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
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    • About Christine Valters Paintner
    • About John Valters Paintner
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  • 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
    • Walk the Ancient Paths: Pilgrimage
      • Monk in the World (Ireland)
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World (Ireland)
      • Vienna Monk in the World (Austria)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
    • Live Programs and Spiritual Retreats
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Dancing with Fear in Troubled Times
      • The Two HT’s-Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Novena for Times of Unraveling
      • Poetry and the Sacred Garden of the World:
        An Online Writing Retreat
      • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color
      • The Way of the Hermit:
        A Spiritual Survival Guide for Dark Times
        with Kayleen Asbo, PhD
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Lent 2021)
      • Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life (Spring 2021)
    • 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, Advent Christmas Epiphany

A Celebration of Stuff ~ A love note from your online abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims,

November 8, 2015 - Top imageIn 2012 my husband and I decided to embark on a life adventure. We were living in Seattle and had been traveling to Europe twice a year to explore ancestral landscapes. He was growing more in need of a sabbatical from his position as high school theology teacher. I had recently applied for and received Austrian citizenship through my father.

Between February and May, we began to sort through our things. It is amazing what accumulates in nine years in one place even in a small apartment with only three closets.

“Honey, I just found more stuff,” became a common refrain as one of us would open a new box or look under the bed.

We sorted through clothing and kitchen drawers, making piles for our many trips to Goodwill. My library of a thousand books went to a friend who owned a used bookshop. Some furniture was sold on Craig’s List. The few art pieces we had were given to friends. I slowly burned my pile of old journals in our fireplace, an act that became symbolic of the threshold we were on, and I would carefully carry out piles of ashes.

Eventually we sold our condo and our car, and then put a few things in storage like boxes of family photos and a couple pieces of family furniture. We packed up two large suitcases and headed off.

Dispensing of things felt almost virtuous, and certainly full of the freedom that comes with not having to maintain things or worry about them. My primary spiritual path in life is as a Benedictine oblate and the contemplative way nourishes me.  I am inspired by the stories of the desert monks who journeyed out into the wilderness carrying nothing but a deep sense of call and desire to be free.

In many ways it felt like we were heading off into our own wilderness experience.  While Vienna, Austria with its sumptuous cafes and gorgeous architecture is hardly the Egyptian desert, we were traveling with what felt essential to us, into a journey that was largely unknown.

In Vienna, our little kitchen with its tiny refrigerator inspired us to shop daily for what we needed in small amounts and we learned to love cooking on the little gas stove and fold-out cutting board which jutted from the wall when needed.

The monastic path of simplicity isn’t just about relinquishing physical belongings. It also invites a holding loosely of our habits and patterns in life which weigh us down. It calls us to release our expectations of what we want to have happen and yield to what actually arrives.

Our time in Vienna was full of opportunities for yielding in a culture where my husband didn’t speak the language and the immigration process for him was filled with bureaucratic roadblocks. After six months, with yet another letter from Austrian officials asking for more documents while the expiration date of his visa loomed, we headed for Ireland in the hope of a better outcome. We landed in Galway, a city of rich artistic culture and the wild west coast beckoning to our imaginations. Immigration went smoothly and we found ourselves falling in love.

Almost two years in, when the next invoice for our annual storage fees back in Seattle arrived and us feeling confident at last that we would not be moving again anytime soon, we decided to finally move our remaining things across the Atlantic Ocean.

They arrived twelve weeks later at the very end of October 2014. As the days grow shorter here and we move into the feast of Samhain, a time when the Irish consider the veil to be very thin between this world and the other world, I found myself sitting on the floor among a dozen boxes. Each one contained albums full of family photos, from my childhood and my husband’s, from each of my parents and my grandparents. Each image sparked a memory, flooding me with renewed connection to stories that had gone silent.

I ran my hands repeatedly over the solid wood of the secretary desk, the one that had traveled from Austria to the U.S. many years ago, and now back to Ireland. I slid open the small drawers, finding small treasures we had hidden before leaving.

Suddenly our spare apartment was littered with stuff: The Northwest Native American rattle carved like a salmon that reminded us of our life before. The soapstone Inuit carving of a bear dancing which I received after my mother died. The oil portrait of my Austrian grandmother, sitting regally in her salmon colored dress. The watercolor given to me by a coworker when I left a teaching position years before.

There was the delicate white china tea and coffee set and silver tray from which Kaffee had long ago been sipped and strudel nibbled. I found the chipped, enameled bell with blue flowers my parents used to ring on Christmas Eve when I was a child.

We are beings who cherish, who remember through touch and smell. We come to love these treasures that witness to our lives and the lives that came before, books that transformed us. We honor writers and artists, mothers and fathers, legacy and lineage. We are connected to the significant moments of our lives through the gold band on our finger or the necklace given to us by a friend who has since passed away.

There are a multitude of things I have absolutely no regrets about giving away when we moved. But there are a few I do wish I had held onto: the sword from my great grandfather who was a general in the Austro-Hungarian army, the cream pearl necklace from my grandmother, the Meissen porcelain set of dishes.

A bird’s nest is an amalgam of twigs and fluff and string. When our things arrived they marked a turning point when I started to feel really at home in Galway, that I wanted to nest. I am still very much a monk at heart, but I have also fallen in love with stuff again.

With great and growing love,

CHRISTINE

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo: © Christine Valters Paintner

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1 Comment November 8, 2015

Upcoming Programs

The Way of the Hermit:
A Spiritual Survival Guide for Dark Times

January 22-24, 2021
with Kayleen Asbo, PhD

The Spiral Way:
Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination

Hosted by the Rowe Center
February 1-21, 2021
with Christine Valters Paintner, PhD

Recent Reflections

  • 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
  • Hildy Tales One: Dia dhuit, is mise Hildy! by John Valters Paintner, Your Online Prior

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