Just Faith, Everyday

  To be in a spiritual wilderness is itself a powerful experience, and those who are willing seek to come to terms with that experience have massive steps to take. I’ve felt this wilderness for some time now, and I know you have, too. So many of us have felt the pain of betrayal, loss, and self-doubt in this past year alone. Now, in this time where many of us are transitioning, deciding how to see anew moving forward, how to start fresh in the practice of awareness, is something I think will make or break our world as we enter it. The beauty in the purification and emptying of self---this alone is a most satisfying and connecting way of prayer and meditation. It can start simple: sit and watch a bird, or some light at your favorite time of day. Listen to the quiet, or the noise, in your house, and fix on what makes it good. Let go some of your expectations and then note how this feels to you. Talk out loud, in any way you like or need, to the One who Created you. Emptying your...

  I already posted this month, and my reflection on this giant waiting room we’re in together still stands, but because it is the last day of the year, of THIS year, this interminable year, I want to leave you with one more reflection.  That the hardest of lessons we each experienced this year have real meaning for us now and forever.   It began for me on that bicycle I got back in April or May. It took awhile, but dawned on me that this bike, which is a one speed, simple, straightforward bike, was much like what I had as a youth. Moreover, that I was riding it as I did as a youth: I took the girls to the one flat cul de sac in the neighborhood and rode round and round and round it, over and over, to the point they got sick of it, the sheer repetition.   I, somehow, did not.   And this is where my realization began: that something from my youth had prepared me for the mundane, exceedingly boring, soul-killing repetition, the groundhog day effect o...

  The Incarnation.  A state of mind, a constant celebration. I think of those who want the trees and lights immediately as not being too far off the mark after all, as the presence of God *is* in fact here, and the Advent meditation on Incarnation is more about our wonder that God should choose to come among us, that he would meet us where we are in this complete and total way.  Fully present and here among us, if we would just be instruments for God’s peace and love.  The real focus comes in the whisper of *trust me* from our Creator. Every bit of the language of Isaiah, and the gospel of Mark and Matthew, shows us the light present in the darkness, shows us the impossibility of ne’re-do-wells and sinners as much as saints paving the way for this birth. The need to prepare a way. To make straight God’s path. We’re called into it, into the Incarnation, to become a part of the mystery. To dreams the dreams of Joseph and see as Mary sees, and to say yes to the invitati...

 Friends, it has been several months. It's been several...difficult months. We've been on this journey together. I wanted to just share with you something that happened yesterday that caught me and--as many things have in the past two months--forced me into staying in the moment. I thought you might find it something worth meditating yourself. I've been starting the process of my practice of spiritual direction, and it's been a joy. I could not have started this at a more chaotic time, really, and that's nearly undermined my efforts, but I am determined that nothing should keep me from the mandates God has given me: to serve others and lift up those who need lifting. I am learning and lifting myself, y'all. Yesterday, before finding out about Biden and Harris--literally a minute before--I had closed my direction session with a Catholic Center friend with a prayer to St. Joan of Arc. Many of you may know this most famous of female saints--born to a peasant family...

  During quarantine I have watched out my window at winter turn into the bright green of spring, and then that velvet green turn into something lush and leafy, with all the heat that counters the breeziness of the previous season. In recent days I have watched leaves start to one by one twirl down from the tops of trees, heading toward fall. In a way it feels like a slow or fast motion movie, depending on the day and how you feel.   But this week for me it feels special, because I have also reached a 5-year mark of learning and growth present in my rainbow baby, my youngest and long-sought child. She was born just as my greatest mentor died, and now we are five years on, and so much water under that proverbial bridge. So much. Yet these five months have felt like a learning of five years in some ways. Putting both time frames side by side I see parallels and suddenly my mind opens up like a lotus or some slow but sure opening flower, bent toward the sun. I see a long process o...

My favorite times of day are dawn and dusk, and now I really know why, in my core. In either case, darkness and light take time to come and go: the slow coming of darkness at dusk allows us color and shadow, a respite from the brightness of day, from its heat. The eking, little by little, of dawn’s rosy, sometimes pale yellow light, unfolding like a lotus, revealing the firmament. The passage of time, sure and slow and easy, familiar to us still in spite of all humankind has wrought, brings us these passages. Our Creator has made it so. In some ways this natural phenomenon tells us of our deepest fears and longings, of our evil and good, which are of a piece, whether we like to think of it that way or not. Coming out of this milestone 5 day silent retreat I have reacquainted myself with this truth. In this pandemic this has become a reality—again, whether or not we see it for each ourselves. I see it, clear as day, now. I see it in those I know who fight the good fight, who en...

I am deeply dismayed at the number of people I know trying to justify murder. Aghast, even. Countless comments with some justification to make sense of the immediate death and trampling of human life. It’s enough to make me want to crawl back into bed daily, or at least to question my friendships, scrutinize and wonder what has happened, or why some would choose to tighten their grip on what is clearly wrong. Yet Dr. King tells us now in a voice from the past to move forward: ““If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but by all means, keep moving.” Dr. King spoke this to inspire youth in 1967, and it speaks to us today, of course. Regardless of who or what stands in the way of the justice that comes from the Creator alone, something he acknowledged in his speeches and efforts to inspire. We are God’s hands and feet. Here’s the thing for me: right now so few are willing to look inside themselves that some outside justific...