Christine Valters Paintner

We live in a world where there never seems to be enough time for all we want and need to do. In Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life, Christine Valters Paintner guides us as we move beyond our own lives and embrace a world that urges us toward rest, reflection, and growth. In Sacred Time, Paintner, abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts, shows us how by becoming in tune with the rhythms of the natural world, we can live more intentionally and experience a conversion toward a more expansive way of being. Paintner introduces us to the eight cycles of sacred time that exist in our everyday lives. These cycles that can ground us through our busy lives are breath, rhythms of the day, weekly rhythms and Sabbath rest, waxing and waning lunar cycles, seasons of the year, seasons of a lifetime, ancestral time, and cosmic time. Each cycle encourages us to mindfully consider the time that passes as quickly as each breath and as slowly as the passing of generations. Within each cycle, we find wisdom from sacred tradition and the saints, including St. Benedict, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Hildegard of Bingen; room for growth; and the presence of the Divine. Along the way, we are also given scriptural guidance, and we are invited to spiritual practices and creative explorations that will help deepen our understanding of each cycle, allow that understanding to take root in our lives, and expand our lives beyond the pressures of each day.

Embracing an Intentional Way of Life

Sacred Time

Laura Mei

There is a beautiful rhythm of rise and fall found in every breath we take, the rising and setting of the sun each day, the waxing and waning of the moon each month, the flowering and releasing of the earth through her seasons, the seasons of our lifetimes, and the larger rhythms of ancestral and cosmic time. In the Celtic tradition, time is depicted as a wheel, as in many other indigenous traditions, always turning and moving through the cycles of seasons. These seasons reflect inner movements as well, in which we are invited into ritual to mark the new moments. Rituals immerse us in liminal space and time, which is time outside of time. We touch the eternal moment. Ritual creates a holy pause and connects us to the very rhythm of the world that sustains us, reminding us of the slow unfolding and ripening of things.

We often talk about wasted time, time spent like money, or time fleeting. This rushed and frenzied existence is not sacred time. Sacred time is time governed by the rhythms of creation, rhythms that incorporate times of rest as essential to our own unfolding. Sacred time is time spent being present to the moments of eternity available to us whenever we choose to pause and breathe. In sacred time, we step out of the madness of our lives and choose to reflect, linger, savor, and slow down. We gain new perspective here. Let us focus on embracing a different experience of time: Time as unfolding rather than always running away from us. Time as offering invitations rather than demands that we keep up. Eternal time, present moment time, the fullness of time. Sacred time is time devoted to the heart, to things that matter, to wonder and beauty, to catching glimpses of eternity. Sacred time is measured not in minutes or hours but in moments and spans, offering us an inner sense of expansiveness.

Sacred Time quotes

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