Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • 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
    • 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
      • 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

Ancestral Pilgrimage: Honoring Landscape and Lineage ~ A love note from your online abbess

As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children, and friends can become true spiritual companions after they have died. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life. Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.

—Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Dearest monks and artists,

I stood there at the edge of the Baltic Sea, on the beach at Jurmala in Latvia, and I felt a deep kinship to this place, which I had never been to before. Perhaps it was standing at this borderland place where forest meets the sea, the same kind of landscape I had inexplicably fallen in love with in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Thousands of miles away I had met this place of wildness and fallen in love. As I stood in this ancestral land, I felt a connection, a kind of deep knowing.

Maybe the felt connection was because of the photos I have of my father playing on these same sands, the carefree days of his childhood long before the burdens of adulthood settled into his bones and the deep grooves formed on his forehead.

Whatever the source, walking this ancestral landscape brought me a sense of understanding and peace. My father had fled this country as a boy when the Russians invaded. He became a refugee, never to return home again in his entire life. I was making this journey in part on his behalf, to restore something that had been broken. 

One of my primary spiritual practices these last several years is ancestral pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a journey of meaning to a sacred site, in this case, a place that was significant for my ancestors. I trace my genetic lineage back through England, Austria, and Latvia and have travelled to each of these places, some multiple times, as a part of my personal journey.

These journeys have changed me and brought much healing to my life and called forth even more from me. In the summer of 2012 I made an even more radical choice. After several of these ancestral pilgrimages, my husband and I moved to Vienna, the city where my father grew up after leaving Latvia and is now buried, as a deeper commitment to continuing this ancestral journey. And then we followed the call to Ireland, the land of John’s maternal ancestors.

A pilgrimage is a special kind of journey, one taken to a holy place with the hope for an encounter with the sacred and the intention of being changed by what happens there and along the way. We don't go on pilgrimages to return the same person.

I believe we are profoundly connected to the land and culture and stories of our ancestors in ways we don't fully realize. Their experiences, their sorrows and joys are knit into our bones, woven into the fabric of our very bodies. The impulse to discover one's story often leads you to reach far back into history. We can't fully understand the impact of these connections until we stand on the land and speak the language of those who came before us and gave us the gift of life through our ancestors.

When I stood on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Latvia and imagined my father playing as a child in the sand and the waves, I connected to this experience of longing. I understood him in new ways. I saw the innocence of a young boy before the war came and shattered everything he knew. May Sarton wrote in one of her poems: "Now the dead move through all of us still glowing . . . What has been plaited cannot be unplaited . . . and memory makes kings and queens of us." Remembering what has been already woven into us is the task.

Each time I prepare for these journeys with excitement and anticipation, as well as fear and trembling, knowing I will have to confront the shadow sides of my family system. But it is in facing the dark depths that I no longer have to live in fear of them.

"If your journey is indeed a pilgrimage, a soulful journey, it will be rigorous. Ancient wisdom suggests if you aren't trembling as you approach the sacred, it isn't the real thing. The sacred, in its various guises as holy ground, art, or knowledge, evokes emotion and commotion," writes Phil Cousineau, in his book The Art of Pilgrimage.

I believe, along with psychologist Carl Jung, that the stories of our ancestors run through our blood and the unhealed wounds and unfulfilled longings continue to propel us forward or keep us stuck in old patterns. The stories of our grandmothers and grandfathers are our stories and we can help to heal the wounds of the past and in the process heal ourselves by telling those stories again, giving voice to the voiceless, unnamed secrets and to the celebrations, insights, and wisdom gathered over time.

Jung introduced us to the concept of the collective unconscious, that vast pool of ancestral memory within each of us. It is a kind of deposit of ancestral experience. He believed it comprises the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. Nothing is lost; all of the stories, struggles, and wisdom are available to us. Each of us is an unconscious carrier of this ancestral experience and part of our journey is to bring this to consciousness in our lives. "I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete or unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors," he wrote.

Consider making a pilgrimage to walk in the footsteps of your own ancestors, those everyday saints who struggled with life's heartaches and suffering. Spend time in the places that shaped their imaginations and their dreams; speak the language with which they whispered their most private secrets to one another, the words they used to express their aching sorrow and profound joy. It doesn't matter if you know nothing of the details. Walking, being, listening, and noticing the impact of trees, rivers, mountains, and sky on your own spirit is enough.

A pilgrimage doesn't have to be a long journey overseas. It might be to a nearby cemetery or a phone call with a living relative to ask about stories you have never heard before.

November is the season of remembrance and we are offering an online retreat in community to celebrate and honor those who have walked before us. We would love to have you join us!

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo © Christine Valters Paintner

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1 Comment October 15, 2017

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 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
  • Celebrate the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle podcast with us!
  • Join us for A Midwinter God & Epiphany! ~ A Love Note from Our Online Abbess

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