Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements [Paperback]

Christine Valters Paintner (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a warm, personable manner, Paintner, a Benedictine oblate and spiritual director, invites the reader to engage creation as a sacred text by prayerfully exploring theological dimensions of the elements. Drawing on Celtic tradition, Paintner explores religious and cultural symbolism; for example, water's associations with the direction west, the season autumn, and its physical forms and spiritual dimensions, such as tides, thirst, tears, baptism. Suggestions for reflection and action include the application of lectio divina, a practice of sacred reading typically used with scripture, to nature, encouraging the reader to listen deeply for the stirring of the holy in sacred texts around us. In each chapter, Paintner offers reflections on her prayer life during the book's composition, demonstrating how she applied the spiritual practices she suggests (such as lighting a candle when contemplating Fire). Quotes from scripture, poets, essayists, and Christian mystics encourage the reader to seek divine revelation and comprehension of God's love for all creation by cultivating a contemplative relationship to nature. Simple and powerful, this book will be a welcome new resource for individuals and groups seeking spiritual connection to creation. (Mar.)
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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Sorin Books (March 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933495227
• ISBN-13: 978-1933495224
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,674 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #59 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Meditations
  • #90 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Prayer

More About the Author

Christine Valters Paintner is the online Abbess at www.AbbeyoftheArts.com, a virtual monastery without walls offering a variety of classes in contemplative practice and creative expression and the author of six books on spirituality, contemplative practice, and creative expression.

She is a Benedictine Oblate, writer, artist, spiritual director, retreat facilitator, and teacher. Her fields of expertise include Christian spiritual practices, monastic spirituality, and the expressive arts. Christine earned her PhD in Christian Spirituality from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and her professional status as Registered Expressive Arts Consultant and Educator (REACE) from the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association (IEATA.org).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Resource for Enriching Your Prayer, March 23, 2010

By 

Carl McColman (Clarkston, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements (Paperback)

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that St. Francis of Assisi's "Canticle of the Creatures" (also known as the "Canticle of the Sun") is a powerful and poetic evocation of God's presence in the elements of nature. But few Christians, in my experience, seem to draw the connection that if the elements are indeed agents of God's blessings and means by which we can offer blessing and worship back to God, then it might make sense to think in terms of "air prayer," "water prayer," and so forth. This is the simple yet powerful premise of this lovely new book from Christine Valter Paintner, a Benedictine Oblate and the founder of the Abbey of the Arts website which explores the connection between spirituality and creativity.

Some readers may wonder if this is a crypto-Wiccan book, and indeed anyone interested in creative cross-fertilization between Neopaganism and Christian spirituality will find much to explore in this book. But let's be clear: the four elements (air, fire, water and earth) are universal energies, since they are grounded not only in the nature of the earth, but indeed in our very bodies (think of it: your skeleton and flesh are earth, your blood is water, your lungs and breath bring you air, and the very heat your body generates is the fire within you). Historically speaking, knowledge of the four elements and exploration of their spiritual meaning can be traced back to Greece, where Plato speaks of the elements, following the earlier Sicilian philosopher Empedocles. In other words, our earliest knowledge of the elements is not occult or magical, but rather philosophical and scientific, in scope. For Christians today, befriending the four elements is a way to honor the incarnational dimension of our faith, seeing God's presence in nature just as we believe the Holy Spirit and the Mind of Christ is present among those who are knit into the community of faith.

This book is essentially a workbook ("playbook"?) for prayer, divided into sections where Valters Paintner explores each element through poetry, stories, blessings, quotations, lectio divina, and suggestions for prayer and reflection. Most of the connections she highlights are obvious enough: water is linked to baptism, air to centering prayer, earth to feasting. This is not a book of secrets revealed so much as earthy common sense: water goes with the flow, fire brings passion and creativity, earth stabilizes and grounds us. Weave all four elements together and we find balance, perspective, and a sense of being at home in the good universe God has given us.

Obviously, this book should appeal to anyone with a love for Franciscan or Celtic expressions of Christian spirituality. But I think the author was wise not to limit her exploration of the elements to those particular strands of wisdom. This book feels universal in its tone and its application -- it is a book for all Christians, and indeed, for all people, anyone who might be interested in finding out what mystics like Hildegard of Bingen or John of the Cross or Thomas Merton might have to say to the question of bringing prayer and nature together.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reconnecting With Our Spiritual Traditions and Creation Care, April 20, 2010

By 

David Crumm "Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine" (Canton, Michigan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements (Paperback)

As a journalist, I see thousands of new books on religion and spirituality flowing from publishers every year and a huge portion of those books relate to prayer, which is the most widespread religious expression in the world. Prayer is a practice, or rather a wide array of practices, extending to us from the roots of human civilization thousands of years ago.

Often, we forget the richness of our own traditions, even the specific Christian tradition that most Americans share. Often, helpful guides can emerge to reconnect us with themes and creative ideas that can wake up our prayer life--and can connect us with parts of the world we often overlook. Right now, millions of Americans are waking up to their deep connection with the natural world. For a long time, American evangelical movements were so focused on the "next" world that this one was almost an afterthought.

Where does our faith connect with "Creation care"? That's a two-word phrase now popular among religious environmental activists. For thousands of years, this wasn't even a question. Religion and environment always intertwined. Remember that the roots of our spiritual traditions lie in ancient lands where life depended on the weather, the fertility of fields--and the overall balance of non-human life on Earth. In the past 500 years, in particular, the Western Christian world seems to have lost track of this connection.

That's why this book is so fresh and so important. Just like me, you can find hundreds of books on prayer. Why choose this slim paperback volume? Because, in 150 pages, Christine Valters Paintner helps to reconnect Christians with our own centuries-old traditions of praying with "the elements"--the connective tissue between our faith and true Creation care.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Celebrate God in all of creation!, January 11, 2011

By 

Maria Rodgers O'Rourke "author and speaker" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements (Paperback)

Water, Wind, Earth, and Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements is filled with mystical moments. Author Christine Valters Paintner explores the essential role nature plays in our spiritual lives. Through events from Jesus' ministry, quotes from scripture, Christian mystics, artists and Native American spirituality, she shows how the elements are relevant today to the spiritual life.

This charming and breezy book invites the pray-er to incorporate each of these elements into his or her spiritual life. These four elements aid the mystic in the journey to deeper experiences of God. They each reflect a dimension of God, and yet are the simple stuff of our earthly existence.

In addition to Paintner's insights and experiences, Ralph Waldo Emerson, St. Francis of Assisi, Chet Raymond, Hildegard of Bingen, and other mystics, poets and writers share their wisdom. Each brings their own voice to the wonders of God expressed through creation.

Water, wind, earth and fire present themselves to us in many different forms. Whether solid, liquid, gas or some combination influenced by temperature or light, each offer a poignant theological lesson. Each invites us to surrender to God's magnificent power and to know at the core of our being that we are uniquely created and loved by Him.