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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!
Elizabeth 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.”
I 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: