Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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  • 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
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      • 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
      • Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color (Book Club – March 2021)
      • God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with Teresa of Avila (Book Club – February 2021)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • 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
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Sacred Balance:
        Aligning Body and Spirit Through
        Yoga and the Benedictine Way
    • 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)
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Uncategorized

The Greening Path (a love note from your online Abbess)

Given, VI
We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

–Wendell Berry

Dearest monks and artists,

I am slowly finding my feet under me in this new city of Galway.  Every morning when the skies aren't clouded over, a vision like the one above greets me from my apartment window.  The Hour of Awakening arrives over the mouth of the River Corrib meeting the great Atlantic, and I can feel the power of unknown things awakening within me.

Galway is known as the City of Tribes, and I find myself longing keenly for a tribe here.  From my window I can see the square with the marker which honors Seattle as Galway's sister city and points in her direction, 7178 km away.  There is a similar marker on the waterfront of Seattle which I have visited, pointing the 4464 miles back to this place I find myself now.  I find comfort in this kinship.  There is kinship in weather as well, although the rain and wind here is much fiercer than anything I encountered living in the beautiful Northwest.  I am eager to discover how this fierceness will shape me in the coming months.

I feel myself on the threshold again, longing for all the beauty of Vienna and all the places I came to love.  I long for the familiarity of Seattle and my friends there.

Yet the path of pilgrimage demands that I stay right here, in the midst of the unknowing, the fertile darkness, the sightlessness of which Berry writes.  The call of the monk in the world is to stability, even in the midst of so much transition, to stay present and awake to everything.  I trust the call that brought me here, even when at times I am broken open by it, made raw and vulnerable.  Even when in the midst of so much strangeness and newness I long for what is old and familiar.

And in the midst of the tenderness of threshold living, there is so much grace.  From my window I can see a statue of Mary in her grotto at the Dominican church down the street reminding me of Mary's presence to me all last autumn on this journey. Each day I can see the gathering of swans on the canal, those symbols of grace and beauty.

I had a dream the other night that I was given a white dress to wear. It was crocheted by my dear friend and wearing it I felt beautiful, as though I had been baptized anew. I awoke to this sense of the baptismal call to become priest, prophet, and king.  In my lectio divina later that morning, I prayed with the psalm for the day, psalm 110, and the line shimmered before me: "you are a priest forever."  And I knew this was a reminder I was called to share with all of you, to embrace your own priestly nature, to know the world as sacramental.  This is also the call of the monk in the world.

Last weekend I participated in a dance workshop.  We were invited to give our inner witness a name – that compassionate and calm core of ourselves able to behold the fullness of our inner lives – and I did not hesitate to write down "Sophia."  Then we had many opportunities to dance as the witness, to feel his or her energy alive in us, the way they move through space and see the world.  Through Sophia I saw dance as a path of greening.

When I sit quietly in the early mornings, witnessing the unfolding of the dawn before me, I hear this invitation to embrace viriditas – the greening power of God which Hildegard of Bingen calls us to immerse ourselves in – as the path to walk (and dance) now.  All through last fall, the world around me was reminding me that I am enough in this moment, and I do not need to strive for anything.  No reaching is necessary.  This greening power meets us right where we are, we must simply remove the obstacles.  And of course, that can be so hard to do, to recognize the way I fight against what is most life-giving in each moment.

Mary, Sophia, and Hildegard all dance with me in this place.  They all know the tremendous and sometimes terrible gift of thresholds, of wandering and feeling desire well up and overcome you.  They each know the overflowing gift of viriditas in the world and what happens when we open ourselves to this greening path.

If you want to immerse yourself in the call to greening this Lenten season, please join me online for Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert with Hildegard of Bingen (registration closes Friday!).  If you are a soul care practitioner (spiritual director, pastor, chaplain, or other field of soul care) and are longing for a more intimate online journey with peers during Lent, consider A Midwinter God: Making a Conscious Underworld Journey (just one space left).

And if the promise of springtime is calling to your heart and you are longing for a great adventure, please join Kayce Hughlett and myself for Springtime in Vienna: A Writing and Photography Retreat (April 6-13, 2013) in the gorgeous city of Vienna, Austria.  This is not your ordinary tour, but an urban pilgrimage and feast for all the senses.  Fall in love with Vienna and with your own beautiful heart once again.  No art experience is necessary.

May you dance at the threshold,

With great and growing love. . .

Christine

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1 Comment February 14, 2013

Upcoming Programs

  • The Two HT’s Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman on Being Free with Therese Taylor-Stinson
    • Apr 17, 2021
  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – April Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available
  • Hildy Tails 12: Is ait an mac an saol ~ by John Valters Paintner
  • Easter Blessings + An Elemental Journey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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