Reflections

Category: Lent Easter

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Easter and the Elements ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Happy Easter and Feast of the Resurrection! I am delighted to share that my assistant Melinda, whom you may know from our online programs and yoga practices, is leading a mini-retreat on Saturday, April 23rd themed around yoga and the elements. Read on for her reflection on Easter and the 5 great elements.  When I asked my eight year old son if he knew what Easter was about he said, “God coming back.” After nearly two years away from church and Sunday School I thought this was pretty on the mark. We briefly talked about love never

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April 17, 2022

The Space Between ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Today we enter Holy Week. This week ahead in the Christian scriptures invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, mockery, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing. Holy Saturday is an invitation to make a conscious passage through the liminal realm of in-between. I love the wide space of Holy Saturday that lingers between the suffering and death of Jesus on Friday and the vigil Saturday night proclaiming the return of the Easter fire.

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April 10, 2022

The Saints in Walgreens ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Ash Wednesday is this week and we will embark on our Lenten journey The Love of Thousands: Honoring Angels, Saints, and Ancestors.  Many of you feel a deep kinship with Abbey of the Arts because of our love of mystics and the saints and the ways we cultivate connections to those wise guides beyond the veil. This happens in many ways including pilgrimage, presence, and . . . relics. Relics may seem just like that – relics of another era, but these bits of clothing, hair, nails, and bones of the saint that have been revered

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February 27, 2022

The Love of Thousands Lent Retreat ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks, artists, and pilgrims, Ash Wednesday is March 2nd and when will embark on our Lenten journey The Love of Thousands: Honoring Angels, Saints, and Ancestors. Two significant things about this retreat – first it is content I am working on for a book that will be published in fall 2023 around some of my favorite topics.   The second is that I will be having a major surgery in March and will be recovering through April, so we are only hosting one live session for the community to begin the journey. The rest of the content will be delivered through written

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February 20, 2022

Easter Blessings + An Elemental Journey ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

A Glimpse of the Underglimmer by Christine Valters Paintner from Abbey of the Arts on Vimeo. “A Glimpse of the Underglimmer” (after Basho) You can see it sometimes in October when the sun’s low angle slides gold over the field, effervescence of light, or you stand in a forest of cedars and March rain pads hundreds of tiny feet across the emerald canopy, or the fireflies of July form new constellations, then vanish into summer’s night leaving only trails of light in your memory, or you stand in a May meadow, a fox crosses quietly, you hold still as possible,

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April 4, 2021

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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April 25, 2020

Easter Blessings from Abbey of the Arts ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

How to Be a Pilgrim – Poem Video from Christine Valters Paintner on Vimeo. Dear monks, artists and pilgrims, 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. In many ways this Lent was far more austere than any of us anticipated. Often, we arrive at the glorious season of resurrection and celebrate for that one day, forgetting it is a span of 50 days, even longer than the Lenten season through

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April 12, 2020

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