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

Reflections

Filter
Lift Every Voice Book Club

Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – February Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available

Join Abbey of the Arts for a monthly conversation on how increasing our diversity of perspectives on contemplative practice can enrich our understanding and experience of the Christian mystical tradition.  Christine Valters Paintner is joined by author Claudia Love Mair for a series of video conversations. Each month they take up a new book by or about a voice of color. The community is invited to purchase and read the books in advance and participate actively in this journey of deepening, discovery, and transformation.  Click here to view this month’s video discussion along with questions for reflection.  In The Wild Land Within, spiritual companion

Read More
Abbess love notes

Join Us for a Virtual Celtic Pilgrimage ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Tomorrow is the eve of St. Brigid’s feast day, a threshold time in the Celtic imagination where the doors to the Otherworld open wider and we are invited to rest into this liminal space and listen for our heart’s true calling.  As the pandemic continues on, many of you have asked us if we would consider creating a virtual pilgrimage. We are delighted to invite you into this sacred space with us. Nine days of giving yourself the gift of dwelling in time outside of time and letting your imagination bring you on a journey of

Read More
Abbess love notes

The sky poured down beauty this morning

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you, don’t go back to sleep.” – Rumi Photos at Silver Strand Beach, Barna, County Galway, Ireland © Christine Valters Paintner

Read More

Blessed Feast Day of St. Muirgen(The Mermaid Saint)

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I come to the sea to listen to ancient rhythms and the primordial voice. I come because it is exquisite medicine. I come because in another life I was a mermaid or a Selkie, diving beneath the dark surface of the cold water to find new worlds waiting. I come because this adopted home of mine is an island and the edge where sand and shore meet is always a portal. I come because when I sit and watch the waves roll and roil life makes sense, chatter quiets, I can drink from the well

Read More
Contemplative Living

Christine’s Reflection on Honoring the Body

Christine has a new reflection published at Bearings journal online on Honoring the Body: “My story is not a one-way hero’s journey. I have not overcome or done battle; I don’t want to be anybody’s inspiration. Stories that give the impression that one can achieve victory over the body’s vulnerabilities do a great disservice to the collective imagination by pushing away the discomfort of grief. I want my story to reveal that tenderness and surrender instead of fortitude and domination are signs of strength. I want my story to say that yielding to my body’s needs rather than forcing myself

Read More
Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Noelle Boughton

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Noelle Boughton’s reflection, “My COVID Transformation.” In early 2021, we’d been hearing for a year that COVID was a global time of transformation. That was certainly my sense going into it the previous March, and I was so excited to see how it would transform my life and that around me. In fact, my spirit was dancing with the possibility of what could be!  Then I smacked into reality. I was working in a congregation that had never

Read More

Introduction to Birthing the Holy: Exploring the Sacred Feminine and Archetypes

Seminary of the Wild recently welcomed Abbey of the Arts online abbess, artist, contemplative, and prolific author, Christine Valters Paintner as a guest Wild Luminary speaker. Christine shares from her new book exploring the archetypes of Mary and the sacred feminine. “The sacred feminine is not at the expense of the masculine. We need both in healthy balance to one another. The feminine values qualities of intuition, dreaming, receiving, and resting among others. We all hold the feminine and masculine within ourselves. Mary offers us many faces of this sacred feminine presence and can help us to cultivate a slower,

Read More

Celtic Wisdom for Troubled Times ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Love Note:  Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, We are thrilled to be offering a virtual Celtic pilgrimage starting January 31st which is the feast of St. Brigid. Journey with us over nine days as we deepen into Celtic wisdom and hear the stories of Brigid, Ciaran, and Gobnait. Each day’s live session (via Zoom) also includes film footage from Brigit’s Garden and two of the Aran Islands as well as our wonderful guides Dara Molloy, Jenny Beale, Deirdre Ni Chinneide, and Pius Murray. (All sessions will be recorded if you can’t join us live). Simon de Voil will be joining me to hold

Read More

Monk in the World Guest Post: Wil Hernandez

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Wil Hernandez’s reflection “Stability and Presence.” About two years ago, as the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to spread, I found myself stranded in an unlikely place: a Benedictine Abbey in the southern part of the Philippines. As it turned out it was to become my home for the next two and a half months. Originally, as part of the monastery’s Lenten Recollection during the Holy Week, I was to give a three-part series on the topic of

Read More
Abbess love notes

Cultivating a Wild Heart of Connection ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, I first met Lindsay Sudeikis at a Spiritual Directors International conference in Seattle in 2019. She was co-leading a workshop on ancestral lineage healing. It was a beautiful program and at the end I went up to introduce myself and thank her for the experience.  We discovered we had much in common. She was immersed in Catholic mystical practices and traditions (and had been a nun in a contemplative order for a period of her life). Her ancestors were from Lithuania (Baltic like my Latvian ones) and from Ireland where she travels regularly to spend

Read More