Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
We have two free gifts for you today!
It is with great joy that we start to release the video podcasts of our Love of Thousands Prayer Cycle this week. The theme for our Day 1 morning prayer is the archangels and for evening is the guardian angels. Here one of the prayers of concern for morning written by our Wisdom Council member Claudia Love Mair:
“Creator/Creatrix, you sent the Archangel Gabriel to visit Mary and herald the arrival of Jesus. Send them to us that we may give birth to music, dance, and art, to ideas, writing, and teaching, and whatever creative thing we set our heart and mind to create. Help us be who we are, and be that well, following the North Star that you placed before us. We are listening for your divine messages. Help us to always hear you with clarity.”
The video podcasts invite you into gentle movement so you can let your body lead the prayer. We are so grateful to Betsey Beckman for producing these podcasts and we will be releasing one day each week for the next 7 weeks. These are entirely free resources and if you find them valuable we would be most grateful for any financial support you are able to offer.
To celebrate the podcast release we have created a brand new free reflection guide for my book The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk with Us Toward Holiness.
Please feel free to share these prayer and reflection resources with friends who would be enriched by praying with angels, saints, and ancestors.
I also continue to celebrate the release of my newest book A Midwinter God: Encountering the Divine in Seasons of Darkness. You can listen to a conversation with me about the book at the Faith Conversations podcast.
This coming Saturday, I am leading a mini-retreat for our wonderful friends at Spirituality & Practice on Gifts of the Underworld Journey of Descent. One of the most powerful aspects of mythic understanding is seeing how the journey to the underworld is present across time and traditions. It is part of our human experience to experience seasons of our lives when everything we thought was certain and secure is stripped away. While I do not ever believe the Holy One “gives” us these experiences, I do believe we are companioned throughout and gifted with wisdom which helps to broaden our understanding of the divine and cultivate greater compassion for ourselves and others.
If you are wrestling with an underworld season of life, I would love to have you join me. As a reminder too we have a free reflection guide for my book available here.
These last two books I have written – The Love of Thousands and A Midwinter God – were both initially sparked by my mother’s death over 20 years ago. I was plunged into an underworld of doubt and unknowing and opened to a deeper intimacy with those beyond the veil. The mystical and mythic traditions have such richness to help us navigate the challenging terrain of being human.
If you want to connect with the ancestors through the creative practice of writing then you might want to register for Writing with the Ancestors, our newest self-study. Use code ANCESTORS20 to take 20% off through October 31st.
I’d love to see you Saturday for the Gifts of the Underworld Journey of Descent and we hope you enjoy the free resources we are sending out today with blessings and much gratitude to you for being a member of our community! You are also invited to join Therese Taylor-Stinson for Centering Prayer this Wednesday, October 16th.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
P.S. I was also interviewed on the Liturgical Rebels podcast with host Christine Sine. We had a conversation about Celtic spirituality, living with chronic illness, and A Midwinter God.
