Last Friday and Saturday I was at St. Placid Priory leading a workshop and a retreat. Much of my work is leading retreats – and while I spend a lot of time designing the flow of experiences, ultimately it is about creating and holding sacred space for others. On retreat the invitation is to cross the threshold of ordinary awareness and enter liminal space for a few hours or days to receive the new questions waiting for us.
This coming weekend I go on my own time of retreat to the place where the forest meets the sea. This space where wild edges meet invites me to ponder the questions which “make and unmake a life.” When I enter into silence, solitude, sabbath, and spaciousness I hear the quiet inner voices which get drowned out in the rush of daily life. I have had life-changing moments on retreat. I have encountered longings which carried me over new thresholds. I have been transformed in my willingness to meet myself. On retreat I can walk for hours among trees, I can gaze upon the unfolding of wave after wave, I sleep when I feel tired, I write pages and pages from a heart which begins to see things widely again. Daily life can narrow my vision and tighten my gaze. Retreat invites expansion, the pondering of horizons, the dancing on edges.
Retreats come in many shapes and sizes. Sometimes all that is necessary is an hour with the phone and computer turned off, a cup of tea, a journal and pen, and some silence to begin to reconnect with the heart.
How might you bring the gift of retreat to your life this season?
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CELEBRATE WITH ME! ART JOURNAL GIVEAWAY!
The Abbey blog is four years old this week! To celebrate my anniversary I am giving away a set of art journals (all five titles which are perfect companions for your own retreat). To enter the random drawing leave a comment below by MONDAY, MAY 10th and share your necessary ingredients for a time of retreat.
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NEW SESSIONS of ONLINE CLASSES AVAILABLE SOON!
Later this month I will be launching a redesign of my website as I move toward offering more resources online for integrating the experience of retreat into your everyday life. I have been pondering the shape of next year’s offerings here at the Abbey and will be announcing them by the end of May. Some free online gifts for my wonderful supporters are also in the works. Subscribe to the Abbey Email Newsletter to be one of the first to hear the details.
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EASTER SEASON LINKS:
Sunrise Sister at Mind Sieve ponders the element of fire and asks some wonderful questions
Melinda at Inspiraculum offers her reflections on air as breath of God and the art she created in response
Diamonds in the Sky with Lucy contemplates the renewal and release of water
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© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts
63 Responses
Christine,
Your work and ministry has brought blessings to me and all I share it with. The first entry above is missing a verse – hit a key too soon. Many thanks for all you are and do.
Personal Retreat: What Does It Take?
Intention to live fully aware of all of my senses
Hearing
Sounds of Nature around me
Cries of my gut
Music within my heart
Blessings of silence
Seeing
Beauty of each person
Oppression of sisters around the world
Allure of each natural season
Self within self
Touching
Dirt of the earth
Tools of creative expression
Books, old friends and new
Loved ones and strangers
Smelling
Fragrances of nature
Memories of joy and loss
Foods which nourish
Persons who have gifted me
Tasting
Foods from around the world
Hope unearthed in prayer
Homemade gifts from friends
Love received unbidden
Retreat happens
In moments of insight
During planned time away
With awareness of Grace
Any minute, hour, day or week.
Personal Retreat: What Does It Take?
Intention to live fully aware of all of my senses
Hearing
Sounds of Nature around me
Cries of my gut
Music within my heart
Blessings of silence
Seeing
Beauty of each person
Oppression of sisters around the world
Allure of each natural season
Self within self
Touching
Dirt of the earth
Tools of creative expression
Books, old friends and new
Loved ones and strangers
Smelling
Fragrances of nature
Memories of joy and loss
Foods which nourish
Persons who have gifted me
Retreat happens
In moments of insight
During planned time away
With awareness of Grace
Any minute, hour, day or week.
Congratulations, Christine, and thanks for the great question. I try to take at least two private retreats per year, and always take my “traveling altar” with me. It is a pouch with a deep purple handkerchief (my altar cloth); a double heart-shaped frame with a photo of my husband and daughter; a small rock that says “Be still and know”; and a tiny labyrinth pewter bowl which sometimes stays empty, and sometimes is given an offering that I might find in nature.
A space of my own: perhaps in an old wicker chair under a spring arbor, perhaps below a cliff near the sea, perhaps simply in the space surrounding me on a walk alone in twilight.
Time: to think, to write, to be quiet enough to collect inside the memory of listening.
An artbook: to recall the creative side.
Poetry: to recall the sound of the voice as it speaks its own language.
Congratulations on your four years here!
Retreat . . .
Painting, writing, walking the labyrinth, drifting through hours in silence with a question in my heart is one way to retreat. The quietness sometimes makes me feel bereft, but if I persist in it, the gifts of energy, refreshment, and curiosity come, turn me inside out, and fasten me to life. It’s new again and calls me forth.
On advise of my and my son’s therapist, I would go on retreat for one day a month which lasted almost a year. The center is just 9 miles from my house so except for “making” the time, it was easy to go. I was trying to re-discover who I was beyond, mother, wife and caregiver. I reawakened my creative side and have gone back to my creative sewing and needlework as a result of my time away.
The time to be “away” and separate from everyday challenges was the biggest “need” for retreat. Once I was there it had quiet and beauty, candles and tea, sounds of nature, warm hospitality and nurturing hosts. I brought with me a tote bag full of “stuff” I thought I needed but usually spent my time in quiet and journaling.
Now that I don’t take the time to separate myself from “real” life to retreat, I aim have time alone at the beginning and end of my days. I pray, listen, journal, walk, knit, meditate and breathe.
In July, I will be leading a “creativity” retreat at “A Snail’s Pace Retreat Center” where we will have fun celebrating the creativeness in each of us. We do need lots of supplies for our projects and I will have boxes full of fun things to play with.
I am so glad to have found your blog and rejoice for your four years here.
Congratulations on four years of enriching lives with the holy, mine included. The older I get, the more I am intentional about retreating, the simpler the definition and my requirements. I do still like to have pens and paper but the piles of books, the necessary number of days, the level of beauty in the surroundings or the length of time are less and less vital. What I need, and need regularly, is time to be…..still…alone….silent…time too, to hear, the natural world, the creation as it groans and hums….
For longer, more defined forays – harder to come by! – I suspect I would still be tempted to pack more ‘supplies’, although I wonder how much I would really ‘need’ them; these days, I am more inclined to look around, notice what’s available and pay attention to that……for a moment or a week apart, breathing – cleansing and deep, is essential.
I strive to find the entrance to enter an inner retreat space within myself even among business. I don’t often succeed but I know the door is always there.
Happy, happy four years! You bring so much beautiful introspection to our lives. Thank you for all the work you put into this.
Retreat? What’s that?!
I realize that I don’t retreat enough. That every day should have moments of retreat.
Even when I went to Kripalu, I was all “business,” working hard in class, writing when not in class.
The closest I get to truly retreating is bird watching on our peninsula and sitting the lake’s edge but I rarely do this.
Oh, dear…
a place apart from the ordinary routines
the natural rhythms of sun and moon
permission to simply be
silence
solitude