May 9, 2008 · by Christine
God’s Grief
Great parent
who must have started out
with such high hopes.
What magnitude of suffering,
the immensity of guilt,
the staggering despair.
A mind the size of the sun,
burning with longing,
a heart huge as a gray whale
breaching, streaming
seawater against the pale sky.
Man-god or beast god
god that breathes in every pleated leaf,
throat sac of frog, pin feather and shaft-
god of plutonium and penicillin, drunk
sleeping on the subway grate,
god of Joan of Arc, god of Crazy Horse
Lady Day, bringing us to our knees,
god of Houdini with hands
like a river, of Einstein, regret
running thick in his veins,
god of Stalin, god of Somoza,
god of the long march,
the Trail of Tears,
the trains,
god of Allende and god of Tookie,
the strawberry picker, fire in his back,
god of midnight, god of winter,
god of rouged children sold
with a week’s lodging
and airfare to Thailand,
god in trouble, god at the end of his rope-
sleepless, helpless-
desperate god, frantic god, whale heart
lost in the shallows, beached
on the sand, parched, blistered, crushed
by gravity’s massive weight.
-Ellen Bass
You can see Part One here.
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
**Come back Monday for our next Poetry Party!**
Posted in Visual Meditation | 3 Comments »
May 7, 2008 · by Christine
Percy (Two)
I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.
He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.
He is sweeter than soap.
He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,
which can’t even bark.
I would like to take him to Kashmir and the Ukraine,
and Jerusalem and Palestine and Iraq and Darfur,
that the sorrowing thousands might see his laughing mouth.
I would like to take him to Washington, right into
the oval office
where Donald Rumsfeld would crawl out of the president’s
armpit
and kneel down on the carpet, and romp like a boy.
For once, for a moment, a rational man.
-Mary Oliver
I have loved animals since infancy. Whereas most children’s first words are “mama” or “dada” I’ve been told many times, mine was clearly “doggie.” My father used to tell me again and again of the time we went to the zoo when I first learned to talk and pointed at the elephant and squealed “doggie!’ My first toy was a Snoopy doll that I dragged with me everywhere for years until its fur had worn off and its head had to be sewn back on. At about age five I was convinced I would one day marry Snoopy.
Growing up in a New York City apartment we never had a dog, despite this early passion. I was given lots of reasons for this — allergies, our summer travels, who was going to be the one to take the dog out regularly. My maternal grandparents had a beagle named Euri when I was young. My visits to Massachusetts to see them were all the more joyful because of him. For a brief while I could pretend had a dog of my own. When I was about eight years old, my grandparents came to visit us in New York and I asked how Euri was. “Oh didn’t we tell you, we had to put him to sleep.” And in that one cavalier statement I experienced my first profound loss. I don’t think they realized what that dog meant to me, but I remember crying every night for days, my small body heaving with sorrow over the dog I would never see again.
My father tried to compensate for this lack of real animals in my life by bringing me back stuffed animals from his business trips in Europe. Actually they were meant to compensate for his absence in my life as well, so every few months a new creature would arrive in my life, always a Steiff and always with a name. If I had been born a boy, my name would have been Frederick Erik Nicholas Christopher (as a girl I was given an equal number of names), and so instead into my life arrived Frederick and Christopher the rabbits, Nicholas the German Shepherd. Despite the fact that these animals symbolized a father who was rarely home, there is a sweetness to these memories, a father who did try in some small ways to make offerings of love to me.
In high school, my parents were in the midst of great ugliness in their marriage and so one day, walking by the pet store window, my heart lit up upon seeing a German Shepherd puppy. Buying an animal from a pet store is never a good choice, neither is buying one as a way of placating your teenage daughter. Nicky was a gorgeous dog, but also a bit crazy from in-breeding I suspect. I had him for two years until I went away to college and had spent hours trying to work with him. I ended up bringing him out to my uncle in California, and he wasn’t able to manage him either.
It would be a few more years until I had another dog of my own. My husband and I had been married for three years when we went to the Sacramento SPCA and saw Duke who was to become our companion for nine years. Duke was part luck-dragon (Falcor from the Never-Ending Story) and part polar bear. He will always live mythically in our imaginations.
Then of course came Tune, our sweet girl in the photos above. I saw her at Petfinder.com, the shelter animal website with a notice that urgent foster care was needed. We fostered her for maybe a day before I knew I was not giving her back.
I could not even begin to count the endless wisdom Tune brings to my life – the reminders of healthy rhythms, the joy of being in a body, her complete freedom to be herself. There is a soulfulness to her that for me is undeniable. In sharing my life with a dog, I open myself to another consciousness or way of knowing that has a similar effect on me as being in the woods or by the sea. I can hear another voice in her communications, a voice rooted in the earth. I am reminded of my kinship with creation.
In the midst of what has been another busy week I took my copy of Pack of Two by Caroline Knapp off my shelf. Knapp writes of the intimacy she experiences with her dog Lucille, the profound affection she has for this animal, and many stories of her interactions with people who clearly don’t grasp the importance of this canine relationship for her and some who even think she is pretty strange for feeling this way. Of course, I saw a lot of myself in her writing. The secret dog language, the arranging of her life around her dog’s needs, the intimacy and care called out of her for another.
As I continue to discern how I am called to focus my energy in the coming months, Tune sits vigil with me. She waits and watches, she offers her fur-covered body as a sacrament of all that is beautiful and holy about making time for rest and play. She invites me to rest in this moment right here and now, to reel in my thoughts scrambling anxiously toward the future. I remember that in an unhurried life I have room for more dreaming and imagining, more delight and possibility. I have time to pull the bodies of those I love close to me, to hold them and to be held.
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Fun, Nature and Creativity | 6 Comments »
May 4, 2008 · by Christine
All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life.
-M.C. Richards
The most visible creators I know of are those artists whose medium is life itself. The ones who express the unexpressible - without brush, hammer, clay or guitar. They neither paint nor sculpt - their medium is being. Whatever their presence touches has increased life. They see & don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive.
-Jane Stone Cards
Last Friday was my two-year Bloggiversary! Hard to believe I have been showing up in this space for that long. It makes me smile to look at my Poetry category in the sidebar and see the number of entries at over 100. When I first began, my blog was called the Sacred Art of Living, a name I still love, but I found there was occasional confusion with this fine place of the same name. So when I launched my brand new website I transferred all of my old posts over and claimed a name for myself that spoke of my love of monastic tradition and the arts while continuing to explore the intersection of spirituality and creativity. I experimented with some regular features such as (my favorite!) the every-other-week Poetry Parties, Visual Meditations which offer a few moments each week of invitation into wonder and seeing more deeply, the marvelous folks who have shared their wisdom through the Sacred Artist Interviews, and of course interspersed are lots of my own honest reflections on themes important to my heart like creativity, discernment, grief, nature, and living as fully and meaningfully as possible.
So I offer a warm thank you to all of you, my wonderful readers and supporters. Truly this has been a joyful place for me to connect with others of like mind and heart and a great discipline for my own creative journey. I would love to hear from you this day, especially if you’ve been reading silently for a while. There are a lot of you out there and so a comment or email would surely make my day.
If this blog helps to provide you with some inspiration along the way, I also invite you to consider supporting my work by visiting my Etsy store and buying some of my zines or prayer cards. They make wonderful gifts and great resources for reflection and times of retreat. Coming soon will be my fourth quarterly zine and a set of summer prayer cards!
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Fun | 17 Comments »
May 3, 2008 · by Christine
. . . is Tom Delmore at Crow’s Perch! Tom, email me with your snail mail address and your choice of zine — either Praying With the Elements, Callings, or What is Blossoming Within You? and I will send that off to you.
What an amazing collection of poetry as usual for this week’s Poetry Party. Thank you so very much to everyone who participates. I get many emails telling me how talented the poets who show up here for the party are and I couldn’t agree more. I am blessed by amazingly creative readers and am always so moved by the spectrum of responses to my simple inspirations. I experience great joy in the forming of a virtual creative community each time. Look for our next one will be on Monday, May 12th!
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Fun | No Comments »
May 2, 2008 · by Christine
“In poetry, language is not the only medium; silence is also a medium. We might even say that, in poetry, the very purpose of the language is to inflect the silences. It’s like after church bells ring: the air resonates with their sound. In poetry, the silences are resonant, from the language that precedes them. . .The silence in poetry is like space in a Gothic cathedral. The function of all that mass of carved stone is to shape a sacred space.”
-Li Young Lee
The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of my favorite places in all of Manhattan. It was my favorite long before I really knew anything about monasticism which to me speaks of the aesthetic draw of monastic spirituality for me long before I could name the hunger I was experiencing.
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Visit this week’s Poetry Party! Submit your poem before tomorrow to be entered into the random drawing!**
Posted in Visual Meditation | 5 Comments »
April 30, 2008 · by Christine
I have been listening a lot these days. My life feels full and rich and I am also feeling a bit gluttonous for wanting it all, not really wanting to say no to anything. There is a playful, exuberant little girl inside of me relishing the sheer abundance of possibility.
And yet there is also my inner hermit who hears the call of spaciousness, the invitation to make sure in the coming months as my work energy shifts and continues to pick up speed, that I also have time to spend with my beloved, with my dear Abbess, with my amazing friends, and oh yes, time just to be with myself. Time to listen for the Holy One singing in the stillness, drawing me forward with the sacred thread of my calling.
For a long time I have felt pulled between my inner hermit and the more expressive part of myself who loves to teach and discuss and be present to the world in all its wondrous possibility. I am experiencing a shift somewhere deep down in the ground of my being — a movement toward integrating these longings. The far wiser part of myself (another of my inner cast of characters) whispers to me, stop wrestling so much, it is all gift. What would happen if these parts of yourself sat down together and really listened to one another? I am eager to receive the wisdom of such a conversation.
My time at the hermitage is now over for this season. I don’t know when I will be able to take the opportunity again, but for now I accept it as sheer gift and will be mining the insights for months to come. A friend recommended Teaching the Dead Bird to Sing: Living the Hermit Life Within and Without by W. Paul Jones and my used copy just arrived the other day. I opened it at random and my eyes fell onto a passage about creating a hermitage in your home, essentially a sacred space set aside for stillness. I have such a space already but have gotten out of the habit of using it since I would wait until I was out at the cottage these last few months. I think it is time I reclaim this space at home. I need to sit back in that chair and listen for what it has to say to me about this new season ahead. I need to invite both parts of myself into that space to listen to one another.
The other week while at a Jewish bookstore picking up kosher wine for a Passover seder, I saw this book on the shelf titled A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home. In addition to my love of Sabbath practice, and especially the Jewish traditions around it, the book had a beautiful cover and lots of inviting illustrated pages inside. I recognize that claiming the sacredness of Sabbath practice is more important than ever and this book is filled with resources to help me reflect in ever more meaningful ways. My inner hermit delighted in this purchase.
Each of us is a multiplicity of selves. We are filled with a wide spectrum of energies and passions, that can often feel conflicting. What might happen this week if you named two or more of those “competing” energies within you and invited them all over for tea? What might happen if you didn’t have to choose anymore, but could find a way to live deeply into the gifts of both?
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Visit this week’s Poetry Party! **
Posted in Abbey Bookshelf | 11 Comments »
April 28, 2008 · by Christine
Poetry Party #17! I select an image and suggest a title and invite you to respond with your poems, words, reflections, quotes, song lyrics, etc. Leave them in the comments or email me and I’ll add them to the body of the post as they come in along with a link back to your blog if you have one (not required to participate!) I’ll add your contributions all week and then I will draw a name at random on Saturday morning from everyone who participates and will send the winner their choice of zine.
When I was in Maine I was struck by all of the weathervanes on top of buildings, something you don’t see as much in other parts of the country. I loved the image of finding the direction the Spirit is blowing within you. What would an interior weathervane or compass look like? Feel free to take your poem in any direction you feel moved, focus on one image or all of them.
Feel free to post any of the images and invitation on your blog and encourage others to come join the party!
*****
to find north
one must know where south is
to find south
one must be willing to dive
~
sinking
to
the
watery
depths
where
monsters
of
the
mind
thrive
~
to navigate
not by sight
but by sound
to discern
not by fact
but by mystery
~
dive ~ dive deep
for therein lies the way
of the spirit
-Kel at the X facta
*****
Hashimoto Takako (1899-1963)
———-
in the sweltering sky
a ladder — someone carries it
to the deep shade
———-
a flash of lightning
coming from the north, I look
to the north
———-
(tr. by Makoto Ueda, submitted by kigen and see kigen’s great photo of a crow looking north)
*****
I spin the circle round,
pointing out, away.
I dance in the wind,
I glow in the sun,
I creak in the rain.
Do you need me
to show you the way?
What will you do
when I spin back
and around again?
-Tess at Anchors and Masts
*****
Wind and Spirit, by Chris Rice
I hear a sound and turn to see a new direction on that rusty weathervane
Suddenly the dead brown leaves are stirred to scratch their circle dances down the lane
And now the sturdy oaks start clappin’ with the last few stubborn leaves that won’t
let go
I can hear Old Glory snappin’ and her tattered rope now clangin’ against the pole
And my breath is snatched away
And a tear comes to my eye
Feels like somethin’s on the way so I look up to the sky, I look up to the sky and…
From the corners of creation
Comes the Father’s holy breath
Ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness
Stirring my soul to holiness
Stirring my soul to holiness
I see the lifeless dust now resurrected, swirling up against my window pane
And carried ‘cross the distance comes the long awaited fragrances of earth and rain
And out across the amber field the slender grasses bend and bow and kiss the ground
And in them I see the beauty of the soul’s who let the Spirit lay them down
And it takes my breath away
And a tear comes to my eye
Feels like somethin’s on the way, so I look up to the sky, I look up to the sky
and…
From the corners of creation
Comes the Father’s holy breath
Ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness
Stirring my soul to holiness
Stirring my soul to holiness
And like a mighty wind blows with a force I cannot see
I will open wide my wings, I will open wide my wings
I will open wide my wings and let the Spirit carry me
From the corners of creation
Comes the Father’s holy breath
Ridin’ on a storm with tender fierceness
Stirring my soul to holiness
Stirring my soul to holiness
Copyright Clumsy Fly Music (ASCAP)
(submitted by Anne Sims)
*****
Inner Compass
The narwhal sang; myth
to the salt drugged ears
of lonely men, lost
in the blue below, the blue
above, the white cold crust
of wind blown fear.
I still hear, the echoing
sound of waves, and voices
from deep within,
stones and sea, and curling horn
ancient as a race once born
in dreams. The needle point
of iron truth swings round
a slow and steady guide,
unbothered by the shifting tide
or wind tossed waves
that might upset, or light
the cold washed lamp of fear
but for that tiny grain, within.
Divine; the spark, a voice
that sings my name
in the voice of narwhal calling,
calling, to the wind.
-Tandaina at Snow on Roses
*****
On the old farm
a young poet found the Way,
facing the wind . . .
now that sense of direction
blows back into her soul again.
-b’oki.
*****
“Spinning and Still”
somedaystheSpiritblows
fiercelyfromalldirections,
theclanklymetalwhalealmosteatinghistail
ashespinsfromonesidetoanother,
heading
e
a
s
t
then
w
e
s
t
now
s
o
u
t
h,
now north,
backagain
w
e
s
t
it’s exhausting
spinningaroundlikethis.
other days
it.
stands.
still.
so, which way am i to go?
just where am i headed?
oh, how i long for a spring breeze to gently blow,
with a clear invitation,
“Come, let’s go this way…”
-Cathleen at Back Road Journey
*****
Turn around.
Go forward.
Stand still.
Choose now.
Wait.
Dream.
Wake up.
Speak up.
Keep quiet.
It’s not clear
what I must do
until the Spirit
finds me ready
for anything.
-Theresa Walker
*****
SACRED COMPASS
Wind in my face brings solace
to my soul, as I stand
at the portal to a sacred world.
Ready to journey upward
where blood red sunsets
signal the desires
of my heart to fly.
Birds on wing take final spins
before indigo darkness
sets them to rest.
Their soaring flights
ignite my imagination
giving birth to windswept dreams.
A weathervane detects
my heart’s movements
but cannot reveal
the depth of my emotion,
just as a conductor leads
an orchestra, yet he never stirs
our soul like a single,
haunting oboe.
A mapless journey reveals a new path,
so I move where I am led,
trusting my heart to take me
to the place where I can test
my wings against the wind,
always mindful of
the sacred compass.
-Rich at Pilgrim Path
*****
The weathervane stands still.
The Holy Spirit is waiting,
waiting for a prayer.
-Martha Louise Harkness
*****
Compass Stilled
He would be my father’s generation
Chalky snot, just inside
The zipper of his coat,
And a milky river that runs
A crevasse, cheek to chin.
I fumble for my hanky
And know he’s not dad
So that sticky river
Will stay his.
The stubble on his face
Is an aerial map
Of the Tillamook Burn;
Growth, clearing, reforestation.
Outwardly he has a walker
Making his life a push
And invading space.
He returns
More often then Jesus after Resurrection
At his stop on thirty-fifth across from
the library.
He doesn’t ask me to touch
Or believe.
His inner compass has no captain.
-Tom Delmore at Crow’s Perch
*****
called by
the wind
i set out for
the deep,
wondering
where she
will take me
and how far..
such is the
mystery
of a call
-Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes
*****
No weathervanes
in Minnesota.
Maybe I better go
to Maine.
Better yet,
I will snuggle inside
and seek direction
from my Home-ly Mother.
-Suz Reaney
*****
winds of change where do you begin?
is it a whisper in our ear or
the roar of a God whose belly fills deep
upon the ocean?
-Kayce Hughlett at lucy creates
*****
In a seafaring town on the Atlantic Ocean coast, clapboard dwellings painted white and silvering shake shingles equally prevail. Tides, sand, rocks and dune grass being common concerns, so is the weather. You need to know where the winds are blowing, cuz what you don’t know you can’t say “yes” to and you certainly cannot ever intentionally change anything you don’t know nothing about. Discerning breezes, spirited winds and directions in general is where weathervanes can be very handy, in addition to symbolizing past glories of way bygone whaling times. But regarding change, when I commented to my grandmother how raw and unfinished freshly new shingles seem to be, standing out in a too conspicuous way like a person of any age whose manners haven’t been put on quite right politely, Nana pointed out to me how quickly, how naturally with no effort on their part the shingles just happen to acquire a shimmering patina of silver. You might even call it graceful! In spite of that fact, still I’m wondering if I wouldn’t rather be brazenly conspicuous and freshly spoken, because that’s how I’ve naturally become as winds and rains have breezed through my life and world and days. That’s how my manner has become, polite or not much so, and to learn where the wind of the Spirit currently blows, Bob Dylan has words for what’s going to be happening soon; you can read it all on his site at When the Ship Comes In. Here’s a sample:
Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’.
Like the stillness in the wind
‘Fore the hurricane begins,
The hour when the ship comes in.
Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking.
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they’ll be smiling.
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand,
The hour that the ship comes in.
And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.
© 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music
-Leah at This Far by Faith
*****
Inner Compass
I turn not
because you push me
but because I want to move
and face the change.
I turn not
because you force me
but because it is time to embrace
new winds,
new power.
I turn.
And turn back.
And the Center?
I pivot on Christ.
-Deb Vaughn at An Unfinished Symphony
*****
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Poetry Invitation | 17 Comments »
April 25, 2008 · by Christine
Excerpted from “Renascence”
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, –
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay (who lived in Maine)
(photos taken along the coast of Maine)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Visual Meditation | 6 Comments »
April 23, 2008 · by Christine
This week’s Sacred Artist Interview is with Naomi Teplow. I first discovered her work while looking for pieces for the Presence journal (I love how this work gives me an excuse to find artists I love and contact them). She designs Ketubahs (Jewish marriage contracts) and other illuminated manuscripts, so after last week’s Abbey Bookshelf you can understand why I love her work so much. I find Hebrew script to be especially beautiful. I am grateful to Naomi for participating:
Are you rooted in a particular faith tradition?
I’m a Jewish Israeli from a secular Kibbutz, and though I’m not religious, I celebrate most of the Jewish holidays, especially the Friday night welcoming of the Sabbath. I also don’t drive on the Sabbath, but stay home to rest and study. But while my weekly (and yearly) practice is Jewish, my daily practice is actually the Buddhist meditation in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
What is your primary art medium?
Gouache and ink on paper or parchment (vellum.)
How do you experience the connection between spirituality and creativity?
When it comes to creativity, I don’t think I can differentiate between spirituality and non-spirituality (what would that be?) To me, everything informs and colors and motivates creativity. The body and the physical world no less than the spirit and the soul. The senses are just as powerful as ideas and thoughts. Everything I see, hear, smell, think about, feel, and experience, all that I am, which is an undividable whole of spirit and non-spirit, looks for expression, wants to create.
What role does spiritual practice have in your art-making?
My Jewish heritage and my deep connection with the Jewish world, past, present, and even future, determines the subject matter of what I do. My Buddhist practice keeps me sane so I can go about expressing all that Jewish stuff. Also, the Buddhist approach opens my mind and heart to the rest of the world and shows me how interconnected I am with every other phenomenon, and that interconnectedness is very much part of my work.
What sparked your spiritual journey?
I’m not in a journey. I bum around from one thing to the other, picking up whatever is exciting and inspiring, interesting and fun, and whatever keeps my anxieties and depressive tendencies in check.
What sparked your artistic journey?
The need to express myself and the need to make a living.
Do you have a particular process you use when entering into your creative work?
I read a lot, and think, and wait, and hope for ideas and solutions, and try imagining things, and wait some more, and slowly, slowly something emerges.
How does your art-making shape your image of God?
I don’t want to shock anybody, but I don’t believe in God. I believe in the human need to believe in God. I personally don’t need that hypothesis (As Laplace put it) in order to try my best to be good and to express that in a visual or verbal way.
(Art from top to bottom: Shannah-Shinnah, Four Seasons, Jerusalem of Peace, Circle of Time)
Thank you so much to Naomi Teplow and make sure to visit her website. I especially resonated with her responses about creativity and spirituality. I appreciate the question of whether we can even have something that is non-spiritual. I love the image of being “an undividable whole of spirit and non-spirit, look(ing) for expression, want(ing) to create.” I also valued reflecting on what a non-theistic spirituality looks like and the way that art can be the language between us.
Posted in Sacred Artist Interview | 7 Comments »
April 20, 2008 · by Christine
There are a lot of new things blossoming here at the Abbey. Just last week I accepted a halftime position as the Program Coordinator for the Ignatian Spirituality Center that begins later this summer. I am delighted to be a part of the mission of this organization. While I reflect a lot here on Benedictine spirituality, Ignatian spirituality has been an important part of my journey as well. I consider these to be two great streams in which I stand. I have participated in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius twice in their extended format, once at the Mercy Center in Burlingame when I was beginning my doctoral studies. The second as a discerner in the SEEL program here in Seattle, discerning whether I was called to be a spiritual director for that program. To my surprise, my discernment at that time was that it wasn’t the right season for me.
Jesuit institutions have played a significant role in my life as well, having attended a Jesuit school for both my Bachelors and Masters degrees as well as spending a year as a Jesuit Volunteer. I currently serve as an adjunct for two different Jesuit universities as well. What I have always loved about Ignatian spirituality are the commitments to social justice, discernment, and to the interior life of the imagination and feelings which is so much a part of Ignatian prayer practices. One part of this position will be developing more support for the program leaders and I am excited to reflect on what an Ignatian model of ministry leadership looks like.
Of course, taking on this commitment means that I must step back and discern which other pieces of my work I can continue and which I must let go of for the season ahead. This is not an easy task. I am someone who always has a multitude of ideas birthing within me, it is the blessing and curse of being a creative person. The blessing is the sense of abundance I experience on a daily basis. The curse is the confrontation with my own limits, the need to rest into a sense of humility, that I can’t do everything I long to do. And yet, even this “curse” has its gifts — I am reminded again and again that the God I believe in is a source of abundant possibility and so there will always be far more possibilities than I can ever live into. There is a beautiful grace I experience when I can rest in this knowledge.
So I look at all of the things I love doing: teaching for Loyola and Seattle Universities, teaching Awakening the Creative Sprit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Arts and Imagination, art editing for the Presence journal, the joy I get from writing this blog and creating my sets of prayer cards and reflective art journals, the many other writing and art projects that call to me, my desire to begin training in spiritual direction supervision and in Bowen theory. Then there are the new possibilities that call to me, like learning how to make podcasts so I can produce some of the guided meditations I write and lead with groups, or creating some videos of my photo images along with reflections. A friend once told me that she has wish lives — several parallel lives that she would be living as an alternative to the one she is living, where she gets to do all of the wonderful things she imagines.
This weekend I spent time with a dear soul friend at my hermitage. She is one of those people I can go months without seeing and then we are able to reconnect at a deep place and share the textures of our lives and listen each other into new ways of being. I breathed deeply of the sea, I walked and listened to the rhythm of the tides, to the pulsing of my own heart.
On Saturday afternoon I was doing some journaling, trying to hold all of the possibilities before me and discern what needs to be let go of for the season ahead. Looking at my list raised my anxiety a bit and so I lay down for a nap. While sleeping I had a dream: I am in a house on stilts over the sea. There is a strong windstorm blowing and the house is being tossed back and forth, as if I were on a boat. I am walking around from room to room trying to find my balance. I open the bedroom door and my husband is laying in bed. He pulls back the covers and tells me “get in and you’ll be fine.”
When I awoke my dream made me smile. Dreams are rarely so direct, but in this instance I could physically feel my body in the dream trying to get my footing while I was being blown about. Then discovering my sweet husband, who is always a grounding presence in my life, and his invitation to lay down, to relax into what was happening. I awoke feeling a shift in my being.
What are the invitations you are tending to these days? Where do you experience a sense of abundance? Do you have any wish lives?
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
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