I am finding myself short on my own words these days, content to rest in the silence of my "still heart that refuses nothing" and be nourished by poetry... Refusing nothing means making room for the equal measure of sorrow and ecstasy which shower me daily.

I have become so aware these autumn days of all the moments when I want to refuse my experience, when I want reality to be other than it is, and then I hear the call to rest into the truth of what is. I breathe deeply, I allow the energy of what I resist to have a place in my heart, and somehow I am able to bear it... I want to offer myself to what is most real, because that is where holiness pulses like the shimmering of sunlight on water.

Images (above and on front-page mastheads) and Words by Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE, Abbey of the Arts: Transformative living through contemplative & expressive arts