Christine Valters Paintner > Quotes

“And don't we all, with fierce hunger, crave a cave of solitude, a space of deep listening—full of quiet darkness and stars, until finally we hear a syllable of God echoing in the cave of our hearts? —MACRINA WIEDERKEHR”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom

“The desert is also a place where we can face our own demons and shadows and be cleansed of them.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements

“The [sun and moon] provide us with different-appearing worlds, which in turn form our two different minds; the one that reasons and the one that dreams.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements

“We cannot become so impatient for the destination that we arrive before we are ready.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred

“Invite Wonder What if you bowed before every dandelion you met and wrote love letters to squirrels and pigeons who crossed your path? What if scrubbing the dishes became an act of single reverence for the gift of being washed clean, and what if the rhythmic percussion of chopping carrots became the drumbeat of your dance? What if you stepped into the shower each morning only to be baptized anew and sent forth to serve the grocery bagger, the bank teller, and the bus driver through simple kindness? And what if the things that make your heart dizzy with delight were no longer stuffed into the basement of your being and allowed out to play in the lush and green fields? There are two ways to live in this world: As if everything were enchanted or nothing at all.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

“Pilgrimage, in this sense, can mean the life journeys we take in response to unwelcomed circumstances.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

“In his Rule, St. Benedict wisely writes that "always we begin again.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom

“While we must venture far to find our “true self,” it is also always with us.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

“God is never a set of concepts to be understood but a relationship to encounter”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

“Practices help us to bring the reality of what we seek into the physicality and earthiness of our lives.”
― Christine Valters Paintner

“I already know everything I need in this moment to live fully. There is no other book or experience that will make me more complete. ... the caution is to not let the words in a book becomea substitute for my own deep knowing.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred

“This discovery that every creature and every created thing can be a window of revelation into the divine nature is an invitation to fall more and more in love with the world. To see that teachers of grace exist everywhere means to bring a sense of reverence to the way we walk in the world ... Sacramental vision means not only that we grow in our love of God’s ways in the world but also that we grow in our sense of kinship with creation…. ”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature

“One of the classic definitions of a sacrament is something that is an outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible grace ... Sacramentality is a quality present in creation that opens us up to the Sacred Presence in all things. Sacraments reveal grace. 

When viewed through this expansive lens, we discover that the more we cultivate intimacy with the natural world, the more we discover about God’s presence. All of our interactions with nature can be sacramental, and all the ways nature extends herself to us are sacramental as well.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature

“most.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk with Us toward Holiness

“They would also carry a small book called a vade mecum, which in Latin means “go with me”.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul of a Pilgrim: Eight Practices for the Journey Within

“Mary is the archtype of the gushing spring, the rushing fountain, the source of inexhaustible life and fecundity. She is, of course, the primordial womb in which all of creation is being fashioned and knit together, the Mother of God, the one whose yes allowed the divine and human to be woven together in a new way.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal