This invitation to reflection should be a part of every member of the family of God each and every day. It sure needs to be a significant part of this Padre’s daily reflection and Ignatian Examen
“An important part of the monastic way is to engage the places of our lives that challenge us and even make us bristle.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
What challenging places make you bristle and call you to deeper reflection?
“What is going on is very important. I think the most important precept of all is to live in awareness, to know what is going on—not only here but there. What we are, what we do every day, has much to do with world peace. If we are very aware, we will do something to change the course of things.”—Thich Nhat Hahn
Verse of the day
The lover of money will not be satisfied with money; nor the lover of wealth, with gain. This also is vanity.
– Ecclesiastes 5:10
Voice of the day
I want a change from an acquisitive society to a functional society, from a society of gogetters to a society of gogivers.
– Peter Maurin, Catholic Radicalism(1949)
Prayer of the day
Empty us of greed, for it will never satisfy. Fill us with generosity, for it will elevate one another.
The expression “new normal” has increasingly felt like a meaningless phrase. With each new shift in the experience of the novel coronavirus pandemic, what we thought we knew had to be relearned and what served as guidance or best practices often had to be re-scripted. Normalcy suggests consistency and predictability, neither of which has been experienced since March 2020.
— Read on www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/5-christian-virtues-help-us-learn-live-new-new-normal
“[Mary] is the embodiment of the sacred feminine, a window into another understanding of how the presence of the sacred can manifest in the world.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal (due out April 8 from Ave Maria Press. Available for pre-order)
How do you experience the sacred feminine in the world?
Verse of the day
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
– Amos 5:24
Voice of the day
They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.
– Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha (1922)
Prayer of the day
Let us listen to the ever-flowing stream of justice, following its winding journey toward your voice.
Verse of the day
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
– James 2:26
Voice of the day
There are just some kind of men who — who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.
– Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Prayer of the day
Keep our focus on the streets. May we never ignore the realities of this world.
“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say they have Ubuntu. Then you are generous, your are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. It is to say, ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’”—Desmond Tutu
As I ponder the world’s situation and my own nation’s situation today I wonder… There is so much hatred… there is so much conflict… there is so much violence… there is so much war… Thomas Merton reminds us that the root of all war is fear. Whether that war is an out and out attack such as we are seeing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or if it is the sort of warfare that is waged on the pages of social media or in various verbal and physical attacks that we see today, fear is indeed the foundation. It is seen in the fear of the white nationalist who believe they are losing power. It is seen in attacks on people who “look different” or who came from another country. Part of the reason that Merton’s words remain prophetic is because it seems the world really hasn’t changed that much from the world of the 1960s when he was writing/speaking-out against war, militarism, the nuclear arms race, nationalism, racism, and the military-industrial complex. There is an old phrase I learned many years ago that came to my mind as I wrote those words: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Last week I bought A Thomas Merton Reader, edited by Thomas P. McDonnell. Those who know me well might ask, why? Don’t you have enough of his books already? With the amount of traveling that we have been doing lately, I have missed having Merton close by for reading and reflection. Even though I have quite a collection of Thurman’s writings and audio CDs, I bought A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life for the same reason as I did for the Merton book.
Today I opened up the Merton Reader and the dedication really hit a chord deep within me. In a world of hatred, war, and fear he held on the the audacious hope for peace and universal friendship. Perhaps these audacious words filled with hope will encourage us to live and act differently from the world and thus change the world!
This Book is Dedicated to All My Friends
To the Old Ones and the New Ones
To Those Who Are Near and Those Who Are Far Away
Tho Those on Earth and Those in Heaven
To Those I know and Those I Have Never Met
To Those Who Agree and Those Who Disagree
To Those I Have Never Heard of
In the Hope That We May All Meet in the One Light.
Dear reader, that is my hope and prayer for each one of us and for this nation and world.
Here are Amazon links to the books. Merton: https://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Merton-Reader-P-McDonnell/dp/0385032927 and Thurman: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Freedom-Thurman-Religious-Experience/dp/080701057X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=152CIC7CKJL8P&keywords=a+strange+freedom&qid=1647801414&s=books&sprefix=a+strange+fr%2Cstripbooks%2C80&sr=1-1
“In a dialogue nobody is trying to win. Everybody wins if anybody wins. There is a different sort of spirit to it. In a dialogue, there is no attempt to gain points, or to make your particular point of view prevail. . . it is a common participation.”—David Bohm, On Dialogue
