***Make sure you go visit this week’s Poetry Party*** Your poems this week about hidden rooms are as evocative and amazing as ever. Click the link above and continue to submit them and I’ll keep adding them! Early this past summer I had another dream about a hidden room: My husband and I move into a new apartment which is much smaller than the one we live in now. We are having dinner guests over and I’m not sure where they will sit. I open a door I hadn’t tried before and behind it I find this large room decorated with antique furniture and
This is Poetry Party No. 7! These are posted every other Monday. 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 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!) Feel free to post the poem along with my image below on your blog with a link back to this post. Please invite your readers to come join the party too! This
Today in the Christian church is the Feast of All Souls, the day when we remember our loved ones who have died. I did not write a post about this today, perhaps because I have been talking a lot about grief and darkness lately and that felt like enough. But then I read Rachelle’s achingly beautiful post about remembering her own lost son and I knew I had to mention this day’s significance and urge you to go read over at Magpie Girl. And while you’re there you might also hop over to her Etsy store and pick up one of
(I believe this photo is of otter prints I discovered in the sand, I have only seen these wonderful creatures fleetingly. The photo below is of Tune’s paw prints.) One of the great gifts of my time at the hermitage is being able to walk along the beach at low tide. Because the tides shift from day to day I keep a tide table to guide me each day as to when I can break from my work and allow the words and images that have been swirling around my mind to settle into my body. A walk always brings me some
For the last Poetry Party I invited you to reflect on the theme of the “beauty of broken things.” Your poetic responses were marvelous, spanning a wide spectrum of possibility and exploration. Many of the images moved me, such as “I am the hidden underside of things” and “ice so cold it is also fire” from Tess, “fierce winds sprung from God’s deep lungs” from Rich, and “swampy depths of truth” from Kievas, or the stark simplicity of Kayce‘s poem: “dark / broken / desperate… / still / i reach for the heavens.” Many of the poems offered probing questions
Last Saturday I attended a concert of the Seattle Choral Company called “Celtic Nights” which marked the upcoming feast of Samhain on November 1st. Samhain is the beginning of a new year in Celtic tradition and is primarily a celebration of ancestors and harvest. It is considered one of the great doorways of the Celtic year which is divided into the seasons of dark and light and is connected to the holidays we may celebrate today — Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. The music was sublime and one piece in particular moved me deeply called An Caoineadh, which is
The image is my view from the hermitage over the Hood Canal toward the Olympic mountains. -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts
I have been neglectful of my lovely web ring lately, not making the rounds to see what creative things are happening in the blogosphere. So I hereby resolve to make this a more regular part of my reading and blogging activity. Look for an every-other-week highlights (alternating with the Poetry Party) of what is happening among these artist friends. Do you want to join the fun? The ring description says: “This ring welcomes artists of all mediums who are rooted in a faith tradition or spiritual practice and who use the arts to explore mystery and meaning. You might be
The week before last was the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death and I shared here before that I have been feeling called to walk willingly into some dark places. It turns out that the anniversary was also the day I had to end a friendship. Friendship to me has always been sacramental and so not something I treat lightly. This friendship had actually been over for some time, but it took until now for us to realize that we each still have old wounds that have never been healed, despite our previous efforts. It feels good to have some closure, but it was a
