Welcoming in Joy

June 19, 2008 · by Christine

 Season by the Sea: A Contemporary Book of Hours has finally arrived on my doorstep!  Thank you for your patience everyone.  I have just made the journey to the post office today to send the first batch out to subscribers and those who pre-ordered.

If you haven’t yet, I would love your support by placing an order for your own copy.  I also have copies available of my previous zines Praying with the Elements, Callings: Becoming Who You Already Are, and What is Blossoming Within You? and my sets of prayer cards for discernment, grief, as well as the seasons (although I haven’t completed a set for summer yet and likely won’t this season). 

You can find them all at my Etsy store or you can email me directly with your order to Christine AT AbbeyoftheArts DOT com.  Please send in all orders BEFORE JULY 8th as I will be unable to ship anything from July 10-August 15.

In other fun publishing news, the book I co-authored with Sister Lucy Wynkoop for Paulist Press titled Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening and Awareness should be available by November.  To get a sneak peek, you might want to visit some previous posts of mine on using lectio divina to pray with scripture, poetry, visual art, and music.  Lectio is an ancient contemplative way of praying with scriptures that can also be used to cultivate a contemplative engagement with all of life’s experiences.

Here is what some wonderful writers have generously said about our upcoming book:

“I highly recommend Lectio Divina: a Way of Being with God and Life. While many books laud the value of integrating lectio into our lives and some may provide the briefest of explanations, this is the only source that I am aware of that provides both the tradition and development of lectio divina along with contemporary expressions of lectio in practice. This book has grown out of years of practice and in mentoring others to cultivate ways of lectio divina that deepen the contemplative stance toward life. Lectio has been the heart and gut of monastic practice for centuries; the Spirit invites all of God’s people to partake of this ancient way with God.”

-Sr. Laura Swan, OSB, author of The Forgotten Desert Mothers

“Lectio Divina: A Way of Being with God and Life is above all a practical book. It is rooted in the authors’ own practice and the experience of those for whom they provide spiritual direction. It gives practical advice for readers who wish to deepen their life with

God on the basis prayerful reading of the Bible or the other ways in which God’s word reaches us. Those who listen with their hearts to these authors’ words will be deepened in their spiritual practice.”

–Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB, Monastery of the Ascension.

“With the rising interest in the art of Lectio Divina Christine Valters Paintner and Lucy Wynkoop have created a work of great promise. In this superb resource the ancient wisdom and the poetry of the Lectio process shines forth. This is a praiseworthy offering.”

–Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, author of Seven Sacred Pauses and A Tree Full of Angels

“Christine Valters Paintner and Lucy Wynkoop offer a way of practicing lectio divina that is inviting, accessible and practical. Their deep confidence in this way of prayer, and the clarity and wisdom with which they beckon the reader, spring from their own lived experience. With its singular combination of insights for daily life and prayer and suggestions for practice, this book will prove helpful to both the novice and to those who teach this way of prayer.”

–The Rev. Mary C. Earle, Associate Faculty of the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, author of Broken Body, Healing Spirit: Lectio Divina and Living with Illness

“Wynkoop and Paintner’s LECTIO DIVINA is a lovely book, with a gentle, lyrical style that reveals lectio’s aim in the authors’ tone as well as words. In their hands, lectio takes shape as a transforming power, combining the great aspiration to love and be loved by God with full acceptance of ourselves as we are. I especially enjoy the way Wynkoop and Paintner integrate the prayer of lectio with the senses, describing its wisdom as basking and luxuriating in God’s presence, and offering specific suggestions for integrating art, poetry, images, music and the body into a lectio practice. LECTIO DIVINA is an act of consecration – the lifting up of our lives and souls to God.”

–Dr. Norvene Vest, OSB obl., author of Friend of the Soul: Benedictine Spirituality of Work

“If a college student practicing a secular adaptation of lectio divina hears the “still, small voice” that was “lost to years of Ritalin use,” then Sister Lucy Wynkoop and Dr. Christine Valters Paintner’s Lectio Divina: A Way of Being with God and Life provides an immensely practical guidebook for discerning the voices of “God” and for being with the vicissitudes of contemporary life.”

–Dr. Sarah Williams, Professor of Feminist Studies, The Evergreen State College

There is, of course, a sense of deep joy in work done well.  I am eager to hold this volume in my hands and begin to share it more widely.  But for the moment I rest in the satisfaction and delight of this moment, and of lingering in the possibilities ahead.

I also found out recently that I will be presenting a workshop on “Cultivating Presence Through the Expressive Arts” at the next Spiritual Directors International Conference held in Houston, Texas in April 2009.  I look forward to connecting again with the spiritual direction community there, the Leadership Institute portion of this year’s conference was wonderful.

So today I welcome joy into the inner rooms of my soul.  Of course the Abbess Petunia brings me her own dose of delight too. Have a wonderful weekend.  May the coming of the Summer Solstice find you dancing in the light of creation and reveling in the wonder of your own being.

-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

** Come back Monday for a continued reflections building on my previous posts this week – Wonder and Despair and Radical Hospitality — and another Sacred Artist Interview on Wednesday with the delightful Marcy Hall **

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