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AWAKENING THE CREATIVE SPIRIT:
Bringing the Expressive Arts to Spiritual Direction
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*REGISTER FOR THE SUMMER SESSION*

July 19-August 29, 2010
The early registration discount is extended until March 10th ($125 per class instead of $150)
There [...]

Posted in Poetry, Visual Meditation | 2 Comments »

A visual meditation with images from my travels during the World Congress of Benedictine Oblates in October 2009. The photos were taken in the Vatican City, Rome, Subiaco (Benedict’s Cave), Monte Cassino (Benedictine monastery), and Sant’Anselmo (Primatial Abbey). The music is by Hildegard of Bingen.
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative [...]

Posted in Monastic Spirituality, Visual Meditation | 14 Comments »

The flock thickens
over the roiling, salt brightness. Listen,
maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world
in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,
but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,
is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,
but of pure submission. Tell me, what else
could beauty be [...]

Posted in Lenten Online Retreat, Visual Meditation | 12 Comments »

I grew up in New York City where my father worked for the United Nations.  He was half Latvian (father’s side) and half Austrian (mother’s side) and at age 12, during World War II, he had to flee Riga where he was raised to go to Vienna and live with his grandparents.  For my entire [...]

Posted in Visual Meditation | 10 Comments »

The autumn equinox is tomorrow. 
What are you releasing that no longer energizes you? 
What dreams do you want to harvest this season?
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
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Posted in Cycles and Seasons, Visual Meditation | 7 Comments »

“There have been evenings when the light has turned everything silver, and like you I have stopped at a corner and suddenly staggered with the grace of it all.”
-William Stafford

© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
END OF SUMMER SALE at the Abbey Shop on ALL Reflective [...]

Posted in Visual Meditation | 4 Comments »

Two Visual Meditation Reprises for this day:
The first, Happy Birthday to my dear friend, this one is for you.
The second, in loving memory of the terrible loss of 8 years ago.

Posted in Visual Meditation | 4 Comments »

Breakage
I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It’s like [...]

Posted in Visual Meditation | 4 Comments »

Floating on the wind,
What do I resemble?
A solitary gull
Between the heavens and the earth
-Du Fu

Photos taken at Golden Gardens in Seattle in honor of my father’s 77th birthday.
** Our next Poetry Party will be on Monday! **
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

END OF SUMMER SALE [...]

Posted in Visual Meditation | 9 Comments »

A series of images celebrating embodied prayer.
© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

Posted in Visual Meditation | 2 Comments »