Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Reflections

Filter
Abbess love notes

Creating New Beginnings in Times of Unravelling ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Hope*Dreamkeeper,bless me with vision to see the possibilities for this hurting and broken world. Help me to remember that hope is not a thingbut an action, I cannot know that what I do is of any consequence, but I must do something. I must walk in trustthat I plant seeds for others,that my kindness ripples out into the world, that justice is necessary, that my joy mattersthat love is at the foundation of everything. On those days when hope feels so far away, surround me with kindred soulswho can help sustain hope when I must let go.

Read More

Monk in the World Guest Post: Dena Jennings

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wisdom Council member Dena Jennings’ reflection on making and sharing music as a spiritual practice. I was 12 years old in 1976. It was an election year and the bicentennial celebration of the United States. My parents were community leaders in Akron, Ohio, the Rubber Capital of the World. There were more events and parades that year than I had known. My oldest sister was a beautiful majorette in an award-winning high school band. And my middle

Read More
Abbess love notes

A Midwinter God is Published! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

God is not simply in the light, in the intelligible world, in the rational order. God is in the darkness, in the womb, in the Mother, in the chaos from which order comes . . . darkness is the womb of life. —Dom Bede Griffiths Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, I am thrilled to share that my newest book A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness has been published by Ave Maria Press and is available to order from your favorite booksellers! To celebrate we have two gifts for you: First, is a reflection guide with questions to companion

Read More
Uncategorized

St Francis and the Holy Fool

A Fool’s Blessing*God of upturned expectations,bless us with holy foolishness.Help us take ourselves less seriouslyand believe in what we did not think could be done: impossible situations,limited resources, injustices demanding rectification,traumas needing healing. Grant us a restless heart when we witness oppressionand exploitation, hunger and war,poverty and destruction. Kindle in us a need to extend our handsin service to a hurting world, joining with kindred souls in communities of care, knowing ourselves to not be alone. Help us trust in the tiny seeds we plant,that they grow vigorously and flourish,let the ripples we send across the watersof life be multiplied

Read More
Abbess love notes

New Abbey Team Member ~ Welcome Delaney Hart!

We are delighted to introduce the newest member to our Abbey of the Arts team. Delaney Hart (she/her), sister to Wisdom Council member Cassidhe Hart, is joining us from Illinois. To begin, her work will focus on increasing the accessibility of our self-study retreats through transcripts and closed captions for select videos, and creating reflection guides for some of Christine’s books. The guide for A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness is available now. Meet Delaney Squirrels and trees, music and dance, curiosity and tears — these are Delaney’s teachers and guides. While listening for the inherent

Read More

Monk in the World Guest Post: Kelly Sollinger

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Kelly Sollinger’s reflection and poem on finding silence. The days leading up to this poem brought one heartbreak after another. I was dealing with personal griefs in the midst of serving as a pastoral presence to a community enduring an impossible loss. Early one morning I fled the house and the phone and the email, desperately seeking an inner silence that eluded me. The longer I walked, the more I became aware of the birds. At first,

Read More
Abbess love notes

Writing Your Spiritual Memoir ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, This Friday, September 13th, we are pleased to welcome Wisdom Council member, clinical trauma specialist and expressive arts therapist Dr. Jamie Marich to lead us in a mini-retreat on Writing Your Spiritual Memoir. In this mini-retreat experience, Jamie will use several expressive arts facilitation strategies to help us start or continue the process of writing our own spiritual memoir.  Fresh off the experience of writing her own memoir You Lied to Me About God about her experience of growing up in a mixed Catholic-Protestant home and experiencing spiritual abuse in other settings, Jamie has a great deal

Read More
Uncategorized

A Midwinter God Reflection Guide

We are pleased to offer a reflection guide for my latest book A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness which releases on Friday, September 13th. Download the reflection guide here. About A Midwinter God: “I believe we all carry grief that has gone unnamed and unmourned,” writes best-selling author Christine Valters Paintner. “Nothing in our culture prepares us to deal with darkness and grief. We are told to cheer up and move on, to shop or drink our way to forgetting the pain we carry. Yet I believe that being faithful to our own dark moments is

Read More

Monk in the World Guest Post: Jamie Marich

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series. Today’s poem is by Wisdom Council member Jamie Marich who will lead a mini-retreat on September 13th on Writing Your Spiritual Memoir. Read on for her poem The Great Lie. Jamie is fresh off of writing her memoir, You Lied to Me About God: A Memoir, and has a great deal to share with the world about her spiritual formation process. This poem is one small reflection that flowed from her own expressive arts processes in preparing the book for publication. The Great LieThere are many lies about God going

Read More

A Blessing for Trust in Abundance ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Blessing for Trust in Abundance*Spirit of generous abundance,remind us there is always more than enough,enough food, enough love, enough time, enough resources. Help us to see how our patterns of livingseparate and disconnected amplifies our scarcity. Bring us into the joy and challenge of communitywhere bread divided multiplies, where laughter shared overflows. Empower us to share freely from our own abundance with others in need. Slow us down to see how time expandswhen we breathe and pay attention. Bless us in our efforts to trust in the goodness and love that pulses through the worldsustaining it moment by moment.

Read More