Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • Prayer Cycle
    • 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
    • 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
  • Contact

Featured Poet Series

Featured Poet: Jan Richardson

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 Jan Richardson whose recent work is centered on grief, hope, and fierce, enduring love. Read her poetry and discover more about the connections she makes between poetry and the sacred. Listen to her read "Blessing for the Brokenhearted" below.

https://abbeyofthearts.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Blessing-for-the-Brokenhearted.mp3

The Magdalene’s Blessing

You hardly imagined
standing here,
everything you ever loved
suddenly returned to you
looking you in the eye
and calling your name.

And now
you do not know
how to abide this ache
in the center
of your chest
where a door
slams shut
and swings open
at the same time,
turning on the hinge
of your aching
and hopeful heart.

I tell you
this is not a banishment
from the garden.

This is an invitation,
a choice,
a threshold,
a gate.

This is your life
calling to you
from a place
you could never
have dreamed
but now that you
have glimpsed its edge
you cannot imagine
choosing any other way.

So let the tears come
as anointing,
as consecration,
and then
let them go.

Let this blessing
gather itself around you.

Let it give you
what you will need
for this journey.

You will not remember
the words—
they do not matter.

All you need to remember
is how it sounded
when you stood
in the place of death
and heard the living
call your name.

From Circle of Grace

Themes of Her Work

Just a few years after we were married, my husband and creative partner, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, died unexpectedly. No surprise, then, that much of my work explores the terrain of grief and loss, those experiences that are heartrending in their universality yet stunning in how specific they are to each one of us. What has struck me most, though, is what shows up amid the intense sorrow. Hope has proven to be wildly stubborn. And love, no matter how inextricably it lives with deepest grief, turns out to be infinitely more enduring, more fierce.

How Joy Works

You could not stop it
if you tried—
how this blessing
begins to sing
every time it sees
your face,
how it turns itself
in wonder
merely at the mention
of your name.

It is simply
how joy works,
going out to you
when you least expect,
running up to meet you
when you had not thought
to ask.

Poetry and the Sacred

Much of my poetry takes the form of blessings. I am fascinated by this ancient literary form that, in the scriptures and elsewhere, has a tangible quality: a blessing is something given, something passed along, often in a time of trouble or pain. A blessing testifies to, and calls upon, God’s presence amid what may appear unendurable. It bears witness to the fact that nothing in our experience lies outside the circle of God’s care.

In English, the word blessing shares the same root as blood. A blessing connects us. It has the power to do what all good poetry does: to help us find our heartbeat again, and be present to the love that, in an entirely unsentimental way, enables us to live.

In the wake of my husband’s death, this has come home to me with particular clarity. Grief brings us into intimate contact with the most elemental forces within us. Poetry—the reading of it, the writing of it—helps us abide and work with those forces. It opens a space where the work becomes possible, becomes imaginable; it gives us tools to engage and name both the pain and the joy that can sometimes seem unspeakable.

God of the Living

“Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living;
for to him all of them are alive.”

—Luke 20.38

When the wall
between the worlds
is too firm,
too close.

When it seems
all solidity
and sharp edges.

When every morning
you wake as if
flattened against it,
its forbidding presence
fairly pressing the breath
from you
all over again.

Then may you be given
a glimpse
of how weak the wall

and how strong what stirs
on the other side,

breathing with you
and blessing you
still,
forever bound to you
but freeing you
into this living,
into this world
so much wider
than you ever knew.

From The Cure for Sorrow

About Jan Richardson

Jan Richardson is an artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. She serves as director of The Wellspring Studio, LLC, and has traveled widely as a retreat leader and conference speaker. Known for her distinctive intertwining of word and image, Jan’s work has attracted an international audience drawn to the welcoming and imaginative spaces that she creates in her books, blogs, and events. Her books include The Cure for Sorrow, Night Visions, In the Sanctuary of Women, and Circle of Grace. Her new book, Sparrow: A Book of Life and Death and Life, will be released this spring.

A native Floridian several generations over, Jan makes her home in Central Florida. For more about her writing and artwork, visit JanRichardson.com, where you can also find links to order her books.

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.

«
»

Leave a Comment March 4, 2020

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

  • 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
  • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – April Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available

Connect with the Abbey

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
JOIN THE HOLY DISORDER OF DANCING MONKS
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES
DONATE TO SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY

Copyright © 2021 BY ABBEY OF THE ARTS · WEBSITE PRIVACY NOTICE

Copyright © 2021 · Flourish Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in