This month The Wisdom of the Body: 10-week online companion retreat to the book is our featured self-study. We have updated all the video content to now have closed captioning and transcripts for accessibility. 

This is an excerpt from the book:

How do I welcome in all that is most nourishing and fruitful into my body and soul? What are the habits and beliefs which rob me of this fertile moistness in my body and soul?

There is a story from the desert fathers where an Abba says to a seeker, “Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.” (Poemen 80) This can be easier said than done, since we are inclined to so many “comforts” which only serve to numb and distract us from life.  How often do we try to satisfy ourselves with that which depletes us?

In the book of Deuteronomy we hear a similar invitation: “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (Deut 30:19) Choose what is life-giving, what makes you flourish, what brings you alive. 

What if your fundamental commitment is to only offer your body and soul that which is nourishing and to listen to what depletes you and say no to those things.

I find some of the contemporary materials on intuitive eating very inspiring and sound. And yet, for some of us, if we have engaged in disordered eating of any kind, tuning back into that intuition can be challenging. The contemplative path is about deepening our capacity for intuitive connection to our body wisdom so we begin to hear our bodies’ voices. 

I invite you to hold the question as you move forward: Does this nourish me or does this deplete me? 

Sometimes we will only discover in retrospect whether something was nourishing or not. Keep returning to those questions of nourishment and depletion and notice what is true for you in this moment.  Not what was true some time ago, or what you long for in the future.  The body grounds us here and now.

Is this truly nourishing? If not, can I change what I am doing?  If I can’t change what I am doing, can I shift my perspective?  Can I pay attention to how my body is feeling in this experience and make room for whatever that might be?  Can I offer a prayer on behalf of someone in need?  Can I commit to myself I will do something nourishing when this necessary task is completed?

Our work with this process (and it is a lifetime process) is simply about presence and awareness, rather than judgment. Through presence we practice a radical hospitality to our own experience. If I eat too much or spend hours in front of the television mindlessly, can I welcome in my disappointment with myself, can I welcome in the grief I am trying to avoid feeling?

Accept that there will be times when you do something which doesn’t feel especially good for your body or soul. Then go back to my second invitation which is to be ever so gentle with yourself. When we experience resistance and then we resist further, we further our own wounding. One of the most healing practices I have found is this simple act of kindness and deep care for our well-being.

The practice is exactly that, a practice. We get to show up again and again. 

Bring this question to everything: to eating, to work, to playing, to movement. Sometimes we are required to perform tasks for work which aren’t nourishing, and that is okay. But bringing our awareness to the moment can help to enliven us to new possibilities.

Then notice the patterns. So much of what we describe as nourishing are things to be enjoyed slowly and are rooted in the experience of the body: good food, good conversation, time spent in nature, rest.  Whereas, what depletes us are often things like worry, anxiety, control, conflict, rushing, many things which reside in our mind and thoughts. Notice what is true for you. How do you define true nourishment?

When we get anxious we become disconnected from ourselves, our thoughts start to race and grasp. When we are always running from one thing to another, we lose ourselves and a fundamental connection to the body. 

The body loves slowness.  It creates more space for greening to enter our being, to experience the lushness of the body. Of course, the contemplative loves slowness as well. The heart of the contemplative path is slowing down and paying attention, becoming fully present.  

Please consider joining us for the self-study version of The Wisdom of the Body. Use code BODY20 for a 20% discount. 

You are also invited to join us this Friday for a retreat with ValLimar Jansen on Sacred Echoes: The Mystical Pathways of African American Visionaries. This retreat was rescheduled from February. Read ValLimar’s reflection on the retreat here.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

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In her book, In the Sanctuary of Women, Jan Richardson tells about the discovery of prayer books that belonged to a convent of Cistercian sisters. Handcrafted by the nuns, each book was distinctive to the woman who had used it, each prayer and page reflecting her spiritual journey as she sought God in the layers of her life. Creating the books offered the sisters a way to actively choose and express their own spiritual path, while the pages themselves offered a threshold into prayer and sacred encounter. In recent years, as I’ve deepened into my own longing to make art, I’ve come to know and nurture it as a form of prayer. Revisiting collages and images I’ve made, or rereading things I’ve written, has taught me that this act of looking back helps me remember the grace I’ve experienced on my spiritual journey. It also draws me into God’s presence in the present moment. As I prepared to cross the threshold of graduation from a spiritual direction training program, I found that the story from Richardson’s book had germinated into a desire for my own prayer book, one that would celebrate and remind me of the beauty that comes from my practice and journey with God, even when it’s hard. I also wanted portals of prayer to help me return and center into the sanctuary of my heart and the deep truth within, so that I can continue to show up in these anxious times and offer my gifts with trust, love, and hope. These pages I have created, mixed with my own photography, art, and glimpses of grace from notes and journals over the past couple of years, are those portals for me, an offering from my practice of being present where I am and searching for God in the layers of my life. As I pray with these glimpses of grace, I hope they will remind me of inner wisdom and sacred love, anchoring me as I live and practice in the world.

Christina Lelache is a spiritual director, photographer, naturalist, and United Methodist pastor who creates space for others to connect with the sacred. She delights in exploring the connections between nature, creativity, and spirituality. Her writings, photography, and spiritual direction offerings can be found at wildgracestudio.com.

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Easter Blessing*

God of Rising,
you bring new life
to all the places death inhabits.

Bless our own dying dreams
with your breath of new life.
Make our dry bones dance,
inspire us to sing,
revive our bodies
so that we might become
more vibrant, hopeful witnesses
to the persistence of your love.

We call on Christ’s wisdom
to bless and sustain us
in the practice of resurrection
by which we honor our bodies
and become agents of generous abundance.

May all the nets we draw up
from the water be overflowing with fish,
may our wounds be still visible
as a sign of healing grace,
and may we encounter your presence
when we sit at table with strangers.

Let our lives be a celebration
of all the ways your love thrives
where once there was only doubt,
like the first riot of daffodils in spring.

Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Lent is a powerful season of transformation. Forty days in the desert, stripped of our comforts, and buoyed by our commitment to daily practice so that we might arrive at the celebration of Easter deepened and renewed. In many ways this Lent was far more austere than any of us anticipated.

Often, we arrive at the glorious season of resurrection and celebrate for that one day, forgetting it is a span of 50 days, even longer than the Lenten season through which we just traveled. Easter is not just the day when the tomb was discovered empty, but a span of time when days grow longer in the northern hemisphere, blossoms burst forth, and we are called to consider how we might practice this resurrection in our daily lives.

The soul’s journey through Lent is like a pilgrimage exploring inner desert places, landscapes, thresholds, and the experience of exile. Ultimately, pilgrimage always leads us back home again with renewed vision. Resurrection is about discovering the home within each one of us, remembering that we are called to be at home in the world, even as we experience ourselves exiled again and again.

The liturgical year, however, is not a linear passage of time. It is cyclical and spiral, returning to previous moments with new vision. It is the heart of kairos time, which is time outside of time. I know many of us are forgetting what day of the week it is because they all run into one another now.

And in this model of time moving in spirals, it means that even though we move into the radiant season of Easter, we do not leave behind the invitations of the desert or the call of grief. To be human means to hold all of these layers together.

As a poet, when I am asked what I write about most often, my response is that for me poetry helps me to be present to a world where terrible things happen and where amazing things happen, sometimes all at once. The grief, the loss, the unknowing, the fear of what is to come, they are all real. The gratitude, the kindness, the caring, the wonder at simple moments, they are all real as well.

The Gospel readings during the Easter season are about the resurrection appearances of Jesus: Thomas doubts and needs to touch Jesus’ wounds; the nets that were empty are pulled ashore overflowing with fish; the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread; Jesus breathes on them the gift of the Spirit; and of course the celebration of breath and fire at Pentecost when everyone was most afraid of what was to come. In all of these stories, there is a sense of generosity and abundance, of caring for needs, and of finding solace and assurance in the wounds. Perhaps these are just the stories we need for these times.

During these dark days of uncertainty, I have been making room for grief. Music and movement become the container for my sorrow. But I have also been making room for laughter, for affection, for connection with others.

The truth of resurrection isn’t that we hold onto some false banner of hope, denying the reality around us. Resurrected life means we know our woundedness as a place where grace can also enter in.

To help us practice resurrection in our lives, Abbey of the Arts and our wonderful Wisdom Council have created an Easter gift for you: Sanctuary —Midday Prayers for Peace and Justice. We have recorded 28 days of prayers with a short reading and an invitation to sit in silence for 5 minutes in the middle of your day as a way to join with other dancing monks in praying for peace in our fragile and hurting world. These are wonderful additions to our prayer cycles of morning and evening prayer. If you subscribe to the daily emails, each day we will include a link and invite you to pray with us at morning, midday (new!), and evening. 

Join Simon and me for our monthly contemplative prayer service tomorrow on the theme of practicing resurrection! We will be joined by musician Soyinka Rahim. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*Blessing is from Christine’s book A Book of Everyday Blessings: 100 Prayers for Dancing Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims (Ave Maria Press)

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Words are my stock in trade. They are a necessary and integral part of how I make my living as a writer and editor. But sometimes, I intentionally don’t use words. I created Embodied Prayer, which is worship with movement instead of words, as an intentional counterbalance to my world of words. 

I first encountered movement prayer in the church of my youth. In the 1970s, St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico was a thriving congregation engaged in all sorts of creative liturgical expressions, including the rediscovery and embrace of historical holy week observances—reimagined for the modern era. One aspect of this reimagining was a liturgical dance group. For some complicated reasons I did not participate, except occasionally as part of the youth group, but I longed to do so. 

Many years later, I was reintroduced to movement prayer during my formation as a spiritual director. I embraced it, then found and joined a liturgical dance group where I lived in greater Boston. I began incorporating dance movements and yoga sequences into my morning stretch routines. These became my foundational expression of daily prayer. I trained as a Let Your Yoga Dance instructor and led sessions for people who yearned to express their spirituality in embodied ways.

After moving “home” to the desert southwest, I led movement prayer sessions for border-focused internships with the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque. Then I led monthly Embodied Prayer sessions in the tiny mountain town of Silver City, New Mexico. Over the decades, I’ve facilitated Embodied Prayer in various retreat and conference settings, including online. I even created a liturgical dance for my best friend’s wedding. Each of these manifestations enfleshes my belief that all of us are invited to pray with our bodies—something I first learned in church so many years ago.

Of course, this movement hasn’t always come easy. One Sunday morning, I danced off the edge of a rug during my daily prayer and broke a bone in my foot. Then there are those who find liturgical dance distasteful or scandalous. My Presbyterian grandfather (who served as a powerful role model of faithful living for me) would have been appalled at liturgical dance and Embodied Prayer. I’ve been told that liturgical dance doesn’t belong in church, that it’s too sexual, and that it’s disruptive. Honestly, I’ll agree with the last point—and even embrace it.

Richard Rohr, who founded the CAC and whose work I edit, teaches that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” Inspired people have been disrupting the status quo throughout Christian history. At one point, I thought of Embodied Prayer as my contribution to the Emerging Church movement. This movement sought to bring new life into Christian liturgy and theology in ways similar to the liturgical innovations that inspired me as a youth.

Some Christian movements, though short-lived, still make an impact on a generation or two. Others, such as the Protestant Reformation, endure and change the course of history. Eventually, every such movement is co-opted by or subsumed into the church, and another reformation arises in response to this institutionalization. 

I didn’t start Embodied Prayer as an intentional “reformation” or criticism of something “bad.” Rather, I felt something was missing. I loved the periodic opportunities our liturgical dance group was given to participate in worship services. However, I didn’t like liturgical dance being treated as a performance that members of the congregation watched. I wanted to invite worshippers to participate somehow (as I had longed to participate in my youth). I believe that all of us are invited to pray with our bodies, in whatever ways we can. Embodied Prayer became my response to that invitation.

Today, I’m rediscovering what Embodied Prayer means for me. I am newly divorced and reconsidering almost every aspect of my life. When I realized it was time to leave my marriage, an image came to mind, of me growing wings and taking flight. I drew such an image years ago in a workshop at a CAC conference. It has taken on new meaning and purpose for me as I leap prayerfully from one stage of my life to the next.

Shirin McArthur is an Episcopal spiritual guide, editor, writer coach, and retreat leader who lives in Arizona and ponders the sacred through poetry, photography, nature, and contemplation. She holds a Master of Divinity degree and a Certificate in Spiritual Guidance and has been a solopreneur since 2012.  ShirinMcArthur.com.

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This Friday, April 3^rd, we are delighted to welcome award winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker Kaitlin Curtice to lead us in a retreat on journeying with story. Following the life cycle of a story, Kaitlin will guide us through how powerful stories become in the world and how we interact with and reclaim stories for love and kinship.

She offers this excerpt from her book Everything Is a Story.

Birth is the beginning of life, of everything that we know and understand as humans, so it makes sense that as we begin to imagine what a story actually is, we liken it to an acorn, seeing it as a seed, as a newly birthed being. 

Five to seven months after pollination and fertilization, an acorn falls from an oak tree. Acorns lie dormant on the ground from fall to spring, so it takes time for acorns to become who they need to be, for their lives to begin and take form. So it is with a story. Some may lie dormant on the ground, waiting to grow, to become, to find out who they are one day going to be. 

Just as acorns are their own beings that have agency but also need the surrounding world to thrive and grow, so it is with stories. Stories are alive, taking their own presence in the world. They are nurtured, every story that grows and becomes—even those that are detrimental to us. 

I think of creation stories from cultures around the world when I hold an acorn, when I consider what exactly a story is. In the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee creation story, who is Skywoman, and why did she gently land on the backs of geese to come down to earth? How did the earth become Odin’s wife and daughter in Norse stories? Why are there multiple cycles of creation in the Aztecs’ story? And how did Esege from the Mongol creation story create the earth out of void darkness? 

I’m a storyteller, so every time I learn about another way that humans try to make sense of the world, I get excited. This is what we do as humans! We enter into stories, tell those stories, live those stories, and sometimes we end up chasing those stories when they take on a whole life of their own. We use stories to affirm what we already believe, and sometimes we even use stories to confuse the truth, to spread lies, and to hurt others. 

The best way we honor the origins of stories is with intention and curiosity, ready to ask questions of the stories themselves, questions like, What is this story teaching me here? What does this story teach me about the way I treat others? We can use stories to ground ourselves, or we can use them to keep breathing in and out the narratives that harm us and others. The courageous life is one where we keep leaning in, where we celebrate the complexity of a story and their origins and keep sifting along the way. 

These words from my new book, Everything Is a Story, will guide us in our time together as we ask how stories journey with us. Following the sacred wisdom of the oak tree and the power of a story, in our workshop together we will be journeying with our stories, asking how they move and shapeshift throughout our lives, and how they also show us who we are in connection to ourselves, one another, and Mother Earth.

Below is a poem from the book for us to hold as we prepare for the journey, as we open ourselves up to the reality that stories are alive in us and around us:

You think you write the stories 
until you realize that they have 
written themselves, entire beings 
with entire lives you’ve 
yet to even imagine. 
 
They’ve gone on ahead 
to encounter the world, 
to live in it, experience it, 
making their way like all of us. 
 
And sooner or later, 
those stories find their way 
back to us again, reminding us, 
maybe, of who we were all along, 
that we also began as a story, 
grew up and grew out into the world, 
only to return home to ourselves 
to write our own life as we always 
hoped it would be. 

Please join us Friday to consider how story can liberate or limit, build compassion or create division and together ask which stories should we pass on to future generations–and which can we finally let go.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image paid license with Canva

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