Chords of God's Kindness

Recently I attended a presentation about St. Hildegard of Bingen, one of the four female Doctors of the Church, at Sophia Spirituality Center. As Sr. Judith Sutera noted, it was not unusual for an abbess in a German Benedictine monastery in the 1100s to compose music, study herbs, write theological and scientific books, have mystical visions, go on preaching tours, and be the administrator and spiritual leader of a monastery. What is unique about St. Hildegard is the quality and quantity of the work she produced, which still instructs and inspires us today.

This quotation by St. Hildegard caught my eye: “The marvels of God are not brought forth from one’s self. Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played. The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather through the touch of the Musician. I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God’s kindness.”

It is humbling to think that whenever we feel the impulse to be kind—for example, by offering an encouraging word, helping someone finish a task, donating supplies to a homeless shelter, or taking food to a grieving family—it is God’s kindness that we are transmitting. Since that is the case, we should never hesitate to be kind, in keeping with God’s abundant outpouring of love. We must keep ourselves in tune so the chord of God’s kindness can sound throughout the world.

Delight as a Doorway to Contemplation

I haven’t intentionally practiced visio divina (praying with images) lately, but I was led into it naturally when I was at Sophia Center recently for a journaling retreat. I found a comfortable corner to do some writing and found myself drawn into delight by three ceramic birds perched next to a lamp. One bird looked exceptionally alert, one looked curious, and one looked contented. It occurred to me that these are three characteristics we need to foster in our spiritual life.

Jesus and St. Benedict both caution us to stay awake—otherwise, we might miss God’s coming into our lives and join Jacob in saying “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it” (Gen 28:16). Curiosity is a way of maintaining both alertness and humility, for curious people know they don’t know everything and are prepared to be surprised and enlightened by God’s creation. An attitude of contentment helps us be grateful for what is and be fully present wherever we are.

We should not overlook the capacity of delight to lead us into contemplation. It was my delight in these three bright and whimsical little birds that led me to meditate on alertness, curiosity, and contentment. The next time you experience delight, let it lead you into contemplation and see what you discover!

Me and My Shadow

Humans distrust shadows; we have a natural tendency to wonder what might be concealed in the darkness. In movies, shadows are often an ominous sign and are used by film makers to build tension. At first glance, then, when the psalmist in Psalm 88 asks, “Can shadows rise and sing praise?” the answer would seem to be, “Of course not.” However, I think the answer to this question might actually be yes!

We all have a shadow side, which is simply those things about ourselves of which we are unaware. For example, I might be “blind” (in the dark) about the fact that I am overly competitive. (It’s perfectly natural to yell at the TV during Jayhawk basketball games, right?) However, our shadow self ironically provides a mirror of who we truly are, enabling us to ask if we need to make changes in our attitudes or behavior. As Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg say in The Promise of a New Day, “[Shadows] provide an additional opportunity to move closer to the person we are called to become.” In that sense, shadows can indeed rise (become known to us) and sing praise to a God who leads us to greater understanding and wisdom.

I recently attended a retreat at Sophia Center, “A Journal for the Journey,” by Sr. Thomasita Homan. One journalling technique she introduced was having a dialogue with someone or some aspect of our life, and it occurs to me that having a dialogue with my shadow might be helpful. I can talk to the competitive part of me as if is a person and ask why it’s part of me, what I gain from it, and how my life would change if I didn’t believe I always have to win. Instead of trying to banish my shadow, I can allow it to rise and eventually, I hope, sing praise.

Abandoning Our Nets

When Sr. Esther Fangman welcomed us at the beginning of mass on Sunday, she noted that it is not surprising that Jesus called fishermen to be his disciples, because people who fish typically have lots of time to meditate. Meditation provides time to listen to what God may be saying to us—and indeed, when Simon and Andrew heard Jesus say, “Come follow me,” they abandoned their nets and followed him.

I was struck by that term “abandoned their nets” in Mark’s gospel. Fishing was what Andrew and Simon had always known; it was their livelihood, and they were good at it. Yet they were able to abandon that safety net, so to speak, when God asked them to do something different.

We all have safety nets—they may be skills, bank accounts, relationships, beliefs, or typical ways of dealing with life. Safety nets can be helpful in navigating our world, but when we grow to depend on them instead of God, they can keep us from hearing and responding to the new life to which God calls us. If we, too, are to answer God’s call to be fishers of people, it appears we must take time for prayer/meditation and be willing to abandon our old ways of being, represented by our safety nets.

Walking With God

In my new class on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), we have learned that four different peoples contributed to the creation of the book of Genesis. It is interesting that the earliest peoples, the Yahwists, portrayed God as being intimate with humans—for example, walking with Adam and Eve in the garden—whereas the Elohim, who wrote after the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, saw God as being more distant and communicating through messengers, dreams, and prophets.

Meanwhile, in my Monastic History class, Sr. Judith Sutera has pointed out that humans theologize about what they experience. It makes sense that a people like the Elohim who have been defeated in war and exiled from their land would feel that God is far away from them and needs to be appeased through sacrifices.

In current times, we are blessed with the revelation that God chose to become human through the person of Jesus, as well as new insights from quantum physics about how everything in the universe is designed to be in relationship. As we theologize about that understanding, it seems that we have a God who wants to be intimate with us after all. It is we who cause alienation by trying to be like God without being willing to be human—we want knowledge and control now instead of having the humility to learn from experience, suffer weakness, and endure mistakes in order to gain wisdom, as noted by St. Irenaeus. Jesus, who was willing to be human, had a very intimate relationship with God, who he knew as Father. This connection between being human and closeness to God isn’t a coincidence. Thus we need to follow Jesus’ example and accept our humanness, with all its joys and sorrows, satisfaction and emptiness, and pain and contentment, knowing that God walks with us through it all.

Winter Blessings

Although recent frigid temperatures have many of us longing for the coming of spring, we actually have many good reasons to be thankful for the season of winter:

• Most people sleep better in rooms with cooler temperatures

• The air is cleaner because of lower ozone levels

• Cold temperatures kill disease-carrying insects, such as mosquitos and ticks, and tree-killing bugs, such as the emerald ash borer

• The cells in our body that fight infection increase when we are exposed to cold weather

• Cold temperatures reduce inflammation in our bodies

• More time indoors leads to increased connec-tion with far-away family and friends by phone

• Winter fosters our gratitude for warmth and light

The fortitude that we build in winter can cross over to our spiritual lives. Are we willing to stick out the days that lack sunshine and roses—when prayer seems stale, our energy is at a low ebb, or illness/death shakes our faith—trusting that these times also hold a blessing for us? Do we believe that God is present in trying times as well as in times of smooth sailing?

We can all learn from the faith-filled reaction of one of our monastic elders, Sr. Cyprian, when she was faced with surgery to have an eye removed. “Everything else in my life has always turned out okay, and this will too,” she said. All life holds blessing, whether the temperature outside is cold or hot, whether we have all our original body parts or not. As with so much of life, trust and gratitude are keys to finding the goodness that is our lifelong companion.

Do Something for Others

At morning prayer on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we listened to the following stirring words by Dr. King. He clearly was a man who “listened and inclined the ear of his heart” to scripture and used it as a guide for how to live. When I heard these words, I thought, “This is what it means to be a Christian”—though somehow, we tend to lose sight of Jesus’ call to service and sacrifice as we get wrapped up in our own day-to-day world.

Dr. King’s words lead me to ask myself, “Who do I choose to identify with? Who do I choose to give my life to? What way am I going? How am I going to respond to the voice I myself have heard saying, ‘Do something for others’?” It’s a worthwhile examination of conscious at the midpoint of the first month of the year—the setting of an intention that can transcend the preoccupations and focus on self that often fill our days.

I choose to identify with the underprivileged.

I choose to identify with the poor.

I choose to give my life for the hungry.

I choose to give my life for those

     who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.

I choose to live for and with those who find themselves

     seeing life as a long, desolate corridor with no exit sign.

This is the way I’m going.

If it means suffering a little bit,

     I’m going that way.

If it means sacrificing,

     I’m going that way.

If it means dying for them,

     I’m going that way,

     because I heard a voice saying,

     “Do something for others.”

                                            

                                                                                                                      — Martin Luther King Jr.

Tuning Our Ear to the Truth

At evening prayer on Thursday, a line from Psalm 49 caught my attention: “I tune my ear to the truth.” The best tuning fork at our disposal is the gospel, because when we attempt to live as Jesus did—forgiving, serving, being in relationship with God—we know we are walking the way of truth. As Joan Chittister says in Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, “Listen with a critical ear for the sound of the gospel in everything you do. And don’t do what isn’t a gospel act, no matter who says so, no matter who orders it, no matter how sacred the institution that demands it.”

In our complex world, it takes a lot of effort to tune our ear to the truth—to make sure we aren’t purchasing shoes that were made in a sweatshop or drinking coffee made from beans that were harvested with child labor or investing in the stock of companies that trash the earth. Tuning our ear to the truth often requires living simply as a way of avoiding the affronts to the gospel that are engrained in much of life in our society.

We can take comfort in knowing that if we keep our ears and hearts open, God promises to lead us in the way of truth. Let us pray that we and our world will be willing to undergo the tune-up we need to live more harmoniously in 2018.

Coming to Our Senses

As with so many things in life, we tend to take our senses for granted until illness or aging diminishes our ability to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. I’m currently contending with an eye infection, which means I will be wearing glasses instead of contact lenses for a couple of weeks. As a result, my depth perception has changed, and I need to be careful when going down stairs or stepping off curbs.  Although this infection is a nuisance, it does offer the unexpected gift of heightened gratitude for the awesome gift of sight—a gift of which I am rarely cognizant.

At one time in human history, the senses were uniformly seen as gateways to sin rather than gifts from a God who meets us through our interactions with the world. However, as the mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If humankind could have known God without the world, God would never have created the world.” We know the world, and thus God, through our senses. Indeed, Richard Rohr suggests that Jesus came as a human being to teach us how to be a fully alive human being here on this earth—Jesus, who enjoyed eating and drinking, who healed the sick and injured through touch, who heard God’s voice say that he was God’s beloved son.

We all have the impression that time passes more quickly the older we get. Our senses offer us the great gift of slowing down to contemplate and savor what we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. May we not wait until diminishment sets in to be aware of the gifts of our senses and use them to know God and enjoy being with God in the world.

The Work of Christmas

I have mixed feelings about the end of the Christmas season. The Myers-Briggs personality test shows that I am an “INFJ,” and as an introvert, I have had a surfeit of feasting and socializing. My intuition says it is high time to focus on the big picture again instead of the concrete details of holiday decorating and baking. My judgmental, organized self is ready to get back to the predictability of our regular prayer and meal schedule. On the other hand, the part of me that prefers feeling to thinking will miss the warmth of the Christmas lights and the good spirits generated by our daily reminders in prayer and song that God came to dwell among us and is here to stay.

Howard Thurman says that after Epiphany, “The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among people, to make music in the heart.” I don’t think we are able to do that work capably unless we somehow find a way to instill in ourselves a perpetual awareness of and gratitude for the wonder of the incarnation. Then we can participate in the life of God among us by doing the work of God. As Richard Rohr suggests, “When you get up in the morning, ask yourself, ‘What aspect of God, what aspect of love, am I being called to incarnate in the world today?’”

Illuminating God’s presence in the world may seem like a presumptuous task, but as Sr. Mary Faith said in her poem During the Night, once God became flesh “All flesh sees / its own glory too. / Wherever we are on the journey / to Him, we all feel better / about our path and love it as it is.” Christ was born for us, and that’s just as true for us in the ordinary time of January as it was in December’s season of Christmas.

The Light of Christ Surrounds Us

In our Christmas scripture readings, we hear John the Evangelist proclaim that “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.” Indeed, Christ the light infuses not just everyone but everything, as demonstrated in the lights from our Christmas creche that dance in the pitcher of wine on our altar table. The light of Christ brings life through the melding of Jesus’ incarnation and surrender to death, leading to the resurrection in which we all share.

With the feast of Epiphany approaching, we are invited to open our eyes to God’s light wherever it appears, even in the most unusual of places—for example, a glint on the bumper of a car, the silver hairs we see in the mirror, a golden thread unraveling from the edge of a towel. The light has come into the world. It is now up to us to develop the insight to recognize it and respond to this gift with joy and gratitude.

God's Magnetic Personality

I remember playing with magnets as a child and being fascinated by the strong attraction between the north and south poles that made them snap together and resist being separated. This memory surfaced because of a line in an article by Patty Fawkner, SGS, in which she compared God to a magnet.

When it comes to magnetic personalities, you might say that God is unparalleled! A magnet produces its own magnetic field that then interacts with other magnetic fields. The magnetic field produced by God is so powerful that it attracts all of us, even atheists (who, after all, spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about God).

Although we are made in the image of God, we are not God, so when we try to approach God as an equal (south pole to south pole), the action is repellant and we are distanced from God. However, when we go “true north” and remember who we are—persons who came into being through God’s love—our fields become aligned and we and God become a strong, almost inseparable force.

I like the idea of being attracted to God instead of being pursued by God (as with the “hound of heaven” image). God always extends the invitation to “come ‘round right” and be united in love. Stanley Mooneyham noted, “Love talked about can be easily turned aside, but love demonstrated is irresistible,” and God is constantly displaying love for us, most notably through the incarnation we celebrate during the Christmas season. May we enjoy the fruits of alignment with God in the year to come!

The Grace of Holy Perseverance

Instead of making New Year’s resolutions, one way to contemplate how we want to be in the world in the year ahead is to think of a word we can use as sort of a mantra to echo through the year. In a way, my word was given to me by the community when I began my canonical novice year, as sister after sister told me, “I wish you the grace of holy perseverance.”

In 2018, my main focus needs to be perseverance in my monastic studies and prayer. If Anna, the prophetess mentioned in the story of the presentation of Jesus in the temple, can withdraw from the world and pray for more than 50 years, I can certainly do it for another six months!

Perseverance is also a quality greatly needed in our society today—especially perseverance in advocacy for persons without health care, for children facing deportation because they were brought to the US illegally (“Dreamers”), and for the earth itself as it is endangered by global warming and overconsump-tion. As Elie Wiesel said, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

At a time when the world is greatly in need of squeaky wheels, may we all be blessed with the grace of holy perseverance.