Less than Three Months

Yes, there are less than three months until I enter the community.

I am so glad that it is coming soon, and also happy that I have some time to prepare. The semester is ending this week, and so I will be working on my own projects as well as the Big Move.

I'm trying to be more conscientious about this blog, but I really don't have a lot to say! I am at peace--and maybe that's the biggest thing I can say. My heart is peaceful. There seems to be so much to do before I'm ready to go, but I'm happy that I will be entering community, and the details seem pretty insignificant right now. Perhaps complicated, but insignificant.

The picture above is a stained glass of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, from the chapel at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart in Houston, where I visited last week. The chapel is lovely, and this window is the highlight. There are also windows there of Philippine and Mater Admirabilis.

Holy Week and Easter

Jesus is Risen! Alleluia!

I love Holy Week and Easter, but it always throws me off track a bit. Part of it is simply the different schedule. Since I sing in the church choir, I'm there for everything, usually including Wednesday evening practice. I love all of the services, but there doesn't seem to be enough time to do them all and to get a full night's sleep.

But part of the reason I find the season difficult is all the emotions. On Thursday, we celebrate ministry, and this year I found myself reflecting on the great value of each individual's contribution. The whole of humanity was present Thursday, represented by the twelve who came up for the footwashing, male and female, old and young, of different nationalities. All had their feet washed by the priest. It was beautiful.




On Good Friday, we see the starkness of death, of loss, of the pain and suffering of Jesus. We also do the extended general intercessions, where we pray for people of all backgrounds throughout the world. We are reminded that Jesus suffered and died for each of us, but that there is still suffering all around. It is a painful day, a black day--and in fact, they used to wear black vestments on Good Friday. I'm glad that's not the practice any more.

Holy Saturday is just a weird day. Jesus is in the tomb--what do we do? Traditionally, this is the day we believe that he "harrowed hell," and released from death those who were holy, and brought them to heaven. It is a day of silence, and (since we know something big is coming) of preparation.



And then there is the joy of the Easter celebration. The Easter Vigil lies between, connecting the sorrow of death with the joy of the Resurrection. The rituals march us through the transition -- from darkness into light, from the Old Testament into the Gospel, from silence into joyful song with bells and organ. The Exsultet, sung at the beginning prepares us for what is to come:

Rejoice, heavenly powers!
Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

It makes me grin -- and cry -- every time. The joy is so palpable!



Images: www.godweb.org, www.ibiblio.org, www.southsidebaptistgriffin.com

So Much to Do

I feel like I've been neglecting this humble blog! It's certainly not intentional, but there just seems to be so much that must get done!

That said, all is well. My spiritual director spoke with me about contentment this week. He has great reflections on that word, and I hope he writes about it soon. We talked about how being content with your life (with all the content of your world, self, mind, etc) makes everything seem right, and enables you to follow God's call.

I realized that I am quite content. Yes, there is a lot to do. Yes, my world is changing very drastically, and very soon. But I'm content. I like what's going on, and I know God is with me, leading me on this mysterious journey. I'm happy, but it's that happiness of contentment--of satisfaction with my life and world.

On another note, I've been receiving some wonderful email notes from sisters who've heard that I will be entering the Society. They are often words of encouragement and joy. Most have a few words of advice. The best message I've received is a reminder that God is always faithful, and that if I trust in God, all will be well.

I'm content, happy!

Image from www.strobertparish.org

Beginnings and Endings Friday Five

The following comes from RevGalBlogPals. Conveniently, the questions are things I was reflecting on yesterday:


This Celtic Mandala represents life, noting how days and years turn from one to another. As we have stepped from 2008 into 2009 some of us look back with joy and others with sadness; probably most of us with a mixture of the two.

As we look back we may come to understand how God has worked in and through us in joy and sadness. how we have grown against what may seem impossible odds. As we look forward we may do so with expectation, and we may do so with fear and trembling. As we look back and forward in New Years liminality I offer you this simple yet I hope profound Friday Five in two parts:

First list five things that you remember/ treasure from 2008

Then list five things that you are looking forward to in 2009

As you read one anothers blogs today I challenge you to leave a word of encouragement and pause to pray for each member of Revgals as we step into a New Year. I leave you this New Year Blessing from the Iona Community:

We stand to face the future:

God behind us in the past

Christ before us; the way ahead;

Christ beside us in this moment;

Christ beneath us in our weakness;

Christ above to shield us-

beneath the shadow of his wings we are safe;

Christ between us to bind us in the unity of his love;

Christ in us equipping us with his all sufficient grace.

Thus armed and guided, and protected we face the new year.

Now we arise and go forth on the journey before us,

knowing that, where Christ leads, life is a journey home.

Therefore we travel in faith, in hope, and in love,

in the name of the Father/ Mother, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

May the blessing of God

be upon us

all this year

and into eternity. Amen.

Five things I remember and treasure from 2008:

1. Beginning and going through the application process for the RSCJ. It's been a long road that's not over yet, but I have learned so much about myself. I think also that in the process I am becoming a stronger person and more confident in who I am.
2. Spending time with my best friend as she prepared to have her first baby. I will meet the baby next week!
3. Becoming more at ease in a new place. I moved here in 2007, and 2008 has been a year of greater comfort, more friends, and finding a place in this community. It is good even though I will be leaving this community over the summer.
4. Spending time with the sisters at the retirement facility in California. I spoke with one sister for awhile and she said some things about religious life that I will never forget. She said that you have to "date God" and never stop. That this is a beautiful thing, and one that brings great joy. She also has the gift of tears, and she simply radiated joy and love. It was a very special conversation, as were others with those sisters.
   
5. I am thankful for the many weeks I have been able to spend with the sisters. Each time I am with them, no matter where it is (New Orleans, St. Louis, San Francisco, Chicago....) it feels more and more like the place I want to be for the rest of my life. I am grateful that I have had the many opportunities to stay with them and to become a part of their lives as they become a part of mine.
   

Things I look forward to in 2009:

I'm ignoring the whole "five" thing just to explain what I look forward to. I'm hoping this year will be one of profound life changes, as I become more and more who I am and who God wants me to be. It's exciting and a bit scary at the same time, but for today at least, I am up for the adventure!

The year of new adventures begins (I hope) with acceptance into the Society of the Sacred Heart. I should hear the final word in February, and so then I can begin to think more about the next year, as we discern together where I will go and what I will be doing. The possibilities are pretty open, though I hope to continue teaching at the college level for the next year as well.

I'm looking forward to living in a house, in community with the sisters, even though I know it will be a challenge.

I'm looking forward to a new city, a new job, a new form of life. Again, these things are challenging, but they are also (I hope) full of blessings.

So, this year will be one of blessings, one of friendship, one of growing relationships. And one of hope. May each of you have a year full of God's love as well.

The Word

And the Word became flesh

and made his dwelling among us,

and we saw his glory,

the glory as of the Father's only Son,

full of grace and truth.

May we always remember the great gift we have received when Christ humbled himself to share in our humanity, to experience our joys and sufferings, our love and our worries. I pray that we can find comfort in the fact that all the hardships and all the blessings we receive were experienced by Jesus also, that we are not alone in our journey.

I pray that we find the Love we need and seek, in our family, friends, and in God. I pray that through love, we each might experience the healing that will make us whole.

Image from antiqueclipart.com.

God Acting

I've been thinking a lot about God in action. My spiritual director talks about "God-acting" and this idea has stuck with me.

God never changes, and God created us. So if God once created, then God is always creating, because to stop creating would be to change. The Creator God is Creating God, always acting in every one of his creations to keep us going.

There's a second side to the image, too. God is always making us holy. We are sinful, human, full of mistakes, but God makes us holy, and God is always making us holy.

Perhaps that's good to remember when I feel especially sinful or unworthy of God's love. I'm worthy of God's love because God is making me holy--because God says I am worthy!

With that, I feel humbled by God's greatness.

Advent Friday Five--Simplicity, Light, and Beauty

There is a lovely reflection on Advent at the source for this Friday Five, RevGalBlogPals. I'll quote part of it here:

Advent calls us into the darkness, a time of quiet preparation, a time of waiting, and re-discovering the wonder of the knowledge that God is with us. Advent's call is to simplicity and not abundance, a time when we wait for glorious light of God to come again...

Christ is with us at this time of advent, in the darkness, and Christ is coming with his light- not the light of the shopping centre, but the light of love and truth and beauty.

What do you long for this advent? What are your hopes and dreams for the future? What is your prayer today?

In the vein of simplicity I ask you to list five advent longings....

My five advent longings:
1. Peace. Above all peace. Peace in our churches, among our churches, in our nation, in every nation on earth. Peace in each person's heart. Peace given to our environment, as we take what we need from the earth. Peace in our dealings with everyone that we meet and in every action that we take. I keep dreaming of a day when peace will reign on earth, and I hope that this dream will continue to unfold in the world.

2. Along with peace goes Love. I am drawn to the phrase from a movie from a few years ago, "Love Actually Is All Around." So it is! God our Creator is Love! And God is with us always and everywhere, loving us into being, creating us constantly and lovingly. It's such a beautiful image of God--that never-stopping love and creation.

I've been thinking lately too, that we see much violence and hatred. But I think if we each consider our everyday encounters with others, we will discover that most people in this world run on love, are ruled by love. Only a few are ruled by hate, and unfortunately they get the attention of the news.

3. An End to Fear. (Yes, I know these are all theological idealisms... but what else can a theologian do??) Would it not be beautiful if each of us could live our lives detached from our possessions and concerns in such a way that we no longer act out of fear? What do we have to be afraid of? In the end, even our greatest fears have been conquered by the Risen Christ. [I say all that knowing that fear is one of those things that haunts my world just as it does everyone else's.]

4. Reducing Materialism. There is a beautiful program to that effect called JustLiving. I can't find the website right now, but I'll figure it out and put it up later today. There are additional benefits to reducing our materialistic tendencies as well: it reduces our usage of the earth's resources, and it reduces our trash.

Update: I found it! Check out the website for Just Living!

5. HOPE! Hope in all the goodness within us and within our world, created by Love. Hope that Christ is coming again to draw us to himself. Hope that love and peace will prevail over fear.

Feast of the Assumption of Mary!

Happy Feast!

I have to admit that I have never been particularly devoted to the Blessed Mother. But, as I learn and read more, I am coming to appreciate her more and more.

I was asked to give a talk today on things Marian. I chose to use that invitation as motivation to finish reading Elizabeth Johnson's Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. It's a wonderful book, focusing on Miriam of Nazareth--the human person, living in a particular time and place.

So, I presented some of the material, and then reflected on the Magnificat with Johnson's assertions in mind. I'd like to share some of that reflection here.

The text of the Magnificat that I used is from the People's Companion to the Breviary:

My soul proclaims your greatness, O my God,

and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.

For your regard has blessed me, poor, and a serving woman.

From this day all generations will call me blessed,

for you, who are mighty, have done great things for me;

and holy is your Name.

Your mercy is on those who fear you, from generation to generation.

You have shown strength with your arm.

You have scattered the proud in their hearts’ conceit.

You have put down the mighty from their thrones,

and have lifted up the lowly.

You have filled the hungry with good things,

and have sent the rich away empty.

You have helped your servant Israel,

remembering your mercy,

as you promised to Abraham and Sarah,

mercy to their children forever. (Luke 1:46-55)

My reflections:

The history of the Hebrew people is bound up in their deliverance from overbearing political leaders, from those who do not believe in Yahweh.

Yet there is a challenge here also, a hope that the world is not going to remain in the oppression that is being experienced.

By remembering God’s acts, the community remembers that God will do this again—God will always lift up the lowly, will always isolate the proud to their own inner dissatisfaction, will always pull the mighty from their powerful positions.

What does that mean for us? Are we the lowly or are we the proud? Certainly, for Mary, the lowly were those who were quite literally at the bottom of society—the slaves, servants, peasants, farm workers, “blue-collar” people who live from paycheck to paycheck.

But what about us? What about me? It is so easy to say that I am one of the “spiritually humble,” one who acknowledges my own lowliness before the God who is all-powerful and all-merciful.
- But do I recognize the power I have over other people, the opportunities that my socio-economic status has given me that others do not have, through no fault of their own?

What do I do about it?

Am I content to live my comfortable life and ignore the needs of those in my world, my country, my city, my street?

How much am I willing to pull myself down, as God pulls down the mighty from their thrones?

How much am I willing to see what God sees and attempt to remedy the injustice in the world? How have I helped in God’s task of lifting up the lowly?

Down from the clouds

Well, in my last post, I was still on that just-returned-from-retreat high. I have to say that it has gone away. I am back to normal everyday work, which means teaching summer classes. It's going well (and quickly--the summer session is already half over).

I am also finishing the application for the Society. It is lengthy--about 20 pages of forms and short-answer questions, and then an "autobiography" section. I'm guessing that it is pretty similar to most religious orders nowdays. It also has gone surprisingly well, and I hope to turn it in in a couple of weeks. Just have a few things to collect first...like a baptism certificate, proof that I am actually Catholic! (I really am! I promise!)

I mentioned before that the spirituality conference gave me a new sense of love for God's creation. Several things have caught my eye lately in that regard. I finally started bringing canvas bags to the grocery store after reading (not for the first time) about how many end up in landfills and oceans, and how they come from petroleum.

I was also caught by the post over at Musings of a Discerning Woman, on the Jubilee Act that is going up for vote in the Senate shortly. It concerns debt cancellation for poor countries.

The Legislative Alert Center that she posted is an easy way to contact your senator.

Until later!