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

Reflections

Filter

Monk in the World Guest Post: Katharine Weinmann

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Katharine Weinmann’s reflection and poem Courting the Mystic and the Muse. Five years ago, with the onset of Covid–19, and grieving the abrupt end of a professional career I had cherished, I found my way to writing poetry. The intensive online retreats hosted by Christine and Abbey of the Arts provided the emotional support, compassionate community, intellectual stimulation, and skillful scaffolding I needed for my self-study into this creative expression. Despite that prolonged period of uncertain, even

Read More
Abbess love notes

Give Me a Word ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, My newest book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year has been published by Broadleaf Books! (You can download a free reflection guide or small group leader’s guide here.)  The dedication to my book reads:  “For all the ancient and contemporary wild-hearted ammas and abbas who let the desert work its power and who listen for the sacred word of Mystery emerge from within.” That includes you, especially if you are drawn to the wisdom of the desert and how it can support us in living in challenging times. The

Read More
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Sharon Dawn Johnson

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sharon Dawn Johnson’s reflection Finding My Song, Finding Its Colour. My heart’s deep-down hunger urges me: Enroll in this skincare formulating course! Signing up honours my wild self and her contours—as organic as that of the skincare organization’s eco-sustainability ethos. Lesson by tasty lesson, my heart and mind are nourished and at peace.  Even so, self-doubt’s entangling flip-flops set up creative struggles in me—to keep exercising the sign-up trust that’s digestively sustained and strengthened by each formulating lesson. For

Read More
Books

Christine Interviewed by The Center for Action and Contemplation about Her Book “Give Me a Word”

Christine Valters Paintner sat down with CAC’s Publications Manager Mark Longhurst to discuss themes from her new book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year. How can we receive a “word?” Christine discusses practical tactics like contemplative listening, dreamwork, and embodiment. She also invites you to embrace nature and sacred thresholds to tune into the voice of God. Watch this video to discover more on this unique contemplative practice. Join us for our book launch celebration on Monday, September 22nd!

Read More
Abbess love notes

Autumn Equinox Deep Rest ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, We live in times when it often feels like everything is coming undone. The Celtic hinge points of Autumn Equinox, Samhain, the Winter Solstice, and Imbolc offer the wisdom of living into a rhythm that honors the importance of times of rest as essential to our personal and collective wellbeing. This Friday, September 19th, we begin our Deep Rest series of mini-retreats with a gathering to honor the Autumn Equinox and the energy of surrender. Autumn is a time of transition, of the earth’s turning, with the balance of light and dark in the northern hemisphere tilting toward the

Read More
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Melinda Emily Thomas

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to our Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Abbey Program Coordinator Melinda Thomas’s reflection on her new book Elements of Being: A Spiritual Memoir in Verse. The poems started out of necessity. I wanted to write and had a story to tell but very little time. While I could not sustain the energy needed to write a prose novel, I could write poetry. Inspired by Nikita Gill’s The Girl and the Goddess, the project began as fiction in verse but quickly evolved into a spiritual memoir blending imaginal

Read More
Abbess love notes

Resting into Uncertainty and Harnessing Opportunity ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow, September 8th we begin a four week journey for Resistance, Renewal, and Resilience: Resting into Uncertainty and Harnessing Opportunity with Kindred Spirits led by Wisdom Council members Aisling Richmond, Felicia Murrell, Jamie Marich, and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. This retreat will guide you through contemplative and action-based practices to meet the challenging times in which we live.  Felicia Murrell offers this reflection. As a descendant of enslaved humans in America, I embody resistance, resilience and renewal. These energies live within me, blood memory genetically coded in my DNA, alive in every cell. I’ve been asking Sacred Presence to

Read More
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Rick Diehl

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Rick Diehl’s reflection From the Forest to the Desert. For over fifty years I lived in the US Northeast. Taking countless walks in the Thoreauan woods  of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Then, almost a decade ago, my wife and I  moved to the high desert of Arizona. Maybe this new landscape would give me revelation on the lives of the Ammas and Abbas of the Desert – you would have thought? Well it did, but not the

Read More

Wisdom Council Members Jamie and Richard Meet in Person for the First Time!

Longtime Wisdom Council members and Abbey friends Jamie Marich and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan met in person for the first time at the Wild Goose Festival in Union Grove, North Carolina! As a virtual Abbey and online community we have been blessed to form deep relationships with one another across the globe and it always a treat to meet someone in person we have known for years online. Richard and Jamie are co-teaching with Felicia Murrell and Aisling Richmond our upcoming retreat Resistance, Renewal, and Resilience: Resting into Uncertainty and Harnessing Opportunity with Kindred Spirits that beings September 8th. Here is

Read More
Abbess love notes

Resistance, Renewal, and Resilience ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims, On Monday, September 8th we begin a four week journey for Resistance, Renewal, and Resilience: Resting into Uncertainty and Harnessing Opportunity with Kindred Spirits led by Wisdom Council members Aisling Richmond, Felicia Murrell, Jamie Marich, and Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. This retreat was created to guide you through contemplative and action-based practices to meet the challenging times in which we live. Through rest and renewal we not only nourish ourselves, we settle into what is most important for our spiritual growth and our capacity for resilience.  Jamie Marich offers this reflection as inspiration. In a Worldby Jamie Marich The

Read More