Tomorrow I head down to the Priory for our annual Oblate retreat, the topic is “The Heart of an Oblate” and I am looking forward to spending time with some of my Oblate friends. 
Sister Lucy asked if I would consider being a mentor this coming year to someone who is becoming an Oblate candidate, which means […]

Posted in Monastic Spirituality | 5 Comments »

For the season of Easter I made a commitment to practice resurrection of the body, both my own body and the Earth’s body.  It has been a good process as I continue to discover places of my own healing and how they are woven together with the healing of the greater body.
As a part of this […]

Posted in Sacred Nourishment, Easter | 11 Comments »

  
Camas Lilies
Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground bulbs
for flour, how the settler’s hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed and
useful […]

Posted in Photos, Poetry, Monastic Spirituality | 4 Comments »

  
In the Christian church, today is the feast of Pentecost.  It is considered to be the birthday of the church because it celebrates when the Spirit descended upon the disciples and filled them with the fire of courage to go and spread the message of liberation witnessed to them.  Vestments and banners usually are red, filling the […]

Posted in Photos, Easter | 5 Comments »

Allium is one of my new favorite flowers (after peonies, of course).  For some reason I had never seen or noticed them before.  They look to me like purple dandelion seed pods or a tiny fireworks display.
Blessings upon your weekend.  May you discover new beauty you never noticed before!
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the […]

Posted in Photos | 3 Comments »

In the last couple of weeks we have watched Blood Diamond which takes place in Sierra Leone and The Last King of Scotland which is about Uganda.  They were both heart-rending films.  I also have been reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmeal Beah which addresses the Sierra Leone story from the perspective of a boy soldier […]

Posted in Sacred Nourishment | 9 Comments »

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their […]

Posted in Photos, Poetry | 12 Comments »

Driving Under the Influence of Poetry
Scribbling on scraps of paper
On the seat next to me
As my car sails down
The freeways.
Words tumbling out
Around that sharp turn.
Poems dashed off at stop lights
They will not wait for me
To sit politely at a desk.
Poems on the run.
No speed limit for them.
They race in my head
As I keep one eye […]

Posted in Poetry, Creativity | 6 Comments »

 
What a gathering-the purple
tongues of iris licking out
at spikes of lupine, the orange
crepe skirts of poppies lifting
over buttercup and daisy.

Who can be grim
in the face of such abundance?
There is nothing to compare,
no need for beauty to compete.

The voluptuous rhododendron
and the plain grass
are equally filled with themselves,
equally declare the miracles
of color and form.

This is what community […]

Posted in Photos, Poetry | 8 Comments »

Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, […]

Posted in Creativity | 6 Comments »