October 13, 2008

A grandbaby and God

I want to introduce you to my new grand daughter, Corinne Madeleine Stocker, born September 16th, almost a month ago. Here’s a picture giving us a foretaste of her many smiles. It was an earth shaking experience to become a grandmother the first time in 2007 with fireworks of wonder and love lighting up all my sky. Now, this time, I’ve held our tiny Corinne with such a glow of happiness and a quiet, still sky above me. I’ve become reflective about God being a sort of eternally joyous Grandma/Grandpa.

First we pass on our “spirits” to our children as we raise them and now I am watching my children pass on their “spirits” . I know so concretely now that God acts in human history, that is, the Eternal Spirit is not just an aloof deity sitting on a throne in the heavens. God is in this beautiful new baby! Just massaging Corinnes’s new body has definitely made me optimistically in love with life.

October 3, 2008

A Women's Minyan

The Women’s Minyan is the title of a play by Naomi Ragen about a woman who is ostracized by her Ultra-Orthodox community when she leaves her husband because of a range of abuses.  She leaves in night when she must save her life, and the community refused to let her see her 12 children, believing lies told about her by her husband and the rabbi with the support of the town’s women.  The plot revolves around the ostracized woman’s plea to ten women in the community (including her mother and former mother-in-law, two daughters, and a sister-in-law) to hear her case in a women’s minyan.  Normally a minyan for purposes of prayer and justice involves ten men in orthodox Judaism, but a women’s minyan may be called for rare occasions, including an effort to reconcile enemies.  Continue Reading

September 18, 2008

Finding forgiveness is bloody business

I cut my finger last Tuesday. No, I mean, I really cut my finger. Four stitches worth.

I had sharpened the little knife I like to use for cutting vegetables and I was really proud of its new razor’s edge. It just floated through all those fresh tomatoes I put into the tava, a wonderful Kosovar dish I had discovered earlier in the summer. I put the tava in the oven and I was ready to go to work on making preserves out of the big basket of peaches we’d gleaned from some friends’ tree. I hurriedly rinsed the knife, reached for the drying towel, looked down just in time to think, “Oops, knife blade is turned downward; it may cut a hole in the cloth.” Continue Reading

September 15, 2008

A new postulant and a new life

I’ve been wistfully imagining the symbolic knocking on the monastery door which Jackie Walsh did on September 6th. Once she was allowed into the monastery she started the period called postulancy in view of becoming a Benedictine from Rock Island. I’m so moved that it all started with a ritual of welcoming her in with its strong symbol of a huge, heavy door which opens onto a community of sisters gathered to take her into the chapel. Continue Reading

September 10, 2008

Hospitality across Party Lines

Where have you seen hospitality practiced amid conversations about presidential candidates?

The activist in me remembers that there is a time to identify with the biblical prophets, especially those like Amos who were angry about exploitation of the poor and shallow, self-centered behavior among leaders. I am among those who protest a misguided war with Iraq, who are disturbed by our current leadership’s indifference to civil liberties, who worry often that we are not spending nearly enough time getting to know peoples and lifeways in other parts of the world. Continue Reading

August 31, 2008

Benedictine jihad

A few weeks ago I was in a bar to hear some musician friends. Shortly after our arrival–Cynthia and daughter Emma were with me–I met an acquaintance who, without the usual chit-chatty preamble, abruptly said, “I heard you became a Catholic. Is that true?” When I responded in the affirmative he quickly asked, “Why would you do that?” Continue Reading

August 23, 2008

Creative Lectio: Words about music

As a musician, my lectio frequently takes a musical form. I believe that even humming is an unconscious form of lectio: I have learned to attempt to notice what I’m humming (if it is a recognizable tune). Frequently my hummings are hymn-tunes and occasionally I am unable to recall the words. So, I look them up. Now and then, I can’t even remember a title, so the looking up takes some doing. Continue Reading