Reflections

For today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour, I offer you a guest post at Roy Deleon’s blog Expressive Prayer and Praying with the Body on “Contemplative Photography in a Time-Obsessed Culture.” Roy and I are fellow Benedictine oblates with St Placid Priory in Lacey, WA so he has a similar contemplative vision of the world. (He is also the author of the wonderful book Praying with the Body: Bringing the Psalms to Life which I highly recommend for those who want an embodied approach to praying the Psalms): We live with a scarcity of time in our culture.  We lament how busy

Today we take a journey over to Lacy Ellman’s blog, A Sacred Journey, where I share some wisdom for planning your own personal retreat.  Lacy’s wonderful site focuses on pilgrimage as a powerful metaphor for life and she has attended live programs through the Abbey.  Read on for more: What do silence and solitude have to do with spirituality and Christian tradition? There is a long and rich tradition of seeking the gifts of silence within Christianity.  One of the earliest is the desert monks who wrote extensively about hesychia, which is a deep inner stillness and silence.  Hesychia isn’t

I am so delighted to share today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour.  Andy Gray has a wonderful new interview project offering “inspirational stories of authenticity and happiness” at A Congruent Life, and you can listen to our conversation here. Christine Valters Paintner is a writer, contemplative, and the online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts.  In her latest book, Eyes of the Heart, she challenges us to ‘receive images’ instead of ‘take pictures.’ In this episode of A Congruent Life, Christine shares profoundly about ‘following the thread,’ pilgrimage, and vulnerability. Click here to listen to the whole interview>> Click here to purchase

Today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour, is for an interview at Catherine Anderson Studio! Catherine is a photographer who also offers online classes in photography as a meditative practice and the author of The Creative Photographer, a lovely resource. Catherine:   Christine, I love your idea of seeing with the “eyes of the heart” and the heart being the source of true vision.   In the fast-paced world we live in, it can sometimes be hard to slow down long enough to see fully in this way.  What have you found helps you slow down so that you open to seeing

For today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour, I am delighted to share a guest post I wrote for Brent Bill on Learning to Trust What Shimmers. Our habitual ways of perceiving the world, which help us navigate things  like stopping at a red light or stop sign, also stand in the way of  seeing the world in fresh and new ways. In my book Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice, I find inspiration in the ancient practice of lectio divina, or sacred reading.  In lectio, we read scripture and listen for what word or phrase

For today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour, I am delighted to share a guest post I wrote for Ronna Detrick on Seeing Ourselves with Eyes of the Heart. (I collaborated with Ronna on the fabulous Women on the Threshold online program).  Stop by the post to email Ronna for a chance to win a free copy of the book! Cultivating eyes of the heart is about seeing in a more spacious and expansive way, and recognizing how we often move through life with limited vision.  It is a biblical perspective, where the heart is seen as the organ of transformation and integration. 

Yesterday’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour was at Louise Gallgher’s blog A Year of Rejoicing.  Louise participated in my Lenten retreat last year and I was blessed by her joyful spirit.  We talked about a number of things, including what it means to be a monk in the world, how I discovered my own inner monk, and how to maintain presence in the face of suffering: Q. What does it mean to be a Monk in the World? Being a monk in the world means being committed to helping people reclaim their contemplative self. Everybody has an inner monk, whether

Tara Owens at Anam Cara has been hosting me at her blog last week with a guest post and a book giveaway.  Last Friday (my apologies for the late post, but I was having technology issues over the weekend!) she shared an interview with me: Christine, thank you so much for all that you do. Your resources and writings have consistently brought healing, life, resurrection and more of God into my life. My first question is this: Can you share with us a time that having “eyes of the heart” helped you to see something (a situation, a place, a