Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Blessings! The feast of St. Francis is this Sunday, October 4th! A much-loved dancing monk and saint here at Abbey of the Arts. I wrote the poem above several years ago imagining what Francis would be like at the local pub, knowing his playful delight and joyfulness. 

I offer the following excerpt from our book Dancing Monk Feast Days which includes 52 of our dancing monk icons created by delightful artist Marcy Hall with creative invitations and prayers written by our wonderful Program Director Melinda Thomas. 

St. Francis of Assisi (c. 1182–c. 1226)

“The world is my monastery.”

Francis founded in Italy one of the most widespread and enduring religious orders. His focus on simplicity and spirituality led him to become a reformer within the Catholic Church, helping to rebuild it. He received the Stigmata (or marks of Christ’s Crucifixion) as a sign of his devotion. Francis is known for his strong connection to nature and is the patron saint of animals. Many churches today still hold “blessing of the animals” ceremonies on his feast day, October 4th.

Francis invites you to consider:

How might you deepen your intimacy with nature?

Creative Invitation

You are invited to spend some time connecting with nature. You might choose to take a contemplative walk allowing your gaze to rest upon the vegetation, animals, and elements you see. This can also be done looking out a window. If you have an animal companion, enjoy a few intentional moments where you are fully present to their ways of being in the world: the feel of their fur or skin, the sounds they make, the love they give, etc. You can also do this with animals you see outside your window. Write, dance, sing, or offer a prayer of thanksgiving for the living world that companions you. 

Prayer

Holy and Loving God, we give thanks for all of creation and for the example of St. Francis. Help us hear your call to simplify our lives so we may unearth our authentic connection with you. Like Francis, may we release what is no longer needed. May our letting go free us up to hear the calls of the earth and our plant and animal kin beckoning us into tender relationship with the wild matrix of being.

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In October 2000, I traveled to Assisi, Italy. During a two-and-a-half-mile walk through the nearby forest to Eremo Delle Carceri (Hermitage of the Prisons), I felt God’s presence vividly. I had an undisturbed awareness of each step and breath I took. Trees, stones, and a twirling leaf in a spider’s web drew me in, calming the turbulence in my mind.  

I had recently completed a six-month volunteer position at the Camas Centre on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. I struggled to make sense of how to move forward after this transformative time of community living.

As I wrote in my journal the night of my hike, “It is my first sense of real peace since Camas. This stillness enfolds me and I return there, not in place but in wholeness of spirit.” I wrote how the spirituality I had found on the Isles of Mull and Iona made sense. “It is incorporated into theatre and story, poetry and ecology, simplicity and beauty. St. Francis joins my spirit and I feel the warmth of God.”

The immediate sensation left me, yet the encounter made a lasting impression. I came away with the consolation that God was with me. I left the woods outside of Assisi with greater trust to let my life unfold.

As I established my life—developed a more standard career, enjoyed the security of a good-paying job—practicality and pride eroded the raw and simple trust of a twenty-four-year-old with only a couple hundred dollars and a few boxes of possessions to her name. I might have still said I trusted God, but I had grown comfortable in an illusion that I was able to control my circumstances, direct all aspects of my life, and prevent unwanted outcomes. 

As the years passed, I rarely spoke of my hike in Assisi to others. Even remembering it brought a little internal embarrassment. What happened in those woods? Did I let my youthful sensibilities sweep me away into romantic notions?

My connection to nature, however, didn’t change over the years. In 2013, I bought a farm in Sonoma County, California, setting out to build my own kind of hermitage with the trees of my orchard and my flock of chickens as companions. 

Then, during another October seventeen years after my time in Assisi, my relationship with forests and nature, that which had comforted and soothed me, shifted in one night. I woke around 1:45 a.m. the warm night of October 9, 2017, to the sound of popping and the smell of smoke. Within a few hours thousands of homes were destroyed, including 1,400 a half a mile from my home.

When I evacuated my farm the first night of the fires, one of the few items I took with me was a stick in the shape of a cross. I had found it on my hike to the hermitage outside of Assisi. In taking that wooden cross on that tremendous night, I carried a concrete reminder of the unique something that had once happened to me. Perhaps I knew whatever had happened in Assisi was something I needed to remember more than ever.

The encounter with nature through a firestorm left a different kind of mark. One that continued to burn deeper with each new devastating season of fire and smoke. I now see how the trauma of wildfires set kindling for what ignited in my nervous system after my Covid infection in 2021.

Before the fires, I had seen nature and my farm as a refuge. I found comfort in the land, the birds, my garden. But after the fires, a drive into a wooded area caused my heart to quicken and my chest to tighten. I had learned what I hadn’t wanted to know — nature, a beloved sibling in creation, is not benign. My relationship to the forests, the dry summer, the fall winds — these all had to be rebuilt. It took me almost four years to retrain my mind and body to reside again in a place of trust and safety.

A main portion of this retraining was acknowledging what author and historian Kate Bowler refers to as my “limited agency.” I came to greater acceptance that I wasn’t able to control or prevent all discomfort, pain, difficulty, or suffering. Through a variety of practices like meditation, somatic tracking, and exposure therapy, I learned to be present to all my emotions, including my discomfort and fear.

In my youthful hike through Assisi in 2000, I had encountered God in the beauty and serenity of nature which calmed my inner turmoil. In my middle age, I learned the practice of welcoming God to sit with me in the uncertainty and impermanence of the natural world. It is a different trust.

At twenty-four, subconsciously I believed that if I worked hard enough and “trusted” in God then life would unfold harmoniously. Now I am learning that trusting in God is trusting that God will be with me, in both the harmony and disharmony. I have moved toward accepting how little I can control, and I have found how much I can change my experience from within.  Both can be true. At the intersection of what might seem opposites, at this meeting place of the cross, God is there.

Natalie Gould is a coach, storyteller, and retreat leader who made a full recovery from a three-year debilitating illness, discovering what is possible even in situations that seem impossible. She is the author of the memoir Enough Feathers to Fly: Stories of a Farm and a Life Made Whole. She lives on a small farm in Northern California. SparrowCrowFarm.com

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Tomorrow, we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale The Handless Maiden!

I mentioned in last week’s love note that I first fell in love with this story about 20 years ago and it continues to speak to me. It became woven into a profound series of synchronicities that led me into a deeper relationship with Mary and the sacred feminine. 

In 2012, soon after John and I had first moved to Vienna, Austria on our grand midlife adventure and pilgrimage, I was co-teaching a class called Women on the Threshold where we told stories each week of thresholds and transitions. I chose the story of the Handless Maiden because it has spoken to me in profound ways in the past and the maiden finds healing in the forest, the place of my own great joy and connection.  I wanted to let this story inform me once again.

What seized my imagination in my reading of it that time was the maiden’s journey through the forest to the pear garden.  I was so moved by the image of her, vulnerable and alone, finding nourishment in the gift of pears.  I discovered a poem by Nan Fry, a contemporary poet, about the handless maiden which reads in part: “you bent to her, Pear, / and offered yourself, breast / and milk both, the earth / grown pendulous and sweet.”

Those words: “you bent to her, Pear, and offered yourself” broke something open in me, a longing I had for receiving rather than reaching, for sinking into an even deeper trust of life’s nourishment for me. I was hearing other whispers within me about not striving, not needing to work so hard. The pear became a symbol for this.

As I was falling in love with the wisdom of Pear for my life, my local grocery store in Vienna had started a promotion. They had plush toy fruits and vegetables you could get free with the points earned on your store card. I had enough for “Birnadette” (the German word for pear is “Birne” and so this is the name she came with), a silly but absolutely delightful plush pear who made me ridiculously happy, because the story and her full body is a reminder of rest for me, of receiving the plushness and abundance of life. She reminded me (and still does) to be playful and take things less seriously.

Soon after, my dear friend and teaching partner Betsey came to visit me in Vienna for a few days before she was heading to France to help lead a pilgrimage which included visits to several Black Madonna sites. I told her of my unfolding journey with Mary and the pear. She told me that very often the Black Madonnas were carved from pear wood! I began looking on the internet to see if Mariazell, a Black Madonna in Austria I had recently visited, had been. I was never able to find out the wood she was made of, but what I did discover stunned me. I found a photo of her statue without the elaborate dress she was wearing in the shrine, her unadorned beauty I had been longing for when I visited. In her hand, beneath that elaborate dress, was a pear.

Here was Mary offering me the very pear I had fallen in love with from the fairy tale. Here was Mary saying in a new way, “let me bend down and offer you the nourishment you need.”

There are, of course, many more layers to it all. But this is what it means to me to follow the thread. I also call it living organically, letting go of long-term plans, and stepping into each moment from a place of deep listening, unfolding, ripening.

The pear remains to this day a symbol of something quite potent in my life. An ongoing intimacy with the divine presence who calls me to rest and be in the arms of the beloved. I am still learning this practice of surrender and yielding, of releasing my need to control and direct things, but the pear and Mary continue to be symbols of this movement in my heart and soul. 

This is what the story of The Handless Maiden is in part about. Going with our wounds into the orchard and forest and allowing ourselves to be nourished and healed. What journeys of synchronicity and insight might await you? 

The Handless Maiden begins tomorrow and is a 7-week series with weekly live sessions led by me and Te Martin will be present to offer the gift of song (including songs they wrote for each threshold of the story). I will also be joined by Polly Paton-Brown, Aisling Richmond, Dr. Kellie Kirksey, and Dr. Jamie Marich to invite you into a kaleidoscope of creative ways to engage the story’s meaning for your own life. We would love for you to join us. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image: Paid license with Canva

The post Nourishment in the Orchard ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess appeared first on Abbey of the Arts.

Drawing and painting have always been an important part of my contemplative practice. When I go into my studio, my breath slows down, my shoulders release and my mind quiets. As I enter into the project I lose all sense of time and space and I feel that I go deep inside myself. My imagery often relates ideas and themes that I have been exploring and working to heal within myself. Art making is the closest connection that I come to God.

The Guest House 

Pen and Ink 

The Guest House is a pen and ink drawing inspired by a poem of the same name by the ancient Sufi poet Rumi. 

This drawing is about the range of emotions that work their way into my body and become stuck when I choose to ignore or run from them. It represents how I must work to untangle and release to accept all aspects of the human condition.

The Subtle Body 

Pen and Ink, Marker 

The Subtle Body is a pen,ink and marker drawing. 

This drawing represents the image I use to root and ground myself when I settle into my meditation practice.

Return to the Root of the Root of Your Soul 

Pen and Ink 

Return to the Root of the Root of Your Soul is a pen and ink drawing that is inspired by a poem of the same name by the ancient Sufi poet Rumi. 

This drawing is about coming to terms and accepting all the fears and feelings that I push away or spend my life running away from. True inner peace only comes when I step into the waters and befriend my fears and uncomfortable feelings. I go to the root of the root of my own soul and come to full acceptance of who I am. Or as Rumi discovers, that we are already that which we seek.

Paula Hogue is a visual artist from the USA. Her creative process is a blend of self discovery and spiritual practice. Art connects her with the Divine and allows her to go inward. Many of her pieces are a marriage of her yoga, meditation, and contemplative practices.

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On Monday, September 28^th we begin a 7-week journey with the fairy tale “The Handless Maiden.”  You may or may not be familiar with it. There are over a hundred versions of this story which have appeared throughout Europe and other parts of the world, so it is an important story, one that can speak to our experience on many levels. 

It is a story that first found me when I was living in Seattle, about 20 years ago. I participated in a workshop with a Jungian analyst where we spent the week embodying this story through art, writing, and movement. It was transformative for me and the story continued to call in the years that followed. Each time I read it again it touches me in new ways and deepens the previous discoveries. It is a story you can return to for a lifetime, always with new gifts of insight. 

For some time, I have wanted to offer a retreat experience for the Abbey on this fairy tale about healing the wounded feminine and reuniting the sacred masculine and feminine. Even though the protagonist of the story is the “maiden” we all have feminine dimensions to ourselves and an equally important aspect of the story is the healing of the wounded masculine as well. 

I have found working with Jungian ideas and archetypes a very helpful way of looking our place in the world and I have brought these concepts in service to seeing the saints and mystics and ourselves in new ways. Archetypes are universal energies we all experience and encounter in our dreams and longings. They help to guide us to fuller versions of ourselves. We each contain masculine and feminine energies within us and part of maturing as a human being is helping these to mature and embracing the gifts of both these aspects of being. 

Jungian analyst Marie Louise Von Franz wrote about the power of fairy tales: “Fairy tales are the purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes.”  They use symbolic language to express deep psychological truths.

Fairy tales are like collective dreams which can speak to us about powerful archetypal forces at work within us. We can find ourselves in each character and symbol.

The Handless Maiden is a story which speaks to the dis-ease we experience when the feminine is sacrificed and ushers us onto the road back to wholeness. It is a story about initiation into our wild and whole selves. 

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ wonderful book Women Who Run with the Wolves, she describes this story as an initiation into the underground forest. She says that initiation is:

“the process by which we turn from our natural inclination to remain unconscious and decide that, whatever it takes – suffering, striving, enduring – we will pursue conscious union with the deeper mind, the wild Self.”

Conscious union with the deeper mind, the wild Self. The journey is rigorous. Stories don’t spare us from the suffering and challenges of following our deep heart’s desires. If anything, they demand the hard journey of descent. But they also remind us that this is an ancient way. That others have followed this path and emerged stronger, more resilient, wise, with more wholeness and joy.

If you are curious about what a deep dive into a fairy tale might be like, if you are on a threshold in your own life and seeking discernment and wisdom, or if you know this story well and want to enter it again in this season of life, you are most welcome to join us. 

The Handless Maiden is a 7-week series with weekly live sessions led by me and Te Martin will be present to offer the gift of song (including songs they wrote for each threshold of the story). I will also be joined by Polly Paton-Brown, Aisling Richmond, Dr. Kellie Kirksey, and Dr. Jamie Marich who will invite you into a kaleidoscope of creative ways to engage the story’s meaning for your own life. We begin on September 28^th. 

I am also leading an online mini-retreat on a Spirituality of Blessing on Friday, September 25^th for Mercy by the Sea. Join me to cultivate a way of being that blesses the world. Their registration closes tomorrow, September 21^st at 12 noon eastern.  

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image: Paid license with Canva

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