Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
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      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
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      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
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      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
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      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
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    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
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      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
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      • Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
      • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
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        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
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        An Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen
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        A women’s discernment journey through the story of the Selkie
      • Earth, Our Original Monastery
        A Companion Retreat to the Book (SELF-STUDY)
      • Exile and Coming Home:
        An Archetypal Journey through the Scriptures
      • Eyes of the Heart:
        Photography as Contemplative Practice
        (Companion retreat to the book)
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
        (SELF-STUDY)
      • Honoring Saints and Ancestors:
        Online Retreat for the Season of Remembrance
      • Lectio Divina:
        The Sacred Art of Reading the World
      • A Midwinter God:
        Making a Conscious Underworld Journey (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea & Stone:
        A Creative Retreat with the Elements (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Seasons:
        A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
      • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
        Eight Practices for the Journey Within
        (a companion retreat to the book)
      • The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seekers of the Sacred (a companion retreat to the book)
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      • Watershed Moments
        in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
      • Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist:
        A 12-Week Companion Retreat to The Artist's Rule
      • The Wisdom of the Body:
        A 10-Week Online Companion Retreat to the Book
      • The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
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Nature, Photos, Poetry

Already in our Blood

"I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more, is already in our blood. . . many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. . . 

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Last night as our celebration of Sabbath came to a close we journeyed across town to be out by the sea.  I mentioned on Friday that this Sabbath felt significant because of the New Moon and our own new commitment to deepening our practice of Sabbath-tending.  It also felt significant because the day falls between my father's birthday (last Wednesday) and my mother's birthday (this Wednesday).  I have been feeling a lot of sadness as I usually do during this time as I remember both my parents who have gone on to the Great Night.  I wanted to be by the sea, that vast sacred bowl of tears, to be with my sorrow and give it space to move and breathe.

The evening was cloudier than I expected but the sun reached down through the small opening in the sky to illuminate the water. My beloved and I sat on the sand breaking bread together and sharing wine, our own act of communion.  Two little girls went running into the water, at first tentatively wading, and then tumbling and giggling with more and more vigor.  Their delight was palpable and worked its way into my heart and then into my blood as Rilke writes.  I was feeling giddy from good wine and witnessing such playful abdandon.  Then a group gathered near us around a bonfire took out their drums and began beating a slow rhythm. I could not have asked for a more fitting soundtrack to the unfolding of the evening.  I thought of the poem Bette shared last week for the Poetry Party, an image that seemed to spread its joy out within me:

In a circle
we gather around the fire,
drumming down the sun–
rhythms pounding out to sea,
the night is hypnotized.

-Bette Norcross Wappner (b’oki) at Surimono Garden

I walked to the water's edge alone, putting my feet in the brisk Sound as the drums continued to beat behind me.  I rested there for a long time, watching the sun spread color across the sky and pull the black moonless night in behind it.  I dreamed of swimming out into the sea, of being carried in its sacred womb, of diving into its depths to retrieve its treasure.  I dwelled there in the night holding the new thing that had entered into me.  I have a feeling it has been there asleep for a while now, awakened by the laughter of little girls, by the pulse of drums calling down the sun, by the memory of two people who formed me into being. There was my mother splashing in the waves, freed from her wheelchair. There was my father beating out the rhythm of his heart, freed from his addictions.  There I was alongside them, free.

What is the new thing already in your blood?  What do you need to awaken to it?

-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

(images all taken in Golden Gardens in Seattle)

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4 Comments August 31, 2008

Upcoming Programs

  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
    • May 15, 2021 - May 16, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Reverend Deb Goldman
  • A mini-poetry reading from Christine plus other publishing news
  • St. Kevin Holds Open His Hand and Radical Hospitality ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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