"Eyes of the Heart" -- A Review

Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a ChristianContemplative Practice, Christine Valters Paintner’s latest book, is moving, helpful, challenging and inspiring.  Which is not surprising, given Christine’s record of turning out such books (two of my favorites are The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom and Awakening the Creative Spirit: Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction).

Christine, besides being an author, is a Benedictine Oblate, writer, artist, spiritual director, retreat facilitator, and teacher. She’s also the on-line abbess for Abbey of the Arts, an amazing site that you should know about, if you don’t already.  I’m a regular visitor to the site and participant in her “Invitation to Photography” spirituality exercises.  She’s going to guest blog here soon!

As a photographer, as soon as I heard about Eyes of the Heart, I knew I wanted to read it.  I was not disappointed.  Christine is a wise writer and grand guide into the idea of combining contemplation and photography.  I appreciate this as I’ve been doing what I call “praying with my camera” for years.  In some ways, Christine’s concept is similar to Sybil MacBeth’s concept of “Praying in Color” -- an active, visual, and meditative form of intercessory prayer.

We find that the title comes from Ephesians 1:18 when Christine writes, “Photography as a spiritual practice combines the active art of image-receiving with the contemplative nature and open-heartedness of prayer.  It cultivates what I call sacred seeing or seeing with ‘the eyes of the heart.’”  Of course, this resonates with me – having written myself about learning to see deeply as a spiritual practice (Mind the Light) and the integration of body, mind, and soul to experience the Divine as we move through this world (Awaken Your Senses). 

Eyes of the Heart is filled with thoughts helpful and inspiring.  “For me, both art and spirituality are truly about tending to the moments of life: listening deeply, holding space, encountering the sacred, and touching eternity.  For a few seconds I touch time beyond time and in that spacious presence my heart grows wider, my imagination frees, my breath catches, and I am held in awe and wonder.  These are the moments that help to make life full of meaning.”  Indeed.  Words such as that are an invitation to experience God breaking through – via the means of a simple tool that many of us have in phones even, a camera.  It’s a gadget that is often thought of just as that – a gadget – rather than a entry into eternity and spiritual experience.  Christine’s book helps us broaden our spiritual horizons whether through phone camera or professional DLSRs. 

Make no mistake.  This is no book solely for photographers.  It is for anyone who desires a fresh way of connecting the visible daily life with the often unnoticed Divine presence in it all.  It opens a new way of seeing God at work in and around us.  We behold beauty, life, truth and love as we learn to notice – as we accept Christine’s invitation to “see with the eyes of the heart.”

Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a ChristianContemplative Practice by Christine Valters Paintner

Sorin Books (2013)

152 pages, paper, $15.95

Awaken Yours Senses Contest: Official Rules

The Awaken Your Senses Contest is about to begin!

Beginning Monday, February 6^th, Brent and Beth will host an “Awaken Your Senses Contest” featured on:

· Awaken Your Senses Facebook Page

· Brent’s Blog

· Beth's Blog

Here’s how it works:

1. Each week, for five weeks, Beth and Brent will post a sense of the week. You are invited to pay attention to that particular sense and see how it introduces you to the wonder of God.

2. If something cool happens, post a description about that experience on the Awaken Your Senses FB Page or Beth or Brent’s blogs. (All entries must be submitted by Sunday at noon.)

3. Brent and Beth will choose a winner on Sunday evening and that person will receive a $25 gift card for a gift related to that sense.

4. Brent and Beth will also do a drawing from the names of everyone who participated each week and the weekly winner of the random drawing will receive an autographed copy of Awaken Your Senses.

5. The winners will be announced on Awaken Your Senses Facebook Page and Brent and Beth’s blogs on each Monday when a new sense begins!

The Contest Schedule!

February 6 – Taste

February 13 – See

February 20 – Touch

February 27 – Hear

March 5 -- Smell

Tell your friends about the contest. Tweet, tumblr and blog about it! Spread the word! We can’t wait to hear about your experiences as you awaken your senses to the wonder of God!

-- Brent

Family of Brent Bill, employees of Brent Bill and brentbill.com, and Brent Bill's cat are ineligible to participate in the contest. Prohibited where void. Side effects include dizziness, neuralgia, and innuendo.

See The Goodness of the Lord -- Days Seven and Eight

Ah, no scenes of glory to behold these past few days. At least no obvious ones. It has been gloomy and rainy and so has consisted mostly of "inside" days. We've had over an inch of rain in the past 24 hours, so the prairie and field where the new trees were planted are mucky and yucky. And I've been getting ready for a trip to the DC area, so have not gotten home until the sun was going down anyhow.

So my looking for the goodness of the Lord has consisted mostly in looking at what's around me at work. Which is something I need to do more often and more intentionally. So, as I spent the past two days in many meetings with my colleagues, I decided to try to look at them with fresh eyes. After all, it is pretty easy to get used to people you see daily and then take them for granted.

But what I say these past two days, was an amazing assembly of people called together to do God's work. There are men and women; people in their sixties, fifties, forties, thirties (our "twenties" just left the staff); black and white; rural, suburban, and urban; Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Nazarenes, Quakers, Jews, Pentecostals, and more; people who fall all over the map regarding Myers-Briggs and/or Enneagram ratings, etc. And yet, each person here is an amazingly gifted individual. We all work in slightly different ways (even if the task is the same). Our approach to the congregations we consult with is different depending on our styles and personalities. And they are each a blessing to me. They do bring God's light into my life -- often without them knowing it (largely because I rarely say it, which is my fault).

So, by looking at the people I see everyday with intentionality, I was able to see the goodness of the Lord in a refreshed way -- refreshed by those people I am blessed to have in my life on a daily basis.

-- Brent

See The Goodness of the Lord

Dear Friends,

Many of you have followed Beth Booram and me during our 30 Days of Tasting and expressed to us that it was a meaningful experience. Well, how about joining us for our next experiment--30 Days of Seeing?

Beginning tomorrow (10/20), we will start our next sensory focus by paying attention to what we see.

Here's how you can participate:

• Write in your calendar for the next 30 days a reminder like, "pay attention to seeing."


• Each day, isolate your sense of seeing and notice the world around you, especially what stands out to you.


• Then, take a second look at what caught your eye--really look at it.


• Be open and listen for God to speak to you through what you notice and through honing your marvelous gift of sight.


• Finally, follow Beth's blog, this blog and/or join us on Facebook and comment about your own experiences.

Please send this post to your friends, family and/or small group and invite them to participate, too!

Beth and I look forward to your collaboration as, together, we awaken our senses to the wonder of God!

"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13

-- Brent

Quaker Wisdom for Today

"I saw that the grace of God, which bringeth salvation, had appeared to all men, and that the manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to every man to profit withal. These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter, but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by His immediate spirit and power..."

-- George Fox