Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • Prayer Cycle
      • Introduction to the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle
      • Day 1 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Cathedral
      • Day 2 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Scriptures
      • Day 3 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Saints
      • Day 4 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Spiritual Directors
      • Day 5 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Icon
      • Day 6 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Sacrament
      • Day 7 Morning & Evening Prayer:
        Earth as the Original Liturgy
      • Prayer Cycle Leader Resources
    • About the Abbey
    • About Christine Valters Paintner
    • About John Valters Paintner
    • About the Wisdom Council
    • Monk Manifesto
    • Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks
    • Subscribe to Our Love Notes
    • Website privacy notice
  • Books
    • Sacred Time:
      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
    • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems
    • Earth, Our Original Monastery:
      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
    • The Soul's Slow Ripening:
      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
    • The Wisdom of the Body:
      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
    • Illuminating the Way:
      Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
    • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
    • Eyes of the Heart:
      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
    • The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
    • Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated & Explained
    • Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
    • Awakening the Creative Spirit:
      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
    • Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness
  • Poetry | Art | Music
    • Music + DVD
    • Poetry by Christine Valters Paintner
    • Poetry Videos
    • Dancing Monk Icons
    • Other Art Collaborations
      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
      • Saints & Animals art series by David Hollington
      • Sacred Time art series by Alexi Francis
      • Mary block print art series by Kreg Yingst
  • Programs
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Monk in the World (Ireland)
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Vienna Monk in the World (Austria)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
    • Community Online Retreats
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Lent 2021)
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World:
        An Online Writing Retreat
    • Self-Study Online Spiritual Retreats
      • Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert:
        An Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen
      • Dreaming of the Sea:
        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)
      • 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
      • 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)
      • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
      • 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
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Photos, Poetry, Spirituality

I long for You so much (a time of retreat)

I long for You so much
I have even begun to travel
Where I have never been before.

-Hafiz (excerpt)

Last week on Tuesday I piled my things into the car, the essentials like my journal, my yoga mat, my camera, and of course my sweet Petunia.  We headed north on I-5 to the Canadian border.  Two elements of getting to a retreat that feel important to me are a border crossing and a ferry ride and this time I had the gift of both.  When I arrived at the guard booth though, to my disappointment the guard waved me through with half a smile.  I wanted to be asked the purpose for my journey. I wanted the guardian of the threshold to invite me to speak about where I was going. I wanted to say, I am longing for God so much, I find myself here at the boundary wanting to enter into new territory.

The next step was boarding the ferry. Last year while I had the gift of my time at the hermitage each week I would travel across the Sound and hold the words from Jane Siberry's song: “Will you sail ‘cross the water and tell us what you found.”  Something about that act of leaving the land mass of home and journeying across the depths of the sea speaks to me of my own interior journey and my desire for discovery.

It was dusk when we departed, that liminal time between day and night, when the world basks in the beauty of endings.  

God was wildly waving saffron ribbons across the sky in jubilation for me. I could hear the sacred voice singing "yes!  Come closer to me, come to be near me."  Seagulls glide past the boat and I want to spread my wings as wide as theirs and surrender into the current that carries me.

As we near our destination a group of young women gather by their car and sing chants.  Simple phrases again and again, creating a spiral of song encircling each one who would listen. "My body is the body of the goddess" I hear them speak with exuberance. For a moment I am connected to my fellow travelers, standing there above the great sea, feeling the connection between my own body and the earth far below.  I look up and see that the full moon has risen, veiled and shy, tentative in her self-revelation.  I understand her desire to not be fully exposed, but to rest comfortably in the mist.

As night rises over and around us like a swelling river I arrive at my destination, the place that will hold me these next few days like a tabernacle.  The moon becomes bolder, shrugging off her shawl to reveal her full-bodied self illuminating the darkness.  She has become a presence, a companion to me for this sacred time. I feel her fullness in my belly, round and whole, like the moment after having fully inhaled.  The moon and I will begin on this retreat to exhale again.

The next day I head to one of my favorite places where forest edge meets the sea, where wild meets wild and I can dwell between them walking for hours over soft damp earth, stepping over tree roots reaching up out of the ground inviting me to contemplate my own rootedness.

I pause regularly along the way to be present to the sea pressed against the edges of the trail.  I dip my fingers in the cold saltwater and wash my face.  I want to immerse myself and be baptized again. I want to swim long and hard until I can feel my heart pounding in my ears reminding me that I am alive.  I want to float like a fallen leaf, surprised at its own good fortune that instead of landing on hard ground, it was received like a holy offering, and can dwell suspended there for a while. Death does not have to come just yet.

I drive back to my little cottage and stop at farm stands selling their goods, nourishment from this earth, beauty offered from this place.

Upon my return, my spiritual director reminds me that rest is an essential element to a meaningful retreat.  Time to restore my body, time to listen to the wisdom of my dreams.

I sleep long and hard, I am surprised at how tired I am.  The next morning I discover the world wrapped in a silver covering, a cloth draped around me like vestments I am to wear to move into the liturgy of the day.

Later the rain begins to fall casting reflections onto the ground. I long for a sacred mirror to see myself in God's eyes, to know of my goodness, to see my own beauty, to discover God within me, closer than I am to myself.

The world becomes a vessel of tears, an act of solidarity with my sorrow.  A gesture of hospitality, welcoming me into its extended arms.  I am filled with a sense that the earth knows my grief.  More than that, my tears originate from the soil and sky, flowing through me in a lament for the suffering of all of creation.

I return later that day to the trail at the wild edges.  I feel the presence of my mother so clearly there, as if I were breathing her in and myself out.  I am surprised by my desire to feel my father with me too.  With him, as in life, it is much more of a struggle.  I try to make a welcoming space within myself and I wonder if it can ever be wide enough.  I continue to walk and I ask whether they are both there with me there, my mother and my father, reaching out from that dark curtain.  From the stillness, I look down on the trail and discover two small feathers as if the sky tumbled its reply to the ground before me. I place them in my palm to examine my treasures, to feel the hard spine and soft extensions pressed into my skin. I look more closely and see a third tiny feather attached to them. 

After I return back to Seattle, I feel I am not done, I must be out on the earth again.  I have another communication from the sky, offering me solace and the wisdom of both mother and father.  My longing for God, as Hafiz says, has brought me to new landscapes, new revelations.

The feathers go on my altar. My heart continues to beat loudly in my ears or are those the wings of the holy?

-Christine Valters Paintner @ Abbey of the Arts

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10 Comments October 21, 2008

Upcoming Programs

The Spiral Way:
Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination

Hosted by the Rowe Center
February 1-21, 2021
with Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
Retreat for Lent 2021

February 17-April 1, 2021
with Christine & John Valters Paintner and Betsey Beckman

Recent Reflections

  • Celtic Spirituality and the Spiral Way ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 3: Ní heolas go haontíos ~ by John Valters Paintner
  • Humility + Join us today for live prayer! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 2: Tús maith leath na hoibre – by John Valters Paintner
  • New Book Club for 2021: Lift Every Voice ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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