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
    • Breath Prayer:
      An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred
    • 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
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
      • God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with Teresa of Avila (Book Club – February 2021)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
      • Sky, Sun, Sea, & Stone:
        Celtic Spirituality and Creative Writing
      • The Two HT’s-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
    • 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 (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)
      • 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
    • 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)
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Family Systems

Love has come for you

A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Los Angeles for the day.  Actually I was only in the "city of angels" for a total of six hours, long enough to get from the airport to the office of the Austrian Consulate where I could submit the paperwork I have been gathering for months now and apply for dual citizenship.  My father was an Austrian citizen and remained so until he died in 1996.  He is now buried in Vienna in the central cemetery with his parents.

These last few years my husband and I have been returning to Vienna more frequently, it is a beautiful city with much family history for me.  We are considering some sabbatical time there next year, probably the whole summer with an eye toward a longer time in the future.  Citizenship facilitates a number of things, but more than that it has been the culmination of my own inner journey these last few months initiated by my experience last Christmas when I arrived in Vienna alone and four days later found myself in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism, a condition which kills 1 out of every 3 people who develop it.  I was deeply fortunate to have survived, especially when I consider how many hours I spent wandering the city before I figured out what was happening with my body.  An embolism is a condition of the blood and I was there to deepen my connection to my bloodline, so in a strange way it thrust me even deeper into my journey.

That experience led me to the desert last spring and to a movement retreat where I discovered my inner dancer in new ways.  My father's mother was a dancer and I have since found myself dancing many times on behalf of her and her unfulfilled longings.  I have also been dancing on behalf of my father whose struggle with multiple addictions alienated him from everyone he loved so that he died alone and left behind deep wounds in his wake.  My journeys to Vienna these last few years have also been on behalf of this fractured relationship. It has been not only for my own healing but for his as well.

My decision to finally apply for Austrian citizenship is another step on the road to healing and claiming that part of myself more fully.  There is the practical reality of a new passport and rights conveyed to me, but there is also the spiritual reality of exploring where I owe allegiance within myself.  A passport literally means a pass through a portal.  Portals are liminal spaces charged with meaning and significance.  You can never fully know how crossing that threshold will change you.

I had gathered the paperwork for months: birth, marriage, and death certificates for myself and my parents with the Apostille, a special certification process which required more letters and more waiting, finding my father's alien registration card to prove he never naturalized as an American citizen.  I flew down to submit it in person so they could take my fingerprints for the passport.

On the airplane returning home I was tired so rather than tend to the pile of work I had brought with me, I decided to listen to some music and tend to my inner space in the wake of this journey I had just made.  Eventually came the song "Ten Thousand Angels"** by Caedmon's Call and I heard these words: "how long you have traveled in darkness weeping / no rest in language, no words to speak / but there in the wreckage beneath bricks and bindings / love has come, love has come for you."

In my imagination I suddenly saw myself dancing with my father, no longer on his behalf, but now in partnership.  We were engaged in a kind of contact improvisation where we each had moments of dancing alone and then moments where our bodies leaned into one another in a kind of mutual support.

The lyrics continued on, "everything worth keeping comes through dying, love has come, love has come for you, so lift up your heart now, to this unfolding,  all that has been broken will be restored" and I found myself weeping.  Tears streamed down my cheeks silently and I wiped them away with my hand wondering if the Japanese businessman in the seat next to me had noticed, wondering if he would have a look of recognition as if to say, "yes, I understand."

There I was 30,000 feet in the air, suspended between heaven and earth, having just returned from a concrete act of saying yes to this part of myself, and my father and I were dancing.  Even more than that, when I heard the words to the song I knew they were about my father. Love has come for him. I knew they were about me. Love has come for me. Healing is a process, and I continue to experience deeper and deeper freedom.

*Photo above is of me as an infant with my parents

**Lyrics to Ten Thousand Angels (click link to hear the song), Words and Music by Sandra McCracken. c2002 Same Old Dress Music (admin. by music services) all rights reserved. ASCAP

how long you have traveled in darkness weeping
no rest in language, no words to speak
but there in the wreckage beneath bricks and bindings
love has come, love has come for you

against the night sky of your waiting
your face is like starlight when he walks in
everything worth keeping comes through dying
love has come, love has come for you

so lift up your heart now, to this unfolding
all that has been broken will be restored
here runs deep waters for all who are thirsty
love has come, love has come for you

ten thousand angels will light your pathway
until the day breaks fully in the East
they will surround you and make your way straight
love has come, love has come for you
love has come, love has come for you

Next Monday is the feast of All Hallow's Eve, followed by All Saints and All Souls in Christian tradition and the month of remembering the dead.  Also is Samhain, the Celtic feast which marks the beginning of the dark half of the year, when the veil between worlds is especially thin.  It is a time to gather with kindred spirits and open our awareness to what is happening between the worlds.

If this speaks to your heart at all, consider joining us for our upcoming online retreat Honoring Saints & Ancestors: Peering through the Veil (October 30-November 19, 2011).  *Registration will close on Sunday, October 30th!*

It is also your last chance for the combined registration discount with Advent 2011-Birthing the Holy: Becoming a Monk in the World (November 27-December 24, 2011). (Regular registration for the Advent retreat will stay open until November 26, 2012).

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2 Comments October 24, 2011

Upcoming Programs

Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
March 13, 2021
with Drs. Jamie Marich, Kellie Kirksey, and Christine Valters Paintner

Novena for Times of Unraveling
Becoming a Monk in the World

March 17-25, 2021
with Christine & John Valters Paintner, and Simon de Voil

Recent Reflections

  • Hildy Tales 7: An Nead by John Valters Paintner
  • Sacred Time and Slowing Down ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 6: Céim uile an domhain ~ by John Valters Paintner
  • Join us on a Desert Journey for Lent ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Hildy Tales 5: Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin ~ by John Valters Paintner

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