To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Earth Your Dancing Place (excerpt) Take earth for your own large room and the floor of earth carpeted with sunlight and hung round with silver wind for your dancing place —May Swenson, Nature: Poems Old and New Dearest Monks and Artists: I have had the great pleasure of sharing Ireland with John’s two sisters these last couple of weeks.  It was their first time here and so everything was a new discovery.  We loved having family so close and exploring this place we have

. . . Wronda!  Please send me your snail mail address and I will get a signed copy of Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice! Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the Poetry Party – your celebrations of springtime brought forth a blossoming of the soul.

. . . Sharie!  Congratulations Sharie, you have won a space in the online class Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Contemplative Practice (April 28-June 15, 2013) which starts Monday! So many wondrous images over at the Flickr pool.  Pour a cup of tea and then linger for a while, maybe noticing if one image wants to choose you for some visio divina. As always, a deep bow of gratitude to all of the monks and artists who gather here at the Abbey to celebrate the joys of creative expression.

Dearest monks and artists, I have been back from Vienna for a week now, enjoying settling back into my life in Galway, and listening for how this time away has shaped me.  Pilgrimage always changes us because it always brings us to an encounter with the Holy.  As I return to Ireland, I find myself full of inspiration and dreams.  And I find myself deeply trusting the direction my life is moving. There is a part of me hungry to keep traveling more, living here in Europe with so many cultures and countries on my doorstep.  And while there are some

I have a guest post up at the Spiritual Directors International blog in celebration of Earth Day and Hildegard of Bingen: “I am the fiery life of the essence of God; I am the flame above the beauty in the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life. For the air is alive in the verdure and the flowers; the waters flow as if they lived; the sun too lives in its light; and when the moon

To receive this love note straight to your in-box, subscribe here (and also receive a free gift!) Dearest monks and artists, I am back in Galway after two magical weeks in Vienna.  This past week, Kayce Hughlett and I were leading our first ever retreat in Vienna, exploring the beauty of the city through the contemplative practices of writing and photography.  I had been eagerly anticipating this experience for months, so excited to show others this city I love so much.  To show them Vienna, not through the lens of a tour bus, but through the eyes of the heart. 

I’m a Yankee-Doodle Catholic Greetings to The Abbey of the Arts community! My name is John Valters Paintner. I am blessed to be married to your online Abbess, Christine. And I am honored to be joining her in a more direct manner as your online Prior. I just returned from two weeks in Vienna, Austria where I assisted my wife and Kayce Hughett in leading a retreat. But before I begin more work with the Abbey, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you all a little about myself, my background and my inspirations. I was born on the