story; the internal one speaks of taking ownership, restoring, preparing a place for others. And God will use both stories for his redemptive purposes.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Pat Butler is a monk in the subtropics of Florida, currently practicing spiritual disciplines of first-time home buying, sunset gazing, and beach combing. Artist, poet and writer, Pat has authored three chapbooks through Finishing Line Press, and enjoys family, travel, French culture, and black jellybeans.

Gratitude as a Spiritual Practice ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

The United States celebrates the feast of Thanksgiving this week. I have always loved this time of gratefulness and sharing with loved ones. My heart overflows with gratitude for this beautiful community we have created together. I delight daily in knowing there are dancing monks all over the world.

The 5th century monk and mystic Benedict of Nursia counsels in his Rule for monastic life an attitude of contentment among his community. Whatever the circumstances they find themselves in, they are to find some satisfaction with what is in the moment. In a world of self-entitlement and inflated sense of need, learning to be content with what we have has the potential to be quite revolutionary. It means craving less and being more satisfied with what one has.

One way to encourage this posture of contentment in our lives is gratitude. Gratitude is a way of being in the world that does not assume we are owed anything, and the fact that we have something at all, whether our lives, our breath, families, friends, shelter, laughter, or other simple pleasures, are all causes for celebration. We can cultivate a way of being in the world that treats all these things as gifts, knowing none of us “deserves” particular graces.

We might begin each day simply with an expression of gratitude for the most basic of gifts, life itself. Awakening each morning for another day to live and love, grateful for our breath and a body that allows us to move through our day. Then we can offer gratitude for a home and all the things that are important to us about this place of shelter.

Environmental activist and author Joanna Macy describes gratitude as a revolutionary act “because it counters the thrust of the industrial growth society, or the consumer society, which breeds dissatisfaction. You have to make people dissatisfied with what they have and who they are in order that they keep buying.” Gratitude is a way for us to cultivate a healthy asceticism and reject consumerism.

Gratitude is a practice that can begin with the smallest acknowledgement and be expanded out to every facet of our existence. A simple way to nurture this awareness in our lives is to end each day with a gratitude list. You might write 5-10 things for which you feel grateful each day, lifting up both the large and small moments of grace. It is a way to end the day by honoring the gifts we have received rather than dwelling on where life came up short for us. Consider saving these grateful noticings together somewhere, and after a season of time reading back over the things that made your heart expand and notice what patterns you find there.

Gratitude has a way of transforming our approach to life into one that is more open-hearted, generous, and joyful. Rather than moving through our day feeling cynical or burdened, we can consciously choose our thoughts. This doesn’t mean that we have to offer gratitude for injustices or abuse, we are always called to resist those. But it does mean we might be able to tap into greater joy to replenish us for those moments when we do need to fight for dignity and kindness. Gratitude overflows into joy and makes us feel connected to something bigger than ourselves.

I don't want you to just sit down at the table.

I don't want you to just eat and be content.

I want you to walk out into the fields

Where the water is shining and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there far from this white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with mud, like a blessing.

-Mary Oliver

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Writing on the Wild Edges: Participant Poems (Julia Morris-Meyers)

 This past October we led one of our Writing on the Wild Edges retreats on the beautiful island of Inismor off the coast of Galway. We will be sharing some of the writing which participants gave us permission to share here in the next few weeks. Up next are poems by Julia Morris-Meyers.

Coming​ ​home,​ ​Christmas

to​ ​dusty​ ​high​ ​plains

front​ ​door​ ​opening

smells​ ​of​ ​turkey,​ ​more

stockings​ ​bulge,​ ​fire​ ​lit

smiling​ ​parents,​ ​happy​ ​we’re​ ​here.

Twinkling​ ​lights​ ​beckon

while​ ​Dad​ ​carves​ ​the​ ​bird

dear​ ​Aunt​ ​Dot​ ​samples

Mother​ ​juggles​ ​pans.

Table​ ​set​ ​with​ ​best

crowded,​ ​we​ ​don’t​ ​mind

cold​ ​night​ ​kept​ ​at​ ​bay

hearts​ ​warm,​ ​filled​ ​with​ ​cheer.

Yearning​ ​for​ ​those​ ​days

long​ ​gone,​ ​they​ ​now​ ​are

Dad​ ​and​ ​Dot​ ​are​ ​passed

a​ ​stranger​ ​lives​ ​there

high​ ​standard​ ​to​ ​keep

me,​ ​I​ ​can’t​ ​compete

memory​ ​my​ ​comfort

and​ ​love,​ ​in​ ​my​ ​heart.

And​ ​after​ ​visiting​ ​St​ ​Ciaran’s​ ​sacred site,​ ​this​ ​haiku:

Rag​ ​tree​ ​prayers​ ​for​ ​babe

holy​ ​well,​ ​seven​ ​times​ ​‘round

connecting​ ​stone,​ ​heal

(grandson​ ​#2​ ​is​ ​expected​ ​in​ ​the​ ​spring!)

Julia Morris-Meyers takes great joy in teaching others about the beauty of music, whether it is as choral conductor, organist and pianist, or private instructor.  Through her international travels as an accompanist she has seen the power of music to bring diverse cultures and peoples together and she strives for this goal in all her musical endeavors.  Julia lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and leads contemplative studies, retreats and weekly prayer at her Episcopal church. Her husband and pets provide great companionship and she relishes her new role as “Nana.”

Monk in the World Guest Post: April Brenneman

Lament 1: A Passionate Expression of Grief and Sorrow

When did I start living as a monk in the world?

My journey began as a child in a divided and strife filled home where I knew God’s intimate whisper through writing and nature. Though I was too young to consciously understand, my inner being longed for a monastic life.  I voiced this inclination and asked a couple of adults how to become a nun. We were not Catholic and I was told it was not possible. My soul’s deepest desire lie dormant beneath fertile soil as the years sped by.

But somewhere in my growing up, God became cold, hard and unsmiling. I forgot my connection to Love.

I continued on in my sleep-walking life. I married, had five incredible children, then great tragedy struck. My youngest was diagnosed with cancer at age four. During the crisis of treatment, afterward with PTSD, emotional scars and continued medical fallout and beyond; my cold, hard unsmiling God was absent. Trying to force his appearance, I wrestled with him, sometimes angrily, sometimes humbly, but darkness spilled across a decade of time.

Somehow my soul's longing drew me along quietly and underground outside my awareness.  One day while hiking, I discovered nature again. I felt the Divine lingering there. It fed my soul and I ached for more. Writing and art began to evolve in my life. First processing, then seeking and questions less wrestling, but always the desire to know Presence.

Golden Boy-Golden Trachea

My art emerged by painting on my son’s x-rays. My first piece, Lament 1: A Passionate Expression of Grief or Sorrow, was pain-filled. Later pieces: Golden Boy-Golden Trachea, were bright and cheerful. Drawn to create this x-ray art felt like flowing from a deeper place within me. A crack of light opening me to the Divine again.

Slowly, like a tiny shoot pushing up through damp soil, my soul began to peek out. “There has to be a better way, a different language” became my mantra.

Finally, a spiritual director introduced me to Contemplative Prayer practices and my soul burst forth.  I experienced Ultimate Love in a profound and healing way. Everything shifted and I was on a new path. God was no longer punitive. God is Love. Now when walking in nature, colors are vivid and the light exquisite, often taking my breath away. Presence is steady and consistent, I sometimes forget.

Slowly, I built my life rhythms: centering prayer, yoga, spiritual director meetings, walks in nature, writing, silent retreats and collage. Some I practice daily, some monthly and others are yearly practices.

I have come home to myself. (John O’Donahue poem)  I am a monk in the world.

I’d like to share specifically about what collaging holds for me. It’s a call, a drawing inward with images, colors and textures. I answer this call by sitting in my loft, peaceful music encircling me as I cut, tear and paste. The loft, myself, we morph into a liminal space. I see with soul eyes, not physical eyes. I move deeper into myself and Presence.

Recently, I had a medical procedure concerning my uterus. As the date came closer, I reflected on this beautiful part of my body. The nest where my five children were sparked, nurtured and knit together. A sacred space. I know women who could not conceive. I heard their anguish. I was filled with such gratitude.

A collage and poem were born out of this reflection: ”Ode to Little Pear”.

Ode to Little Pear

Ode to little pear

once apple green

wooden tartness

clinging upon

tender branch.

Wordless blossom

fruitless virgin

hopes future

Waiting

ripening.

Ode to little pear

weighty centeredness

pelvic core

sweetening

blood red.

Nesting space

secret place

nativity for souls

quaternary pear

and purple plum.

Ode to little pear

life giver

fertility

of femininity

birthing muscle

I carry thee

a soliloque

on silver platter casket

before Creator

empty hourglass

served me well.

Ode to little pear tree

richness of roots

deep in

loamy soil

chalk white bones

of ancestors

intertwined

branches dancing

toward the light.

My little pears

and perse plum

origins of lineage

bring forth

new life.

April Brenneman is a writing workshop facilitator with Write Around Portland and co-facilitates Contemplative Prayer & Journaling Retreats with Boldly Loved LLC. She also co-founded Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative, connected with OHSU, assists in conference planning and co-hosts their monthly series. April has companioned alongside people through great loss while walking her own journey, processed through creating an art collection titled: X-Ray Art-Mother & Son. She believes authenticity, vulnerability, openness and emotional awareness are keys to a healthy mental and spiritual life. One of her greatest joys is hosting and holding space for others, whether it’s her family, friends or guests from all over the world whom she hosts in her home through Airbnb. She has resided in Tigard, OR for 34 years where she raised her five children. For more information about April and her work check out Boldlyloved.org and nwnmcollaborative.org.

Breath as Holy Pause ~ A love note from your online abbess

Every breath is a resurrection.

—Gregory Orr (excerpt from poem “Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved”)

Dearest monks and artists,

In the monastic tradition there is a practice called statio, which is the commitment to stop one thing before beginning another.  Imagine, instead of rushing from one appointment to the next, that between each one you pause, you breathe just five long slow breaths. Imagine how this might transform your movement from one activity to another. Or even when you move from one room to another, allow a brief pause on the threshold between spaces. God lives inside our breath and so every breath can become a resurrection.

For the Celtic monks, thresholds were sacred places. The space or the moment between – whether physical places or experiences –  is a place of possibility. Rather than waiting being a nuisance, or a sense that you are wasting time, it is an invitation to breathe into the now and receive its gifts.

Each moment of the breath is a threshold – the movement from inhale to fullness to exhale to emptiness. The breath can help us stay present to all of the moments of transition in our lives, when we feel tempted to rush breathlessly to the next thing. Instead, what happens in our bodies and hearts when we intentionally pause? When we honor this threshold as sacred? When we breathe deeply and slowly for even a single minute?

Statio calls us to a sense of reverence for slowness and mindfulness. We can open up a space within for God to work. We can become fully conscious of what we are about to do rather than mindlessly starting and completing another task. We call upon the breath as an ancient soul friend to help us to witness our lives unfolding, rather than being carried along until we aren’t sure where our lives are going. We can return again and again to our bodies and their endless wisdom and listen at every threshold.

We often think of these in between times as wasted moments and inconveniences, rather than opportunities to return again and again to the expansiveness of the present moment and the body’s opening to us right now. Our invitation is to awaken to the gifts right here, not the ones we imagine waiting for us beyond the next door.

(excerpted and adapted from The Wisdom of the Body – we will be offering an online companion retreat to this book in the new year, details at this link)

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

Writing on the Wild Edges: Participant Poems (Vivien Ray)

This past October we led one of our Writing on the Wild Edges retreats on the beautiful island of Inismor off the coast of Galway. We will be sharing some of the writing which participants gave us permission to share here in the next few weeks. Up next are poems by Vivien Ray.

Seven Ways of Seeing a Thorn Tree

(With thanks to Wallace Stevens)

One

Already you have shed summer’s story of leaves

Two

Moss binds your limbs

Three

I watch you from seed fall, shed by a passing bird

To limb fall and decay

And yet you are willing to allow the sap to be called up

By each inspiration of Spring.

Four

If you didn’t move in the wind’s breath,

How would I see the rhythm to sing?

Five

This green field. That weight of rocks. The thistle and the thorn tree.

Six

I know

and don’t know

your roots meeting highways of minerals and moisture;

Giving their gifts to warmth and light.

Seven

Oh dear!

I am falling,

falling into cycles and rhythms

I will never see the end of.

Oh dear. Oh very Dear.

 

Vivien Ray is a Craniosacral Therapist, a writer, a traveller and a Quaker. She lives in the Welsh Marches between England and Wales, in a cherished patch of wilderness rich in wildlife, with a dog, a cat and some horses. She chooses to explore the borderlands both within and without.

Vivien is passionate about words and the human capacity to heal. Becoming a grandmother has been a blessing in her life.