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Monthly Archives: August 2016

Rilke’s Wisdom

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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answers, intention, Letters to a Young Poet, live, patient, perspective, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours, Sunday, the Lord's Day, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unfinished business, unsolved

arilke.jpgIt has become my practice every morning to consider each day a clean slate for my living. Of course there are on-going concerns or projects and I have my lists of “unfinished business” from the previous day (or week or month…) but my intention is to look at everything from the perspective of this day and leave yesterday to the history books. Even more important does that intention become on Sundays for two reasons. It is, after all, the first day of the week, the beginning of a new cycle of events. Additionally it is for Christians the Lord’s Day, the day of Resurrection, thereby giving impetus to thoughts of God and my own sense of hope for myself and the world.

My desire to catapult myself from sleep into newness this morning led me to Rilke’s Book of Hours. As I leafed through the pages, out fell a small sheet of notebook paper that I’ve kept for almost 50 years. A little yellowed by the years, it is otherwise in good shape, having been passed from one book to another from time to time. On it my friend Jan had printed a famous quote from Rilke’s work, Letters to a Young Poet, that was probably encouragement for me during a moment of uncertainty in the novitiate. It was the first time I had encountered Rilke and that text but it has stayed with me and been shared countless times with others. I am fairly certain I have even shared it here. Sometimes, though, repetition is good for the soul – and even the mind. Such is the case for me this morning so I offer it as a new beginning for a new week. May we all be blessed in our seeking!

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gladly, without even noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday

20 Saturday Aug 2016

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24/7, balance, housework, justice, landscape of the soul, mercy, Peace, psalm 85, Sabbath, salvation, Saturday, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth, work week

alandscapeThis morning for some reason I was thrown back into thoughts of “Saturday in the convent,” my early days in the novitiate when Saturday was the day for housework. It made (and probably still makes) sense for people who worked a “regular work week” to consider Saturday that way. Now, in our country, there seems to be little that is “regular.” A recent addition to our shorthand is 24/7, a concept that sometimes seems less than advisable or even possible. Grocery stores, pharmacies and fast-food restaurants are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week – necessary perhaps because there are three shifts now in many businesses. People are always “on the go” and even “Sabbath” – that concept of a holy rest day – has become a thing of the past. For me there’s still something in the feeling of waking up on Saturday that seems possible, some sense of putting things aright that comes from cleaning house and straightening things out. Whether it’s paying bills or washing windows, the inner renewal that is a by-product of such activities sometimes sets us on a more balanced course for the week to come.

Psalm 85 was obviously written about bigger things but feels right to repeat here, just as a call to the daily tasks of this Saturday. Here are two ways it is said as a starter for those of us who can only take one step at a time but long to see the big picture fulfilled.

I will hear what God proclaims: the Lord – for he proclaims peace. Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him, glory dwelling in our land. Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven. The Lord himself will give his benefits; our land shall yield its increase. Justice shall walk before him, and salvation along the way of his steps.   

To every one who turns their face toward you, you come so close and glory floods the landscape of the soul. And in the secret places of the heart your mercy and your truth shall meet at last in full embrace, and right-relationship and peace kiss one another there. So truth is finally born in full; it springs from earth full grown, and heaven reaches out restoring balances to all. And from that marriage, prosperity unmeasured fills the lands, and yields a harvest of unimagined good, and makes the path of justice smooth between all peoples everywhere, for everything in you knows perfect peace.

 

 

 

 

 

Love Revisited

19 Friday Aug 2016

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Baton Rouge, disaster, flooding, Louisiana, love, love your neighbor as yourself, Matthew, ten commandments, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

abatonrouge

When I saw the gospel passage for this morning (MT 22:34-40) I thought, “How can I say anything new and inspiring about one of the most familiar texts in Scripture?” We’ve all heard the sermons that tell us it isn’t about loving our neighbor as much as ourselves; that would be a disaster in many cases, given the lack of self-esteem in some of us. The implication there is that we actually have to love ourselves too. Lately an interpretation that has come to prominence is that I need to love my neighbor as if s/he were really, actually myself – because we are all one in God. I can accept all of that but what makes me move from theory to practice is an experience of that depth of loving.

In our religious congregation (called by our founder “The Congregation of the Great Love of God”) we often can be heard saying that where one of us is, all of us are. Well, today I am proud to say that I have a walking, talking visceral experience of that truth in what I know will be an outpouring of love of mammoth proportions. Yesterday morning all four of us were in our kitchen commenting on the terrible flood event in Louisiana. Susan wondered about our Sister Chris Pologa who lives and ministers in Baton Rouge. “I planned to call her today!” I said as I prepared to leave for a meeting. Susan offered to take that over. By the time I had returned home we learned (by email since phone service is spotty) that half of the 500 students in the school where she ministers and 30 of the teachers had lost everything. By dinner time we had a plan of how best to contribute and were all thinking of what more we could do. I am confident that this process is rippling throughout our entire province and that the people of Baton Rouge will benefit greatly by our love for God and neighbor. So let me close with those familiar words as I am certain that we all have experiences on which to draw this morning that will solidify and deepen the impact on each of us.

…”Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Emphasis mine)

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Good News

18 Thursday Aug 2016

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admirable, Catholic Relief Services, clean heart, corruption, Ezekiel, gratitude, lobby, Louisiana flooding, new spirit, politics, renewal, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vilification, world community

aolympicrunnerI’ve had a bit of a theme running through the past several days of my thinking – and reflected somewhat in different ways in my writing. It started on Saturday where I heard Ezekiel asking God to “create a clean heart in me” and has had several threads constellating around the fact that my hope, not only for my own renewal but that of the world community, resides in large part in the young people of the world, especially those who have seen good in their elders. It may be a stretch to see the last five days like that but let me explain my reasons for that conclusion.

Things are looking pretty grim in the goings-on in the political discourse of the country, vilification being the order of the day as we come ever to closer November elections. Counteracting that, however, has been joy in interviews with Olympians – especially those still in or just out of their teens – who gushed with gratitude for the support they have had from family, coaches and just about everyone in the known world. And their generosity to one another, congratulating one another and even going as far as stopping after a fall to walk to the end of the race with the person over whom they had tumbled because she was hurt, has been heartbreakingly admirable.

Stories of corruption in our cities and even high in state government this past week make me wonder if we will ever have a functional polity again. But then there was the mayor of one of the cities in Louisiana who was asked last night as he was rescuing folks from their flooded homes whether his house had been flooded. He answered, “Yes, we have water. I’ll get to it when I can…” And then this morning I watched a short video about 100 college students, part of a program of Catholic Relief Services called Student Ambassador Leadership Training, who traveled  to Washington, D.C. to lobby their congresspersons on issues of human trafficking, climate change and refugee migration. Their stated purpose was to advocate to those in power in our government, “giving voice to the voiceless” because it was the right thing to do.

Examples of those who understand what it means to “lobby” God for a clean heart have been everywhere this week and prepared me for this day as I read the promise of God, again from Ezekiel.

I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees. You shall live in the land I gave your ancestors; you shall be my people and I will be your God. (EZ 36:23-28)

That’s a promise I can believe in and a world that I hope to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Living Word

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

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The verse before the gospel in today’s lectionary readings caught my eye – not because it is unfamiliar. Rather it has come, because of a conversation in a wisdom retreat, to be cause for deeper searching. The line from the Letter to the Hebrews says this: The word of God is living and effective, able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. (HEB 4:12) Chapters 3 and 4 of this letter consider how God’s people through the ages have or have not paid attention to God – a commentary on the more familiar: If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts. To our benefit, God has sent Jesus as a compassionate high priest who knows our weaknesses and is able to sympathize with us so that we are able to “hold fast to the faith” and thereby “enter into our rest” at the end of our lives.

The interesting thing about the verse under consideration, however, is that it seems to personify the word of God by saying that it is the word itself that is able to discern our deepest thoughts. The message at our retreat conversation was something like the following: If the printed word stays flat on a page, it has no power. It’s when it is spoken that there is a possibility of response. I have known this to be true at conferences with charismatic speakers, liturgies where the energy of the homilist makes the words come alive, and so on. We can be inspired by metaphor or images used for emphasis. In its entirety the gospel verse above says this: Indeed, God’s word is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates and divides the soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the reflections and thoughts of the heart. Quite a bit more vivid, I’d say, living and effective, indeed. “Cutting to the quick,” you might add, so that the words fairly jump off the page and settle somewhere deep with us if we are awake and open to their power.

Then to the further point about Jesus. He was able to sympathize with us because he came as “one like us in all things but sin.” One of the familiar titles given to Jesus is Word of God. Jesus was so focused on his mission that all of his words and actions fairly shouted God to the people. Reading about him in the Scriptures can inspire us to follow his example. But until we are so saturated by the “word” spoken by his entire life that we are transformed, the words continue to lie flat on the pages of our life. A favorite prayer that I often sing to begin my morning meditation speaks my desire for the living Word of God to be sparked into fire in my life. David Haas has written it as a gospel acclamation. (You can find it on Youtube as Come Now, O Word of God). Admittedly, the music helps a lot, but here are the words:

Fill our minds that we may learn your wisdom. Touch our lips that we may speak your truth. Hold our hearts that we may always follow you. Come now, O Word of God!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One More Wake Up Call

16 Tuesday Aug 2016

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charity, contemplation, corruption, divisions, mystic, news, Peace, prophets, saints, sanctity, solace, spiritual maturity, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, violence

contemplationIt is sometimes counter-productive to read the news in the morning. I don’t often do so before taking up this writing task. I should always move toward what I know to be my priorities. After twenty minutes or so this morning of breaking my own rule and falling deeper into distress, I moved away from stories of corruption, violence and division in the world and turned to Thomas Merton for solace. Here is what he gave me as a motivational word for today:

If the salvation of society depends, in the long run, on the moral and spiritual health of individuals, the subject of contemplation becomes a vastly important one, since contemplation is one of the indications of spiritual maturity. It is closely allied to sanctity. You cannot save the world merely with a system. You cannot have peace without charity. You cannot have social order without saints, mystics and prophets. (A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 375)

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Enduring Legacy

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Assumption, birth, Catholic Church, courageous choices, exile, God's will, Luke, Magnificat, Mary, Messiah, Pope Paul VI, poverty, say yes, Second Vatican Council

amaryToday the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, into heaven. It is one of many feasts observed by Catholics the world over – in both Eastern and Roman rite – and gives pride of place to the woman who said yes to the call of God to bring Christ to the world in the most significant way possible: by birth. In the renewal of the past half century, begun at the Second Vatican Council, we have come to appreciate Mary in perhaps more expansive ways. What I mean is that if we do indeed recognize her as a young woman (probably still a teenager) who lived in a small village in the Middle East, perhaps illiterate and certainly not privileged in any social way, her “yes” to God seems as extraordinary as it always has, but with one additional understanding that generations rarely if ever conceded – or even considered. This seemingly ordinary, humble young woman who cooperated with grace in an uncharacteristic way is the same girl who responded to the recognition by her kinswoman Elizabeth that she was carrying the Messiah with the following words:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…From this day all generations shall call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me…He has shown the strength of his arm and has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly…(LK 1:39-56)

Commenting on Marialis Cultus, Pope Paul VI’s apostolic letter on Mary, Elizabeth Johnson writes that the Pope “describes Mary as a strong and intelligent woman, one who has the wits to question back when the angel addressed her, one who experienced poverty and suffering, flight and exile. In the midst of these troubles she consistently gave active and responsible consent to the call of God, made courageous choices, and worked to strengthen the faith of others….In the most quoted passage from this letter, the Pope then declares that far from endorsing the particulars of Mary’s own life as exemplary, the Church proposes her to the faithful as an example to be imitated: not precisely in the type of life she led, much less for the socio-cultural background in which she lived and which today scarcely exists anywhere. Rather, she is held up as an example for the way in which, in her own particular life, she fully and responsibly accepted God’s will (see LK 1:38), because she heard the Word of God and acted on it, and because charity and a spirit of service were the driving force of her actions…(#35)“

Johnson concludes that “what has a permanent, universal, exemplary value is the way she walked the path of her own life before God, which can instruct and inspire people’s own creative responses in this new era. We can be inspired by her because we are all human together. Mary is ‘one of our race,’ ‘a true daughter of Eve,’ indeed (as Pope Paul says) ‘truly our sister, who as a poor and humble woman shared our lot’ (#56).”

Hope for the World

14 Sunday Aug 2016

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babies, baby boomers, climate change, family, Fiona Mitchell, gratitude, Meg Wheatley, next generation, Olympics, planet, sports, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Turning To One Another, winning, world community

aplantLast night again I stayed up late watching amazing young people engage in sports. And again I was heartened to hear them tell not only of their joy at winning medals but also of their gratitude for the support of their teams, their coaches and all others who have supported them in their efforts. They also spoke of the privilege of representing their country at the Olympics – just being there, in such a “world community” as indescribable. In the face of all the negative events swirling around us daily in the news and in our neighborhoods, it is helpful to experience the worldwide cooperation that is evident in the contests in Rio.

While speaking of climate change and the devastation of earth that is part of the “downside” of life in our world these days, Meg Wheatley quoted a 22-year old college student in England who reminded me of the common spirit of the athletes when she spoke about our responsibility to the environment. This young woman, Fiona Mitchell, says:

I’d love to be able to just get on with my life and just enjoy it and do the things I want to do…And it’s really annoying that you can’t get on with your life because the planet is being destroyed. But I, personally, can’t just ignore it, because it’s a part of me. It’s  part of all of us, you know. I think a lot of people don’t see the connections between things, the connections that run through everything. We have to take care of everything, because it’s all part of the same thing. (Turning to One Another, p. 109)

In all of this, I think too of my extended family, gathered this weekend for a 60th birthday celebration of one of the “old folks” – my generation. It’s always a profound joy to see “the kids” (now in their 20s and 30s) who have morphed into such amazing and interesting adults, having also chosen wonderful partners for their life-walk. Whether I am present or just vicariously living these events by telephone, I am moved to hope for the world, just as I have been this week at the Olympics and in England by Fiona Mitchell. The next generations have much to do to keep the world turning (as, by the way, so do those of us “baby boomers” still walking around) but perhaps with our support wonderful things lie in store for the beautiful babies being born right now. May we all hold this intention and determination in our hearts as we open ourselves to a new day and week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Job

13 Saturday Aug 2016

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converted, crimes, Ezekiel, House of Israel, job description, new heart, new spirit, psalm 51, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

anewheartI’m pretty well-versed in Scripture passages that call on God to make me a better person. One of the most familiar to me is Psalm 51, which I fell right into reciting this morning as I read: A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me…I was, however, somewhat surprised by the end of the previous reading from the prophet Ezekiel and went back to read it again after finding what I expected in Psalm 51. It sounds like a slight difference in nuance but makes a huge difference in “job description” between us and God. Here’s what it says at the end of a long commentary on the virtuous and unvirtuous in “the House of Israel”:

Turn and be converted from all your crimes, that they may be no cause of guilt for you. Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, and make for yourself a new heart and a new spirit. (EZ 18:31)

Maybe I’m putting too much of a fine point on things but that seems a new wrinkle in the fabric of responsibility in my life. I thought we were supposed to turn from our “crimes” – large or small – and that God would be the one to create our hearts anew – a perspective consonant wit the psalmist’s view. This looks like we need to wake up to our own more participative role in becoming who we are called to be. It’s just a thought – but for me a quite powerful distinction that does not allow me to passively wait for God’s action in my life but rather to join God in the process of realizing my own deepest, most authentic self.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Olympic Messages

12 Friday Aug 2016

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alike, competition, cooperation, dedication, difference, discipline, Human Family, Maya Angelou, Olympics, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unalike

Rio Olympics Artistic Gymnastics Women

I’ve been watching as much of the Olympics on television as I can stay awake for because I am overwhelmed by the dedication and discipline of so many young people from all over the world. (The oldest competitors are considered “old” if they are over 35 years old, a birthday I have not seen in a very long time!) The television coverage is helpful, too, with brief segments that allow us to see these athletes as people of different backgrounds who have families and struggles and favorite things like ice cream…so that the sport that drives them does not consume them. I’m sure there are those who cannot bear to lose but one of the advantages of participating in a team is learning that old lesson that “it isn’t whether you win or lose but how you play the game.” All of this leads to the conclusion that working together in cooperation – even with a healthy spirit of competition – is possible and desirable among the nations of the world.

Every so often in the evening coverage there is a break that does not advertise any product but rather shows pictures of people. The text is read by a person whose voice sounded familiar and when I finally was sure it was Maya Angelou, speaking truth from beyond the grave, I looked up a line and, sure enough, it was her poem that she was reading, called Human Family. I will write it here as I hear it each evening rather than in the poetic form to illustrate what I have tried to indicate above – that is, the reality that needs so desperately to permeate the consciousness of the planet at the present time.

I note the obvious differences in the human family. Some of us are serious, some thrive on comedy. Some declare their lives are lived as true profundity, and others claim they really live the real reality. The variety of our skin tones can confuse, bemuse, delight, brown and pink and beige and purple, tan and blue and white. I’ve sailed upon the seven seas and stopped in every land. I’ve seen the wonders of the world not yet one common man. I know ten thousand women called Jane and Mary Jane, but I’ve not seen any two who really were the same. Mirror twins are different although their features jibe, and lovers think quite different thoughts while lying side by side. We love and lose in China, we weep on England’s moors, and laugh and moan in Guinea, and thrive on Spanish shores. We seek success in Finland, are born and die in Maine. In minor ways we differ, in major we’re the same. I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike. We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

May our prayer always take the form of a striving to understand this truth: that we are more alike than unalike.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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