Being an Arborist of the Spirit

This week when an arborist came to the Mount to prune our older apple trees, he noticed that some of the young trees we planted last spring are stressed because we have had such a dry winter. He recommended that we start watering these trees now, even though it is not officially spring yet.

Lent is an ideal time for pruning old branches that no longer serve our spiritual tree of life and for watering our thirsty roots. The word “Lent” comes from the Old English word “lencten,” which means “spring.” The season of Lent gives us the opportunity to be arborists of our spiritual life so new life can ”spring” forth. To be a spiritual arborist, we must perform the following tasks:

• Evaluate (give attention to) our overall spiritual health

• Trim areas that are draining us of life because they are dead or overgrown

• Water dry roots with silence and prayer so we are strong enough to provide oxygen, shade, and fruit for others

May you be blessed in your springtime tasks of attentiveness, pruning, and watering!

Blessing the Lord

Psalm 103 begins with these lines:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all within me, the holy name of God.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and never forget all God’s benefits.

For the psalmist, it is not just her soul but all within her that is to bless the holy name of God. As Mary also proclaimed, our whole being should bless God’s name—everything within us, including our tendency to be petty, discouraged, jealous, and selfish—because somehow even those parts of us know that God’s name is holy and that God has bestowed many benefits on us.

If we were to sit down every day and draw up a list of God’s benefits, a few new ones would come to mind now and then, but the following benefits would permanently reside on the list:

• The gift of creation, including earth and our own life

• A sense of security and trust that the universe is unfolding as it should

• Companions on life’s journey

• Grace in the tough spots

• God’s everlasting presence

The psalmist insists we should never forget these benefits, because when we forget we lack gratitude, and when we lack gratitude we are dissatisfied and unhappy. Thus it is not just receiving the blessings of God but blessing God in return that is necessary to live a whole and holy life. Blessed are you, Lord our God, who gives us the ability to remember and to bestow blessing!

Disciples of the Holy Spirit

Recently at Evening Prayer we sang a song, Dust and Ashes, with this lyric by Brian Wren:

Holy Spirit, come, walk with us tomorrow,

take us as disciples, washed and wakened by your calling.

I know what it means to be a disciple of Jesus—that is, to listen to his teachings and attempt to follow his example of letting love and service to others flow out of an intimate relationship with God. However, I had never thought about being a disciple of the Holy Spirit. What would such discipleship look like?

• Being a disciple of the Holy Spirit requires openness to the unexpected: You mean God is present there? You mean God wants me to do what? You mean I have to rethink what I’ve always believed?

• Being a disciple of the Holy Spirit requires traveling light, for your attachment to things will be consumed by a fire that cleanses and burns away the dross of life.

• Being a disciple of the Holy Spirit means entering into a loving relationship with the triune God, with the resulting call to creativity, obedience, and joyfulness.

Once thing is certain: Walking with the Holy Spirit as a guide means being AWAKE to possibility, to transformation, to the fullness of life. Boredom and complacency are not part of the vocabulary of disciples of the Holy Spirit!

A Prayer for Us All

We know that being human means we cannot escape suffering (of one kind or another) and death. Why, then, do we pray at these times if our prayer isn’t going to change those realities?

Humans have also learned over the centuries that to remember (re-member) is to make present. Therefore, prayer can be thought of as our way of making God present. When we remember God (which is one definition of prayer), God becomes present to us. Thus when Jesus called out on the cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he was, through his prayer of despair, making God present. And clearly God did become present to him, because Jesus was able to place his spirit in God’s hands with his last breath.

When we call on God, we have faith that, in spite of our pain and fear, our suffering and death will be transformed into new life. That takes a lot of trust. The writer Brian Doyle concludes his essay “A Prayer for Pete” with these words: “So a prayer for my friend Pete, in gathering darkness, and a prayer for us all, that we may be brave enough to pray, for it is an act of love, and love is why we are here.”

If the meaning of our time on earth is to learn to know and love God through the joys and limitations of being human, we’re only going to achieve that through the act of love that is prayer.

The Measure of Our Love

We tend to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what God wants us to do in this life we have been given, but the mystic St. Catherine of Siena makes it very simple: “You are rewarded not according to your work or your time but according to the measure of your love.” She also heard God say to her, “The soul, as soon as she comes to know Me, reaches our to love her neighbors.” Thus it stands to reason that if we do not find ourselves inclined to love our neighbors, we need to spend more time getting to know God.

But what shape should our love take, we wonder? What is the best use of our precious time? Jesus’ response is essentially that it doesn’t matter—we should respond to whatever needs we encounter each day: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (Mt 25:36). The nature of compassion is the same whether we are volunteering at a local food pantry, listening to the worries of a colleague, or watering a thirsty plant. As St. Benedict would say, “Listen and incline the ear of your heart”—then we will know how to respond in love to the needs we encounter.

With the following song lyrics, John Lennon graciously provided us with a catchy reminder of St. Catherine’s wisdom 580 years after her birth:

All you need is love

All you need is love

All you need is love, love

Love is all you need

Perhaps listening to this song would be a useful meditation during the season of Lent or anytime we find ourselves making the invitation to love more complicated than it really is.

Carrying God's Heart With Us

Today at mass, we sang a song by Marty Haugen that included the phrase “Return to me with all your heart.” However, the beginning of a poem by ee cummings offers another approach to being united with God: 

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

If we carry God’s heart with us, there is no need to return to God, for God is always with us. Indeed, as Psalm 139 reminds us, we are never without God; there is nowhere we can go where God is not present.

Perhaps a useful Lenten practice would be to find a small image of a heart (a pendant or pin, a stone, or clay in the shape of a heart) and carry it in our pocket throughout the day. In this way, we can be reminded,                                                                        as cummings says in his poem,

this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Lenten Hope

What are our hopes for the season of Lent? To grow closer to God? To “wash away the negligences of other times,” as St. Benedict proposes in his Rule? To rein in our self-indulgence and be more attentive to the needs of others?

Sr. Lynn Levo has noted that true hope is based on connection, attachment, and engagement:

• We need connection with others—the prayer and support of community—as we walk through the season of Lent together.

• We need to acknowledge our attachment to God by inviting the Holy One to “set your seal upon my heart and live in me,” as John Bell notes in his song Take O Take Me As I Am.

• We need to engage in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to give flesh to our hopes.

It is right that we should begin Lent with hope, for as Romans 5:5 indicates, “…hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Let us embark on this season in hope, then, confident that the irrepressible love of the Creator, Redeemer, and Spirit will continue to spill over into our Lenten lives.

Being In Communion With Others

When my mom and dad died, I remember thinking how much they would have enjoyed being at the luncheon that followed their funeral—visiting, remembering, catching up, laughing. At prayer on the morning of Sr. Mary Margaret Bunck’s funeral, I had a similar feeling as we sang this Invitatory, written by Daniel Schutte:

Ever on my lips, the praises of the Lord

Ever in my mouth, God’s music.

Through the dark of night, in morning’s golden light,

God’s praises I will sing.

Sr. Mary Margaret would have loved to be present to sing God’s praises with us, as she had done for the past 73 years of monastic life. However, one of the privileges of being human is that when the dead can no longer give voice to their praise and thanks here on earth, we can be their voice and sing for them.

God gave us bodies to lead us into communion with others—through seeing them, listening to them, sharing the taste of food and the scent of flowers, and offering affection and caregiving through touch. Just so, our bodies are the vehicle of communion with those who have died when we sing their favorite songs, eat their favorite foods, look at pictures of them, and take in hand the letters they wrote and the books they read. Thus we don’t have to wait to be one with the communion of saints—our bodies give us the opportunity to enjoy their company every day!

A Partnership of Listening

Our prayers recently have included two interesting references to voice. In the first instance, Judith says to God, “Let every creature serve you, for you spoke, and they were made. You sent forth your spirit, and they were created; no one can resist your voice” (Judith 16:14).

This verse was an appropriate meditation in the days after Sr. Johnette Putnam’s death, because she heard and responded to God’s voice at a very early age, entering her Benedictine community at age 15 years. She served God and her Benedictine family faithfully until her death at age 84 years, and as the stories about her life indicate, God’s “lively spirit” dwelled within her.  

Many of us do attempt to resist God’s voice, because we believe it is counter to our own will. Eventually, even if it is not until we are on our deathbed, we realize that we truly cannot resist the voice of the one who created us. As Sr. Johnette’s life illustrates, the earlier we listen to that voice and respond, the more time we will have to fashion a meaningful life of service and enjoyment of God’s friendship.

The other reference to voice in this week’s prayer was “The Lord bends to my voice whenever I call” (Ps 116:2). Apparently, we humans aren’t the only ones called to listen; God listens to us as well. That’s a rather humbling thought. However, it’s probably what gave Sr. Johnette the courage to take on the responsibilities of being prioress of her community, president of St. Scholastica Federation, and director of Sophia Spirituality Center, among other ministries. She showed us that responding to God’s call and trusting that we ourselves can call on God is the formula for a remarkable life.

Acknowledging Our Need for God

In the Old Testament, God makes choices about whom to favor. God prefers the offering of Abel, the second-born son of Adam and Eve, over that of his brother, Cain. God chooses to fulfill promises to Abraham through Jacob, also the second-born son, rather than through his brother Esau. Abraham’s line continues through Leah, the wife Jacob does not love, rather than through Rachel, Jacob’s beloved. Jesus is descended from Judah, the fourth-born son of Jacob, not from the first-born Reuben or the politically powerful and wealthy Joseph.

One thread through these choices appears to be that God chooses to work through those who know they need God. In their young adulthood Cain and Esau were both confident in their abilities as hunters and thus didn’t seem to have need of God. Rachel stole her father’s household gods, which can be taken as a sign that she didn’t have complete faith in her husband’s God. Reuben felt entitled to his status as first-born son, and Joseph felt secure in his wealth and power. On the other hand, Abel and Jacob were second born and thus not entitled to the same privileges as their older brothers. Leah was unloved by her husband. Judah was the fourth born of twelve and watched his father dote on his stepbrothers Joseph and Benjamin. It appears that Abel, Jacob, Leah, and Judah were more aware of their need for God, and thus God chose them for special favor.

Given this pattern in Scripture, it is not surprising that St Benedict denotes reverence for God as the first step of humility. When we are in right relationship with God—that is, when we acknowledge that we need God and that nothing else (our own skills, money, or power) can take the place of God for us—then God can be God in our life, work through us, and bless us. Jesus affirms God’s preference for the humble by seeking out the poor, the ill, and the shunned, who have one thing in common: they know they need God. When we ourselves learn to live with this awareness, we open the way for God to work through our lives too.

Lessons from Sr. Mary Katrina in Cultivating Joy

I will always remember Sr. Mary Kratina, who died on February 1, as being a joyful person. Whenever I came upon her in the hallway, she beamed at me and said, “I’m so glad you’re here!” That’s an expression of joy and affirmation you don’t forget.

Christians should be joyful to the core, yet few of us seem to be infused with that spirit. How did Sr. Mary Kratina achieve it? Based on the stories that others have shared about her, it appears that the following characteristics were key to her joyfulness:

• Sr. Mary was generous in giving of herself to her students, to her staff when she was director of laundry services, to her sisters in community, and to her family and friends. Generosity in giving of ourselves to others directs our attention away from our own worries and gives us the joy of being God’s instrument of care and compassion.

• Sr. Mary had a long memory of the kindness of others. She would remind you of her gratitude for something you gave her or did for her for months to come. Gratitude reminds us of our blessings and helps us develop a joyful spirit.

• Sr. Mary was very faithful in coming to chapel to pray with the community, even when she struggled to get around. Listening to God’s word reminds us of God’s love and mercy, which is the greatest source of our joy.

As St. Paul said of Philemon, I can say of Sr. Mary Kratina: “Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you, [sister], have refreshed the hearts of the Lord’s people.”