Have you stopped by this week’s Poetry Party yet?  As always there is an incredible gathering of poems.  This week’s theme is “In Praise of Life’s Detours,” those side-journeys we get called to which take us more quickly to our destination that traveling straight through.  Pour yourself a cup of tea and stay for a while, savor the words, linger over the images.  Then share your own poem before this Sunday for a chance to enter a random drawing where the winner will receive a book of their choice. June 7-10, 2012 I am offering a brand new Sacred Rhythms Writing Retreat

I am so thrilled to be offering a brand new live retreat called Sacred Rhythms: Bringing Yoga, Movement, and the Wisdom of the Seasons to Your Writing Practice – June 7-10, 2012 at the Grunewald Guild near Leavenworth, WA. This will be a wonderful, nourishing time of diving deep into our bodies and telling the stories we discover there. Guided by the rhythms of the day, we will move through the hours of awakening, ripening, releasing, and being to listen to how these rhythms might support our creative practice. This retreat is for every body and anyone who loves to

I will be teaching an online class this spring through the Spirituality and Practice website:April 23 – May 18, 2012 $49.95 Click here to registerThe desert is a place of sparse landscape, where we are stripped down to our essence and confronted with our own deep needs and desires. Naturalist and writer Terry Tempest Williams described its spiritual significance in her memoir Refuge: “If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is

The lovely Tara at Anam Cara has interviewed me about spiritual direction.  Here is an excerpt: Introduce yourself to the Anam Cara readers. Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do other than spiritual direction? I am Christine Valters Paintner and I live in Seattle, WA with my husband and my canine companion (who is one of my primary spiritual directors) in the heart of the city. I am a Benedictine oblate which means I have made a commitment to living as a monk in the world outside the monastery walls. I am also the online Abbess

This past week for our Poetry Party I invited you to write love poems to the world – to those ordinary things of our everyday lives which might for a moment become luminous.  Stop by to read the marvelous offerings. The winner of the random drawing for a free registration spot in my upcoming online art retreat for the season of Lent – Soul of a Pilgrim (February 22-April 7, 2012) is Phebe Allen Gustafson.  Phebe, send me your email address and I can get you registered.  Thank you to everyone who participated. If you want to join the online

The Center at St. Andrew’s here in Seattle is sponsoring an icon workshop with Peter Pearson April 26-29 which sounds wonderful!  I encourage my Seattle area friends to go if you have any interest at all.  You can find more information at their website here. Sponsored by The Center at St. Andrew’s with help from the Little Sisters of St. Clare Study with Iconographer Peter Pearson at An Icon Workshop A Brush with God April 26-29, 2012 The Round in Lake City 2212 NE 125th, Seattle, WA 98125 (formerly St. George’s Episcopal Church) Workshop-Studio     Schedule Thursday,     7:00-9:30pm Friday,     7:00-9:30pm

Over the last several months I have been training to teach yoga. I began the program because I have practiced yoga for many years and longed to dive more deeply into it. I expected to fall in love with my own body even more in the process; what I didn’t expect was how much I would fall in love with other people’s bodies as well. As I walk around the studio and students are in their various poses I see the incredible variety in body types, shapes, sizes, flexibility, and bone structure. My training involves hands-on adjustments, which are less