Visit the Abbey of the Arts online retreat platform to access your programs:

Reflections

Category: Abbess love notes

Filter

Prayer Cycle Podcast + Honoring Ancestors ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Listen to the Audio Podcast of Day 2 Evening Prayer Here >> Dearest monks and artists, We offer you the audio and video podcast for Day 2 Evening Prayer on the theme of Earth, our original scriptures. In the Celtic way of seeing the world, Earth was one of the two books of revelation alongside the holy text. The seasons beckon to us with their continual unfolding and wisdom about what it means to be fully human in this world and embrace rhythms of flowering, fruitfulness, release, and rest. Last week I talked about how dawn and dusk are threshold

Read More

Prayer Cycle Podcast + Listening at the Threshold ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Listen to the Audio Podcast Here >> Dearest monks and artists, I am thrilled to share with you above the video and audio podcasts for Day 2 Morning Prayer. We hope that you are enjoying these resources! In the Celtic imagination, the hours of dawn and dusk are considered threshold times when the veil between worlds is especially thin. When we show up for morning and evening prayer we open ourselves to an encounter with the Holy One reaching toward us. This encounter is always available, but it is in these sacred moments of Earth’s turning when we become more open

Read More

Poetry Book Launch + Prayer Cycle Podcast ~ Love Note From Your Online Abbess

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 1 Evening Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Click Here to listen to the Audio Podcast Dearest monks and artists, Celebrate with me! In addition to our Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle being released this fall, I am delighted that my second poetry collection – The Wisdom of Wild Grace – is also  launching with an online event hosted by Paraclete Press tomorrow on October 12th. (Register here) I would be most grateful if you would consider writing a review on Amazon or Good Reads. Every review and recommendation helps the work spread. Read

Read More

Prayer Cycle Video & Audio Podcast Launch ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle: Day 1 Morning Prayer from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Dearest monks and artists, Happy Feast of St. Francis! It is an especially appropriate day to announce that today we are launching a series of audio & video podcasts for our Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle. It has long been a dream of mine to create a series of morning and evening prayers for the Abbey of the Arts community, prayers that were inclusive and poetic, that celebrated our kinship to all of creation, that encouraged us to sing and dance. This Prayer Cycle really came

Read More

What She Does Not Know Poetry Video ~ A Love Note From Your Online Abbess

What She Does Not Know – Poem Video from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. What She Does Not Know (for unsuspecting Selkies everywhere) She does not know there is a reason she always feels out of place her life rigid and small, like living in a doll’s house a marriage more trap than longing and when she chokes on courtesy and convention the salt which burns her throat is not just tears. She does not know that when she stands on the sea’s wild edge and can finally breathe, dream, weep, her body strains forward seawater in her veins,

Read More

Once Poetry Video + Autumn Equinox ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Once – Poem Video from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. Once my hands were made of silver, delicate, refined, needing to be polished daily, glinting on sun-heavy days until I made my way into the woods listened for long while, ear pressed to soft earth thirsty for the song I heard among roots and moss, rumors that spring was coming, could even hear the magnolia bud rumbling. I stayed that way for years, prone, breathing in scent of fur and feather until everything silver fell away until flesh rose back up my arms pink covered me like the promise

Read More

St. Columba and His Horse (a new poetry video) ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

St Columba and His Horse – Poem Video from Christine Valters Paintner on Vimeo. St. Columba and His Horse The old man hobbles down the road toward the monastery gate, rests on a roadside stone, hears clip-clopping of hooves approach and his faithful companion arrive. The horse nuzzles Columba’s shoulder, shudders all down his white length eyes glisten round and brown, great teardrops pool and drop sounding like rainfall. Columba rests his forehead against the horse’s broad skull, closes his eyes and each imagines the other, galloping together across heather and buttercups. The horse knows his dear friend will soon

Read More