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Reflections

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Sacred Nourishment

With summer approaching, we also starting to receive a bounty of wonderful fruits and vegetables.  Farmers Markets in Seattle are opening again this month and I am eager to go tomorrow to the one in my Capitol Hill neighborhood and browse the wonderful array of locally crafted foods and talk to the people who actually are involved with growing and making the food.  Food is such a ripe place for reflection on the sacred art of living.  Cooking has the potential to be a deeply creative act , sharing a meal as a sacred time to break bread with friends and to

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Creating Space

There is no getting around it. Creativity requires spaciousness. In a culture that demands we hurry up and do, produce, move faster and higher up the ladder, become breathless, worship speed and efficiency, finding space can be a real challenge. And yet, for me, here is where the spiritual life and the creative life converge—in the profound need and longing to make space to listen to the divine presence who, as the mystics tell us, dwells within us. Space to notice the stirrings of our souls, and to honor the newness budding there. In fact, we don’t just “find space,”

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Genesis and the Story of Names: Sacred Center, Creating Space, and the Sacred Art of Living

I was thinking that many of you may be unfamiliar with the genesis of our programs and the different names for the websites, so here is an abridged version of the story: Several years ago, my husband John and I dreamed of an urban retreat center, a place in the city folks could come to at lunch or after work for spiritual renewal, easily accessible so that people didn’t have to travel out of town for retreat.We came up with the name “Sacred Center” because we liked the double-meaning, it could refer to the physical space itself, but also refers

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About the Sacred Art of Living Blog

WELCOME! This is a new Blog hosted by Creating Space and Sacred Center and created/moderated by Christine Valters Paintner. It was created as a place for conversation around the intersection and integration of spirituality, creativity, and the arts. The regular practice of art-making helps us to cultivate creative ways of being in the world. Ultimately, our greatest creative act is the living of our daily lives. Creativity is about making space and listening deeply to our lives and the world around us, seeing beneath the surface of things to the depth dimension of the world, opening ourselves to the newness

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