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
  • Contact

Abbess love notes

"Dwell" (a love note from your online Abbess)

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NEW! Listen to the love note in audio form or read below:

Dwell beach

Dearest dancing monks,

dwell 2I have been sitting and listening for my own word. It arrived first about a week or so ago. I have been blessed to have some quiet time over the holidays to reflect on the inner and outer movements of this past year. Reflecting on the significant shifts for me over the last year helped to open the door for where I am being invited to focus my love and attention for the year to come.

Last year held many significant shifts for me. From April through August I had several serious health challenges. Then there came new insight into some things draining me and holding me back. In October was the incredibly grace of our 20th anniversary celebration with friends from the U.S. and Ireland coming together to help witness our abiding love and commitment.

This was followed two days later by our storage unit from Seattle finally arriving. When we embarked on this pilgrimage, releasing our things felt essential to the journey – home, car, furniture, books, and more. We kept one small storage unit and have been paying the fees for the last two and a half years. It felt like time to ship them over and receiving those things was like receiving a box of old treasures and began to weave our current home with our family stories. It felt like putting down a beautiful anchor in this place we have grown to love so much.

My word for 2014 started out as essence, as in what is of the essencel? It was a juicy question for many months, as I considered travel commitments and what in my work made my heart beat most loudly. I find good words help with discernment. Then this summer it shifted to surplus as I pondered how I might give myself the gift of an excess of resources and energy to meet the work I am called to do. I thought this word might continue to be mine for 2015, but it turns out a different word was waiting.

I was reading an article by author Sharon Blackie, Listening to the Land's Dreaming. In it she writes about the philosopher Heidegger's concept of the word dwelling "to describe the ways in which people perceive and relate to geographical space and specific locations. We ‘dwell’ in a place, Heidegger said, when we exist there in a freedom which also leads us to ‘spare and preserve’ that place – to live in peace with the land and with creatures, objects and people on it. . . Heidegger’s contention is that we have forgotten how to ‘dwell’ – how to be at home in the land. To dwell, we must be in tune with earth, sky, people, and the gods."

It is these stories and this connection to landscape which roots us as human beings and gives us a sense of identity. Just as those tangible objects from my family's past, like photos and the old secretary desk connect me to the ancestors who beat in my blood, so we can feel this sense of rooting in a place by learning the myths and the textures of the land.

Dwell "shimmered" for me and seems to call forth this quality of rootedness and commitment I am experiencing here in Galway in which I find myself letting the landscape, elements, and rhythms shape me and act as holy muse to all that is being birthed in me.

Dwell recalls the vow of stability for me. For the last two and a half to three years peregrinatio has been the dominant theme, as we set ourselves free to follow the call of the Spirit, looking for our place of resurrection. Even having lived in Galway for the last two years, for much that time we were still uncertain if this was it. Now there is a shifting, a longing to claim this as home.

Dwell: (from various dictionary definitions)
1. to live or stay as a permanent resident
2. to live or continue in a given condition or state (e.g. "dwell in joy")
3. to linger over or ponder in thought, direct attention to something
4. to make a home
5. to remain for a time

Dwell invites me to make a home, to remain here for a long while, and to deepen into the stories of this place, making them a part of me.

But dwell also invites me to consider what kind of internal house I want to inhabit. What do I want to dwell in? How do I choose to inhabit my days?  Dwell asks me to not to linger in resentment, anxiety, or anger, which have occasionally been some of the shadows lurking inside me these last few months. Dwell asks me to choose joy, possibility, and paradox. Dwell asks me to inhabit a sense of surplus and generosity. I love these multiple meanings of the word because it speaks to a range of things close to my heart right now.

Where do I choose to dwell this coming year? In friendships, in this holy landscape, being shaped by the rawness of the elements, the wild edges of where earth and sea meet, the sacred rhythms of tides and moon cycles and seasons. I imagine each of these like a temple or sanctuary I can choose to enter and draw upon the fire there.

Then I was reminded of Emily Dickinson's poem about her vocation as a poet in which she writes: "I dwell in Possibility." and goes on to write "The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise–."

I wrote my word in the sand on the shores of Galway bay and then on a stone from the Burren to place on my desk as a tangible reminder all year long. One of the suggestions in our free 12-day mini-retreat for letting your word choose you (available through this link) is to write a poem once your word has arrived as an acrostic:

Down by the sea-sprayed stones which
Whisper of the ancient ways, I pray at these sacred
Edges, hearing the call of the wild to
Listen, linger, and send roots down in this holy
Landscape.

I encourage you to explore the various dimensions of your word. Look up the definition, write it in the sand or on a stone, find poems which use it, write your own poem about it. Then let us know what word has chosen you and allow it to be a touchstone for discernment throughout the year.

A word for the year acts like a guiding star, leading you to places you might not have gone otherwise.

With great and growing love and fondest blessings for the year ahead,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE
www.AbbeyoftheArts.com

Photo top: "Dwell" – my word for 2015 written in the sand by Galway Bay
Photo above right: writing my word on a stone to keep on my desk throughout the year

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1 Comment January 6, 2015

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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