June 27, 2008 · by Christine
“At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. I stare and stare.
It seems I was called for this: To glorify things just because they are.”
-Czeslaw Milosz
(most of these photos have appeared on this blog before, but the quote inspired me to group them together)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Come back on Monday for our 21st Poetry Party **
Posted in Visual Meditation | 7 Comments »
June 25, 2008 · by Christine
I first encountered Marcy Hall’s work through her partner’s blog blisschick who comments here very thoughtfully from time to time. I was delighted to follow the links that landed me at Marcy’s website because I discovered an artist with a wonderful sense of playfulness to her work, while at the same time exploring very sacred themes.
I also adore her use of animals in her imagery that speak to me of the sacred power our connections to creatures have. Each animal in her work seems to occupy its own world of peace and play, while also inviting the person gazing upon the work into this world, to participate in it.
I am so pleased that Marcy agreed to particiate in my Sacred Artist Interview series:
*****
Are you rooted in a particular faith tradition?
Not so much. I was raised as a Methodist, but it didn’t really stick. I think I am pretty rooted in Christianity as a whole, though I tried for years not to be. I like to try to stay open minded (for example, I wasn’t raised Catholic but there’s a lot there that attracts me and the same for Buddhism), but I am, at this point in my life, actively seeking a path that is more definite and concrete. I think that having a path helps to focus and direct your life in a way that nothing else can. Cafeteria style is fine but at some point you have to decide what to put on your tray, which is only so big.
What is your primary art medium?
My primary art medium is acrylic on canvas, though I like to explore. Recently, I’ve branched out to painting on wood panels. I have a real drive to do more multi-media work or to incorporate sculpture in some way. But I haven’t figured out how or even why to do so. I know I have to just wait and eventually it will come to me.
How do you experience the connection between spirituality and creativity?
I think they are one and the same, which is why I think I’ve had a hard time settling on a particular faith tradition — because I feel like too often the religions I’ve experienced try to separate the two by creating set-in-stone methods that are supposed to work the same way for everyone. I think our spirituality and our personal way to God is as unique as the creativity we all possess.
What role does spiritual practice have in your art-making?
Even though I don’t have a particular faith tradition (for the moment!), I do believe in one basic principle, which I try to use as the guiding principle of my life: Everything is divine in some way, in some respect. I may not know how or why, but that’s not important, because most things are beyond my ability to see. I try to represent this principle through my art in my own way, through the subjects I choose, the colors I use, the elements I incorporate, the words I write. My goal is to make art that celebrates life’s inherent divinity and specialness.
What sparked your spiritual journey and your artistic journey?
Both my spiritual and artistic journeys are constantly sparked by each other, and both are constantly sparked by a million other things. I like to think, though I am building on what came before in both cases, that I am starting over new and fresh each day. Anything can happen. In that way, each day is an opportunity for something new to happen, big or small. Both my spiritual and creative journies are also equally sparked by trying to find my place in the world and by trying to better understand how I can contribute to the world around me. I can’t contribute much if I’m not spiritually grounded (or at least seeking to become so) or if I’m not practicing my artistic gifts, which are spiritually inspired. They go hand in hand.
Do you have a particular process you use when entering into your creative work?
I do have a process that I normally follow. On the wall behind my easel and painting paraphernalia, I have an altar of sorts (just a shelf mounted on the wall) that holds a couple of candles, some pictures of loved ones (cats and people), and some other miscellaneous items of importance to me. Before I begin painting, I light my candles and remind myself not to over-analyze and not to try too hard, but to just let the images and color choices come naturally and spontaneously. I remind myself to trust my instincts and to not second guess myself. My painting room is also where my rabbit, Zoe, resides, so my creative process also involves taking a lot of snuggle breaks.
How does your art-making shape your image of God?
I’ve always had a favorable impression of God, and painting and living more artistically and creatively has only enhanced that impression. My art doesn’t so much shape an image of God for me as much as it solidifies my connection to God. Though I’ve lived a long time without adhering to one particular tradition, I’ve never doubted God, and I think that’s because I’ve always been creative or artistic in some way over my lifetime. Creativity and art-making show me personally that though I may not totally “get it” in the religion department, that’s not ultimately what matters. What ultimately matters is that I try to do the best I can every day with whatever skills, talents, and passions I possess. I think that God is Love and Love is God, and every day is an opportunity to see the world from that perspective. For me, art is what reminds me of that when I lose my way.
*****
Thank you so much to Marcy for sharing her insights here with us. As always, in the process of reading through the interview I found much that resonated and stirred me. Today I am especially moved by her statement of making art “that celebrates life’s inherent divinity and specialness”, that each day offers to us an abundance of new possibilities, and I of course love that her creative process involves snuggle breaks with her bunny. The Abbess Petunia is often my muse as well as my reminder of the delights of love which then infuses my work. I also love Marcy’s image of art-making as a way of deepening her connection to the sacred.
Make sure to visit her website to see more of her absoltuely delightful images. Also visit her Cafe Press store called Animal Dreams where you can order some of her whimsical animal art on t-shirts, cards, totes, and more.
(Images from top to bottom: Meditation, Bird Goddess, Tiger Tiger, Bridge Cat, Cherry Blossoms)
Posted in Sacred Artist Interview | 4 Comments »
June 22, 2008 · by Christine
A Great Pilgrimage
I felt in need of a great pilgrimage
so I sat still for three
days
and God came
to me.
-Kabir
Tomorrow is my birthday and lately I have been longing for some retreat time. I was wise enough to block off the next few days to rest in some stillness at home while my dear husband is away. This time of retreat is partly in preparation for a much larger pilgrimage I will be taking in just a couple of weeks and partly because I find birthdays invite reflection as I celebrate the anniversary of my own birth and sit in vigil waiting for what needs to be revealed for this next phase of my journey.
This past week I wrote about the need to be willing to walk into our despair rather than resist it and the practice of radical hospitality as one way to welcome in the strangers at our interior doors. There is another metaphor that I find helpful in this journey – the image of learning a new landscape. When we have enough courage to see sorrow or grief through the peephole and we welcome them in as treasured guests the way Rumi invites us to, there is an energy of resting in our interior dwelling space together. But there is also the energy of being invited onto a pilgrimage through unfamiliar territory. Much of our spiritual journeys hold these seemingly paradoxical movements — creating space within us to dwell and rest and be present to the strangers and shadows we would rather not welcome in — as well as the invitation to leave the place of our security, to go beyond the door of our own safe homes and be led on a pilgrimage by these strangers and shadows and being shown an entirely new landscape.
When I sit with people in spiritual direction I usually offer both of these metaphors at different moments, depending on what seems to be called for. In some ways the initial movement is the ability and willingness to welcome in the whole host of feelings and experiences that we want to resist into our interior house, into a place of safety. We make tea for our anger, serve a meal to our despair, build a fire for our sense of betrayal, so that we can create room enough within us to learn from these guests.
But while we sit over tea and scones with the fire roaring, this guest begins to take us on a journey. It is an interior journey of exploring a certain kind of landscape. In our deepest grief, when we let the sorrow in, can we then let sadness take us by the hand and walk us through the textures of that landscape? Are we willing to become familiar with the rock formations there, with the vegetation, the colors (or lack thereof) that spread out before us? Can we linger in those places that may not be beautiful, but offer us wisdom about what it means to be human?
Years ago, a wise and wonderful spiritual director sat with me as I shared a story of a betrayal I had experienced, one that had no neat resolutions to be found. She invited me to get familiar with that experience of betrayal, to welcome it into myself with the fullness of the human experience if for no other reason than to know that one day when I found myself sitting with another person going through a similar experience I could invite them to embrace the experience rather than resist it with the knowledge that I had been there too. True, my experience of the landscape of this emotional territory might be slightly different, but there was great value and compassion in simply being present to the pain in part as a gift to a future unknown other. A gift I find myself called upon to offer again and again.
In just a few weeks I leave for another external pilgrimage connected to my family systems work. I will be traveling to the places of my father and his ancestors, some of which I have journeyed through before as a child and some will be my first experience. It has taken time to get all of the preparations in place, to plan the itinerary, to make the necessary reservations, to contact the family members and old friends I want to connect with, to find someone to care for our home and beloved dog while we are away.
All those practical pieces are in place now and I suddenly realize it is time for me to make the emotional preparations as well. As someone who loves to travel, it will be an exciting journey simply to visit these beautiful places. But there will also be challenges along the way, I know memories will be stirred, unresolved feelings will show up, ancestral longings and trauma I was not familiar with before will demand my attention. I will need to put radical hospitality into practice, making internal space for all of these strangers. I will need to tend to the internal dimensions of the pilgrimage and grow intimate with landscapes and emotional territories I may not have anticipated. So these next few days of retreat are in part a time of preparation for the bigger journey ahead.
I also have some maps to help guide me along the way. I recently had my birth chart done again. The first time I went to an astrologist was about ten years ago. She was a close friend of my aunt’s and she offered a reading as a birthday gift. I accepted for the fun of it but was surprised by the complexity and beauty of what the reading offered to me in terms of understanding my own longings and the directions I felt called to go. Suddenly I imagined a God vast enough to have offered these archetypal symbols to me at the moment of my birth as one possible map, as guidance from one much wiser than myself. Astrology is not about your life being pre-determined, but a template that provides an invitation to go to the places that nurture your soul most deeply.
Ironically enough (or perhaps not really), one of the invitations in my chart I heard this past week that I hadn’t heard in past readings, is that an essential element of my work is to go to places of my own darkness so that I can also be a guide for others to do their own difficult soul work. The astrologist offered the myth of Persephone as an image and then in a lovely synchronicity, the person leading my peer supervision group the very next day invited us to work with the myth of Persephone through art as our process. I experienced deep resonance and layers of invitation unfolded before me during our time together that I will continue to explore. Persephone spends half the year in the Underworld, but while she was initially tricked into going there, she eventually becomes the Queen of this shadowy place. She becomes empowered to dwell there, but also is able to return to the earth above. I hold this story as another map to tend to in my few days of retreat and as a preparation for the pilgrimage ahead.
Lest you worry that my birthday will be spent only plunging the dark emotional depths of my soul, know that I also have the landscape of joy before me. Last Friday night I spent the most delightful and wondrous evening with a dear friend, welcoming the Solstice together, celebrating all of the delights of summer in Seattle, sharing communion together through bread and wine, witnessing each other’s journeys. I truly had the experience of breathing in the deepest kind of freedom that comes from authentic joy. And there is more of this kind of delight still to come this week. These moments provide their own kind of map as well.
What are the stories and symbols singing within you during these days of summer? What are the journeys and pilgrimages you are being invited to take (both internal and external)? Where are you experiencing the rich satisfaction of joy and the difficult places of sadness? What is the map you need to move into this new territory?
(photo taken last summer in Ireland at Glendalough and is also featured on one of the cards from my set for discernment)
* I will still be checking email this week so I welcome your comments and insights into what I have shared by comments or email notes. Wednesday there will be another Sacred Artist Interview. *
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Spirituality, Grief, Pilgrimage, Family Systems | 12 Comments »
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 **
Posted in Fun, zine journal | 3 Comments »
June 17, 2008 · by Christine
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning is a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
[S]he may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi
I am very grateful for the many thoughtful comments and emails I received in response to my post from Monday on Wonder and Despair. If you haven’t read all of the comments I encourage you to do so.
The poem above by Rumi has been one of those core life poems for me for several years — a poem that speaks to me so beautifully and simply about what I believe to be one of life’s central and most difficult tasks.
Over time, as I lived into the poem’s imagery, I began to discover a connection to the Benedictine concept of hospitality that plays a central role in my spiritual life and practice. St. Benedict wrote in his Rule: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for him himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” The core of his idea was that everyone who comes to the door of the monastery, and by extension the door to our lives—the poor, the traveler, the curious, those of a different religion, social class, or education — should be welcomed in, not just as an honored guest, but as a window onto the sacred presence. For Benedict, our encounter with the stranger, the unknown, the unexpected, the foreign elements that spark our fear, are precisely the places where we are most likely to encounter God.
I began to see how we could apply this kind of hospitality to our very selves, to all of the elements about us that we fear and reject — the painful and dark feelings, our shadow side, the things we do and long for we don’t want anyone to know about. I began to see this as a kind of radical hospitality of the soul. The word radical comes from the Latin word radix meaning root. Radical hospitality might be seen as hospitality that proceeds from the very core or root of who we are, an invitation to extend a welcome to the stranger that dwells inside of you. We are made up of multiple inner characters and voices and some of them get invited to our inner table, while others are standing out in the rain waiting to be let in to feast and share their wisdom with us.
Rumi’s poem commands us to make space for the whole range of guests who might arrive – the feelings we experience that we push back, resist, numb ourselves to – which might come bearing gifts.
How do you welcome in the range of your feelings without being swept away by them? One way to do this is by cultivating an inner witness. Meditation practice can nurture our ability to sit and observe the rise and fall of our inner lives without resisting or seizing any particular moment. When we offer ourselves the space to simply be with whatever is happening inside, without judgement, we begin to see that each of those feelings passes with time. The inner witness is that part of ourselves – described in different ways by many traditions — that can be fully present without anxiety, that can offer radical hospitality to whatever knocks at our inner door.
We are called to be a witness to each other as well – to be fully present to the sorrow and despair of another without rushing to console or offer hope to circumvent our own discomfort. It is because I have treasured friends and other support in my life who provide a safe container for me to explore the depths of my experience, that I am able to walk into the feelings of despair when they come, rather than run the other way. It is because I make a regular practice of nurturing the ability of my inner witness to be present to the guests arriving at my inner door welcoming them in. When the difficult feelings arrive, I breathe deeply and make space so I can listen to what messages they have to offer me rather than resist and leave them banging on the door. Some days this is easier than others, some days I still want to pile the furniture to prevent their entry. But as Rumi said so wisely 800 years ago, treat each guest honorably as a guide much wiser than myself. In that act of hospitality I will walk in solidarity with those who are shrouded in pain. I will come to know how essential kindness is. I will discover moments of wonder. I will come face to face with a different kind of hope, one that rises like heat from wrestling bodies.
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
(photo of door handle taken in Ireland last summer)
Posted in Poetry, Spirituality, Monastic Spirituality, Contemplative Living | 12 Comments »
June 15, 2008 · by Christine
The Love of Morning
It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we’ve lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .
God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight’s gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;
but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth’s
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.
-Denise Levertov
I had a recent email exchange with one of my readers who shared with me that she sometimes goes through stages where she is “carried by a poem.” I completely resonated with this image and the Levertov poem above is one that is carrying me through these days. These lines in particular are singing to me: “God has saved the world one more day / even with its leaden burden of human evil; / we wake to birdsong” although the whole arc of the poem reflects my internal journey in this season.
I have come to recognize a deep despair that resides in the shadow part of myself, the shadow being of course those things about ourselves we don’t want to embrace. And yet the journey toward our own wholeness is precisely about naming our shadows, welcoming them into the inner rooms of our being, and listening for what they have to say to us.
Those of you who have been reading along here for a while know that I am engaging in some family systems work as a part of my spiritual journey. My father was someone who let despair consume him, his whole life he ran from his own darkness. In addition to whatever pain he experienced within his own family, his youth was layered against the backdrop of World War II, and the trauma and despair of that experience is something he never spoke of to me. I have found that resisting the despair only magnifies the weight of it.
In some ways, in saying these things, I feel like my paint is peeling, I am revealing the more difficult surfaces of my soul. I think part of my reluctance to share these struggles is my fear that others will try to step in to offer me hope as an antidote. I have an ambivalent relationship to the word “hope” — too often I think we use that term as a way of trying to circumvent the necessary process of facing our own dark emotions, we do violence to others by trying to move them to a place where we feel much more comfortable.
I am blessed with a spiritual director who does not ask me to cheer up or have hope. He asks me to walk right into the despair, to name the darkness and pain and suffering that weighs on me at times. He invites me to dwell there and imagine the pain my father struggled with so that I might cultivate more compassion and forgiveness for him.
I want to resist the despair, as many of us would. I sometimes spend a lot of energy doing precisely that. I don’t want to leap into the dark abyss where I must come to terms with the fact that this next moment could be my last, that those I love deeply will one day be gone, that we are waging a terrible war thousands of miles away whose trauma will ripple through generations to come, that we continue to wreak havoc on our planet and much of the damage is simply irreversible. When I contemplate the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust I come to the conclusion that there is simply no consolation for that devastation. For some despair there simply is no tidy redemption offered in response, it simply is the horror that it is. Not that there weren’t stories of tremendous courage and love that rose from the ashes of that event, but the millions of crushed and broken bodies cannot be changed.
And yet, when I give myself space to walk right into that place of feeling utterly undone, of naming the things that give me reason for despair, I feel the crushing weight of sorrow and sometimes something quite remarkable happens. Sometimes when I am truly able to release my resistance to the places of darkness I am reminded of birdsong as Levertov writes, I come to treasure the simplest kindness, my heart begins to open in wonder at my own capacity for love.
These things do not outweigh the despair, as though the universe were some kind of cosmic scale. The despair and the beauty dwell together in the same space, not competing, but offering to us the full experience of soulfulness. Poetry and art help us to hold these in tension.
I come to realize that the opposite of despair for me is not hope, but precisely this experience of wonder. Wonder that there is anything at all, wonder that in the presence of great darkness there is also so much beauty, so much love.
As you read these words, I invite you to notice what stirs in you. Do you want to rush and reassure me that everything will indeed be alright? Do you want to say that the beauty of the world really does outweigh the darkness in some sort of ultimate battle?
Or can you rest here in this space with me, holding the profound paradox of the world as best as you can. Can you join me in making room within you for the full spectrum of the emotional landscape we contain within us, responding to the call to be fully present to this wondrous and despairing moment?
(photos: above taken over the Hood Canal, below taken at a sheep farm in Arlington, WA)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts.
Posted in Family Systems | 24 Comments »
June 14, 2008 · by Christine
This week’s winner of the random drawing for the Poetry Party is Tess at Anchors and Masts. Tess, email me with your snail mail and I will be sending you a copy of my newest zine Season by the Sea: A Contemporary Book of Hours by the end of this coming week.
Thanks to everyone for their stunning poetic offerings this week. An amazing array of beautiful words and reflections. Make sure to click over and read the wonderful poems. The next Poetry Party will be in three weeks on Monday, June 30th.
Another full week, but things are beginning to subside and I will be sharing more reflections next week at my blog, so make sure to come back on Monday. I realized after I posted the cover of my upcoming zine here last week that I made a last-minute change because of an inspiration I had to do some collage representations of the different qualities of time throughout the day, and so here you see the new cover for Season by the Sea: A Contemporary Book of Hours (the image from the previous cover still appears inside).
The issues will be here from the printer any day now and I have all of my pre-orders and subscribers envelopes ready to stuff when they arrive! Please keep the orders coming in!
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Fun, zine journal | 2 Comments »
June 12, 2008 · by Christine
excerpted from “To Learn from Animal Being”
May we learn to return
and rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our unlocked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.
May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.
-John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
Today is Abbess Petunia’s 11th Birthday! She welcomes birthday wishes from humans and canines alike in the comments! Both photos above are of her in all her wise and restful glory. The bottom image was the featured photo for our previous Poetry Party, but it is one of my favorites so here it appears again in her honor.
** Make sure to visit this week’s Poetry Party! **
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Visual Meditation | 8 Comments »
June 9, 2008 · by Christine
Our Twentieth Poetry Party! 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 a copy of my newest zine Season by the Sea: A Contemporary Book of Hours when it is back from the printers in another week or so.
Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog and encourage others to come join the party! (a blog is definitely not required to participate!)
I photographed the image below last summer on Vancouver Island at a Raptor Sanctuary. There is something so powerful about eagles and they are known for strength and vision. What in your life do you feel this kind of clarity about? Or is there something for which you would like a clearer vision?
*****
Practicing zazen –
now the camera has become
my meditation cushion!
-kigen
*****
Clear eyed
Oh Grandmother Eagle,
riding the thermal
currents high, higher.
Your sharp sight slowly
fading, your sinews
tough, still powerful.
How much longer will you
soar, until you fold
your outstretched wings
forever?
-Tess at Anchors and Masts
*****
Sacred Eagle, Our Mediator with God:
Please forgive me
For the feather that I stole from your land
To mail to my friend.
Karen was dying
And she needed your
Clarity and Strength.
-Suz Reaney
*****
Listen
The eagle knows.
Watchful guardian
of the west.
We cannot escape his gaze.
The eagle sees
as rivers run dry and
wild lands shrink.
He is the look-out.
The eagle remembers
this land from long days past
when people tred
softly upon it.
The eagle teaches.
Somber and still.
No one is off
the hook.
The eagle warns
with his sharp,
shrill call.
But do we listen?
His voice echoes
off canyon walls.
Other creatures and
the wind pay heed.
-Pam McCauley
*****
on this particular morning
when so many eyes are blind
and too many hands are groping
beneath the weight of fog
and growing fear
of ever looking but not seeing
i linger
inside
the wealth of this solitary moment of mystery
which makes room for understanding-
the Voice that breaks the cedars
is always singing
the exile home to wholeness.
-Laure
*****
Eagle Haven
When I see you with such clarity,
images behind you fade
and I am captured by the
round perfection of your eye,
the lacy feathers of your neck,
firmly scalloped scales of your body,
deceptive in their soft fragility,
the decisive sharpness of your oversized
beak from which comes my defense and provision;
symbols of your maternal majesty
stop my breath in the shadow of
a still moment when
we hold each other bound;
pinion me.
-Christine Eleanor Merritt
*****
Far seer, soarer,
eagle brother
If only I could fly with you
Share your vision
Fly on your free wings.
Instead, myopic,
earthbound
I close my eyes, slip my skin
and dance with you
in the Creator’s light.
-Anne Sims at Stories and Faith
*****
Is this the eagle
that took my soul
like the vol not seen?
Is this the bird
happy at the thought
that all seen is his?
Is this the winged one
that went leg-deep
in Cresent lake
to secure a salmon?
I am pleased
that if this bird
stole my soul
it is varital in its
acts of selection.
-Tom Delmore
*****
“as a bird soars high
in the free holding of the wind,
clear of the certainty of ground,
opening the imagination of wings
into the grace of emptiness
to fulfill new voyagings,
may your life awaken
to the call of its freedom.”
-John O’Donohue from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
(submitted by lucy)
*****
In this valley
the only way out is up –
blue sanctuary;
on crystal clear creek water
a feather floating through the clouds.
-b’oki.
*****
O strong rider
of winds and currents
I have tried
many times
to capture
the essence of you
in word
and picture…
majestic,
clear sighted,
noble,
stuff of dream and ledgend
you symbolise strength,
hope for the weary,
…and yet you gaze
holds me,
challenges me
to new heights,
to discover new resources
within…
teach me your ways…
-Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes
*****
soaring high above
no sound distracts my Father’s voice
fly on, wings of change
-Deb at An Unfinished Symphony
*****
Vision
Your stillness masks your heart
beating with love or fear.
Your steady gaze
reveals nothing of the
distance you can comprehend.
Won’t you drop your mask?
Won’t you respond to wind
blowing everywhere, to tears
flowing from people all around,
to light startling you,
transforming you,
drawing you into a space
your fluid body
can’t resist moving through?
-Theresa Walker
*****
Vision
On a clear day his eyes
see for miles, the slightest
movement there below; a mouse
among the tiger colored grass,
heavy with grain
and promise, or salmon,
pink and dappled against
the scaled pebbles of river-bed
moving like quick silver.
Hanging there, on thermals
so high we all fade to nothing,
and into everything,
can he see Truth?
Do those eyes watch
as men fight, over a patch
of trampled ground and mourn
the emptiness of wasted
mouse lives?
From a thousand feet
does he drink the Spirit
of the future, and guess
where our path goes?
Into the darkness, or out
from under the clouds
to lay on our back in
sunlit grass, watching
him soar? If we could fly
with such vision, would we
ever choose the dark
of rough churned soil,
salted and bare, over
warm earth full of tiger
striped shadows and the tiny
heartbeats of our brothers.
-Tandaina at Snow on Roses
*****
Knowing nothing about you I visited around the vast world wide web and found out a few facts. At http://www.cvm.umn.edu/raptor/info/baldeagle.html I learnt that you and your kind were formerly distributed across North America, but you are now limited to breeding in Alaska, Canada, the northern Great Lakes states, Florida, and the Pacific Northwest. You are an amazing construction worker, building large stick nests (sometimes weighing over a ton) that are usually about six feet in diameter and more than six feet tall near the top of the largest trees near a river or lake. You eat fish that you catch yourself, or find dead, or pirate from other birds. Road-killed deer is a special delicacy that puts you at risk of being hit by motor vehicles. On July 9 last year (2007) you were removed from the endangered species list.
From http://www.answers.com/topic/accipitridae-1 I learnt that you have a big family and a long whakapapa. Names like Kite, or Hawk signal a relationship. Your family is found in the fossil record 30-50 million years ago. Your family is Accipitridae, of the suborder Accipitres, in order Falconiformes of the class Aves. Members of your family live all over the globe, yet you have no obvious relatives among the other birds; and scientists don’t even agree that all members of your family are closely related to each other. Maybe you have just grown to look alike because you need similar characteristics to survive in similar habitats.
And then I found this brilliant video clip of your distant cousin Kahu
http://blip.tv/file/115031?filename=RichieB-hawk210.mp4
And so I write
Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
I’d like to know:
How does it feel
to be removed
from the endangered list?
Is it a relief?
Do you rejoice in your resilience,
that you have overcome
the powers of destruction?
Are vulnerable children
easier to protect than endangered ones?
Do you worry less
when you leave them in their treetop mansion
and go fishing for their breakfast?
Does it restore to you
the land that was yours for millennia?
Or make it any easier
to live within the confines
enforced by the invaders
who destroy your way of being?
Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Congratulations
You have turned around the forces
gathered against you.
You have found a mate
and continued your line.
You have done well.
And some humans have helped.
Bald Eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
Remind us please
that we cannot fully congratulate ourselves
for this minute step
in the right direction
We cannot ever restore
your true entitlement.
We have gone too far for that.
Please accept our contrition
as we come to realise
that our way of life
has so limited yours.
We rejoice in your presence
Above, beyond and beside us
Inspiring us to persist
In the face of all that would overwhelm
To make a home in the highest places
To find strength for ourselves
To secure a future for our young
To catch and find and even to scavenge
The things that will sustain
To fly high
And see our shadow
Rest lightly
on the world below.
-Mavis at Set the Bird Free
*****
Predator
Predator.
This is the name I know you by,
This is how I define you.
Like self-loathing, you corrode my heart,
stripping me of the earth beneath my feet,
feeding me to myself.
I am caught in your talons, afraid.
Predator, symbol of a militaristic nation,
you corrode my heart and I resist you at every turn,
yet you hunt me down, down the rivers and rivulets,
down the memories of seismic misunderstandings,
down the trembling fear of one who waits
for a blow, an arm flung in rage.
Predator, symbol of fierce pride and
source of great adulation, I do not know you.
I ask you now, introduce yourself beyond my categorization.
Your heart’s desire is to feed your nestlings.
I know we have that in common,
so let me call you by your name, at last.
-Martha Louise Harkness
*****
Eagle eyes
searching
seeking
finding
prey
from miles away
you see
you fly
you catch
your supper
and fly back home
to feed your young
fledglings
who will one day
fly like you,
proud and strong
soaring above
the earth
in the splendor
of the sky brilliance
so close to God
may we soar with
your wings in prayer
so close to God
with you
-Susie at Reconnecting to the Truth
*****
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
Posted in Poetry Invitation | 18 Comments »
June 5, 2008 · by Christine
When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you
to sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.
I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else
to continue to flourish, full-flowered:
so that you can reach everything my love directs you to,
so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song.
-Pablo Neruda
(photos of peace cranes sent in from around the world taken at Tribute World Trade Center and the cemetery at St. Paul’s Chapel – the place where recovery workers went to recover themselves, although the graves are not of 9/11 victims – bottom 3 smallest images are of the Ground Zero site itself, from my trip this past March)
-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
** Come back on Monday for our 20th Poetry Party! **
Posted in Visual Meditation | 5 Comments »
