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
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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
      • 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
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Featured Poet Series

Featured Poet: Jeanne Murray Walker

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 Jeanne Murray Walker whose recent work was created through the discipline of a sonnet format. Read her poetry and discover more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred. Watch and lister to her read "The Creation" below.

Staying Power

In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International convention of Athiests. 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside and question the metal sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can’t go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I’m focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It’s the attention, maybe, to what isn’t

there that makes the notion flare like
a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon
spraying it with the hose to put it out. Even
on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they’ve found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I whisper, God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which--though they say it doesn’t
exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God’s not fire, say anything, say God’s
a phone, maybe. You know you didn’t order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don’t know who it could be.

You don’t want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbered up
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.

First appeared in Poetry.
Also appears in Helping the Morning

Themes of Her Work

I have just finished writing a hundred poems, each in 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter. I very intentionally took on this task as a king of spiritual commitment about five years ago:   to write sonnets, investigating the question:  why have the best religious poets in English have been obsessed with the sonnet?  The answer became the book, Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking (Paraclete).  I confess that I didn’t care for sonnets, particularly, when I began writing. Through practice I have discovered that the sonnet offers a powerful way to read and/or write about life and death and God and His astonishing world.

Everywhere You Look You See Lilacs

and better yet
just blossoming in woozy
pink and white, smell the peonies
that will cast off their clothes like floozies
soon. Ponder the indolent fat bees
like tiny blimps that hover over them,
perfectly content with where they are
this morning. Nothing’s missing in the flame
of this slow day. Sun through Douglas fir
cascading now, the earth complete and here:
once, currently, forever. How not traveling,
we’ve still traveled everywhere. How far
it’s possible to go without unraveling
maps or charts. To get there with no drive,
no fear, not even any hunger to arrive.

First appeared in Innisfree.
Also appears in Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking

Poetry and the Sacred

Reading good poetry reminds me (as does participating in ritual at church) that every literal thing in the world has another meaning, that there is a spiritual world which lies around and just beyond us all the time.  I believe this.  However, when I write poetry, I am usually not thinking about that spiritual world so much as about the fact that I’d better show up for a workshop at 3:00 pm (or whatever the scheduled time) with a couple of poems so I can talk them over with a friend, who is a poet and a fine critic.  She brings her poems, too.  I learned a long time ago that if I don’t workshop with other poets, I don’t write.  Workshops and deadlines serve as my reminders about the dailiness of living on earth; for me they are also an aspect of the sacred practice of poetry.

Attempt

Be present with your want of a Deity
and you shall be present with the Deity.

Thomas Traherne

Sometimes I lose you, as if you were a stallion
and the barn door’s left ajar. Or I’m due someplace
and can’t remember where. In my hellion
hair and ripped work shirt, I ransack the place
to find my datebook. Gone. Or I’ve dropped
my glasses and I’m crawling on all fours
to swab the floor with outstretched hands. I mop
blindly, my heart stuttering with fear.
Don’t tell me you’re not a stallion. I know.
You’re not some destination. But I want to
tell you what it’s like to search, although
the words are clumsy. Vapor.
What it comes to:
You are the sky, the boat, the oars, the water.
You are the soul that longs to row and you’re the rower.

First appeared in Spiritus.
Also appears in Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking

About Jeanne Murray Walker

Jeanne Murray Walker is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently, Pilgrim, You Find the Path by Walking (Paraclete Press).  Her poems are collected in Helping the Morning (WordFarm Press).  Jeanne’s poetry and essays have appeared in several hundred journals, including Poetry, Image, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, and Best American Poetry.  Her plays have been produced by theatres across the US and in London. A recipient of the Pew and NEA Fellowships, she has been nominated 16 times for The Pushcart Prize.  Her poem “Colors” is part of a permanent installation in The Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia. Jeanne served as head of the creative writing department at the University of Delaware and as a mentor in The Seattle Pacific University MFA Program. Currently she teaches writing as a volunteer at Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution.

Visit her online at  www.JeanneMurrayWalker.com

For more of Jeanne’s books including her essays visit:  https://www.english.udel.edu/people/jwalker

 

Dreaming of Stones

Christine Valters Paintner's new collection of poems Dreaming of Stones has 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 January 22, 2020

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

  • 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
  • Celebrate the Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle podcast with us!

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