Love Holds You is a collection of poetry and devotions from beloved author Christine Valters Paintner.
Amid the daily grind, the pain and loss, the fears and doubts, you can lose sight of the firm bedrock of love beneath your feet. Christine weaves together reflections from her own life with her signature poems, encouraging you to find your own new path forward as you start to see the beauty and wonder all around you.
As Christine reflects on the moments and events that shaped her, she invites you to:
Discover the strength that God gives you through the beauty of creation
Nurture your inner poet, artist, and spiritual pilgrim
A compassionate and experienced retreat leader, Christine has cultivated a following of artists, poets, and spiritual seekers through her Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and global community based in Ireland. Love Holds You is an excellent gift for friends during times of loss, life transition, or uncertainty, or simply a gift for yourself.
Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE is the online Abbess of Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and global, ecumenical community integrating contemplative practice and creative expression. She leads online retreats and prayer services and hosts other wisdom teachers. Christine is a Benedictine oblate living on the west coast of Ireland with her husband John and is the author of numerous books on spirituality, monastic wisdom, creativity, poetry, and the arts.
“A hymn to the soul’s journey. Though the poet ‘builds a bonfire from all the old maps,’ she has drawn a new one here for the reader, charting a path through beauty and heartbreak to the realm beyond ‘the country of certainty.’ Each poem is a summons to reverence, be it in a hospital hallway, at a gravesite, or on a bed of ‘moss and mulch.’ This is as much a prayerbook as a poetry offering. May you find sanctuary among these pages, and a mirror for your soul.” —Kim Rosen, author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words
“This is a wonderful, generous, gentle book. Read these poems slowly . . . let them permeate your day and make it richer . . . or read them—like me—in a rush of tears and smiles and gratitude to Christine Valters Paintner for reminding us that poetry allows us to soar above the world, to dig deep beneath it, and just to simply, profoundly be in it.” —Clare Shaw, poet and author of Flood, Straight Ahead, and Head On
