Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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    • Prayer Cycle
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    • About John Valters Paintner
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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
    • 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
      • 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)
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Abbess love notes

Finding Home Within (a love note from your online Abbess)

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Wild Rosebush

How it stands there against the dark
of this late rainy hour, young and clean,
swaying its generous branches
yet absorbed in its essence as rose;
with wide-open flowers already appearing,
each unsought and each uncared-for….
So, endlessly exceeding itself
and ineffably from itself come forth,
it calls the wanderer, who in evening contemplation
passes on the road:
Oh see me standing here, see how unafraid I am
and unprotected. I have all I need.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Dearest monks and artists,

It feels like the threads of my life are weaving themselves again and beckoning to me to follow. I shared in my newsletter last week about herbalism and the particular gifts of rose as a part of medicine. Then the Rilke poem above was shared with me by a dancing monk and I was grateful to find it again, or to be found by the poem, as would be more accurate. I see myself so clearly in that wanderer, receiving the wisdom of rose by the side of the road. To be reminded of the courage needed.

Rose is also my birth flower (born in the month of June) and of course, the rose is a symbol both for Mary and for Jesus (as in one of my favorite hymns for the coming season). Lately I have been feeling like Mary is inviting me into a deeper intimacy with her. Last fall she showed herself again and again inviting me into a deep trust in the fundamental generosity of life.

This past week I contacted Ronna Detrick, whose work I so deeply respect, she has such a creative and enlivening way with the stories of women from scripture. She makes them matter for our lives. Ronna has created a process she calls Sacred Readings, where you ask a question and she draws a card with one of these women and listens for how she responds. My question to Ronna had to do with home and our longing to put down deep roots here in Galway.  Out of the 52 possible women she could have chosen, Mary was the one who stepped forward.

In the reading she appeared as the wanderer, the one who has known exile, and the one who carries home in her heart. Of course these things resonate deeply with me. The message, as all of the wisdom that has come to me in the past year and a half on this life pilgrimage, has been an invitation to a deep and abiding trust and knowing there is an abundant Source at the heart of everything. This is the trust which allowed me to step away from my lovely and comfortable life in Seattle, sell everything I owned, and move out into foreign landscapes seeking something I couldn't quite name. I continue to listen.

Ronna wrote to me: Mary "creates a 'home' for others through her story, her status, her heart.  And all of this is possible because of her ability to trust the unseen, the miraculous, the amazing." There was much solace offered in this encounter. Funny, how we humans need confirmation again and again. I am grateful it continues to be offered to me.

I love that Mary is especially revered in the world of monks: from the Black Madonnas in Benedictine monasteries like Einsiedeln in Switzerland and Montserrat in Spain to Bernard of Clairvaux, that great Cistercian reformer of the Middle Ages and Hildegard of Bingen, the Benedictine Abbess, who both held Mary in special regard, her yes as participating in a unique way the holiness birthed through God.

I have been traveling a great deal this fall and as you read this I will have left on another trip – this time to Norway to lead a retreat.  John and I are also making time to visit Tromso, up in the Arctic Circle, where we hope to see the Northern Lights we have always longed to see. But even if that doesn't happen, we will be embraced by the long dark nights and skies filled with a thousand stars. It will be a gift to breathe into a small window of time when holy mystery descends in such a tangible way. Vienna also beckons for some time at the Christmas markets, this is the most magical time of year there with glittering lights everywhere and the chance to warm yourself with mulled wine, classical music streaming from church doors, long walks in the Vienna woods.

Following these travels, I enter into a season at home, three lovely months in Ireland and the invitation right now is to continue the inner pilgrimage with Mary as my guide. I delight in my times of travel and in connecting with dancing monks in person, and I am also dancing in the anticipation of time to turn inward and root and rest, to continue to find ways to claim this land as home and listen for Mary's ongoing wisdom in the midst of so much ongoing transition.

This is what I love about seasonal wisdom. Autumn has been a season or travel and exploration and the coming winter beckons with quieter rhythms and the call to focus energy on building my connections here in Ireland, to deepen into a sense of community. This too is the essence of the monk's path: to listen for what this season right now invites you to consider, knowing it is different than the season that came before. We are invited to yield and be flexible, to surrender into a greater wisdom than our own.

What is the invitation of the season ahead in your own life?  What threads are you following? How might you honor the shifts happening deep within?

This all feels like very ripe possibility for entering into Advent, the time of waiting, of tending to the coming birth.  If you would like to make an intentional journey from home, please join us as we embrace the wisdom of Celtic spirituality this year to guide our pilgrimage online. We would love to have you.

We also have a new Poetry Party and monk in the world guest post from Mary Sharratt, author of a wonderful novel about Hildegard of Bingen, and you have a chance to win a free copy of her book.

With great and growing love,

Christine

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1 Comment November 20, 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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