"When God is going to do something wonderful, He always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He always starts with an impossibility."
"When a lot of things start going wrong all at once, God is trying to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born - and this something needs you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible."
-Anne Lamott (2x)
13 February 2008
One Heck of a Rag-tag Army...
"You've got to love this God - constantly assembling the motleyest people to bring, into the lonely and frightening world, a commitment to caring and community. It's a centuries-long reality show - Moses the stutter-er, Rahab the hooker, David the adulterer, Mary the homeless teenager. Not to mention all the mealy mouthed disciples. Not to mention a raging insecure narcissist like me"
from: "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith"
from: "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith"
12 February 2008
Simple Question. Simple Answer.
"It is possible to love God with your whole heart, mind, and soul, without forcing yourself to feel any emotion whatsoever. Simply will it. Will to love God, without making yourself feel anything. The will has only one function, to say yes or no. If you want to love God, just say yes. Forget the feelings. The Lord is pleased with your holy desire, and He blesses you for it."
- Fr. John Catoir, “Joyfully Living the Gospel Day By Day”
- Fr. John Catoir, “Joyfully Living the Gospel Day By Day”
11 February 2008
He's h-e-r-e!
"God does not abandon us...his love comes to us where we are, with our misery and our weakness, to offer us a new possibility of goodness."
Papa Bene - Letter to Romans on Education
Papa Bene - Letter to Romans on Education
O Sister, Where art thou?
Celebrating 150 years of their local ministry
By Jay Tokasz - The Buffalo News
Updated: 02/11/08 6:50 AM
Three hospitals, several high schools, a college and scores of elementary schools throughout Western New York can all find their origins in a midwinter horse-and-carriage ride from Rochester to Buffalo 150 years ago today.
That’s when three Sisters of Mercy and a candidate for admission into the religious order of nuns traveled into Buffalo at the request of Bishop John Timon, set up shop and began growing into a force that would irrevocably alter the area’s spiritual, medical and educational landscape... (more)
and, in the same edition: Churches may become museum
By Jay Tokasz - The Buffalo News
Updated: 02/11/08 6:50 AM
Three hospitals, several high schools, a college and scores of elementary schools throughout Western New York can all find their origins in a midwinter horse-and-carriage ride from Rochester to Buffalo 150 years ago today.
That’s when three Sisters of Mercy and a candidate for admission into the religious order of nuns traveled into Buffalo at the request of Bishop John Timon, set up shop and began growing into a force that would irrevocably alter the area’s spiritual, medical and educational landscape... (more)
and, in the same edition: Churches may become museum
Chin up!
From Cleveland's cyber-cleric:
“Blessed are you when you when they insult you.”You do more good than you know. You are the ones in the trenches. You are the ones who love despite the odds. Please do not be discouraged. Be true to God and to yourself and may He bless you abundantly in return for the sacrificial love you show Him."
“Blessed are you when you when they insult you.”You do more good than you know. You are the ones in the trenches. You are the ones who love despite the odds. Please do not be discouraged. Be true to God and to yourself and may He bless you abundantly in return for the sacrificial love you show Him."
09 February 2008
Pardon Our Dust
From Rocco:
As many of you know, few (if any) days of the calendar get larger Mass attendance than [Ash Wednesday]... even though it isn't obligatory.
And unusually early though it might be, it's almost too easy to simply go through the motions of another Ash Wednesday, another Lent, thinking in the process that, having done it for years before, we've "got it down."
If anything, a key message of this season remains a heightened awareness of how much ahead there is to do, how great our potential is to do better, to be better, to do more... and not just 'til Easter, and not just in the same way we did last Lent.
The story of this day is one of the more counter-cultural ones out there. The crux of Ash Wednesday is one that fascinates, and rightfully so: in a world -- and, indeed, in a church -- too often obsessed with appearances, with shirking blame and maintaining an image of perfection (sometimes at any cost), all that gets turned inside out: I'm far from perfect. I don't have all the answers. I can't go it alone. What I do matters beyond myself. I can be a better person than who I am right now.
Think of yourself as a construction site. You're a bit dusted up today, or you likely will be in a couple hours. No building rises or stands on its own, and the dust of putting one up didn't just magically appear -- like life, building is invariably a messy process if you're doing it right.
Along these lines, a work-site without dust is no accomplishment; no meaningful work would be getting done there, whether it's the foundations not being adequately driven in, the ground not being sufficiently cleared, maybe both.
A work-site isn't something to behold at mid-project... but the further along it gets, the more specific its work becomes, and the more the dust clears. And then, seemingly all of a sudden, what'd been a mess at the outset is transformed into something beautiful, useful, solid and lasting.
These days can easily become nothing more than a longing for whatever we've given up. But they're meant to be more than that -- and the more dust we kick up in the process, the better the finished product will be.
Bottom line: for yourself and those around you, let God build a better you this Lent.
As many of you know, few (if any) days of the calendar get larger Mass attendance than [Ash Wednesday]... even though it isn't obligatory.
And unusually early though it might be, it's almost too easy to simply go through the motions of another Ash Wednesday, another Lent, thinking in the process that, having done it for years before, we've "got it down."
If anything, a key message of this season remains a heightened awareness of how much ahead there is to do, how great our potential is to do better, to be better, to do more... and not just 'til Easter, and not just in the same way we did last Lent.
The story of this day is one of the more counter-cultural ones out there. The crux of Ash Wednesday is one that fascinates, and rightfully so: in a world -- and, indeed, in a church -- too often obsessed with appearances, with shirking blame and maintaining an image of perfection (sometimes at any cost), all that gets turned inside out: I'm far from perfect. I don't have all the answers. I can't go it alone. What I do matters beyond myself. I can be a better person than who I am right now.
Think of yourself as a construction site. You're a bit dusted up today, or you likely will be in a couple hours. No building rises or stands on its own, and the dust of putting one up didn't just magically appear -- like life, building is invariably a messy process if you're doing it right.
Along these lines, a work-site without dust is no accomplishment; no meaningful work would be getting done there, whether it's the foundations not being adequately driven in, the ground not being sufficiently cleared, maybe both.
A work-site isn't something to behold at mid-project... but the further along it gets, the more specific its work becomes, and the more the dust clears. And then, seemingly all of a sudden, what'd been a mess at the outset is transformed into something beautiful, useful, solid and lasting.
These days can easily become nothing more than a longing for whatever we've given up. But they're meant to be more than that -- and the more dust we kick up in the process, the better the finished product will be.
Bottom line: for yourself and those around you, let God build a better you this Lent.
Images for Lent
What is the meaning of lent?
Why do we set aside forty days each year to voluntarily give up some legitimate enjoyments so as to prepare for Easter?
The need for lent is written right into our DNA. Perhaps a look at some of images for lent can help make this clearer. Religiously the richest image we have for lent is the image of the desert, of Jesus going into there voluntarily to fast and pray. Scripture tells us that Jesus went into the desert for forty days and, while there, he ate nothing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that, literally, he took no food or water during that time, but rather that he deprived himself of all physical supports (including food, water, enjoyments, distractions) that protected him from feeling, full force, his vulnerability, dependence, and need to surrender in deeper trust to God. And in doing this, we are told, he found himself hungry and consequently vulnerable to temptations from the devil - but also, by that same token, more open to God.
The desert, by taking away the securities and protections of ordinary life, strips us bare and leaves us naked, both before God and the devil. This brings us face-to-face with our own chaos. That’s an image for lent. But we have some wonderfully rich anthropological images for lent as well. Let me briefly mention three of them.
In virtually every culture there is, somewhere, the concept of having "to sit in the ashes for a time" as a necessary preparation for some deep joy or fulfillment. We see this, for example, in the story of Cinderella. The name itself, Cinderella, holds the key: It is derived from two words: Cinders, meaning ashes; and Puella, the Latin word for young girl. Etymologically, Cinderella means the eternal girl who sits in the ashes, with the further idea being that, before she, or anyone else, gets to put on the royal clothes, go to the ball, and dance with the prince, she must first spend some time sitting in the ashes, tasting some emptiness, feeling some powerlessness, and trusting that this deprivation and humiliation is necessary to help bring about the maturity needed to do the royal dance. There is a similar concept inside some North American Native cultures, where it is accepted that, in everyone’s life, there will come a season where he or she will have to spend some time sitting in the ashes. For example, in some tribes, when they used to live communally in long- houses, the fires for heating and warmth were kept in the center of the house so that a partially open roof could function as a chimney. Ashes would, of course, accumulate around the fires and occasionally someone from the community would, for a period of time, simply sit in the ashes, quiet, withdrawn from ordinary activities, and take little food or water. Eventually a day would come when he or she would get up, wash off the ashes, and resume normal activities. Nobody asked why. It was taken for granted that this person was working through something, a depression or crisis of some sort, and needed that space, that quiet, that withdrawal, to work through some inner chaos and demons. In short, he or she was seen to need a lenten season.
A second image is that of being a child of Saturn. In some mythologies, Saturn was thought to be the planet that causes us to feel sadness and despondency. And so if you were a poet, an artist, a philosopher, a writer, or a religious thinker you would want, sometimes, to sit under Saturn, that is, to enter voluntarily into certain inner areas of the soul that ordinarily you might want to avoid precisely because they trigger chaos, sadness, heaviness, and despondency. Part of the idea was also that, occasionally in every person’s life, you would for a time become a child of Saturn, meaning that you would be overcome by a certain sadness and heaviness and would have to cease your normal activities and sit for a time with that, patiently learning some lessons that only a certain sadness could teach you. Again, the idea was that there is some necessary inner work that can only be done in sadness and heaviness and we need sometimes to enter these voluntarily.
Finally, there is yet another rich image in anthropology to can help us understand lent, the image of our own tears as re-connecting us to the flow of life. The image is simple: Our tears are salt water, as is the ocean which is ultimately the origin of all life on this planet. What our tears do is put as back into touch with the physical origins of all life on this planet, salt water. The idea then is that, occasionally, it is good to forsake the joys of life for the salt of tears because only tears can deepen us and help us connect to our origins and grounding.
Lent is meant to do exactly that.
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, omi
Why do we set aside forty days each year to voluntarily give up some legitimate enjoyments so as to prepare for Easter?
The need for lent is written right into our DNA. Perhaps a look at some of images for lent can help make this clearer. Religiously the richest image we have for lent is the image of the desert, of Jesus going into there voluntarily to fast and pray. Scripture tells us that Jesus went into the desert for forty days and, while there, he ate nothing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that, literally, he took no food or water during that time, but rather that he deprived himself of all physical supports (including food, water, enjoyments, distractions) that protected him from feeling, full force, his vulnerability, dependence, and need to surrender in deeper trust to God. And in doing this, we are told, he found himself hungry and consequently vulnerable to temptations from the devil - but also, by that same token, more open to God.
The desert, by taking away the securities and protections of ordinary life, strips us bare and leaves us naked, both before God and the devil. This brings us face-to-face with our own chaos. That’s an image for lent. But we have some wonderfully rich anthropological images for lent as well. Let me briefly mention three of them.
In virtually every culture there is, somewhere, the concept of having "to sit in the ashes for a time" as a necessary preparation for some deep joy or fulfillment. We see this, for example, in the story of Cinderella. The name itself, Cinderella, holds the key: It is derived from two words: Cinders, meaning ashes; and Puella, the Latin word for young girl. Etymologically, Cinderella means the eternal girl who sits in the ashes, with the further idea being that, before she, or anyone else, gets to put on the royal clothes, go to the ball, and dance with the prince, she must first spend some time sitting in the ashes, tasting some emptiness, feeling some powerlessness, and trusting that this deprivation and humiliation is necessary to help bring about the maturity needed to do the royal dance. There is a similar concept inside some North American Native cultures, where it is accepted that, in everyone’s life, there will come a season where he or she will have to spend some time sitting in the ashes. For example, in some tribes, when they used to live communally in long- houses, the fires for heating and warmth were kept in the center of the house so that a partially open roof could function as a chimney. Ashes would, of course, accumulate around the fires and occasionally someone from the community would, for a period of time, simply sit in the ashes, quiet, withdrawn from ordinary activities, and take little food or water. Eventually a day would come when he or she would get up, wash off the ashes, and resume normal activities. Nobody asked why. It was taken for granted that this person was working through something, a depression or crisis of some sort, and needed that space, that quiet, that withdrawal, to work through some inner chaos and demons. In short, he or she was seen to need a lenten season.
A second image is that of being a child of Saturn. In some mythologies, Saturn was thought to be the planet that causes us to feel sadness and despondency. And so if you were a poet, an artist, a philosopher, a writer, or a religious thinker you would want, sometimes, to sit under Saturn, that is, to enter voluntarily into certain inner areas of the soul that ordinarily you might want to avoid precisely because they trigger chaos, sadness, heaviness, and despondency. Part of the idea was also that, occasionally in every person’s life, you would for a time become a child of Saturn, meaning that you would be overcome by a certain sadness and heaviness and would have to cease your normal activities and sit for a time with that, patiently learning some lessons that only a certain sadness could teach you. Again, the idea was that there is some necessary inner work that can only be done in sadness and heaviness and we need sometimes to enter these voluntarily.
Finally, there is yet another rich image in anthropology to can help us understand lent, the image of our own tears as re-connecting us to the flow of life. The image is simple: Our tears are salt water, as is the ocean which is ultimately the origin of all life on this planet. What our tears do is put as back into touch with the physical origins of all life on this planet, salt water. The idea then is that, occasionally, it is good to forsake the joys of life for the salt of tears because only tears can deepen us and help us connect to our origins and grounding.
Lent is meant to do exactly that.
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, omi
06 February 2008
05 February 2008
04 February 2008
Pope Floats!
"In the Mainz Carnival procession today, a reference to the document on the nature of the Church - the Pope lights the Catholic candle, while backing into the Protestant candle - not a candle in the proper sense of the word."
All theological statements aside, WHERE IN THE WORLD DO YOU FIND ENOUGH TIME TO MAKE A POPE FLOAT???
All theological statements aside, WHERE IN THE WORLD DO YOU FIND ENOUGH TIME TO MAKE A POPE FLOAT???
03 February 2008
02 February 2008
On love...
"When Jesus was asked about beauty, he pointed to nature, to the lilies of the field. Behold them, he said, and 'behold' is a special word: it means to look upon something amazing and unexpected. Behold! It is an exhortation, not a whiny demand, like when you're talking to your child - "Behold me when I'm talking to you, sinner!" Jesus is saying that every moment you are freely given the opportunity to see through a different pair of glasses. "Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." But that's only the minor chord. The major one follows, in his anti-anxiety discourse - which is the soul of this passage - that all striving after greater beauty and importance, and greater greatness, is foolishness. It is, ultimately, like trying to catch the wind. Lilies do not need to do anything to make themselves more glorious or cherished, Jesus is saying we have much to learn from them about giving up striving. He's not saying that in a "Get over it" way, as your mother or your last horrible husband did. Instead, he's heartbroken, as when you know an anorexic girl who's starving to death, as if in some kind of demonic possession. He's saying that we could be aware of, filled with, and saved by the presence of holy beauty, rather than the worship of golden calves." Anne Lamott
"If we only knew how much God loved us, we would all be saints." - Unknown
"If we only knew how much God loved us, we would all be saints." - Unknown
On prayer...
"Prayer is not asking for what you think you want -- it is asking to be changed in ways you can't imagine" - Anne Lamott
And I always end my prayer with, "and bring this about in a way I'd least expect, so that I know you have your hand in it" - Gene Monterastelli
And I always end my prayer with, "and bring this about in a way I'd least expect, so that I know you have your hand in it" - Gene Monterastelli
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