Recently, in thanks for a small contribution to “Home of Hope India” (which helps neglected, abused and abandoned girls in Southern India), I received a wonderful gift: a copy of In Due Season: A Catholic Life–autographed, no less, by its author, Paul Wilkes. (He is also executive director of “Home of Hope India.”) Continue Reading
Benedictine values
Cultivating Stability
The greatest gift we can cultivate in our lives and give to those around us is stability. My parents were models of stability, working, tending, helping. To say they were pillars of the community is an understatement. “Busy” and “doing” were their by-words. Continue Reading
Foreign Travel
In both a recent interview published in CONNECTING POINT (Autumn 2009) and a story posted on the SMM oblate blog/facebook (October 2009) I discussed my business trip to Nigeria this summer, during which I spoke to Nigerian business executives and attorneys about corporate criminal laws in the U.S. My reflections on this trip brought to mind something Richard Rohr observed about “liminal experiences,” that is, those events that tend to induce a type of “inner crisis to help us make a needed transformation”–sort of a displacement in hope of a new point of view. Continue Reading
Hot Tea, Anyone?
For some reason, I became a hot tea drinker my freshman year in college. My Southern family’s mealtime beverage preference was always for iced tea, but no one I knew drank hot tea. I had a Hot Pot for my dorm room and it was easy to keep tea bags in my room for a bedtime cup. Far from being troubled by the caffeine, I am soothed & calmed by the ritual of tea-making, as much as by the warmth of the mug. I enjoy classic varieties of tea -Ceylon, Darjeeling- but have never developed a taste for herbals. I use a tiny bit of sugar, but no lemon or milk. Continue Reading
More vacation notes: June 24 and associated memories
12:10 Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in downtown Birmingham. I spent my entire young life in and around Birmingham, and I never walked inside this building until today. I don’t remember ever even seeing it till I was in my 30’s. I frequently ate at the Social Grill, just a block away, when I was in college at Birmingham-Southern. I discovered the Birmingham Art Museum when I was in my ’20s. But St. Paul’s Cathedral? Nada…till today. Continue Reading
The Rule on Closure
What do you think the Rule says about finding closure when a relationship (of any significant sort) changes or ends? What do you think the rules of closure are in general–its dynamics?
I recall that the Rule speaks of the gradual steps to take towards excommunication–each time offering a chance to be restored to community. But even an excommunication is not permanent the first or second time around (how many times?). Continue Reading
Praying against a Psalm
Yesterday I came home from a local peace and justice meeting in which we decided to issue a press release urging an immediate ceasefire in Gaza (following the UN’s own urging–with the US abstaining). Present at our meeting for the first time were two Palestinians. One spoke at length about his sense that the only true Jews in Israel were the ones present before all the immigrations of Jews from Europe and Russia and Africa and the Middle East; these folks were often simply secular, he said, and most were Zionists. The Jews he defined as authentic were orthodox Jews who believed the Messiah must come before the state of Israel ought to be created–1200 such Jews in his West Bank community stood by the Palestinians and against Israel. No one directly challenged his definition of a proper Jew, though it’s clear that most everyone else present at the meeting supports the existence of both the state of Israel and a Palestinian state. Continue Reading
Audacity and Advent
Walking home today, it struck me that Advent is the most audacious season of the church year. Even Easter invites us to witness to a past event–one we strive to witness as present as well: the resurrection of Christ, and all it signifies both backwards and forwards in time. But in Advent, we remember the first coming of Christ in a manger in order to anticipate the second coming–one we envision as coming from the skies, or as breaking apart all injustice in our world. While there is a penitential, minor key, reflective spirit during Advent, the most striking feature of Advent may be our boldness in petitioning Christ to come again. Continue Reading
An Open Letter–to everyone
Over the past few months and weeks I have been alternately thankful and dismayed to read, on the one hand, articles and letters calling for unity of spirit, even when we cannot agree on specific issues, and, on the other hand, writing which underscores, and at times even seems to increase, the deep divisions in our society and in the Church. Continue Reading
140 or so people
It was a sunny day today and not too cold. There were new faces among the volunteers and there were many, many new faces in the line of those asking for a bag of food at the Clare House Food Pantry. I especially see in my mind and heart two women in their early twenties who were at the front of the line. Usually the first two in line have been old regulars who start lining up at 9 in the morning, maybe because they don’t have much else to do. I took the time to talk a bit with these two women and so they’ve become part of my prayer today. I’ve been handing out food at the Pantry for 18 years now and it still softens my heart each time. Continue Reading
Benedictine Oblate Musings 