Sunday Adult Forum -- Earth, Our Original Monastery

Led by The Rev. Karla Woggon. Earth, Our Original Monastery, is a contemplative prayer series featuring seven poetic blessings and short films written by Christine Valters Paintner inspired by her book Earth, Our Original Monastery. Poetry is the soul’s language.

Through image, lyric, and metaphor, poets are able to convey messages from the soul of their humanity to express a moment of awakened truth—a glimpse of the Creator still at work and ever connected to creation. Christine’s poetic blessings are an invitation into the blessed Divine current, into the practice of deep listening for the whisperings of your own soul. They are contemplative prayer pieces, guides to being present in communion with Creator and creation.

Each week we will view a short 2-3 minute film of Christine’s poetry and God’s holy creation several times. We will then discuss and pray with the text of poetry and film using the ancient prayer practices of Lectio,  and Visio Divina.

Lectio Divina is a core ancient monastic prayer and meditation practice in contemplative spiritual life used to deepen a person’s experience of written material such as Scripture, written blessings or laments, or poetry. It is a Latin phrase that means “sacred reading” or “holy listening” that works like a layering or an unraveling God stirs within our hearts. Visio Divina refers to holy seeing or sacred attention. Just as we learn to listen or hear with our hearts, so we can learn to see or attend with our hearts.