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
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Uncategorized

How will you practice resurrection? An invitation to deep soul nourishment

Easter blessings my dear monk friends!

I hope your Lent was a rich and meaningful journey through the desert to the place of your resurrection.

Beyond bunnies, baskets, chocolate, and jelly beans, Easter calls us to the profound practice of resurrection of the body. Resurrection is about entering the fire of our passion and letting it burn brightly. It is about what enlivens us and makes us feel vital, releasing fear and anxiety over what is to come, and embracing this moment here and now.  Resurrection calls us to experience the full weight and lightness of our physical being.

In the Abbey's online Lenten art retreat, we engaged the metaphor of pilgrimage as a guide for the soul's journey through these last forty days.  It was a beautiful and moving journey as participants explored their own inner desert places, landscapes, border crossings, and more.  Ultimately, pilgrimage always leads us back home again.  Resurrection is about discovering the home within each one of us, remembering that we are called to be at home in the world, even as we experience ourselves exiled again and again.

I have just returned from my own nine-day pilgrimage up the east coast to visit old friends and family, some of whom I hadn't seen in twenty years.  It was a whirlwind trip back to the place of my own upbringing, a homeland for me – New York City and New England- as well as connection with relatives on my mother's side of the family.  While I knew this would be a Holy Week journey, I did not realize how much of my travels would lead me back to this place of inner resurrection.

I began the week in Maryland with the warm hospitality of one of my mother's dearest friends, on to New Jersey to see my 91-year old great aunt, and then Manhattan to see one of my best friends from childhood and walk along the streets which shaped our shared world and memories.  I passed through Rhode Island and Connecticut to visit with my mother's cousins.  On Holy Thursday I sat in a cemetery in Massachusetts, next to my mother's and grandparents' headstone, and I asked them for their blessings on this next phase of big adventures in my life.  On Easter Sunday I was in Maine visiting my aunt and her husband and took a long walk I had taken several times before, but this time stumbled upon an unmarked hiking trail that went into the woods.  There was not a single other human soul there and I reveled in the time to be among trees and let them teach me about resurrection.

At each place I found myself experiencing a deep love and sense of kinship with all of these people I am connected to through blood or memory or both.   I listened to my own heart's longings which will bring me to a new home this summer.  I could feel my mother's presence shimmering throughout the week, singing me forward, singing me home wherever I found myself.  As crazy as my schedule was (and I rarely plan such a hurried trip) I was able to arrive fully present to each moment.  I was able to welcome the grace of stories which cascaded around me time after time.  Stories of my mother and father, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, great grandparents, cousins, friends, the stories which are my stories, woven into the fabric of my own unfolding. I will practice resurrection in these days ahead by making space to continue listening for the wisdom bubbling up in me in the wake of this journey.

What would it mean for you to practice resurrection? How might you let your dreams and passion be brought back to life in the coming months? What does it mean for you to return home to your body and yourself?

If you are a soul care practitioner (someone who offers soul care to others through spiritual direction, retreats, chaplaincy, pastoring, counseling, or other kinds of presence – whether paid or volunteer) I invite you to consider making a commitment to your own journey of resurrection during this season ahead.   The Soul Care Institute is a series of online and live classes providing a nourishing space to gather with peers and explore ways to deeply reflect, restore, and renew yourself so that you can sustain the vital work you do for others.  At SCI we believe that the only way to sustain our passion and commitment to the care of others' souls, is to make our own self-care and soul nourishment an absolute priority.  It is so much easier with support, insight, and guidance in a sacred context to discovering your own best practices.

We have two online classes available which start next Monday, April 16th and both have just a couple of spaces left (limited to 15 participants) – click and read over the descriptions (or scroll down) for Live it to Give it: Essential Practices of Soul Nourishment and Self-Care (taught by Kayce Stevens Hughlett – see a reflection from her below) and Earth as Soul Care Ministry: The Wild Heart of Ministry (taught by your online Abbess) and see if one stirs something in your heart.

Take just a few minutes now to pause and breathe and check in with what you need this spring to nourish your own personal resurrection.  Are you looking for some deep insights into ways to offer yourself a radical experience of self-care and cultivate practices which will help you to flourish?  Or are you seeking a deep re-connection to the earth and her wisdom for your own soul care and want to explore what nature has to offer for your ministry to others?

(I posted a video meditation last year on the four sacred elements which you might want to revisit and see what longings are stirred in response- Everything is holy now).

This is your last chance to register for these two classes!  Each one offers a rich community of shared wisdom facilitated by seasoned teachers.  Gather with a flock of like-hearted souls to practice listening deeply to yourself and your own longings for new life.  The feedback we have received on previous online classes has been tremendous.  Offer yourself this gift and let your soul bloom this spring.

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Leave a Comment April 10, 2012

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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