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Category: Earth as Original Monastery

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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

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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

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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

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Earth Monastery Prayer Cycle ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists, We are back after a monthlong break in our email newsletters. It is always good for us to have this sabbatical from our communications, to be able to turn inward a bit more and to give some time and energy to other projects. We are thrilled to be launching our newest offering – a 7-day Prayer Cycle of morning and evening prayer on the theme of Earth as our monastery. Here is an excerpt from our Introduction: Abbey of the Arts is a virtual monastery and global community of monks, artists, and pilgrims dispersed all over

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Join us for a Summer Online Retreat! + Newsletter Sabbatical ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dancing Monks at Abbey of the Arts from Christine Valters Paintner on Vimeo. Dear monks, artists and pilgrims, We are so grateful to the 35 dancing monks who sent us videos telling us what they loved about Abbey of the Arts. We are even more thrilled to have representatives from the United States, Canada, Ireland, England, Scotland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the Philippines included! What an amazing global community we are. We have compiled excerpts from these videos into the one we share above to give a window into what nourishes and sustains us. Please pour a cup of tea

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Christine Interviewed on Praying at the Speed of Love Podcast

This is the perfect conversation for a time of pandemic and quarantine. Christine invited us to explore how the monastic view embraces all of life—treasures and sorrows, cygnets and compost. She offered rich insights into the practices of Stability, Wild Edges, Grief, and the paradoxical state of Holy Indifference. She took us into a gentle meditation of memory—a heart practice to rediscover the gifts in small experiences. An excerpt from Earth, Our Original Monastery is included as well as a song based on Christine’s poem about St. Columba and his horse. Click here to listen to the podcast>>

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Practicing Resurrection with All of Creation ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dear monks, artists and pilgrims, Christine has written an article for Godspace Blog. An excerpt is below with a link to read the full article. Lent is a powerful season of transformation. Forty days in the desert, stripped of our comforts, and buoyed by our commitment to daily practice so that we might arrive at the celebration of Easter deepened and renewed. And yet this year, we were challenged to a much more severe Lenten experience, where many of our daily securities have been stripped away. How do we then approach the glorious season of resurrection, and celebrate not just

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