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Tag Archives: example

Father’s Day

16 Sunday Jun 2019

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example, father's day, fatherhood, lessons, memories, psalm 8, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wisdom

This morning I am greeted with a rush of memories and feelings like smiles inside as I think of my father. A devout Catholic, my father loved the prayers and rituals of the Church and I can see his face as he humbly blessed himself “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” especially on this feast of the Holy Trinity.

As I read Psalm 8 just now (definitely my favorite of them all), I feel my father’s amazement in experiencing the beauty of nature. Whether on our front porch with us during a storm so that we would never fear thunder and lightning (although respecting the power by taking us inside when necessary) or floating effortlessly for hours on his back in the ocean at Cape Cod, his peace was palpable.

My father taught by example mostly and the lessons remain. I pray today in thanksgiving for the blessings bestowed on myself and my siblings, my cousins and the wider world of friends and co-workers as well as, of course, my mother, with whom he made love the purpose and center of his life.

I pray as well today for all fathers that wisdom may guide their steps, that their children may respect their efforts and that they have what they need of strength and the resources necessary to be equal to the role of fatherhood. May it be so!

Good Example

07 Friday Dec 2018

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charity, example, gentleness, intellectual freedom, Kathleen Degnan, kindness, love, New Seeds of Contemplation, positive, President George H.W. Bush, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

In the wake of all the events occasioned by the death of President George H.W. Bush, one would hope for the return of a kinder, gentler way of being for the United States of America. The example of this man regarding acceptance of others, positive thinking and charity in all things gave a good feeling to all who watched and listened to the many testimonials and interviews during the week. For me, it all mirrored what I read this morning from Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours edited by Kathleen Degnan, offered for the second hour of Friday. 

This is what it means to seek God perfectly, Merton writes. To cultivate an intellectual freedom from the images of created things in order to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all as myself; to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no obligation to carry. 

And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things.                            (New Seeds of Contemplation, pp.44-46, excerpted)

Mother Seton

04 Thursday Jan 2018

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Catholic Church, education, example, faith, ordinary life, religious community, sanctity, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

asetonElizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (1774-1821) was the first American-born saint canonized in the Roman Catholic Church. We celebrate her today as a woman who, it is often said, “lived an ordinary life in an extraordinary way.” Her life was a bit like a seesaw with serious ups and downs by turns. She was born into a solid, well-to-do family in the high society of New York but her mother died when she was 3 years old. She was married at age 19 to a wealthy businessman and had 5 children, but his business failed and he died of tuberculosis when Elizabeth was 30 years old. Necessity led her to open a school in Baltimore in order to support her children and grace moved her to found a religious community which grew out of the spiritual nature of how she ran her school. She died at age 46. Franciscan Media says the following about the woman who has become an example of faith to generations of Catholics and is revered as “Mother Seton.”

Elizabeth Seton had no extraordinary gifts. She was not a mystic or stigmatic. She did not prophesy or speak in tongues…The thousand or more letters of Mother Seton reveal the development of her spiritual life from ordinary goodness to heroic sanctity. She suffered great trials of sickness, misunderstanding, the death of loved ones (her husband and two young daughters) and the heartache of a wayward son…She wrote to a friend that she would prefer to exchange the world for a “cave or a desert. But God has given me a great deal to do, and I have always and hope always to prefer his will to every wish of my own.” Her brand of sanctity is open to everyone…(www.franciscanmedia.org)

How can we refuse the offer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big Love

06 Thursday Oct 2016

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bad news, big love, curious, engaged, example, humanity, Hurricane Matthew, listen, love, Meg Wheatley, open our hearts, pain, pray, quiet, reality of pain, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Turning To One Another, world

aloveI am probably going to sound like a broken record today but in the face of all the “bad news” that greeted me when I turned on my computer this morning, I can’t help it. It would be easy to stay frozen in my rocking chair and figuratively “bury my head in the sand” knowing all the devastation of hurricane Matthew thus far in the Caribbean and anticipating “his” arrival in the United States or reading so many e-mails asking prayers for loved ones diagnosed with terminal diseases. I won’t even begin to talk about politics and the state of our nation! For solace I turned to Meg Wheatley. She quoted Sharon Salzberg’s concise dictum that I believe could solve everything if we could just intuit the depth of meaning in it and choose to embrace it fully. Salzberg says:

Only love is big enough to hold all the pain in this world.

She doesn’t say that love is big enough to minimize the pain or eradicate the pain or (God forbid) help us ignore the pain. She calls us to see that only in recognizing and being willing to embrace the reality of pain in our lives and in the larger world in solidarity with each other will we be able to endure. Meg Wheatley then adds, I think of a gesture of love as anything we do that helps others discover their humanity. Any act where we turn to one another. Open our hearts. Extend ourselves. Listen. Any time we’re patient. Curious. Quiet. Engaged…I feel we become more fully human through our generosity, when we extend to another rather than withdraw into ourselves. (Turning to One Another, p. 138)

It’s okay to start small. Read the news. Pray for one situation, one person to get better. Make a phone call to use your voice for good. Show up when it counts. Be a good example to a teenager. Get used to practicing until “big love” is the only way you can imagine living, even though it is not the easiest way to live.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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