Book overview
The essential collection of poetic and contemplative blessings and prayers from Christine Valters Paintner, the beloved online abbess of the Abbey of the Arts.
A Book of Everyday Blessings: 100 Prayers for Dancing Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims is a treasury of creative blessings and prayers that will help you bring reverence to every aspect of life, transforming even the mundane parts of your day into an encounter with holiness. As Paintner writes, "Blessings offer hope and encouragement, steep us in gratitude, and nurture our courage. They bring us present to the grace of each moment. They remind us of the love and beauty of the Holy One in our lives and assist us in taking nothing for granted. They act as maps to navigate our human experience, orienting us back to gratefulness and praise. They invite us to breathe more deeply, enlarge our vision, and give honor to our experiences. Blessings help us touch eternity here and now."
With her lyrical style and contemplative wisdom, Paintner gives voice to the longings, fears, gratitude, and wonder that live in every human heart. This collection includes
- blessings for quiet moments--for silence and solitude, the gift of rest, being present to each moment, peace and discernment;
- blessings for daily living--for a spark of joy on a bad day, grace in the ordinary, release into sleep, creative joy, calm in chaos, loving more deeply, when the calendar is full;
- blessings for health, healing, and wholeness--for health in times of illness, starting a new medication, healing a divided family, support in depression, rest in burnout;
- blessings for pilgrimage--for saying yes to the journey, stepping into the unknown, traveling lightly, coming home;
- blessings for our connection to the holy wild--for kinship with creation, learning from the wisdom of nature, savoring the wild sacrament of creation, a song of praise, a lament for creation;
- blessings for the seasons--for Advent, embracing holy darkness, following Mary as God-Bearer, a Lenten journey, Holy Week, celebrating a birthday, the anniversary of a death;
- threshold blessings--for bountiful hospitality, comfort when facing the unknown, patience in waiting, before going on retreat, courage to befriend death.
A gifted teacher, Paintner concludes this book of blessings with an invitation to embrace three practices that can deepen your experience of blessings and empower you to create your own--soaking in the presence of the divine, being a blessing in the world, and writing your own blessings.
This is a book that will both serve as a resource when you are in need of beautiful blessings and shape your interior life to become more aware of God's presence abiding within you day by day. "Blessing is an act of solidarity--it is a way to say to someone, I am praying for you, I am celebrating with you, I am grieving with you," Paintner writes, "and I know the Holy One is praying, celebrating, and grieving with us."