Birthing the Holy

During this time of Advent - of darkness and winter in the northern hemisphere - our bodies are inclined to hibernate. We curl up by the hearth and wait, attentive to the life pregnant in the darkness. During such a season, what does it mean to give birth to the Holy?

Leave us a voicemail at https://www.spiritualwanderlust.org/ask for the chance to have your spiritual question answered live!

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:22

Kelly Deutsch

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Wanderlust podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Deutsch, and I have really been looking forward to today's conversation with a woman whose work feels deeply resonant with the spirit of the times. Those of you who know her are familiar with her several books on Celtic spirituality and creativity in a variety of practices, but those of you who haven't met her are in for a treat.

00:00:25:24 - 00:00:56:24

Kelly Deutsch

Today we welcome Christine Walters, partner to the Spiritual Wanderlust Podcast. Christine is the abyss of an online monastery called the Abbey of the Arts, which offers classes and resources on contemplative practice and creative expression. A poet, a spiritual director and a part time hermit, she now resides, resides in Galway, Ireland with her husband John. Her several books include Earth Our Original Monastery, The Artist Rule, the Soul's Slow Ripening, The Wisdom of the body, and her latest, The Birthing of the Holy.

00:00:56:26 - 00:00:59:16

Kelly Deutsch

Welcome, Christine. We're so happy to have you.

00:00:59:19 - 00:01:02:25

Christine Valters Paintner

Thank you. Kelly, it's delightful to be with you.

00:01:02:28 - 00:01:13:14

Kelly Deutsch

Wonderful. Well, to start us off, you are an abyss of an online monastery, which is a rather unusual title. Can you tell us how this came about and what that means?

00:01:13:16 - 00:01:53:18

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. I sometimes joke that that wasn't like one of my college, you know, career choices to sign up for. yeah. It happened. I was in graduate school, gosh, almost 20 years ago, I guess. And studying, studying monasticism was part of it that I actually fell in love with monasticism through my graduate studies. The graduate studies does have, some doorways into pleasure and and joy, and fell in love with Benedict and the Benedictine rule and Hildegard of Bingen and all of those, you know, wonderful, practices and people.

00:01:53:21 - 00:02:18:17

Christine Valters Paintner

And I, became drawn towards becoming a Benedictine oblate, which, as I was doing graduate work in the Bay area in San Francisco and Berkeley. And then we moved up to Seattle, my husband and I and I became an oblate of Saint Placid Priory, which is about an hour from Seattle, and, is a Benedictine monastery of a community of women.

00:02:18:17 - 00:02:58:00

Christine Valters Paintner

And Sister Lucy there became a wonderful kind of friend and mentor and great support of my work, and promptly got me leading retreats there and all of that. And yeah, just kind of evolved from there. It took, you know, I mean, those were sort of like the early days of online teaching. I taught a course for a seminary that was part of the doorway into, for the Episcopal Seminary at the Graduate Theological Union on Benedictine Spirituality and I wasn't I honestly wasn't convinced that teaching online would be as satisfying as teaching in person, and I ended up loving it.

00:02:58:00 - 00:03:22:20

Christine Valters Paintner

So that was kind of the impetus, I guess, and I was pretty comfortable with online technologies. So we started up a website and decided it would be a virtual monastery because that's what my, you know, my love was, and we call it the Abbey of the Arts, because my two kind of great passions are the contemplative practice and giving people those traditions.

00:03:22:20 - 00:03:58:26

Christine Valters Paintner

And it's and then creative expression, particularly as grounded in the the kind of practice of what's called expressive arts, which is kind of a more therapeutic approach and really looks at kind of nurturing creative process over product. those things kind of all came together in this virtual monastery. And to my delight and joy, there were all kinds of other artists and monks out there in the world who had this very specific passion for these things, how these things come together.

00:03:58:29 - 00:04:17:20

Christine Valters Paintner

yeah. I'm just delighted. And so we've been doing this for 15 years. I say we because my husband, once we moved to Ireland, started to work with me when we were living in Seattle, he was teaching high school theology, and, he was kind of ready for a break from that. So now we now we partner together in the work.

00:04:17:20 - 00:04:45:16

Kelly Deutsch

So that's awesome. I love when I first encountered your Facebook group, The Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks, I immediately was like, okay, I need to I need to be a part of this because this sounds so perfect. Like the I feel like that's, a theme both in your work and in, in Celtic spirituality is almost like a wink, you know, that happens through a lot of writings and just the, I don't know, the way of viewing the world like that.

00:04:45:16 - 00:04:51:14

Kelly Deutsch

There's a playfulness to it. Yeah. Where do you think that comes from?

00:04:51:17 - 00:05:23:23

Christine Valters Paintner

I think, well, I just I have a love of, you know, working with the imagination, working with intuition, kind of working with what I would call, like the, you know, the sacred feminine. really, I find that contemplative practice really nurtures and nourishes a way of being that's slow and spacious and makes room for the spirit to erupt in ways that are disruptive and playful sometimes.

00:05:23:25 - 00:05:43:16

Christine Valters Paintner

you know, I just I also think that you know, part of Benedictines budget is very much, emphasis on humility and humility kind of has a weird, ring to it, I think, in our modern world. But for me, it's really about being earthy. And of course, humility and humor have the same root, in hummus or earth.

00:05:43:16 - 00:06:09:06

Christine Valters Paintner

So there's a sense for me about not taking myself too seriously. And then several years ago, actually was just when I was moving from Seattle to, to Europe and I led this retreat and it was, creativity dancing and writing retreat. And that was where the disorder, idea came in, because we were having this conversation and, and I realized we're not an order, we're a disorder.

00:06:09:09 - 00:06:30:02

Christine Valters Paintner

And I would much prefer I'm not really particularly interested in rules and, you know, dogmas and telling people what to think and all of that. I'm much more interested in giving people practices and inviting them into a way of embodiment that works for them in their own lives. And so, yeah, so part of that is not taking ourselves too seriously.

00:06:30:04 - 00:06:42:03

Kelly Deutsch

I love that. So Benedictine spirituality is a huge influence and stream in your own life, but so is Celtic. And I'm curious where that came about.

00:06:42:05 - 00:07:13:13

Christine Valters Paintner

Well, my husband and I, visited Ireland for the first time in 2007 together, and we were here for three weeks, and I just I fell in love with the place. It's funny because I don't have any Irish ancestors myself. My husband does, and half of us side and and yet I feel so much more kind of alive and connected here than I do say in the UK, where half of my ancestry comes from and and part of it.

00:07:13:17 - 00:07:44:16

Christine Valters Paintner

At the time I was reading that the book Oh, by Thomas Cahill, how the Irish Slave Civilization, while I was, on that trip. And, you know, it made me it made me angry and a bit at the Roman church and, you know, the kind of imposition of order that it talks about. And but it also made me really appreciate how these Irish monks had their own sort of indigenous organic sort of way of practicing, ritual in monasticism.

00:07:44:19 - 00:08:15:13

Christine Valters Paintner

That was. Yeah, that just felt much more aligned, much more connected to the natural world. A lot of enlightenment towards the pre-Christian pagan practices. There's all these gorgeous stories of, saints who have this intimacy with animals, which I just I adore those stories because for me, it's about celebrating this, this idea that holiness comes from an intimacy and cherishing of creation and that that those stories are such a direct window into that.

00:08:15:13 - 00:08:42:21

Christine Valters Paintner

And the Celtic monks were so deeply influenced by desert spirituality, and that would be the other thread for me that really speaks to my heart, and that I bring into a lot of the work that I do. And, and so, yeah, to see how the Irish monks, you know, there are so many places in Ireland that have the word desert, desert or desert or desert and that my Irish is not very good.

00:08:42:28 - 00:09:07:11

Christine Valters Paintner

But in the actual place name. And it's so funny because here in Ireland, of course, you know, it's like the northwest, it's gushing rain all the time, most of the time. So there isn't really any literal desert, but those that metaphorical space of seeking the solitude and the wilderness and that radical encounter with the divine was very much, you know, they very much resonated with that naturalism.

00:09:07:15 - 00:09:32:00

Christine Valters Paintner

So all of those threads together just. Yeah. and, you know, then we, we moved to Europe and we actually moved to Austria first for six months because that's where my father was from. And I have an Austrian passport. So that facilitated all the practical sides of things. But the immigration process was very challenging for my husband. So we always said Ireland was plan B, so to speak.

00:09:32:00 - 00:09:59:13

Christine Valters Paintner

So we came to Ireland and it's worked out really, really well for us and we really do love it here. And, you know, within an hour's drive there's dozens of these sacred sites, both the Christian sites as well as, you know, the kind of cult kind of pre-Christian sites and, and, Neolithic and megalithic sites and, and just this amazing history and, and stone, you know, that exists here and.

00:09:59:15 - 00:10:27:14

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. And, and there's stories connected to all the parts of the land. It's it's a place really unlike any other that I've lived. Now, I'm sure in Seattle that the indigenous people have that similar tradition of the stories of the places. But of course, you know, as a white person, I don't have as much access to that. And here it's it feels much more like alive and for me and integrated into the culture.

00:10:27:14 - 00:10:50:03

Christine Valters Paintner

And. Yeah, there's even all the place names, if you look back to what the Irish name, because a lot of the place names are anglicized. but if you look at the Irish names, you know, you can sort of get a like a glimpse of the story of the place. And there's a big movement here to reclaim the Irish language, which is really exciting to to witness as well.

00:10:50:05 - 00:11:20:04

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, yes. I love to see the resurgence of, of interest in the Celtic and the contemplative and the mystical like that is really having a moment. And I love that because I feel like it's, I mean, at least in the Christian tradition, is one of the best kept secrets, you know, but that this tradition even exists. So I'm very excited that that people are discovering it and finding something that is, very heart centered, embodied, earthy, you know, it's delightful.

00:11:20:06 - 00:11:49:10

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah, yeah, I feel like it offers such a good alternative to our kind of dominant way of thinking, which is very linear and planning minded and doing and the Irish, the Irish web being is not linear at all. And and I love that. I find it frustrating at times for sure. but as someone who does tend to have a fairly orderly way of thinking about things, but I love that it disrupts that for me.

00:11:49:10 - 00:11:59:08

Christine Valters Paintner

And, you know, there's a playfulness here and, you know, all of that kind of mischievous sort of side to the Irish to figure. And I really enjoy all that, you know.

00:11:59:14 - 00:12:22:27

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, it is really helpful to have a culture around you that is disrupting the more western linear, you know, planning, success minded. I mean, I found that too, when I was living in Italy. You know, they were like, if you get one thing done during the day, feel good about it, you know, because normally we'd be like, okay, got to go to the post office, got to go grocery shopping.

00:12:22:27 - 00:12:30:07

Kelly Deutsch

I got to run it, you know, and they're like, no, that's just not how it works here. Relax. Yeah. Slow down. Come, come.

00:12:30:09 - 00:12:31:13

Christine Valters Paintner

Lovely, lovely.

00:12:31:13 - 00:12:57:27

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful. I wanted to spend some time today talking about your book. Is that all right? Berlin. The whole length. Great. So this book is all about 31 titles of Mary. And when I share this with my husband, who is not Catholic, he was like, I didn't know she had so many titles. Like. So before we get into the content of the book, why does Mary have so many titles?

00:12:57:29 - 00:13:38:15

Christine Valters Paintner

That's a great question. and I could have written, you know, about, you know, 60 or 100 names of Mary. I had to choose, you know, and it was basically the ones that most resonated with me. you know, kind of I mean, Jesus also, you know, goes by many names and certainly God goes by many names. And so I think that there's something about our hunger for connection to the sacred in all of its different facets that then, you know, we resonate with Mary, you know, as, you know, as the Queen, as the Virgin, as the star of the sea, you know, as the mirror of Justice.

00:13:38:18 - 00:14:21:27

Christine Valters Paintner

it's it's this I think it's this beautiful sense of, well, for me, it comes from kind of the union work around archetypes and how we embody within us all these different facets of our being. We are each a multitude. We aren't just one thing. And so there's a way for me in which, exploring and embracing all these different facets of Saint Mary has helps me to get in touch with those parts of myself as well, especially the parts that maybe I have more difficulty embracing or resist or need a little more support with.

00:14:22:03 - 00:14:54:10

Christine Valters Paintner

as well as the ones that I love. And then she helps me celebrate that, that aspect. but yeah, they, I mean, they just it's just sort of one of those things that evolved over time. you know, I give a little history for most of the titles, and, you know, it's not like there was a council early on that decided either the name was it just a lot of the names, emerge out of specific traditions or specific places or specific encounters and just over time, then become part of the.

00:14:54:16 - 00:15:01:03

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah, part of the beautiful tradition and poetry, really of her, of who Mary symbolizes.

00:15:01:06 - 00:15:29:28

Kelly Deutsch

Yes. I love how you do that in the book. It's almost a, lexia practice with each of her titles and, reflecting upon that, that archetype, like, what does this title mean for us? Like, it's cool that Mary is a star of the sea, but what does that even mean? And how do we, how do we not only call upon her, but also, live into that same, presence that she brings to us?

00:15:29:28 - 00:15:54:18

Kelly Deutsch

So I really enjoyed how you did that in the book. yeah, I, I also love how you bring in the union into your work, and I'm curious. I mean, there are people who are listening who also are just love the union and archetypes and all of that, but they're also listeners who are not that familiar with the union and might not be sure, like, how does that intersect with, you know, your your spirituality?

00:15:54:18 - 00:15:56:27

Kelly Deutsch

What does that mean?

00:15:57:00 - 00:16:33:07

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. Well, yeah, it's it's such a rich place for, you know, deepening self knowing and deep and greater freedom for being present to others on the holy and essentially young. I mean, there's lots of layers to his teaching, but, you know, what kind of one of the foundational things was this idea of the, the unconscious that each of us, you know, if you think about, like, a little tip of an iceberg coming out of an ocean, that little tip of the iceberg is what we're actually conscious of.

00:16:33:07 - 00:17:04:15

Christine Valters Paintner

And everything beneath the surface is what we're unconscious of. And, you know, why should we? Why should we care about that? but the idea is that we have, again, this kind of wealth of different aspects to ourselves, different dreams, different desires. Jung does a lot of teaching around the shadow, which I think is extraordinarily helpful for anybody to work on to do some shadow work.

00:17:04:15 - 00:17:33:06

Christine Valters Paintner

But I think especially people who are quote unquote spiritual, you know, there's a whole, I find very kind of invigorating, this whole teaching that's come out in the last few years around what spiritual bypassing is, when we when we, you know, use religion and spiritual practices and truths to only uplift what is light and good and, you know, all of those kinds of value judgments that we make.

00:17:33:09 - 00:17:57:14

Christine Valters Paintner

And for me, you know, and, and part of this connects back to Benedictine spirituality, this idea of radical hospitality or abundant access to welcome the stranger at the door as the very face of Christ. And I think that's such an extraordinarily beautiful image because it's like, not not the thing that you love the most or the thing that you most resonate with.

00:17:57:14 - 00:18:25:09

Christine Valters Paintner

It's the the stranger, the thing that feels most disruptive or most foreign or most disorienting. And those qualities are all often part of our, shadow selves. So they're all of the things in us that we have suppressed a lot for very good reason, maybe for survival skills when we were children, maybe we were told not to be a certain way, and we might have gotten punished if we did, you know, act that way.

00:18:25:12 - 00:18:48:06

Christine Valters Paintner

But then as we get older and particularly, midlife, you know, these things starts, we start to, you know, maybe they start to disrupt our lives a little bit. And that's, I think, kind of where that whole idea of like, a midlife crisis comes from is that all of a sudden we're in touch with maybe some of these desires in our life that we have suppressed for a long time.

00:18:48:06 - 00:19:16:00

Christine Valters Paintner

And I think the first, you know, half of our lives were spent a lot of our time about cultivating our persona and our events and so forth. And so we become quite identified with certain faces that we show to the world. And then when these other parts of our self start bubbling up, it can be really threatening or disorienting to think, oh, you know, I didn't you know, I what what happens if I follow this particular thread?

00:19:16:03 - 00:19:44:15

Christine Valters Paintner

You know, what will it upend in my life? Will I have to change my career or my relationship or whatever? Yeah, usually. Usually there is a demand from it. And you also said there's the golden shadow, which are also the. So these qualities are not necessarily negative, quote unquote. They're but they're anything that are suppressed. And the Golden shadow are particularly the, those qualities, those really kind of radiant qualities in us that we then project on to other people.

00:19:44:18 - 00:20:04:29

Christine Valters Paintner

And so, you know, if we idolize somebody, you know, lift them up beyond their kind of status or whatever, that we are probably projecting. And that's sort of a couple of the key ways that you would say that we get in touch with the shadow material. One is Dreamwork and the shadow is often, you know, comes forth in dreams.

00:20:05:02 - 00:20:29:17

Christine Valters Paintner

And then, he talks a lot about projection, which is essentially I talk about it where, you know, sometimes, you know, there's a lot of people in the world who are annoying and, you know, just generally annoying. But there are some annoying people who really get under our skin and, like, they're really just like, we can't, like, let go of a conversation or whatever it is.

00:20:29:20 - 00:21:01:22

Christine Valters Paintner

And it's those, those things that hook us that are a good clue. It doesn't mean that they're not genuinely annoying or unethical or whatever lack integrity, but it also has a potential to reveal to us something that we might be struggling with. So all of those things, I think, are really rich food for the spiritual life, because we're not about contemplative practice, isn't about meditating into a space of inner bliss, transcending life.

00:21:01:22 - 00:21:26:01

Christine Valters Paintner

It's about really being present, you know, the desserts, mothers and fathers that have been very much about wrestling with, you know, what they called the inner demons and sort of basically the vices of, of tradition and, and, you know, how to work with those things so that we can then become more free, ultimately to grow in love of ourselves, our neighbor, and the divine.

00:21:26:01 - 00:21:30:01

Christine Valters Paintner

So ultimately, it's all in service of love.

00:21:30:03 - 00:21:53:03

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, yes. I love how so many of the mystics of people, also the unions, tie that together so nicely of of the interior life being one with the exterior. It's kind of like, you know, the, the system. And I asked all of your hearts, you know, it's like it goes out and in and in and out, and it has to be that rhythm.

00:21:53:03 - 00:22:19:00

Kelly Deutsch

Otherwise. I mean, if you don't have that rhythm that we call that dead, you know, and so I, I love the grappling and the wrestling and both shadow work and I love my favorite way to do shadow work is through ifs internal family systems. And I just that idea of hospitality, of welcoming those parts of you. And like you said, it could be the more the more positive the golden shadow.

00:22:19:00 - 00:22:37:08

Kelly Deutsch

Or it can be things that are more difficult, you know, like our anger, but it could also be our playful mess, you know, that we've repressed and don't allow ourselves to just let loose a little bit. And it is a lot of work that I think saints and mystics in the past would have just called virtue, you know?

00:22:37:08 - 00:22:40:04

Kelly Deutsch

And we're like, this is just another way of doing that.

00:22:40:06 - 00:23:18:02

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I work a lot with, you know, people in ministry and a lot of pastors and spiritual directors. And I find, you know, that when you're in that kind of work, you know, there is like a certain persona that's very tied into that. And so it's it can be challenging both to be the one who's like, asks for help or the recipient of help because often they're the caretakers or, or that, you know, can show either a playful side or a rebellious side or a side that doesn't feel is congruent to the our image of what you know, a minister should be.

00:23:18:04 - 00:23:31:16

Christine Valters Paintner

I mean, and this is true, I think, for any, any kind of identity that we hold. But that's the one that I, I tend to see a lot, you know, how do we how do we free ourselves up from, from that hold that it might have on us?

00:23:31:23 - 00:23:58:07

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, absolutely. I wanted to ask about a couple titles of Mary that you wrote about, one that stuck out to me was that of Mary as Warrior. And you use the image of the scapular not as a defense against evil, like some, Catholics in the more traditional strains might have perceived it as, but more like a defense against your boundaries being encroached.

00:23:58:13 - 00:24:08:06

Kelly Deutsch

And I don't think many of us have heard Mary spoken of in this way. So in your mind, what does it mean to see the Sacred Mother as warrior?

00:24:08:09 - 00:24:33:01

Christine Valters Paintner

yeah, I, I love, I love that warrior archetype, in part because it's probably one that I wrestle with a lot, you know? And I think, again, like anybody who's in like, spiritual teaching or ministry, you know, that that sort of warrior might feel a little bit challenging because we're often peacemakers and people trying to kind of create harmony and all of that.

00:24:33:03 - 00:24:56:11

Christine Valters Paintner

And yet and yet they're, you know, the warrior part of ourselves is the part that is willing to be fierce, to defend something of value. and I certainly, you know, find Mary in that. And I love that image of Mary as protect, protect dress and her cloak. You know, that she gathers around people to help create these boundaries.

00:24:56:11 - 00:25:26:08

Christine Valters Paintner

And I think I know for me, part of my own journey for a few years was, was learning to create some of those more energetic boundaries because, you know, again, as as someone in service, you know, there's an inclination to say, yes, a lot to people's invitations and, you know, to things that are asked of you. And, and I really had to learn how no was as sacred of a word as yes.

00:25:26:11 - 00:26:10:07

Christine Valters Paintner

And that, if I really wanted to cultivate, a really true contemplative life to the degree that I actually need to thrive and to be able to see that, that my thriving was part of the service that, you know, for me to be to be a teacher of these practices, it's really only, it's really only a kind of helpful, life giving thing if I'm being deeply nourished by it, like if I'm feeling stretched thin or exhausted or depleted, I'm not embodying what it is that I actually want to teach others.

00:26:10:09 - 00:26:27:23

Christine Valters Paintner

And it seems kind of obvious, but it's also a really hard thing to do and to practice, which is part of why I teach it, because it is so hard to do. and so for us, for several years, I had our I mean, I still work on the cultivating and boundaries, but now I have more practices that are a part of that.

00:26:27:23 - 00:26:59:13

Christine Valters Paintner

And calling on Mary is definitely a piece of that and all kind of the different spiritual beings for me that help embody that sort of sense of energetic protections. It's both like against people who might wish me harm, but it's also a protection of, you know, if I feel like there are a lot of demands being made on me that sometimes, you know, particularly running, you know, my own monastery, my identity can be very tied up in the work.

00:26:59:13 - 00:27:30:14

Christine Valters Paintner

And so having finding a way to kind of create a little bit of a boundary between myself and the work has been helpful so that I'm not consumed by it because I love what I do. But and, you know, I also need rest and I need to step back from it sometimes. And so all those things Mary can be can be one of the, you know, archetypes that helps us to to, yeah, create the sense of healthy boundary for ourselves.

00:27:30:17 - 00:28:10:10

Kelly Deutsch

Yes. I think that's incredibly important for any human being. But I think especially for those who are in some sort of ministry, spiritual direction, caregiving role, it's so easy to, want to give and give and give and, burn ourselves out or end up fostering some sort of resentment or, I mean, I know after, so I was in a religious community in Rome for several years and, after I, my health fell apart and I came back to the US, and that was such, an immersion class in, in how to say no, how to set boundaries.

00:28:10:10 - 00:28:28:15

Kelly Deutsch

Like, I didn't really have that in my vocabulary before, but the sacredness of a know something I had to learn very quickly because my body just wouldn't allow it. You know, they were like, all right, it's time to learn this real fast. and I find that's true for many people. Like, it's something that life kind of forces them to learn.

00:28:28:15 - 00:28:31:03

Kelly Deutsch

If you didn't previously.

00:28:31:06 - 00:28:41:11

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. Yeah, that can definitely be one of the invitations of illness for sure. Yeah, I've experienced a lot of that in my, my life as well.

00:28:41:13 - 00:29:08:24

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. Yeah. okay. I have like four questions floating in my head. let's I'm curious you you mention and share as much or as little as you want, but, you mentioned that the passing of your mother was something that partially inspired this book. And I'm curious if you would be open to sharing a little bit about that story, how losing your own mother led you to write a book about Mary?

00:29:08:26 - 00:29:36:25

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah, yeah. well, I was 33 years old, and I had just moved from the Bay Area to Seattle, and my mother, she had, rheumatoid arthritis for a lot of her adult life. I also have that same illness. but at the time, the medications weren't so great, and they really wore her body down. And she had been in the hospital with a bone infection for about 12 weeks in the summer.

00:29:36:27 - 00:30:02:12

Christine Valters Paintner

And then all of a sudden and she went home for a little while, and then all of a sudden in October, her system got overwhelmed and she went into the ICU and they I was called and I flew. She was living in Sacramento at the time, and I flew down there to be with her. And it was and I'm an only child, so, it was up to me to have to make the decision to take her off life support.

00:30:02:14 - 00:30:22:11

Christine Valters Paintner

it was it was excruciating in a lot of ways. And I was very close to my mom, and that was really kind of. My father had died a few years before, but that was actually kind of a relief in my life. And so it was. Yeah, it was a very painful grieving process. And there were a lot of layers to it.

00:30:22:11 - 00:30:42:25

Christine Valters Paintner

And part of it was, you know, my mother was kind of coming into her own. I mean, she was 60 years old, but she was finally coming in, I think, into like that crone stage of her life and the fierceness as she, used a wheelchair and she would, lobby for disability rights and, you know, she just really come into her own power.

00:30:42:25 - 00:31:11:22

Christine Valters Paintner

And I so grieved not having the chance to witness her grow into that and have a model for that. plus, just the the heartache of, you know, aggrieved for a good couple of years. Pretty, pretty hard. And and someone in along that grieving process said, you know, part of this journey for you will be rediscovering what mother means for you now, and and.

00:31:11:22 - 00:31:38:03

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. And Mary, up until then, I had been, you know, I, I liked me and I didn't have any objections to Mary, but, you know, she's often so depicted as this very docile, you know, white woman in a blue dress, and she looks always very peaceful and serene and, you know, I started to discover that there were more faces to Mary, and, it became pretty, yeah.

00:31:38:03 - 00:32:04:00

Christine Valters Paintner

Empowering and comforting. And, you know, Mary, Mary who held the body of her, you know, girl and son in their arms who, you know, had been murdered and, you know, just to feel that kinship to her as a presence, as an embodiment of that sacred feminine, that we don't have as explicitly and, Christian tradition, I mean, it's there everywhere.

00:32:04:00 - 00:32:27:27

Christine Valters Paintner

It's just lifting it up. And then. Yeah, several when I moved to Europe, when I moved to Austria, first I started to have an encounter with the Black Madonna in particular. And there's a Black Madonna near Vienna, and there was a whole series of synchronicities, dreams and things that brought me to her, and it became this, yeah, amazing journey.

00:32:27:27 - 00:32:39:21

Christine Valters Paintner

And then a few years later, I went to Charlotte to do a teacher retreat for the Voodoo task people. And then Ivan Maria said, would you like to read a book about Mary? And I was like, yeah, sign me up. I'm ready.

00:32:39:23 - 00:33:15:26

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. That's beautiful. I, I was talking with a friend of mine who is, grew up Pentecostal, evangelical, and he's really, you know, he's left that tradition. But, you know, it was feels like he's haunted by Mary. I'm like, oh, like, I love how that that, whether it's specifically, you know, Mary, the mother of Jesus or this, kind of image of this sacred mother is, is really having also a resurgence now that so many people are, craving this, this feminine presence.

00:33:15:28 - 00:33:26:22

Kelly Deutsch

and so, like you said, being able to lift it up like it's it's there, it's just needing to, make space for for that thing of feminine.

00:33:26:24 - 00:33:42:29

Christine Valters Paintner

And Mary, you know, who's the one who fights for justice? you know, the whole Magnificat about, you know, lifting up the poor. And it's it's really beautiful and powerful. so, yeah, it's very exciting to see so many people welcoming that.

00:33:43:01 - 00:34:03:03

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, I saw a, image, and I wish I could remember the artist. There's an image, that someone created of Mary, and it has, like the Magnificat written around her. And she's, like, crushing the snake, you know, like Mary the warrior. It was. It was such a lovely image, you know, kind of counter image to that docile, like, praying weight.

00:34:03:03 - 00:34:18:20

Kelly Deutsch

Mary. yeah. So I love being able to to welcome those aspects of her and of us as well. what would you say which title of Mary speaks to you most in this present chapter of life?

00:34:18:22 - 00:34:47:20

Christine Valters Paintner

that's a great question. I, I think, Our lady of the underworld, has been calling me a lot. She is, one of the Black Madonnas at Charlotte Cathedral. She she lives down in the crypt there. Notre Dame theater. And, I have a love of. Part of what I love teaching about, too, is, kind of the Dark Knight journey and the underworld journey and the midwinter journey.

00:34:47:20 - 00:35:24:13

Christine Valters Paintner

And then certainly when my mother died, that was a big part of my own learning and process, integration. And I'd say in the last couple of years I've entered into menopause. And it's, it's also an underworld journey, but in a different ways. There's, there's grieving, but it's not quite like the acute loss of my mother, but it's, there's like all this disruption happening in me and, and I've also learned a lot about how to be present in those moments of uncertainty.

00:35:24:13 - 00:35:53:15

Christine Valters Paintner

So there's I feel like there's a lot of security is being stripped away. And I've been having a lot of health issues. And so I think it's it's like this entering into the underworld again. But this time, you know, the the story of Persephone. I love that story, in part because she's abducted into the underworld and how often we feel, you know, when we, we fell victim to life circumstances.

00:35:53:18 - 00:36:17:14

Christine Valters Paintner

But in that story, she is, you know, she eats the pomegranate seeds. And then some of the versions of the stories, it says she's tricked into it, but I prefer the stories that say that she actually ate them intentionally. Because what it means for me is that she. And then by eating them, she has to stay in the underworld half the year just how we have the seasons.

00:36:17:16 - 00:36:45:22

Christine Valters Paintner

But she becomes queen of the underworld, so there is a transformation for her of moving from victim to queen and into her sovereignty and becoming the one who then welcomes in others into the underworld. And so anyway, I feel like in this season of my life, I'm maybe even learning some more aspects of what that underworld journey is about and, you know, experiencing it in a in a different way.

00:36:45:22 - 00:37:02:06

Christine Valters Paintner

And yeah, yeah, it's hard to describe because it's a lot of it is about things that I don't actually have a lot of words for, you know, but it's just making space for I know there's some movement that's working its way through me.

00:37:02:08 - 00:37:31:20

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, yes, I, I feel that the there's so much, to be learned from living in those liminal spaces in uncertainty and, the, the big crises, life changes, loss. All of those can usher us into the underworld and and health, I find, is a big one. And I know that's part of your experience. and mine of of living through chronic illness and just not knowing.

00:37:31:21 - 00:38:05:25

Kelly Deutsch

You know what? When, when I'm going to have a good day or not. So good day. And, trying to maintain that contemplative or even Marian stance of receptivity before that and just saying, like fiat, like, may it be done, may it be so. It's so hard when when I can be so painful, you know, having to, say no to things when we don't want to say no, or you don't want to let people down or, you know, they're just so many aspects tied up with that.

00:38:05:25 - 00:38:24:20

Kelly Deutsch

And so, for me, that image of Our Lady of the underworld is, is such a big part of learning how to relax that muscle in, in receptivity during the, the liminal, the uncertainty, the, the darkness, the winter. And that's.

00:38:24:22 - 00:38:54:27

Christine Valters Paintner

Hard. It is, it is. And I feel like for all the, you know, the reading in this study I've done and all the experience about her, that it doesn't make it any easier. It does. I do feel like I have, I'm, I'm able to accept it in a way that I wasn't able to the first time I went through it with my mom, because it was a new experience to me, and it was such a a loss.

00:38:54:27 - 00:39:24:29

Christine Valters Paintner

And I fought back a lot more. And I, and I actually think fighting back is part of the process, too. I'm not saying that sometimes that's not called for some good, some good lament, but at the same time, yeah, I'm I also feel like I have a really deep trust of, of whatever it is that will eventually emerge and trying not to have a timeline around that because, gosh, who knows?

00:39:25:01 - 00:39:45:12

Christine Valters Paintner

Right along it'll be, you know, and I'm sure it'll be the kind of thing that unfolds slowly over time, you know, where I'll have new insights around, you know, how I'm meant to be in this world, and both in terms of my work as well as just my prayer life and my, yeah, my commitments and, yeah.

00:39:45:14 - 00:40:10:06

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, that that trust is such a gift. I when I came home from Rome with severe illness, the image that came to me and I kind of clung to, I felt like I was, like I had been on some sort of battlefield, but my chest had been blown open, and I needed emergency open heart surgery, you know, and it was like the most excruciating thing that I had ever been through.

00:40:10:08 - 00:40:33:14

Kelly Deutsch

But it's like the divine surgeon was there, and I knew he was doing something important, like he was saving my life. And I couldn't quite express how. But I knew that it was very important. It was going to hurt like hell, and I needed to hang on to Mary's runs through that to get through. You know how difficult and sometimes scary that underworld place can be?

00:40:33:17 - 00:40:59:22

Christine Valters Paintner

yeah, absolutely, absolutely. When I first moved to Austria and I had that first encounter with the Black Madonna, it was, with, Our Lady of the South, it fell in Austria. And that was a different kind of, experience with Mary. But one of the things that became significant in that was Mary, that Mary is holding a pair and many of the Mary is are either holding pairs or made of pair wood.

00:40:59:22 - 00:41:30:00

Christine Valters Paintner

And the pair became this beautiful symbol for me of, of abundance, of, you know, letting go of my striving and my reaching and and letting myself be nourished. And I think that's part. And so there's a, there's a real sweetness to this underworld time of learning to let go even more like, I, you know, I had this encounter with her with the pair about ten years ago, and it's been an ongoing thing.

00:41:30:00 - 00:41:42:23

Christine Valters Paintner

I feel like I keep learning, and now that I'm in the underworld, I do feel like I also have the, you know, the sweetness of that fruit still to nourish me. And so, yeah, that's lovely. Yeah.

00:41:42:26 - 00:42:07:14

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah. One more question for you before we wrap up today, another title that you talk about, of Mary is that of the greenest branch, which is a title that that Hildegard loved. And it, it really intertwined with her ideas of the greening power of God, that vitality or variety tasks, and in a short time, you'll be teaching a class on Hildegard in the Women Mystic School.

00:42:07:14 - 00:42:15:27

Kelly Deutsch

And I was curious if you could just share a brief bit about For Ready, Thomas, what it meant to Hildegard and how that ties in with Mary.

00:42:15:29 - 00:42:49:11

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah, yeah. The very tough is the screening power of God, and it's a word that Hildegard created and for her, it was this, physical, spiritual, emotional, like multi level, way of attuning to the work of, of the divine in the world. And so, you know, and, and I've been to the Rhine Valley where Hildegard walked many, many times now and, you know, is such a green and lush place.

00:42:49:11 - 00:43:15:03

Christine Valters Paintner

And you imagine Hildegard out in the vineyards and, you know, celebrating this creator who, you know, brings forth all the screening. But then for her, the greening of the soul was the kind of reflection or the other part of the greeting of the body. And she was, you know, she was a herbalist, and she was very concerned with kind of that holistic sense of, of healing of ourselves, body and, and spirit.

00:43:15:06 - 00:43:49:09

Christine Valters Paintner

And then for her, the basically the virtues Mary, Jesus the divine, the angels, they are also all embodiments of this greening power of God. So they are kind of the, the like if we want to know what the fullness of that greening is, because as human beings, you know, we only have so much access to it. And and so, mare, we can call on Mary and of course, you know, one of her songs, a very decent idea figure, a greenest branch.

00:43:49:12 - 00:44:12:07

Christine Valters Paintner

You know, she depicts Mary has this, you know, for her, Mary is really a significant figure as well. For her, Mary is is the doorway to Christ, to the the birth of Christ and the presence. but yeah, I love that image of greening. And we'll definitely be working with that a lot in the, in the program that we're that I'll be doing for you.

00:44:12:09 - 00:44:34:09

Kelly Deutsch

Yes, yes, I'm very excited. And, if people want to join us, I mean, feel free to sign up at Women Mystics or we're looking forward to, another wonderful class, and exploring all of these female mystics and their feminine strengths and incredible stories. I, Hildegard, just blows my mind. She was such a I mean, a pre Renaissance woman.

00:44:34:10 - 00:44:39:04

Kelly Deutsch

She just did everything, you know, like music, medicine, herbs, I mean.

00:44:39:07 - 00:45:00:04

Christine Valters Paintner

And she had chronic illness her whole life too. So I don't know how she did it. But anyway, it's funny because, you know, a lot of the, the people, a lot of people have studied her. I think, you know, she maybe suffered with chronic migraines. Which would they think explain her visions? I have chronic migraines and I've never had visions like she has.

00:45:00:07 - 00:45:03:00

Christine Valters Paintner

so maybe a little different. Yeah.

00:45:03:00 - 00:45:11:01

Kelly Deutsch

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Christine, if people want to learn more about you, your work, the Abbey, where should they go?

00:45:11:03 - 00:45:29:29

Christine Valters Paintner

our website is Abbey of the arts.com, and we have, newsletter, and we have prayer cycles. We have this a lovely free resource with audio podcasts for morning and evening prayer. One of the weeks is on Mary and birthing the Holy. So it's a lovely resource.

00:45:30:01 - 00:45:53:18

Kelly Deutsch

Excellent. Well, I encourage everyone watching and listening today to check that out. she has a plethora of, of resources, retreats, wonderful books that are all very worth reading. So, Christine, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing some of your story. we very much appreciate it, and we appreciate everyone for joining us and listening in.

00:45:53:21 - 00:45:54:11

Christine Valters Paintner

Yeah. Thank.