Calendar

Program runs August 2024 - June 2025

At Abbey of the Arts we celebrate financial accessibility and strive to make all of our programs available to those who long to participate. We want to gather a core circle of financial supporters for the 2024-2025 academic year to help keep our offerings and our community open and accessible to all who desire a contemplative and creative life.

with Christine Valters Paintner and Nóirín Ní Riain

Join us on the Feast of the Assumption which celebrates Mother Mary’s final journey into the fullness of the divine. Mary has many names and titles and we will focus our time on her as Mother of the Keen, Untier of Knots, and Queen of Heaven.

with Christine Valters Paintner

Join Christine Valters Paintner for a free informal gathering online where we will begin with some centering and meditation, then we will look at the upcoming programs and resources, followed by time for sharing and questions.

with Christine Valters Paintner

This 28 day program begins with a 2-hour online retreat led by Christine who will guide you through different exercises to help you yield to the process of writing as a journey of discovery, rather than holding too tightly to the end product. Following the opening live retreat there will be 27 days of writing prompts designed to take about 15 minutes a day to cultivate a writing practice. This is a generative program, we are not here to edit our work, but to show up for the Creative Source when we slow down and listen to what is erupting in the silence.

with Dr. Jamie Marich

In this mini-retreat experience Dr. Jamie Marich uses several expressive arts facilitation strategies to help us start or continue the process of writing our own spiritual memoir. Such a memoir never has to be publicly shared--it can be a personal aspect of your spiritual practice and growth and in the spirit of expressive arts can take on a variety of expressions.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Christine and John Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, Dena Jennings, Aisling Richmond, Jamie Marich, and guest teachers

In the four weeks of this retreat on the archetypes of apocalypse, orphan, fool, sovereign, and prophet, we will explore the significance of living during what feels like end times to gain new perspectives on the beginning of time. We will focus on the liberating and empowering concepts of threshold and transformation. We will listen to the wisdom of the mystics who have lived through their own turbulent periods as well as those who have been oppressed and lived through end times over many generations.

with Christine Valters Paintner and Simon de Voil

Join us on the Feast of St. Francis for an exploration of Francis and one of his first followers, St. Clare. Through song, teaching, meditation, and sharing we will listen together for how Francis and Clare might inspire the soul friendships of our own lives.

with Christine Valters Paintner and Simon de Voil

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will be leading music and Christine Valters Paintner will be leading reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month's theme is Silence and Solitude.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, and Nóirín Ní Riain

Join us on the feast of All Saints and the Celtic feast of Samhain to pause together and honor our beloved ancestors and all the wise and well ones who have passed through the veil. Through ritual, song, teaching, meditation, and sharing we will weave a container together to hold our prayers and longings and receive the gifts the saints and ancestors have to offer us for the season ahead.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and guest musician Dena Jennings

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will be leading music and Christine Valters Paintner will be leading reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month’s theme is Hospitality.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

Christine and John Valters Paintner, Sybil MacBeth, and guest teachers

This Advent, join us for a retreat in which we cultivate a spirituality of blessing. Together we will nurture gratitude, joy, hope, and delight in the beauty of our lives in the midst of a hurting world. We won’t be denying or bypassing that woundedness but resourcing ourselves with a sense of abundance at the heart of things. We will resist a culture that strives to wear us down and leave us feeling hopeless.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and guest musician Te Martin

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will be leading music and Christine Valters Paintner will be leading reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month’s theme is Community.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and Deirdre Ní Chinnéide

Join us on the Winter Solstice to celebrate this threshold moment when the sun stands still and the earth tilts from growing darkness to growing light again. Through ritual, song, teaching, meditation, and sharing we will create a holy pause in the rush toward the holidays when we can listen deeply to the voice of the Holy One whispering within us.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and guest musician Deirdre Ní Chinnéide

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will lead music and Christine Valters Paintner will lead reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month’s theme is Kinship with Creation.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Aisling Richmond, Jamie Marich and guest teachers

Our western culture denies the reality of difficult feelings, demonizes the experience of darkness, and rejects the invitation of winter to move into a place of unknowing and mystery. Through live sessions, somatic exploration, mindful movement, written reflections, and creative practice we will cultivate an ability to be with life’s questions.

Simon de Voil

Join us on January 31st, the eve of the Celtic feast of Imbolc which celebrates the quickening of the year and a subtle shift into the promise of a still-distant spring. February 1st is also the feast of St. Brigid, one of the most beloved of the Celtic saints and goddesses. Through teaching, song, and meditation we will bring compassion to help us hold these paradoxes and heal the rifts around us.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and guest musician Jamie Marich

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will lead music and Christine Valters Paintner will lead reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month’s theme is Work.

with Melinda Thomas

Drawing on the wisdom of yoga and the Christian mystical tradition, we will cultivate our capacity for devotion through gentle yoga postures, creative writing exercises, and contemplative practice.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Christine Valters Paintner and guest teachers

Join us for the sacred season of Lent when we dive into the wisdom of seven medieval women mystics: Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, Clare of Assisi, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Angela of Foligno, and Margery Kempe.

with Christine Valters Paintner and Simon de Voil

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will lead music and Christine Valters Paintner will lead reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month's theme is Sabbath.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Cassidhe Hart and Grant Showalter-Swanson

Earth Psalter is an opportunity to explore traditions of psalm composition, experience re-writing a psalm from the perspective of your ecosystem, and reflect together on how the practice of psalm writing might nourish us for the work of ecological justice.

with Christine Valters Paintner, Simon de Voil, and guest musician Richard Bruxvoort Colligan

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will lead music and Christine Valters Paintner will lead reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month's theme is Conversion.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Melissa Layer

Calling upon the gifts of poetry, journaling, and visio divina reflections we will break open death and resurrection as invitations to personal meaning-making and transformation in our eldering journeys.

with Christine Valters Paintner and Simon de Voil

Join us each month for an online contemplative prayer service. Simon de Voil will lead music and Christine Valters Paintner will lead reflection and lectio divina or other meditative practice. Each month we will explore a principle of the Monk Manifesto. This month’s theme is Creative Joy.

with Therese Taylor-Stinson

Centering Prayer is a method of Christian meditation that places a strong emphasis on interior silence or stillness. Our time together will include checking in, teaching on a theme to inspire contemplation drawn from a wide variety of sources, time in silence together, and reflection.

with Te Martin

Join us for a springtime community singing mini-retreat. We'll ask ourselves and each other, "What are the places, people, or activities in my life that give me strength?" Singers of all levels are welcome -- experienced, new, or anywhere in-between!

with Carmen Acevedo Butcher

Love, as Brother Lawrence discovered, comes from an everyday friendship with God. Recognizing that so many of the issues of Brother Lawrence’s time mirror our own, we will discuss how the friar’s work helps us live in touch with Love’s wisdom, moment-by-moment, cultivating self-compassion, compassion for others, and peace within ourselves during the very real stresses of our world.