-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
(photos taken along the shore of the Hood Canal)
The winner of this week’s Poetry Party drawing will be announced later today! There’s still time to add your poem — currently up to 23 participants which is a wonderful outpouring of creative energy.

Posted in Photos, Season by the Sea, Visual Meditation | 11 Comments »

(I believe this photo is of otter prints I discovered in the sand, I have only seen these wonderful creatures fleetingly. The photo below is of Tune’s paw prints.)
One of the great gifts of my time at the hermitage is being able to walk along the beach at low tide.  Because the tides shift from […]

Posted in Season by the Sea | 7 Comments »

For the last Poetry Party I invited you to reflect on the theme of the “beauty of broken things.”  Your poetic responses were marvelous, spanning a wide spectrum of possibility and exploration.  Many of the images moved me, such as “I am the hidden underside of things” and “ice so cold it is also fire” […]

Posted in Aesthetic Spirituality, Season by the Sea | 10 Comments »

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. /
I would like to see you living / In better conditions.”
-Hafiz
“Move from within. / Don’t move the way that fear wants you to. /
Begin a foolish project. / Noah did.” 
-Rumi

  
I smiled yesterday when lucy commented about my journey of fearlessness because this subject of fear and freedom […]

Posted in Photos, Nature and Creativity, Season by the Sea | 20 Comments »

“Will you sail ‘cross the water and tell us what you found”
-Jane Siberry, “Sail Across the Water” from When I Was a Boy
 
Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, from In Praise of Mortality

My dreams lately have been inviting me to enter […]

Posted in Photos, Poetry, Season by the Sea | 7 Comments »

I walked along the beach yesterday afternoon and discovered brilliant white oyster shells scattered across the sand, tumbled smooth by the waves and brought to shore in an offering from the sea.  I began picking up the ones that seemed to be calling to me, until my hands and pockets were overflowing with treasure. I brought them home, […]

Posted in Nature and Creativity, Season by the Sea | 6 Comments »

Humpbacks
There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.
Off Stellwagan
off the Cape,
the humbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at […]

Posted in Photos, Poetry, Embodiment, Season by the Sea | 7 Comments »

About a month ago I shared a dream I had about renting an art studio space with wide windows onto the sea.  My spiritual director said my psyche was insisting on more space for my art.  I wasn’t sure how to respond.  I love making art out of my home and as I did a cursory search of art […]

Posted in Photos, Season by the Sea, Lunar Cycles | 11 Comments »