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)
    • Community Online Retreats
      • 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)
      • 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

Monk in the World Guest Post Series

Monk in the World Guest Post: Nancy L. Agneberg

I am delighted to share another beautiful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Nancy L. Agneberg's reflection on entitled Winter Spirituality.

I love winter.

I prefer winter to summer and spring.

When it is fall, I think fall is my favorite season, but then winter comes, and I know, for sure, winter is my favorite season.

Oh, I am willing to join in with the usual February and March conversations about winter being far too long and will spring ever arrive? As I listen to the whining about the cold, the snow, the dark, I politely nod my head in agreement. 

“I know, I know,” I say. “Isn't it awful?”

Once at a retreat the ice breaker activity centered on the question, “What's your favorite season?” The floor was divided into four quadrants labeled winter, spring, summer, fall. One by one each participant stood in her preferred season, giving her reason for choosing that season.

“I love the new growth, the beauty of spring flowers.”

“I love the freedom of summer, being able to be outside all the time. 

“I love the fall colors and wearing a sweater again.”

While I wasn't quite alone in the winter square, there weren't many of us, but we seemed to share the same sensibility.

“I love the feeling of being tucked in.”

“I love the peace and quiet when it snows.”

“Winter feels more spacious to me, more time to be with myself.”

Yes, that is it.

I welcome the coming of winter. Cave Time. Sabbath Time. A time not only to hibernate and rest, but a time to grow and deepen. 

On dark winter mornings when I go upstairs to my garret office, I stand, just for a moment, in the glow of my desk lamp's circle of light. That one light reminds to me to stay quiet, to listen to the inner promptings. In this focused circle of light I meditate and pray. I write. I read. I sit in silence. Here there is shelter for deep conversations and connection. Here I am reminded of my own inner light, even in moments of darkness. 

With a shawl wrapped around my shoulders I delight in doing the next thing, often feeling productive and creative. Or I choose to do nothing. Either way is a choice of contentment. Winter's uncluttered, unlittered nature moves me patiently from day to day without surprise of color or blossom or smell of dirt. Instead I stop, I rest. I stretch slowly, deliberately, quietly, careful not to wake any other bears in my cave.

I love the bones of trees in the winter; the skeletons. The ability to see how a tree is made and how it reaches; its spread and girth and width. The bones, the basics, the dark against the grey sky. The shadows cast, the possibilities, the past, present, and the imagined future.

It I were a painter, winter trees would be my subject. From a distance I would paint a colony of trees, a naked community, like being at a nude beach. Up close I would paint every line and blemish and wrinkle and wart and age spot and acne scar. The signs of a life lived. They've earned their wrinkles, just as I have earned mine.

They have lived through many seasons, many years, known draught and deluge, the coldness of abandonment and neglect and the pressing heat of passion too close for comfort. I love the starkness, the lack of pretense, the startling beauty of trees in winter. The way they seem to say, “Look at me. This is who I am.” 

A winter tree looks either older than its years or younger than time and that is just the way I feel. I am a winter tree.

There is a certain clarity that comes with winter, a clarity I would like to discover in my own winter season of life. One can see forever, or at least it seems that way. And yet, we can't quite see how or when exactly it will end. Winter asks us to let go of the need to know for sure. Winter reminds us to rest in the surprise of the present moment, but at the same time assures us that it will melt into another time. On its own time. Not ours. 

I value the harvest of fall, the energy of spring, the secure lingering of summer, but even more I covet the lairs of winter, the hidden passages, the unlit corridors, the streamlined views, the bareness of the horizon. The action coldly stopped, frozen without conscious time. I've done what I can all those other days and months and now it is time to leave what is undone and to unwind the sweater till once more it is yarn. It is sheep. It is essence.

Ah, this is it. Winter is essence and offers the time to recall, to re-call my own essence.


Nancy L. Agneberg, a writer and spiritual director, finds joy in helping others deepen their relationship to the Divine, the Sacred, the Holy, especially as one ages. Currently, Nancy is writing a spiritual memoir, which explores the spiritual invitations of living in different homes. She posts frequently on her blog, Clearing the Space.

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10 Comments February 8, 2017

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

  • 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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