Christine Valters Paintner is one of our favorite contemporary spiritual writers. We’ve awarded several of her books our “Best Book of the Year” awards. She’s also profiled in our Living Spiritual Teachers Project. Living on the west coast of Ireland, Paintner is online abbess at the Abbey of the Arts, an online global monastery offering retreats, classes, and resources to nurture contemplative practice and creative expression. A writer, artist, spiritual director, retreat facilitator, and teacher, she earned her PhD in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Paintner describes herself as rooted in the Catholic mystical tradition with a strongly ecumenical spirit and love for the wisdom of all spiritual traditions. All of this comes through clearly in her books.
This new book is devoted to the practice of listening. Paintner writes with the conviction that there are sacred “words” awaiting each of us, and it is our task to quiet ourselves to hear them.
Her language for the divine is, as always, broad and inviting. She speaks of “listening for what is calling to you in a particular season of life” and learning “to trust a greater wisdom at work in the world than our own egos.”
Thirty practices are offered in thirty short chapters, organized into three parts: “Listening for a Word,” “Receiving the Word,” and “Carry the Word with You.”
These notions are not original with Paintner; she is, in fact, sourcing her rootedness in the Benedictine monastic tradition for these teachings. Going back to the desert “fathers and mothers” of early monasticism in the Roman Era, a novice would go to one of their revered elders and say “Give me a word” — meaning, in Paintner’s words, “a communication that can be received as a stimulus to grow into fuller life.” This is explained in her Introduction.
Most intriguing, perhaps, for people new to this practice and living in the busy 21st century is what’s offered in Chapter 3, “Let the Word Choose You.” Paintner explains: “It means releasing your thinking mind and expectations and resting into your heart…. It means surrendering into a place of deep trust and receptivity.” See the excerpt accompanying this review for the breath prayer meditation offered at the end of that chapter.
Every chapter offers a clear practice, turning this book into a portable spiritual guide for listening that anyone, new or experienced, can use in this well-worn way of the Spirit.
