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Awe and Wonder

In the first few days of our trip through Ireland I had this dream: My husband and I are on a cruise through Alaska and go up on the top deck in the middle of the night. The sky is black with a thousand stars glittering across it. Then suddenly I see the aurora borealis off in the distance and moving closer, first green and then purple. I am in complete awe and wonder. I look down and there is a little girl standing there who looks like me at her age. I lift her up toward the sky so she can

July 14, 2007

Holy Play

Last summer my husband and I went to Kauai for two weeks. It was a beautiful trip where I absolutely fell in love with sea turtles. We started to notice as the days passed there, the most common car on the island was a yellow jeep. We started to point them out and create a silly game, saying “screamin’ heebie-jeepie!” and then decided each time we had to give each other a kiss (sort of a much nicer version of orange punch-bug). Since we passed them on the road all the time, it made for a very romantic trip. The delightful part is that ever

July 13, 2007

Gifts of the Morning

We hit a record 98 degrees yesterday, but thankfully this morning is cool and delightful. Tune and I went for our usual walk and I fell in love with a vine blossom -Christine Valters Paintner @Abbey of the Arts

July 12, 2007

Listening Point

If you head over to Listening Point today, you can see a photo I took in Ireland in a wonderful forest near the ruins of Cong Abbey accompanied by one of my all-time favorite poems (which I posted here about a year ago, but it seemed time to bring it out again). And while you’re over there, bookmark the site and keep going back to it. Always good stuff posted there on the contemplative life and they are also looking for more regular contributors. -Christine Valters Paintner@ Abbey of the Arts

July 12, 2007

Living Out the New Creation

I have a deep affinity for crows and ravens as they seem to connect two important parts of my life together. Ravens and crows are a part of the same Corvidae or Crow family with ravens being larger and perferring wilder places. Saint Benedict (whose Feast Day is today) is often depicted with a raven by his side because legend has it that a raven saved him from eating poisoned bread. Special connections and relationships to animals were once a sign of holiness. Thomas Merton wrote in one of his letters that this is what the monastic life is ideally all about: “the

July 11, 2007

Another thought on time. . .

One other thought that occurred to me about clocks and time is the shift we have had to use of digital clocks. Pretty much every clock in my home is digital, reading out those numbers in their glowing faces. What we lose with the shift away from analog clocks is a sense of the circular nature of time, the cycles and rhythms we participate in, and the relationship of the time of day to the rest of the day as a whole. I think I am going to buy myself an analog clock to put in my prayer corner and

July 10, 2007

Measuring Time

Before I left for Ireland I had a dream in which my husband and I return to our old apartment building in San Francisco which was going to be demolished and help to save an old clock tower that rests on top of it (the clock tower is not there in waking life). I brought this dream to my spiritual director who pointed out that clock towers rest at the junction between chronos time and kairos time. For those of you not familiar with those terms, chronos time refers to everyday time, the time we measure out

July 9, 2007

The Swan

This laboring through what is still undone, as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way, is like the awkward walking of the swan. And dying-to let go, no longer feel the solid ground we stand on every day- is like anxious letting himself fall into waters, which receive him gently and which, as though with reverence and joy, draw back past him in streams on either side; while, infinitely silent and aware, in his full majesty and ever more indifferent, he condescends to glide. -Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. Stephen Mitchell) Rilke is one of my many favorite poets. We

July 7, 2007

The Prayer of Trees

I have been having problems with my online access all day so I offer above a wordless meditation. -Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts (photo taken at Glendalough in Ireland)

July 5, 2007

Home Again

My husband and I returned home last night after three amazing weeks in Ireland. We went to Dublin, Waterford, Kenmare, Dingle, Galway, and Westport and drove through much of the countryside. We saw ancient stone circles and tombs, remains of monasteries, wondrous illuminated manuscripts, field after field filled with woolly sheep and majestic trees, we perched at the edge of the Atlantic ocean, we walked and walked, and we listened to music that makes your pulse quicken. It is hard to know where to begin exactly, but I imagine it will unfold in my reflections in the coming weeks. We experienced

July 4, 2007

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Awe and Wonder

Holy Play

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Listening Point

Living Out the New Creation

Another thought on time. . .

Measuring Time

The Swan

The Prayer of Trees

Home Again

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