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
      • Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color (Book Club – March 2021)
      • God Alone is Enough: A Spirited Journey with Teresa of Avila (Book Club – February 2021)
    • 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)
      • 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: Marjorie Maddox

Last spring we launched a series with poets whose work we love and want to feature and will continue it moving forward.

Our next poet is Marjorie Maddox, whose work focuses on the intersection of body and spirit.  You can hear Marjorie reading her poem "Prayer" below and read more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Prayer-by-Marjorie-Maddox.m4a

And the Topic for Today Is Environmentalism . . . .

Teaching “God’s Grandeur”

More politically correct than divine grandeur,
it too flames out in this small Pennsylvania town
where fracking hijacks the headlines. Good reason
and good enough to bring the state students trodding
heavily into a poem piled high with God and earth,
with “responsibilities” they hear each morning
as the gas industry trucks rattle past our windows,
their tired drivers knowing nothing
of iambic pentameter or sestets but much
about food on the table, a steady job.

The freshmen, eager now,
blurt out dilemma, paradox, instress—
and all those other new-sounding ideas
suddenly connected to their lives,
their parents, the sonnet
they think was written last week,
even with its 19th century,
sound-packed syllables they don’t get
until slowing down, thinking.

And so, after playing with light, foil, sound;
the way trade “sears,” “blears,” and “smears”;
and how and why shoes separate us from ground,
we detour to Genesis, Cat Stevens, and a heavy metal rendition
that almost drowns out Hopkins with bass.
All this before rounding the terrain-raked bend
to solution, which is what—they are surprised to discover—
we all most want: the eloquent octet, the bright wings,
the ah! that opens the mind to talk
at long last, about the holy.

Previously published in True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and Illumination Book Award Medalist)

Themes of Her Work

I write poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature and address such diverse topics as baseball, my father’s unsuccessful heart transplant, art, identity, living in an unsafe world, and the writing and teaching of literature. And yet—because faith is a central component of who I am—much of my work focuses on the intersection of body and spirit.

In my current book project, Seeing Things, I address memory within several parent/child relationships, including the beginning stages of my mother’s dementia and my daughter’s health issues. The manuscript also examines the ways we distort or preserve memory, define or alter reality, see or don’t see those around us. I look forward to learning—through poetry and God’s grace—what I will discover along the way.

Rocking Chair Hymn

And praise be this chair
with its waltz of the heart
that dips with the breeze
and the lilt of the lark.
And praise the pulse there
in the stretch of the limbs
in both person and tree
as we two-step with Him
in the motion of nature,
the beat we breathe in,
the rhythm of earth,
the dance and the hymn.

from True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series and winner of the Illumination Book Award)

Poetry and the Sacred

In the dizzying spinning of our lives, poetry has the ability to lead us—as T. S. Eliot might say—to “the still point of the turning world,” that place of quiet contemplation where the natural and spiritual often intersect. Although I would not equate prayer with poetry, the two share the need for sustained pause and meditation, a slowing down of our hectic lifestyles, an openness to discovery, and a desire for communion with the Divine. “Be still and know” is also true with poetry. Here, if you listen, you may hear the voice of God.

You also will hear the cries, laughter, and struggles of those like and unlike yourself. This, too, is the work of poetry: empathy and epiphany. The process of writing and reading allows us to better understand this world and the next. Poetry connects the local and universal, the mundane and the miraculous. It gives us those ears to hear and eyes to see that we might, then, head back into the turning world sustained, nourished, and willing to learn more. And will this not lead us to the Sacred? Yes, I say. Yes.

Eucharist

Host

the small circle of face
we see by
in light of wine

the sliver of why
that bends the bones
begs "Come!"

the orbed cross
bright in the palm
of the poor

the crucified moon
nailed high
on the night of tongue

Chalice

To sip is to sing the Amen
into veins, sweeten
the soured tongue.
But first: lips
pursed with it,
hollowed mouth brimming
with want.

This is the swallowing
of what spewed out: spears
stuck long in the side,
thorns thick in the skin.
No trickle.
A Hallelujah
torrent down the throat.

previously published in Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize; reissued 2018 Wipf and Stock)

About Marjorie Maddox

Winner of America Magazine’s 2019 Foley Poetry Prize, Sage Graduate Fellow of Cornell University (MFA), and Professor of English and Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); True, False, None of the Above (Poiema Poetry Series; Illumination Book Award Medalist); Local News from Someplace Else; Perpendicular As I (Sandstone Book Award)—the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); children’s books; Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor); Presence (assistant editor); and 550+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. She gives readings and workshops around the country. Please see MarjorieMaddox.com

Books

Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation

True, False, None of the Above

Local News from Someplace Else

Wives' Tales

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 August 14, 2019

Upcoming Programs

  • The Two HT’s Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman on Being Free with Therese Taylor-Stinson
    • Apr 17, 2021
  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – April Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available
  • Hildy Tails 12: Is ait an mac an saol ~ by John Valters Paintner
  • Easter Blessings + An Elemental Journey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

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