Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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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
    • 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)
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
        (SELF-STUDY)
      • 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
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Featured Poet Series

Featured Poet: Laurie Klein

We are launching a new series this spring with poets whose work we love and want to feature!

Our next poet is Laurie Klein whose work is deeply inspired by mystery and the healing that comes from courting holy disruption. You can hear Laurie reading her poem "How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Backyard-Psalmist.mp3

How to Live Like a Backyard Psalmist 

Wear shoes with soles like meringue
and pale blue stitching so that
every day you feel ten years old.
Befriend what crawls.

Drink rain, hatless, laughing.

Sit on your heels before anything plush
or vaguely kinetic:
hazel-green kneelers of moss
waving their little parcels
of spores, on hair-trigger stems.

Hushed as St. Kevin cradling the egg,
new-laid, in an upturned palm,
tiptoe past a red-winged blackbird’s nest.

Ponder the strange,
the charged, the dangerous:
taffeta rustle of cottonwood skirts,
Orion’s owl, cruising at dusk,
thunderhead rumble. Bone-deep,
scrimshaw each day’s secret.

Now, lighting the sandalwood candle,
gather each strand you recall
and the blue pen, like a needle.
Suture what you can.

Appeared in Where the Sky Opens

Themes of Her Work

I’m currently thinking of poems as Valentines. I want to name what I love in ways that startle and disrupt and heal. I chase economy with ruthless reverence: a few memorable details, a singular question, the felicitous jolt. Perhaps I’m courting revelation, dazzle amid what dissolves. Feeling compelled by what I can sense— but not say—never stops me from trying! Yes, I trip over my own words, then, eventually, hopefully, cajole all my striving toward tenderness, wherein I can kneel, re-graced. Hostage to nothing. And there, await the passing sacred hem, linen’s whisper brushing against my hand.

Poem for Epiphany

Perhaps, rolled in papyrus
or raw silk,
the jeweled boxes arrive as small thuds,
and gifts imprint the dirt floor.
Were the Magi
quiescent?—a hint of Quaker,
a nod to Zen—with nothing
verbal to treasure or
ever replay in their minds
save eloquent exhalations,
the creak of joints,
be they camels or kings,
the serial tick of straw.

For the marveling patience
of plastic wise men
en route, step-by-step,
to my mother’s crèche (despite
my down-the-stairs drop kicks,
behind her back), I reposition
my knees, atoning, wordless
now, as the star comes for me.

Appeared in Books & Culture, 2016

Poetry and the Sacred

For me, entering the presence of the sacred means embracing mystery. And I adore mystery. Poems I love evoke—and expose—irresistible gaps: within my understanding, between the lines themselves, betwixt soul and Truth’s unerring glance. So I try to inhabit a listening simplicity that borders on innocence, nose out clues. Heaven knows, the last word on just about everything still remains to be said. Often, as a gap narrows into connection, an insight arcs—a comet searing my meager horizon. Is it any wonder “scared” and “sacred” share the same letters?

Centuries ago, trembling Magi parsed the star’s mysterious invitation. The seeking, the gazing, the giving—historically, we call this Epiphany: literally, “to show, to make known, to reveal.” And aren’t these the riches poems offer? An unexplained image shimmers, one step or seemingly light years beyond our reach. We turn toward it, and the primed heart, the even more primal gaze, kindles a devotional reset. Reverence radiates. Gregory Boyle, S.J. tells us, “Awe softens us for the tender glance of God,” which, in turn, graces our glance at life’s enigmas: the sacred waiting for us within others, ourselves, and our work.

I Dream You Ask,
But Where Do I Start?

Unglove the knuckles,
torqued and sore. Let the flesh
dip, then lift, a hand dripping
tears, into the basin,
anchored within a pillar of stone.

Such a kindness, this water,
warmed. Sketch the sign: brow
to breastbone, then shoulder
to shoulder—a recollection,
retraced, like a map. Tell me,

which is graver: the soul's
relief, or its grateful receipt,
re-initialed? Love is an oar
extended, until the lapsed
skiff of a self,

long swamped,
resurfaces chaste, borne
on a christening tide where
memory balloons, everything
new, in one killing swirl

About Laurie

Laurie Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, hymnals, recordings, and recently, on NPR. A past recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred and two-time Pushcart nominee, she writes from America’s Inland Northwest. Where the Sky Opens is her debut collection (The Poiema Poetry Series), available at Wipf & Stock (always 20% off retail), and Amazon.Visit Laurie Klein on Facebook, or sample her bimonthly blog at LaurieKleinScribe.com

 

Photo by Dean Davis Photography

Order Laurie Klein's Book

Where the Sky Opens: A Partial Cosmography  (The Poiema Poetry Series)

(using the Amazon links above help to support the Abbey scholarship fund at no additional cost to you)

Dreaming of Stones

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones has just been published by Paraclete Press.

The poems in Dreaming of Stones are about what endures: hope and desire, changing seasons, wild places, love, and the wisdom of mystics. Inspired by the poet’s time living in Ireland these readings invite you into deeper ways of seeing the world. They have an incantational quality. Drawing on her commitment as a Benedictine oblate, the poems arise out of a practice of sitting in silence and lectio divina, in which life becomes the holy text.

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Leave a Comment April 3, 2019

Upcoming Programs

  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
    • May 15, 2021 - May 16, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Reverend Deb Goldman
  • A mini-poetry reading from Christine plus other publishing news
  • St. Kevin Holds Open His Hand and Radical Hospitality ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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