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

Last fall I participated in a two-week yoga teacher training retreat through the Samarya Center, a wonderful non-profit yoga studio here in Seattle that is committed to making yoga accessible to everyone.  In addition to their regular offering of classes to the general public, they also offer yoga to those in hospice, to veterans, to those suffering with addiction, and many others. Yoga is not just a physical practice at Samarya, the whole rich tradition of yoga philosophy is woven into everthing they do. I have been practicing yoga for about 15 years and while I have long felt drawn

I am posting this information to support the Sisters who lead these retreats.  I am not personally involved in the programs, so if you have questions, please visit their website and contact them directly: Deep in Iowa farming country, stands Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey. Abiding by the centuries-old Rule of St. Benedict, this contemplative community of Cistercian nuns has left behind the clamor of the 21st century for a cloistered life of prayer based on the monastic values of silence, obedience and humility. But in 2006 the Sisters allowed television cameras inside their abbey along with five women