The Fruits of Struggle

A plant on top of a bookcase in my office is practically crawling out of its pot in an effort to reach the light from a nearby window. Nonetheless, the plant is blooming!

Is struggle necessary for us to bloom? We shouldn’t have to struggle to reach God’s light, because it is around and within us—but often we do have to struggle for the insight to recognize it. Light can be disguised in any number of ways: in a word of encouragement, a smile, a song on the radio. We know that what we are drawn to is holy if it gives us a lightness of spirit and the inspiration to contribute our own beauty to the world.

Although most of us would prefer to avoid struggle, it teaches us endurance, perseverance, and humility. May we see God’s light this day and share the fruits of our struggles with each other.

Writing Straight With Crooked Lines

Yesterday at Benedictine College I spoke to students in two Benedictine Spirituality classes about how I came to join a Benedictine monastery. Public speaking is low on my list of preferred activities, but the invitation prompted me to reflect on how God writes straight with crooked lines, to use a phrase coined by Charles Peguy. It was almost like an opportunity to go back and talk to my 20-year-old self.

I told the students that I believe God’s will for each of us is not specific (e.g., which particular occupational and vocational path we should follow) but general, in that God wants us to live in love and participate in God’s work of creation—that is, continually making all things new. As Sr. Mary Faith said in one of her poems, “God is not an authority on anything but love.”

I remember feeling that religious life felt too confining when I discerned about becoming a sister upon graduating from college. I then embarked on a 30+ year journey of seeking community and learning how to follow the guidance of the Spirit through my intuition. The crooked lines eventually led me back to the Mount, where now the vowed life feels more freeing than confining.

I concluded by telling the students, “I guess what I’d say to you is not to sweat too much about the specifics of what you should be doing with your life. Trust that God will be able to work with whatever decisions you make. Seek to be an authority on love, as God is. Learn to listen to the voice within, and when you experience change, remember that God is on the midst of it, making all things new.” Would it have made a difference if someone had told me that when I was 20 years old? I don’t know. We probably have to live our way into that knowledge. But we can never have too much reassurance that we are called to participate in God’s life of love and creativity.

Wintertime Lessons in Stability

It’s cabin fever time of year in Kansas—late January, with its gray skies, sniveling drizzle, and cold temperatures. The solution for people who do not take a vow of stability is often to follow the sun to places with more temperate climates and thus escape winter weather for a while.

Many people fail to see the benefits of stability. For example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said, “A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.” I guess that means that monasteries are seedy places, which is as it should be—places where the seed falls to the ground, dies, and arises to new life.

Once I asked my Uncle Barney if he wanted to do any traveling. “Heck, I haven’t even seen all of Doniphan County yet!” he replied. He was a person of the seed too, being a farmer all his life. When you stay in one place you learn its treasures, even in winter—that everything needs time to rest, to just be in the darkness and silence until it’s time to burst into new life.

Every day we have a little more light at the end of the day. Spring is coming—but not yet. These are the days for hunkering down, for experiencing the simplicity, the stark beauty, the calmness of winter. If we try to rush through it, we’ll miss out on its blessings, even if they are not the blessings we most desire.

Being a Meeting Ground

The following lyric from Diverse in Culture, Nation, Race by Ruth Duck caught my ear today:

God let us be a meeting ground

where hope and healing love are found

Hope and healing love are found in, with, and through Christ. Therefore, the way for us to facilitate hope and healing is to allow people to encounter Christ in us—to carry that meeting ground with us wherever we go.

In his book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, Edward Hays says this to God: “May I also be one with all who fail to worship you, with all who reject you and your dream because those of us who profess to be Jesus’ disciples have failed to be living examples of your love and justice.”

Jesus was a meeting ground where the outcast, the marginalized, the destitute, and the broken—along with the wealthy, the powerful, and the spiritually blind—could experience God’s love and mercy. To be true to our calling as Jesus’ disciples, we must cultivate that meeting ground within ourselves by remembering that all people are beloved of God as surely as we are and thus deserve our attention, care, and respect, even when they behave badly. What other possible way can transformation occur?

Hope and healing love will not be found unless we have the humility to extend them to others as, to our great joy, Christ has extended them to us.

Living and Dying with Grace and Gratitude

Since I joined the Mount community, Sr. Laura Haug has been an exemplary model of the graciousness and gratitude that flows from the decision to let go of what has been and live simply. In every group of sisters she lived with, she requested the smallest bedroom. With every life transition, from retiring as an education professor at Benedictine College to making the decision to move to Dooley Center, she adapted to her new circumstances with equanimity. Thankfulness was integral to her life, whether she was sharing a simple breakfast with friends or making daily treks past the large windows she so appreciated in the hallways of Dooley Center.

Now that Sr. Laura has died, it is no surprise that she let go of her earthly life with grace and ease. Upon learning she had bleeding in her brain, she firmly rejected extraordinary measures and asked to return home to die in her own bed. Francis Bacon once said, “Death is a friend of ours, and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.” In true Benedictine fashion, Sr. Laura offered hospitality even to death itself.

The following poem by Sr. Mary Faith Schuster seems like an appropriate meditation as we  say goodbye to Sr. Laura. Though she has left the earth with her utter peace, she has given us a model for how to achieve that peace ourselves.

For the Saints

Those who die take their everlastingness

along with them. They leave the earth

with some abandon and some utter peace.

They will pray that we can follow their example

And let go the flowers and the fences

and the rooftops where sparrows hold

their dignity. We give up every realm

to enter another. We cannot keep hoarding

the voices of eternity. One holds the whole

and cannot keep accumulating.

Let the saints go home. Oh God give them

their peace and give us here

the sound of morning and the endless view

of everything on earth that speaks of you.

                         Mary Faith Schuster, OSB

When It's Time for a New Ritual

Many of our rituals are meaningful and comforting because we perform them often and know what to expect, whether it is singing the “Happy Birthday” song, placing flowers on graves on Memorial Day, or decorating a tree to celebrate Christmas. However, some occasions are one-time events, calling us to use our creativity to craft a new ritual.

Today provides just such an opportunity. What will you do to mark the one and only time you will experience the 20th second of the 20th minute of the 20th hour on January 20, 2020? This event calls for a new ritual. Here are some possibilities:

• Share a list of 20 things you are grateful for with a friend or family member

• Say a prayer for 20 people who especially need your support this day

• Write a check for $20 to give to your favorite charity

• Do a 20-lap circular meditation walk

• Recall 20 sweet events from your life as you eat 20 M & M’s

The 20th second of the 20th minute of the 20th hour on January 20, 2020, will be fleeting, but ritualizing it will help us enter a different time frame in which every moment of our lives is precious and to be savored. Enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience!

How To Be a Vessel of God's Goodness

Most of us prefer to hide or ignore our limitations and define ourselves by what we accomplish. However, every once in a while, someone comes along to remind us that God values us because of who we are, not because of what we do.

For the past three years or so, Patricia Fangman was that person for us at the Mount. The niece of Sr. Esther Fangman, Patricia came to live at Dooley Center as her health began to decline. Patricia had Down syndrome, and in the eyes of the world, she didn’t accomplish great things; her life’s work consisted mainly of doing chores in an elementary school cafeteria and visiting/reading to residents at Atchison Medicalodge.

Patricia didn’t so much gift the world by what she did but by who she was. She had a spark of wit, will, and indomitability that prompted her parents to lead the fight for handicapped persons and families to obtain educational and support services from the public school system. Within a few years, the school system adopted a mainstreaming program that has now benefited generations of handicapped children.

Patricia displayed a strong sense of integrity, being true to her sense of right and wrong, and was faithful in prayer. She was tenderhearted, compassionate, fun loving, and fiercely loyal to family and friends. She demonstrated that dignity and self-confidence does not come from what we accomplish but from being fully ourselves, which includes both our gifts and our limitations.

At Patricia’s funeral the church was packed with people whose lives she had touched—family, former colleagues, Mount sisters, caregivers, and a network of friends from the town and Benedictine College. Three priests concelebrated at her funeral mass. It was a remarkable display of how God’s love flows through us when we allow ourselves to be vessels of God’s goodness, despite or perhaps because of our imperfections.

A Prayer for Ordinary Time

Now that the Christmas/Epiphany season has officially ended with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, many sisters have commented that they will miss the warmth and cheer provided by our many decorations, especially the tree and wreath in the dining room and the creche in the Choir Chapel. However, as Sr. Mary Faith Schuster reminds us in the following poem, Ordinary Time also has much to commend it as we join God in living into a new year.

        A Prayer for Ordinary Time

             I look for something

        different to praise You with,

          something saints used

                and all I hear

      are birds in early morning,

                     all I see

           the sidewalks fringed

         with grass

           footsteps of rain at night

            feeling of sweet well-being.

            You are simple too; this chorus

            at dawn

            of all that’s good

            surrounds my soul

            and comforts me

           with sense of You

            at work

            smiling and singing

            and living,

            always living.

Surrounded by Grace

One day recently the thought occurred to me that grace pools around us, and that thought morphed (appropriately) into the following poem. Whatever happens this day, I trust that you will be surrounded by grace. Look carefully, and you'll see that it is all around you.

Chameleon

 Over eons, grace

has perfected

the art of hiding

in plain sight

by shape shifting—

Here a tissue

offered to dry

tears of exhaustion,

there the sparkle

of a ring affixed

to a woman’s finger

for more than 50 years,

Always wafting

on the milky breath

of a newborn

and on breezes

that fortify crews

of sweaty roofers,

And if you look

askance, you can see

her in the cat’s offering

of a dead mouse

and in valentines

scrawled for mothers

of second-graders.

Through a lifetime

of constantly changing

circumstances, she is

the chameleon found

wherever beauty abounds

and kindness quickens,

a sly yet steadfast

reminder that all

of us live continually

in a state of grace.

The Slow, Slow Work of God

Many people are aware that the hymn Amazing Grace was written by a man named John Newton who was engaged in the slave trade in the mid 18th century. As reported in the Writer’s Almanac on January 1, 2020, “In 1748, aboard the slave ship Greyhound, Newton called out to God to save him during a violent storm. It wasn't the first time he had found religion in times of crisis, but this was the first time it stuck. Even so, his conversion was gradual, and he stayed with the slave trade for several more years.” Newton ended up being ordained in 1764 and was a vicar in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, when he wrote the verses to Amazing Grace.

What I find interesting about this story is that Newton didn’t immediately change his slave- trading ways after his terrifying experience in the storm; rather, his change of heart occurred gradually over a period of years. Although the conversion of St. Paul is depicted as being instantaneous, he too had to undergo a period of darkness before his eyes were opened and he was baptized. Conversion is not an event but a process, which should provide encouragement to us as we attempt to put on the mind of Christ. As Teilhard de Chardin counsels, “Above all, trust in the slow, slow work of God.” Eventually, that slow work led John Newton and St. Paul to write hymns and epistles that have provided comfort and inspiration to millions of people. Who knows where it might lead us?

The Whatness of God

The solemnity of Epiphany is a beautiful feast with many throught-provoking symbols. Today in the Writer’s Almanac, it was noted that the writer James Joyce “…gave us a secular meaning of ‘epiphany,’ using the word to mean the ‘revelation of the whatness of a thing,’ the moment when ‘the soul of the commonest object [...] seems to us radiant.’ This meaning, however, is not only secular but sacred.

The birth of Jesus was a revelation of the “whatness” of God. What is God? Along other things, God is one who, out of love, takes on our human form to experience what we experience—birth, nurturing, persecution, maturation, vocation, work, relationship, pain,  consolation, suffering, death, and resurrection. In doing so, God expresses a desire for intimacy with us and “crowns us with love and compassion” (Ps 103:4).

When our eyes are opened to the “whatness” of God, we understand that God’s essence is in all things, that we are all connected through the body of Christ, and everyone and everything seems radiant. As Thomas Merton described in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . .”

In the revelation of the “whatness” of God, we see reflected the “whatness” of ourselves and each other, which is cause for great joy. May the radiance of Epiphany remain with us and help us see ourselves and others as we really are—one in the love of God.

A Word for 2020

Each new year always includes discussion about resolutions, but we have other options for contemplating how we want to approach a new year of life. I have come to appreciate the suggestion by Christine Valtners Paintner that we allow a word to surface that we can carry with us in the coming year.

This morning as I was praying with Psalm 104, which considers God’s life-giving breath, I thought about how seldom I take time to simply enjoy breathing. I use this gift of breath approximately 12 to 20 times per minute (17,000 to 30,000 times a day!), but I’m seldom consciously aware that I am breathing. Similarly, I’m seldom fully present to what I’m doing throughout the day, simply moving from each activity or task to another in an effort to meet the demands of daily life. I felt a longing to live more consciously, or as Sr. Imogene Baker used to say, “Be where you are and do what you are doing.”

What word encapsulates that desire? After considering several options, I settled on “presence.” I want to be present to my life in 2020. I want to resist my inner tyrant that demands productivity and is constantly looking ahead instead of being where I am and doing what I’m doing. When I find myself rushing or getting anxious about what is undone, the tool for regaining a state of presence is as close as God’s breath within me.

Last year, the word that came to me was “contentment.” This year, “presence.” As our lives evolve, the Word of God comes to us in different ways to guide us. May you be guided to a word that nourishes you in the coming year.