Be sure to check out the EVENTS page for the latest information about upcoming workshops.
May 19th – Contemplative Gardening Workshop
June 22nd – Summer Solstice Open Mic/Art Show
Would love to have you join us!
Tag Archives: Contemplative Prayer
Blossoms of hope by Staci Kennelly
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Finding Hope
Staci Kennelly is mom, teacher, mentor and housemaid to three wonderful and amazing girls. In her spare time she enjoys playing hooky with her husband and children, cooking yummy food, exploring new cities, collecting vintage cameras and photographing all of it. My Japanese Magnolia tree is one of my favorite plants in our yard. It is a big beautiful tree that is green all of spring and summer. Come autumn, all of it’s leaves slowly loose their color and fall. Then the tree sits there for weeks, bare. The whole thing is this great gray stick. Each year, this is when my heart seems to fall in love with my tree more. Not because of what it is, but because I know what is coming. You see, in the middle of winter, when all of my garden is sleeping and waiting for spring, my Japanese Magnolia blooms. It doesn’t have a single leaf on it… only pretty pink flowers. This giant gray stick is suddenly a bursting with life!
©2012 Staci KennellyThe first year we lived in this home, I thought I had killed it. It was just so bare. But now, I know that when it is bare and seems to have nothing else, that is when I am to be reminded of the years past. That is when I reach back and remember the Januarys filled with pink flowers.
©2012 Staci Kennelly
Hope is like that. We do not need to be reminded of hope when our soul is in a spring season. Spring is full of new life. Summer is filled with freedom and warmth. We seem to carry summer’s warmth into autumn. But when winter comes, sometimes, its cold reaches so deep into our soul that we forget what warmth and freedom felt like. This is when we need to remind ourselves of years past. We can remind ourselves of our own beauty and our own strength. We can remind ourselves of the times we fell, only to rise up again. Winter seasons in my life no longer hold fear or worry. They are a time of great hope. For I know, right there in the middle of winter, I will bloom.
©2012 Staci Kennelly
RELAUNCHING A BEAUTIFUL MESS!!
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Art Journaling, Home.Food.Garden, Poems and Blessings, Spiritual Direction
Well the site never got “turned off.”
This may have been providential in the midst of shifting my focus to my new site kristinritzau.com (which still exists). As I have been doing some vision planning for 2012, something became quite clear… TOGETHER WE ARE BETTER. Through the workshops, events, and open mic nights, this has been so evident and so refreshing. As I thought about it, this is what ABM was birthed out of – a safe space to be yourself, authentic and true. Why not have a blog where we can continue this community? Where others can join when they want to and contribute. Where we can find our voices and share our gifts as well as honor and respect other people in the space.
So here we are in 2012, with a website that never got shut down, and a philosophy to support it. So why the heck not? I am over the moon about this idea so here it goes: Each week, at least to start with, a different voice will be featured sharing an original essay, photo, collage, art piece, or poem. These ideas will revolve around a seasonal prompt which will change every four months. So for example, if the prompt for this winter is “Finding Hope,” then you would use that to create something to share with this community and your own of course. It could be just a short poem to a picture that inspires that prompt in you to a story to a painting (which you would take a picture of)… hopefully it will make sense as it begins.
I have contacted a handful of people to initiate the blog which will start next week, but as we get the ball rolling if you feel like you want to contribute something, send me a message and I will send you the prompt for this season. And remember TOGETHER WE ARE BETTER! Happy New Year everyone.
The Cost of Busyness – an ode to my 80 year old self.
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Home.Food.Garden, Spiritual Direction
I feel like a cranky grandma right now. The other morning I found myself in my garden getting mad at insects and waving at drivers to slow down on my street.
I can’t be serious? Who am I?! I become a faculty member and suddenly I’m 80? (I might be in this pic)
I am starting to understand why my grandpa watched golf all day. It was his meditation and escape. His dream life on screen and his naptime all wrapped up with the lullaby of shushed applause and the melodic “ooohs and awwws” cooing away all that is wrong in the world. Even the speeding cars.
There is the occasional, “What the crap kind of ball is that?” But then it would switch to another player and life would go on. It is like a person having a bad dream, only to roll over and drift off again.
My grandparents weren’t busy. They read the paper, drank coffee and golfed. A lot.
Today I can’t escape busyness. Even in the past two weeks, where work has slowed and the normal 9 to 5 ceases, I still have classes to plan and meetings to attend. However, there are these times of lull. Times where I am tempted to turn on the TV or watch the free episodes of Barefoot Contessa on Hulu. Times where I want to check out. I look at a picture on Facebook and suddenly an hour has gone by. It’s not that I never do those things, but I’m just not sure how so much time is gone by doing them.
Summer is disappearing and I am letting it. I’m beginning to think this of life too. I was raised in a family that thought, “Once you’re old enough, you’ll understand.” Somehow though, I am always 12. I’m almost 2 decades older than that, but I got lodged in my father and older brothers’ memories as a struggling adolescent, and I’m wedged there between their 80’s mullets and my dad’s memorable but awkward mustache. They have moved on (and shaved), but somehow I did not in their minds. Read More
A Tale of Disappointment & Hope
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Spiritual Direction
These past two weeks have been full. Full of travel, hospitality, reconnection, and relationship. The literal journey took me and Nate up to Oregon for a week-long contemplative prayer retreat, followed by another seven days in Washington with family and friends.
Computers were sparse; phone service scant, and time was of the essence. Time to read, walk and breathe. Time to taste, feel, reflect and connect.
This annual week in Oregon is a sacred time of intentional prayer and slowing down. Each year I need it more and this year was no exception. It is always difficult to put into essay or spoken form what happens. Contemplative prayer is gentle, but it is a spiritual discipline that requires all of you. The phrase “handle with care” is completely appropriate.
To be in a space where you know you are beloved in a world that constantly tries to contradict that is hard work. To show-up to your surroundings and find God is in everything is all-consuming. To have room to digest a year’s time, to peel back more layers, to find more beauty and delight in the inner parts of your soul is overwhelming. Read More
Making a Mess in Colorado
Filed under A Beautiful Mess, Art Journaling, Workshops/Retreats
A lot of paper was ripped in the past four days. And with every tear, I pray that something in the world was stitched up.
I flew to Denver last Thursday. It was the fourth trip I’ve been on in a month. This spring has encompassed another country, another county, another state, and all different kinds of amazing events and people at every stop.
The three events scheduled for this past visit flew by, but not without moments to pause, to meditate, to share, to laugh, to rip, to cry, and to heal. I met over 30 women this past week (and even more up north in Modesto) who are longing to find depth, connection, and growth in their communities and with themselves.
(centerpieces for the event at Big Valley Grace Church in Modesto)
A trend is emerging at these workshops of women being reintroduced to the right side of their brain: the creative, intuitive, fluid and often ignored or undervalued side. Through ripping up magazines, finger painting and throwing “normal” structure out the window, we began to breathe a little easier, deeper, and truer together — all at different rhythms, but side by side nonetheless.
It wasn’t without rules though.
“Rules?” You might ask, “I thought perfectionists were trying to recover from those?”
These were different: Read More
