When do you you most let your life slow down? Is it in lectio? In the evening? In the morning before you begin your active day? When you vacation?
When I’ve traveled to a new place, I usually prefer to linger in one area and get to know it well — whether that’s hanging out by a cabin beside a lake, or walking around a friend’s neighborhood in San Francisco. In one afternoon at the Smithsonian, a new friend and I looked carefully at just the roomful of Madonnas with child, just to observe the iconography of animals in the margins and to notice changes in the style and themes over the centuries. Continue Reading
More reflections from Cynthia — nourishment for any new or reaffirmed resolutions we might consider as we approach a New Year in the middle of our Christmas celebrations of God’s incarnation. Here is Cynthia’s experienced wisdom about how to keep perspective and a sabbath sensibility, even when work responsibilities threaten to knock us out of sync with a sense of God’s presence:
Often, I fall into the trap of asking, “Why, God?” Why am I here, at this place, at this time? Why do these things happen to me and to those whom I love? Why can’t those I love make better choices? Why do bad things happen? Why do good things happen? Why am I me and not someone else more or less fortunate?
Instead of lectio this morning, I decided to visit the oblate blog and noticed a theme stretching across both Ric’s account of Abbot General Notker Wolf’s reflections at an international oblate gathering, and Sister Ruth’s reflections on inserting a verse about the whole earth belonging to God into her reading of a psalm. That theme is both challenge and promise: the challenge of living in a world of innumerable sufferings with a regular sense of the presence of God. 
By Sr. Ruth Ksycki, OSB
Benedictine Oblate Musings 