The Love of Thousands

“Christine Valters Paintner invites us to experience a more authentic way of being and teaches us how to live from there. Warm-hearted, its wisdom keeps us company whether we are in grief’s wilderness, a joyful time, or another liminal place. Making space for our true, loving self to awaken and reawaken, it shares ways to travel soulcraft’s healing path together and walks us home.”
Carmen Acevedo Butcher Poet and translator of The Cloud of Unknowing and Practice of the Presence
"Reading a book by Christine Valters Paintner is like going on a retreat in your own home. She tells meaningful stories, offers insightful guidance, and presents practical ways to bring spirituality into your heart, body, and soul. With The Love of Thousands, she invites readers into one of the most beautiful elements of Christian spirituality: the Communion of Saints (and angels and ancestors). But this is no mere abstract doctrine—the wisdom offered here can help make the love of our heavenly companions truly an embodied presence in our lives." Carl McColman Author of The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism
“Reading The Love of Thousands is like gathering around a campfire on a clear starlit night or plunging into a cold refreshing stream. It awakens what we know by heart, lifting up simple practices that help us cultivate mystical presence. Drawing deeply from the well of human experience, Christine Valters Paintner once again gives us a reliable hope, not just for our individual lives but for the collective wounds plaguing our planet.” Dori Grinenko Baker Coauthor of Another Way
“With her trademark commingling of erudite research and compassionate intimacy, Christine Valters Paintner gently pulls back the veils of both time and space that we might see all those who have come before us looking lovingly upon us in the shadow of every tree, in the echo of every bird’s song. Contemplative prayers and practices invite us into a sacred experience of the love that came before us, the love that surrounds us still, guiding us into the profound peace of knowing that we never walk alone.” Cameron Bellm Catholic author and speaker
“If Christine Valters Paintner simply took us on a journey in her book, The Love of Thousands, that would be enough. In this magical and mystical work, which contains the quotes from a fantastic array of sages, she also opens the space for us to robustly experience our own spiritual pilgrimage as well. Her book is actually a retreat on knowing life more richly by revisiting such experiences as impermanence and vulnerability. By drawing from a breadth of spiritual traditions and personal insights, she also helps us understand time and attention not as mere concepts, but as lenses that need to be polished and intently looked through differently, honestly, hopefully. In encountering her words, I felt as if Paintner was sitting alongside me and encouraging me to breathe in life and become open to relics, sainthood, ancestry, meditation, angelic relationships, and feast days in ways that those whom I have admired did long before me. She constantly challenged me to calmly and humbly open myself to being on the edge of wonder and awe, to appreciate life’s ‘thin places,’ even when what I first encountered was, to my mind, darkness. My hope is that the new consciousness and meditative way of life that this spurred on in me will have a similar impact on you as well.” Robert J. Wicks Author of Riding the Dragon