Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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    • The Wisdom of the Body:
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      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
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      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
    • The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
    • Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated & Explained
    • Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
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      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
    • Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness
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        Exploring Sacred Rhythms of Time
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      • Dreaming of the Sea:
        A women's discernment journey through the story of the Selkie
      • Exile and Coming Home:
        An Archetypal Journey through the Scriptures
      • Eyes of the Heart:
        Photography as Contemplative Practice
        (Companion retreat to the book)
      • Honoring Saints and Ancestors:
        Online Retreat for the Season of Remembrance
      • Lectio Divina:
        The Sacred Art of Reading the World
      • A Midwinter God:
        Making a Conscious Underworld Journey
      • Sacred Seasons:
        A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
      • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
        Eight Practices for the Journey Within
        (a companion retreat to the book)
      • The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seekers of the Sacred (a companion retreat to the book)
      • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
      • Watershed Moments
        in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
      • Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist:
        A 12-Week Companion Retreat to The Artist's Rule
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        A 10-Week Online Companion Retreat to the Book
      • The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine
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Lectio Divina:
Contemplative Awakening & Awareness

by Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE, OblSB
& Lucy Wynkoop, OSB

Paulist Press 2008

Description

Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening and Awareness offers a unique prayer resource that provides a thorough grounding in the different moments of the lectio experience: listening, reading, savoring, responding, and then contemplating God s Word. It will act as a guide for those who have a desire to pray more deeply into this ancient practice and invites readers into a spirituality that encompasses a way of being with God and the whole of life. Lectio Divina, grounded in Benedictine tradition, provides an accessible approach to praying with scripture as well as several concrete and creative ways of praying lectio with different texts such as poetry, icons, and movies. The book also explores ways of bringing lectio into scripture study and integrating lectio into busy lives. It concludes by offering the reader an exploration of the transformational value of lectio divina and a way of using lectio to pray with life experience.

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Praise for the Book

I highly recommend Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness. While many books laud the value of integrating lectio into our lives and some may provide the briefest of explanations, this is the only source that I am aware of that provides both the tradition and development of lectio divina along with contemporary expressions of lectio in practice. This book has grown out of years of practice and in mentoring others to cultivate ways of lectio divina that deepen the contemplative stance toward life. Lectio has been the heart and gut of monastic practice for centuries; the Spirit invites all of God's people to partake of this ancient way with God." -Sr. Laura Swan, OSB, author of The Forgotten Desert Mothers: Sayings, Lives, and Stories of Early Christian Women

Lectio Divina: A Way of Being with God and Life is above all a practical book. It is rooted in the authors' own practice and the experience of those for whom they provide spiritual direction. It gives practical advice for readers who wish to deepen their life with God on the basis prayerful reading of the Bible or the other ways in which God's word reaches us. Those who listen with their hearts to these authors' words will be deepened in their spiritual practice." –Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB, Monastery of the Ascension.

With the rising interest in the art of Lectio Divina Christine Valters Paintner and Lucy Wynkoop have created a work of great promise. In this superb resource the ancient wisdom and the poetry of the Lectio process shines forth. This is a praiseworthy offering." –Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, author of Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day and  A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary

Christine Valters Paintner and Lucy Wynkoop offer a way of practicing lectio divina that is inviting, accessible and practical. Their deep confidence in this way of prayer, and the clarity and wisdom with which they beckon the reader, spring from their own lived experience. With its singular combination of insights for daily life and prayer and suggestions for practice, this book will prove helpful to both the novice and to those who teach this way of prayer." –The Rev. Mary C. Earle, Associate Faculty of the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, author of Broken Body, Healing Spirit: Lectio Divina and Living with Illness

Wynkoop and Paintner's LECTIO DIVINA is a lovely book, with a gentle, lyrical style that reveals lectio's aim in the authors' tone as well as words. In their hands, lectio takes shape as a transforming power, combining the great aspiration to love and be loved by God with full acceptance of ourselves as we are. I especially enjoy the way Wynkoop and Paintner integrate the prayer of lectio with the senses, describing its wisdom as basking and luxuriating in God's presence, and offering specific suggestions for integrating art, poetry, images, music and the body into a lectio practice. LECTIO DIVINA is an act of consecration – the lifting up of our lives and souls to God." –Dr. Norvene Vest, OblSB, author of Preferring Christ: A Devotional Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict

If a college student practicing a secular adaptation of lectio divina hears the "still, small voice" that was "lost to years of Ritalin use," then Sister Lucy Wynkoop and Dr. Christine Valters Paintner's Lectio Divina: A Way of Being with God and Life provides an immensely practical guidebook for discerning the voices of "God" and for being with the vicissitudes of contemporary life." –Dr. Sarah Williams, Professor of Feminist Studies, The Evergreen State College

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Upcoming Programs

Jubilee Year Community Retreat:
Exploring Sacred Rhythms of Time
(ONLINE)

June 2019-June 2020
with Christine & John Valters Paintner and Wisdom Council members

The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine:
A 30-day self-study retreat
(Use code Mary20 for 20% off in December)
with Christine & John Valters Paintner, Betsey Beckman, Jamie Marich, and Sibyl Dana Reynolds

Recent Reflections

  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Jen Arendt
  • Monk in the World: Kinship with Creation 2 – Scripture Reflection by John ~ A Note from your Online Abbot
  • Featured Poet: Mary C. Earle
  • Monk in the World: Kinship with Creation 1 ~ Reflection by Christine
  • Dancing Monk Icons on Sale!

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