My friend stopped his bike on the trail in front of me, sniffed the air, and asked, “Do you smell it?” 

“What?” 

“The animal smell.”

I breathed in. Nothing. 

“It’s that gamey scent,” he tried again. “You don’t smell it?” 

Was it a bad smell? An unwashed body smell? I had no idea. “What’s ‘gamey’ mean?”

“It smells … different.” 

I shook my head, not smelling anything unusual. We scanned the trees but saw nothing. Eventually, we rode on.

It didn’t really bother me that I couldn’t smell the “gamey” scent my friend did. Not having the most sensitive nose, I knew I didn’t smell everything my friends smelled. In fact, I didn’t experience quite a few things as my friends experienced them. 

With a chronic health condition, my body does things differently. It means me having different experiences compared to my friends. It also means me having different experiences compared to myself from one day to the next. I never quite know how I’ll feel. It’s a reason I’ve found the idea of “inner hospitality” so challenging to my practice of living as a monk in the world. Theoretically, I like the idea of having compassion for the different parts of myself and my experience, feeling different on different days and accepting each of those days as they come. In practice, though, I’ve dreaded my bad days as much as I’d dread becoming the source of a bad, “gamey” kind of smell, myself. 

Of all things, learning to mountain bike reminded me of this, showing me how little I’d accepted certain parts of my experience. It humbled me.

Many days I enjoyed those bike rides through the woods. I gained control of my bike, managed more obstacles, and kept up better with my friends. I noticed deer nibbling at underbrush, an eagle who’d sit on a birch branch over the river, and once even a baby racoon hanging from a tree. I enjoyed those bike rides immensely.

But other days felt different. My body’s response times slowed. My depth perception shifted, too. Rather than build up speed, as I consistently tried to do, I had to slow down. I had to focus even more intentionally on safety. Sometimes, if my coordination suffered too much, I stayed home from the bike trail altogether. 

Staying home felt hard to do. Part of how I’d managed my condition over the years was to pursue normal activities as much as possible regardless of how I felt. I’d often functioned well enough, ignoring (and hiding) how I felt whenever I could. 

Until the mountain bike trail. Until the activity that wouldn’t let me to push through “different” days as if they didn’t exist. Some days I had to admit I didn’t feel well and change my plans. To the practices of balancing my body with the bike and strategizing pedal strokes around obstacles, I added the practice of acknowledging my vulnerability to myself and to others. It’s a level of self-acceptance that I’m still developing. And yet, the idea of inner hospitality, of practicing gentleness and compassion will all aspects of my experience, has felt like a truly helpful frame.

As have the bike trails. 

My body is not, after all, the only source of “difference” cropping up along those trails. Sometimes fallen leaves obscure surfaces. Sometimes broken branches block paths. Black snakes may drape their long bodies across the dirt to lay in the sun. And I’ve noticed other mountain bikers tending not to treat these trail variations as anything like a bad smell wafting along the breeze. On the contrary. 

I’ve seen fellow mountain bikers relish navigating different trail conditions. Snapping pictures, they post on social media about how they’ve handled things. They tell one another stories in the trail parking lot. They compare how different bike suspension levels and tire designs handle variations on the trail. It’s as if tackling these differences brings them a fascinating challenge.

Obstacles, constraints, any number of “different” conditions—whether they arrive on bike trails, with unusual and “gamey” scents, or inside my own body—I don’t need to wrinkle my nose at them. I’ve been realizing this. The source of the differences is life, and I want to approach life, even the most humbling parts, with a little more fascination and compassion than frustration. 

I do think my perspective is getting there, however slowly.

I remember one of those “different” days when I paused from an especially slow-paced bike ride. I needed the pause. Fatigue had hit me hard. However, sipping from my water bottle, my attention shifted beyond myself. I became aware of smelling something … odd. 

Only when I glanced around did I see it: a buck. I’d never encountered one so close before. He had a huge body on an entirely different scale than the slender does I usually saw. This massive creature with its curving antlers stared at me. I stared back. It crossed my mind to grab my camera, but then the buck loped away through the trees while I only stood there, still too stunned to move. 

I’d just learned what a “gamey” smell meant, and it didn’t smell bad. Just musky, woodsy, distinctive. And different though the day had felt, I wouldn’t have traded it for a “normal” day. I’d have missed too much.

Callie J. Smith is an author based in the midwestern United States. She writes fiction and short-form essays about everyday things like hope, creativity, and grief. Her newest novel, Kohelette, blends domestic fiction with magical realism in a story of piecing together life after loss. She’s online at CallieJSmith.net. 

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This Friday, June 12^th, we are delighted to welcome Brother Richard Hendrick, OFM Cap. for a retreat on moving From Intention to Attention: Becoming Really Present in Prayer. We will encounter this flow through the lens of the Christian contemplative tradition, looking at the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Franciscan masters, the teachers of the practice of the presence of God, and the sacrament of the present moment up to our own day to garner tools that will help us in our own personal meditative life and practice today.

This poem is from Brother Richard’s Facebook post on March 22^nd:

Desert Stillness:

Be still 
and know
that I Am...
Would you enter the desert
at the heart of yourself?
Would you allow the sandals of your senses
to fall away?
Would you, finally, recognise
the holy ground your heart
truly is?
Would you behold the burning bush
afire with presence at the centre of
your soul?
Then you must 
enter the desert of stillness.
Be still
and know...
Would you know the call to exodus
from the slavery of self?
Would you pass through the waters
of overwhelming worry?
Would you ascend the holy mountain of prayer?
Would you behold the glory so bright that it is darkness?
Would you enter the cloud of the presence?
Would you keep the covenant of grace?
Would you reach the promised land of peace?
Then you must enter the desert of stillness.
Be still 
and know...
For
This is how the Ultimate is revealed:
as presence through stillness,
as Being beyond being,
as emptiness without absence,
as right relationship,
in which 
we come to know
the self truly
only in the light
of Pure Being as
independent
(where all else depends on love),
as non-contingent:
(where all else arises from previous causes),
as creative:
(where all else sub-creates),
as transcending all,
imminent in all,
beyond all,
but 
holding all
in being
by
Love.
Would you enter the desert 
at the heart of yourself 
and see it bloom?
If you would,
then only
be still
and you will 
know.

Please join us Friday to explore the place of Intention and Attention as energetic directions of the soul in your meditative and prayer practice.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

Image: Paid License with Canva

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For a long time, I assumed spiritual depth would arrive through dramatic moments—clarity during prayer, profound insight, or some unmistakable experience of transformation. Instead, I kept encountering God in quieter places: while journaling in the early morning, sitting with unfinished thoughts, or writing words I didn’t fully understand until they appeared on the page.

What surprised me most was how creativity became less about producing something and more about paying attention.

I often move through life quickly, even when I want to live more contemplatively. Responsibilities accumulate, distractions multiply, and my mind constantly searches for what comes next. In that state, it becomes difficult to notice what is actually happening within me. I can pray with words while remaining disconnected from myself.

But when I sit down to write without a plan or outcome, something changes. The act itself slows me down. Thoughts I normally avoid begin to surface. Feelings I have ignored become visible. What begins as writing gradually becomes listening.

Over time, I’ve come to see this as a form of contemplative prayer.

Not because the writing is polished or meaningful in itself, but because it asks me to remain present. Creativity invites me to stay with my experience long enough for honesty to emerge. And honesty, I’ve learned, is often where prayer truly begins.

This is not always peaceful.

Sometimes what surfaces is resistance: restlessness, self-criticism, or the urge to distract myself with something easier. I notice how uncomfortable silence can feel when there is nothing to hide behind. Yet these moments reveal something important about my inner life. They expose how quickly I move away from discomfort instead of remaining present to it.

In contemplative practice, I have found that stillness is rarely empty. It is revealing.

Creativity has helped me recognize this in ordinary life. Writing about a conversation helps me notice what I missed while living it. Reflecting on my day reveals patterns in my reactions and assumptions. Even a few quiet minutes with a notebook can shift how I carry the rest of the day.

The outer circumstances remain the same, but my awareness changes.

I begin to notice beauty more easily. I listen more carefully. I react less quickly. There is a subtle difference between rushing through life and inhabiting it fully, and creative reflection has slowly taught me that difference.

I’ve also realized how deeply stories shape my spiritual imagination. Certain books linger with me not because they provide answers, but because they create space for reflection. Sometimes a story reveals truths I struggle to name in myself.

I experienced this while reading The World Before the Flood. Its portrayal of a society appearing whole while quietly unraveling stayed with me long after I finished it. Rather than offering instruction, it invited me to examine the hidden fractures in my own life—the places where distraction, comfort, or avoidance can slowly distance me from deeper awareness.

That is part of the sacred power of creativity and storytelling. They do not force transformation. They invite attention.

And attention, I believe, is one of the purest forms of prayer we can practice in a distracted world.

I no longer think contemplative life is separate from ordinary life. It unfolds within it: in pauses, in reflection, in moments when I resist the urge to rush past my own experience. Creativity has become one of the ways I return to that awareness again and again.

Not perfectly. Not consistently. But honestly.

What began as a simple habit of writing has gradually become a way of listening—to myself, to the world around me, and to the quiet presence of the sacred hidden within ordinary time.

I still look for meaning the way many people do. But I am beginning to believe that depth is not something absent from our lives. More often, it is something we fail to notice.

And sometimes, all it takes to notice again is a blank page, a few moments of silence, and the willingness to remain present long enough for the sacred to appear.

Alexia Jons writes on Christianity through a contemplative and reflective lens, exploring faith, spirituality, and personal growth rooted in biblical wisdom. Her work focuses on deepening awareness of God’s presence in everyday life and navigating life’s challenges with faith, reflection, and spiritual grounding. Alongside writing, she also enjoys photography, often using it as another way of noticing beauty in ordinary moments.

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Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,

Tomorrow we begin a four week writing journey to embrace the Wisdom of Wild Grace. This is an excerpt from the introduction to my poetry collection of the same name:

When I long for expansiveness and connection to something far greater than my own daily concerns and struggles, a walk by the sea or in the forest expands me. 

We live in a time when Earth is threatened on so many fronts by human development. Slowly we seem to be awakening to the truth that our personal well-being is intimately woven together with the well-being of all creatures and plants. Many of us might have been taught by our religious traditions that humans have dominion over nature or that animals don’t feel pain or have souls. 

The more we cultivate our own intimacy with the wild, the more we open to different truth. Wildness doesn’t mean we have to go out into the forest or travel long ways, the wild is a place within us. 

Each poem here is a doorway into this inner wilderness, a call to sit and be present to what we discover beyond the borders of our neatly controlled worlds. Wildness is vulnerable, risky, spacious, and full of possibility. And this is where I invite you to sit and rest awhile and dwell with me. 

I have long loved the stories of Christian saints who had a kinship with animals. They come mostly from the early Christian desert and Celtic traditions, but also feature later medieval saints like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Julian of Norwich. 

Ever since I was a child, animals have offered a window into an aspect of the divine presence that is more intuitive, more instinctual, wilder. The monastic tradition held the conviction that this kind of connection and friendship with the animal world was a sign of holiness at work. 

The heart of this collection is a series of poems inspired by the stories of animal and saint connections. I meditated with each story to listen to what they might reveal. Each story felt like a way into a new or renewed way of being in the world where nature is an intimate guide and companion. These stories remind me of some of the old fairy tales which hold wisdom for how to live well if we pay close enough attention. 

What we need most right now is a revolution of love. We desperately need to fall in love with creation so that everything we do reflects this love. If reading these poems supports you to see the world in a new way, to make time to sit outside and cherish the breezes, or to fall more in love, then my heart is full of gratitude and gladness.

Journey with me over these next four weeks. We have a live opening session tomorrow followed by four weeks of daily prompts inspired by my saint and animal poems. Our Wisdom Council member Melissa Layer crafted an additional prompt for each day as well. If you’re looking for some creative inspiration, please join us!

I will also be leading our final monthly contemplative prayer service of the program year tomorrow and will be joined by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. 

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE

*Poem is from Christine’s collection of poems The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems (Paraclete)

Image from paid license with Canva

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In recent years, after deaths and losses, changes and griefs, I’ve moved farther and farther away from the traditional dogma I was raised under, and have grown increasingly impatient with what seems to me to be the empty use of religious jargon; the way words like ‘God’ are thrown around void of any true meaning, as if the terms themselves are idolized instead of being understood as signposts to truth. In this struggle, I’ve attempted to define and understand who ‘God’ really is in a way that is meaningful to me, beyond the religious baggage layered on the term. Pondering this question in meditation, I turned to God’s claim to Moses, “I am who I am.” As a writer and grammar nerd, this statement is fascinating to me. “I am,” of course, is the present tense of the verb ‘to be.’ To be – I am, you are, he is, I was, you were, you will be, I am being, you are being, God is being. It occurs to me that God is the ‘is’ in all that is. God is the part of me that ‘is,’ the part of you that ‘is,’ the part of nature that ‘is.’ God is what makes us ‘be.’ God is the ‘be’ part, the verb of being alive, the you and the me and the is-ness between us. As I pondered this beingness and wondered what it had to do with my own life, this story and resulting poem came to me. It’s written in haibun form, a Japanese prose-poem form that traditionally combines prose and haiku. My haibun is a sonnet-haibun, as I’ve combined prose with a sonnet. I hope you find it meaningful.

When I was young, I mucked horse stalls in exchange for riding time with a Quarter Horse named Calypso. I loved her chestnut back, white face and forearms, chocolate brown eyes.  One hot July day with the sun high and the wind still, my horse and I cantered across a field. Flying.  

          Halfway, Calypso stopped. My body did not.  
          I landed flat on my back, like a flipped pancake.  
         The landing sounded thunk.

I lost my breath and lay on the ground with my eyes closed for the longest moment as I wondered if I was dead. My fingers felt the prick of the grass blade tips and I smelled the sticky sweet scent of that same grass. When I finally peeked, I saw the sky and her white puffy clouds, soaring birds, ravens, wingspan coasting,  

            heard their distant croak calls, watched shining sun,  
            north-drifting clouds, sky never-ending  
            across the horizon, blue on and on.  
                      Prisons of my mind, like ghosts,  
                      floated far far away. I thought how John Donne  
                      foretold death’s ending pride riposte.  
                      In darkened shadows, life’s on the run.  
         The ground beneath lay firm, flowers budded pink,  
         purple feathers floated skyward.  
         I wish I could say I’d sparked a holy jubilee, 

                     but maybe I saw a cosmic wink,  
                     mythic goddesses inspired.  
                     This morning, our Yoshino cherry  

blossoms exploded like popcorn kernels encased in velvety pink softness, and butterflies gorged themselves on the first nectar of spring. I looked at the sky and clouds, sun shining on blades of grass, and ran my fingers over the tree, her scratchy smoothness, warmth, linked to an energetic buzzing sensation in my fingertips, connecting life to life.

Christine Davis is a writer, poet and artist from North Carolina, USA. Her poetry has been published in Moonstone Arts Center’s Neruda Anthology (2023, “My Dream”), Kakalak (2023, “Elegy for America”), The Autoethnographer (2023, “After the School Shooting, in a Death Denying World”), and Stardust Review (2023, “La Luna es Vida”), among other publications. Her poetry collection, Life and Death and Holy in Every Breath (Wild Rising Press) was published in 2024. Christine has studied poetry with poets Judyth Hill, Rusty Morrison, David Koehn, Jessica Jacobs, and Morri Creech. Her writing explores her experiences with death and dying, spirituality, and social justice and compassionate living. She is a participant in the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts’ Author’s Lab, where she is writing her memoir about her experience living in Ireland to research the Magdelene Laundries, search for her ancestors, and find herself. She has participated in, and been inspired by, several of Abbey of the Arts’s pilgrimages in InisMor, Galway, and Perth, Scotland. 

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