Reflection for April 29, 2009

Simplicity of life is what 

Sister Madeleva Wolff, CSC, called 

"the habitually relaxed grasp."

It isn't what we have accumulated,

in other words, 

that measures the simplicity 

of our lives; it's what we're willing 

to let  go of

when we must, when we should.

"If you wish to live, you must first attend

your own funeral," Katherine Mansfield wrote.

Put down your false expectations of yourself

and remember that you will die. Then, go out

and enjoy every minute of every day.

You have absolutely nothing to lose now and

nothing to fear.

Both quotes from Songs of Joy, by Joan Chittister, O.S.B.

reflection for April 22, 2009

Great Spirit, 

give us hearts to understand,

never to take 

from creation's beauty more than we give,

never to destroy wantonly 

for the furtherance of greed;

never to deny to give our hands 

for the building of the earth's beauty;

never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand 

that to destroy earth's music 

is to create confusion;

that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;

that to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;  

that as we care for her she will care for us.     Amen

                   U.N. Environmental Sabbath Program

Oh God of all, 

at this time of our gradual awakening 

to the dangers we are imposing

on our peaceful Earth, 

open the hearts and minds

of your children, 

that we may learn to nurture 

rather than destroy our planet.

Amen

Lorraine R. Schmitz

Reflection for April 15, 2009

Keep not thou silence, 

O God:

hold not thy peace, 

and be not still...

-Psalm 83

"In the end, there can be only a dread silence, 

a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: 

Why, Lord did you remain silent?"

-Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz, 2006

"It is when from the innermost depths of our being

... we cry out for an answer

and it is not given us --

it is then that we touch

the Silence of God."

-from Simone Weil

Reflection for April 8, 2009

The whole upstairs of space caved in that night;                                  

as though a drunken giant had stumbled over the sky -

and all the tears of the world came through.                                  

It was that. Like everyone hurt crying at once.

Trees bent to it. their arms a gallows for all

who ever died in pain or who were hungry, since

the first thief turned to Christ cursing...

Kenneth Patchen

Reflection for April 1, 2009

A green shoot grows
out of an old tree stump
announcing to the world
that power lies within death

All the resurrections
ever birthed in this world
find a sister in this green shoot growing
from the old wooden stump.

Things in me that have died,

They are waiting to give rise
to some green shoot
of a sister.

They are inviting me
to faith in resurrection
and reverence
for old tree stumps.

Joyce Rupp, Rest Your Dreams on a Little Twig, Sorin Books, 2003

One year, for my springtime birthday, David gave me
a new pot. In the pot was a crack, a wound he had
torn into it before the firing. Through the crack
grew a green shoot of ivy he had planted in the
hollow of the vessel. It sits on a bookshelf as a
reminder, a witness to the ways that new life seeks
its ways through the wounds.

"Anticipate resurrection," Terry Tempest Willianms
urges. In the deepest depths, in the hollws of our
lives and of our own flesh, there are luminous
thresholds whose edges we find only by tracing the
openings they offer. Christ, who in his
resurrection still bore the wounds of his
crucifixion, stands ever at the threshold. He is
both a tough and graceful companion, given as he is
to offering both challenge and comfort for the way.

Anticipate resurrection. Surely it comes.
Door by door, it comes.

Jan Richardson, Garden of Hollows: Entering the Mysteries of Lent & Easter,
Wanton Gospeller Press, 2006