Take time to nourish your soul and spirit this summer

Last year at this time, I was pretty emotionally pretty decompensated. Long story, it does not matter why, and I’m good now. The one thing that I felt like I needed to do was to go on a retreat, which I did. Seven full days of monastic silence… ahhhh. That kind of retreat is a luxury, and one I don’t have the time for now.

So what do we do when we don’t have the time, or if it feels as if we don’t have the time to go away? How can we take the time to nourish our souls and spirits?

Here is one idea… Sign up for Soelle in Summer: Challenge and Wonder.

Who or what is Soelle, you may ask? That means:

Dorothee Soelle (1928-2003) was a German theologian, poet, peace activist, and Protestant Christian with Catholic, secular, humanist, and Jewish companions and allies; she was also a friend, teacher, spouse, mother, socialist, and from mid-life on, feminist.

She had me at Soelle! And she kept me at “challenge and wonder.” I love that description. I first learned about Soelle from theologian Jane Redmont, who is facilitating this online offering. This hybrid course and retreat begins on June 17 and runs through July 31. Jane is an experienced online facilitator and retreat leader, who will guide you on this spiritual journey.

The beauty of online retreats is that you can set aside time for this that suits your schedule.

For more details and sign up information, please see Jane’s website -  here.  If you want to learn more about online retreats, check this link from NCR. (Please note, you will find me speaking about another one of Jane’s retreats in the article, so I am not unbiased, but on the other hand, I have experienced this!)

There Will Be Kale

Lots of people post recipes; I am generally not among them. I may have put one or two Facebook, but not many. Don’t get me wrong, I love to cook, I truly love to cook, but I am not a food blogger, despite the name of the blog!

If you want a Catholic blog with good recipes, you can go read Not Strictly Spiritual by my friend Mary DeTurris Poust. Her Foodie Friday posts are great. There is a direct line between Mary’s vegetarian recipes and my own desire to eat less meat. (This reminds me that Mary and I are in a months long process of trying to have dinner together. It is ironic that despite living less than 20 miles from one another, we do not get to each other too often.)

Today I made kale slaw. That’s right – kale slaw, not cole slaw. I found the recipe at the Daily Bites blog, which has a lot of great recipes for you to try.  That is their picture and I hope that they don’t mind me sharing it with you here.

I changed some of the ingredients in the recipe, mostly because I did not have everything that was called for. I did one thing that increased the fat in the recipe, but so be it. And my changes were not without challenge… I liked this, but there is room for improvement. That said – it was great, very yummy and filling, and so good for you.

Here is my amended recipe. I thought it was a little sweet; I might use Greek yogurt next time to see if it will be more tart- and I will use less honey. This recipe was bountiful and extremely delicious. Give it a try, using the original from Daily Bites, or try your own modifications. Asterisks indicate where I made changes to their recipe.

For the salad:

• 6 cups chopped kale*
• 2 cups finely chopped broccoli florets
• 1/2 cup finely chopped Vidalia onion*
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and shredded
• Handful of sprouts
• Handful of pumpkin seeds
• Handful of golden raisins

For the dressing:

• 1/2 medium ripe avocado, pitted
• 1/2 cup sour cream*
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey (I used honey)
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons honey mustard*
• Sea salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

• In a large bowl, combine the kale, broccoli, scallions, and carrot. Reserve the sprouts and pumpkin seeds for garnish.
• Scoop the avocado flesh into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, lemon juice, maple syrup, vinegar, and mustard. Puree until smooth. The dressing will be thick, with the consistency of mayonnaise. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to coat everything thoroughly. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
• Garnish plates of the salad with the sprouts and pumpkin seeds.

Let me add one more thing – how did I even find The Daily Bites blog to begin with? Through a link that Mary’s husband Dennis had on his Facebook page. I’m not sure if his link was to Daily Bites or not, but I did find my way there. Yet another gift of community.

Now I’m off to sort out that dinner with Mary!

The Feast of the Visitation

This post ran last year, but I am running it again today. Blessings of this feast to you!

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.

What a fitting end to this Marian month, we celebrate the Visitation today, when Mary “set out in haste” to see her cousin Elizabeth. The feast of the Visitation conjures up visions of two cousins, meeting and embracing. Like so many Marian stories, it is so easy to make it into something too sweet and pretty. This is one of the dangers of over-sentimentalizing something that is so deeply profound. For me, this story is at once, extraordinary, and ordinary.

In 2004, I had the good fortune to visit both Nazareth and Ein Kerem (Elizabeth’s home town). What struck me was the distance between the cities, and the terrain. This was not a simple walk from here to there; this was serious travel and not easy. Of course, we could ask, what journey of Mary’s was ever easy?

Another thing that strikes me is Mary’s eternal “yes,” her fiat, which means, “let it be done.” There is such immediacy to her responses. When I think of so many other people in the Scriptures, there is some hesitation in many, the word no comes from others. I think of Moses, Jeremiah, Jonah… and that is just the tip of the Scriptural iceberg!

Mary is clear – yes. She says yes to God when told she will bear the Christ child, she then says yes to make this journey to her cousin.

What I am also forced to consider is my own hesitation in life and often my own “no!” Mary is a model for immediacy, and Elizabeth is too. It is always about God first and then our response. That’s why we can’t make ourselves holy or “get saved.” Jesus has already done this and we simply need to open our heart to the yes, with hesitation or not, we must say yes. Mary and Elizabeth. They both respond like that. Uncomplicated. Clear. Direct. God-focused, God-centered.

Their cooperation with grace requires courage, humility, inner authority, intuition, deep faith. Very remarkable, very beautiful.

So on this day, let us remember the speed and clarity that Mary and Elizabeth have in responding to God. And let us all remember that it is about responding, not doing it ourselves.

How do we respond to God? How do we respond to one another?

********************

As you ponder that question, allow me to add this. I am always heartened to remember that the public recitation of the Magnificat was against the law in Guatemala in the 1980s. These words that I leave you with are from author Kathleen Norris‘s book, Amazing Grace:

Mary utters a song so powerful that its meaning still resonates in profound and disturbing ways. In the twentieth century Mary’s “Magnificat” became a cornerstone of liberation theology, so much so that during the 1980′s the government of Guatemala found its message so subversive that it banned its recitation in public worship.

The Magnificat reminds us that what we most value, all that gives us status – power, pride, strength and wealth – can be a barrier to receiving what God has in store for us. If we have it all, or think we can buy it all, there will be no Christmas for us. If we are full of ourselves, there will be no room for God to enter our hearts at Christmas. Mary’s prayer of praise, like many of the psalms, calls us to consider our true condition: God is God, and we are the creatures God formed out of earth. The nations are but nations, and even the power of a mighty army cannot save us. We all return to dust. And if we hope to rise in God’s new creation, where love and justice will reign triumphant, our responsibility, here and now, is to reject the temptation to employ power and force and oppression against those weaker than ourselves. We honour the Incarnation best by honouring God’s image in all people, and seeking to make this world into a place of welcome for the Prince of Peace.” (p. 113-114 in “God With Us”).

My empty word file mocks me and other tales of writing (updated)

Lately I have been at many events where writing comes up, and people say things like, “tell me about your blog?” *sigh* My ego happily grabs my business cards from my purse and tosses them like a spray of confetti on New Year’s Eve. Simultaneously my seemingly unstoppable jaw flaps with phrases like “Oh, I just write about faith and real life, that kind of thing.”

Except for when I don’t. You see, I haven’t written too much lately. Kind of like one of my favorite anti-heroes Peter Gibbons, from the movie Office Space, I stare at my computer a lot, along with all my notes, and it might look like I’m working. But I am not.

If you are a regular reader, you know this. If you are among those who picked up the confetti, you will quickly notice this. And I have been struggling with this off and on for some time now. Oh, the writer’s life!

First it was finishing up that last semester. Then it was graduation. Now it is… well, it is… I have a very big deadline approaching. Things were going along, and then thought I was there, but then I started to revisit and edit. So, about being there? Maybe not so much.I do have things that I want to write about and I will be back. Hope versus optimism, a thought I got from a post written by Bridget at Women In Theology. Other thoughts focus on the catholicity of being a Catholic Christian, which got a boost from this post by Jana Bennett at Catholic Moral Theology, inspired by an editorial from Matt Malone, SJ, editor of America Magazine. There are a lot of short scriptural reflections on my mind, but never on paper these days.

And what about the sacraments that I want to write about? There is a big draft about baptism that I have been wrestling with. Wisely or not, I would like to write about LGBT issues in the Church, and that is rolling around in the back of my brain. Pope Francis provides me with endless fodder, including the recent flap about who gets saved.  (Updating by adding this link from Stephen Colbert.) And my desires to write about Holy Orders, or how we might be church going forward, and why the Eucharist matters, are far greater than my ability to do so, as of this moment. The list goes on and on.

And what about the posts about hearing three great theologians in recent times? From Elizabeth Johnson CSJ in April, to Anthony Gittins C.S.Sp.,  and Richard Gaillardetz PhD in May, I am awash in thought about all of them.

Plus, the Fortnight for Freedom is coming, and I have promised to submit two pieces to Catholic Sensibility during those dates. No – not about the Fortnight for Freedom, which you do not want to get me started about – but for the Two Weeks of Worthy Women series that blog host Todd Flowerday initiated during the first Fortnight for Freedom. Last year I wrote about Thea Bowman and Gertrude of Helfta. This year… well, you will have to wait and see.

And I do have a family, the desire to spend time with them, as well as read books, garden, walk my dog, and sleep. Let’s not forget the full time employment either!

So that’s where I’m at. If you are a reader, I beg your patience. If you are new, maybe you will poke around and see what I have said before. Things like this, or this, or maybe this?

I believe in the Holy Spirit… and other annoyances

“I believe in the Holy Spirit…” The words are right there in the Nicene Creed:

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

If you are Catholic, you are saying these words at mass on a regular basis. You may read them off of a page, you may mumble along, you may say nothing at all.

So what do you believe?

I’m kind of stuck on that last bit – “who has spoken through the prophets.”  Prophets – they are so annoying, aren’t they?

If you immediately want to say “No! They’re great!” that might be because you, if you are like me, feel that way about your prophets. You know the ones, the ones that you like. By extension, if they are challenging to those “other” people, but comforting to you, I might suggest this…

Listen to those prophets.

Even when you want to bop them in the head.

Trust me when I tell you that I want to listen to “my” prophets. And I do listen to them, and I am comforted by them, as well. The hard part is, and I am not so good about this, is listening to the “prophets” who completely annoy me.

Those prophets are the one that challenge you at every turn. They say things that you vehemently disagree with, things that you believe turn the meaning of Church on its head. Those prophets are comforting someone else. And to those folks I say, listen to the prophets that annoy you.

You see, the Holy Spirit speaks through the prophets. God afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. Here’s the rub, if you ask me, we are all comfortable and we are all afflicted.

The very moment that we start to rest on the idea that “we,” whoever we means to you, are God’s special ones, we are in trouble. The idea, especially if we have been paying attention to John’s Gospel in these recent weeks, is that “all might be one.”

Um yeah – that means… all. How annoying is that?!

Read these words from Corinthians, from the possible mass readings for this weekend, and see what you think and feel:

Brothers and sisters:
No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit;
there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God
who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit
is given for some benefit.

As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Now, if there was ever a ragtag group of people struggling to believe, obey and be as one, it was those Corinthians. Yet, here we see St. Paul reminding them that… all may be One.

How different are we? And why should I expect you to be like me? And why would you expect me to be like you?

I don’t know about you, but I know that I am often surprised when someone that I “like” expresses an opinion that is not my own. What-the-what, I think; how could they actually say that? Think that? Believe that?

Can we be as St. Paul indicates, many people with One Spirit?

Quite often those people are my prophets, the ones that I need to listen to. Not necessarily to take what they are saying and make it my own, but rather to open my heart and my mind, to try to understand what God is saying.

I like to think about how the image of the Holy Spirit as dove is so pervasive and so beloved. Did you see the image above, earlier in the week? I thought “oh, how wonderful!” and saved the photo. But what happens when that bird flies off and defacates on your head? What about THAT Holy Spirit? Don’t think that is not the same Holy Spirit… it is. Like with a prophet, annoyance is part of the package.

Prophets are generally reviled in their own time, so if you like someone who feels prophetic to you, I simply ask you to balance it out by finding someone who feels completely annoying, and who stands in contradistinction to “your prophet.”

The Holy Spirit lives in those spaces, challenging, annoying, and persistently getting in the way of the great “I,” as opposed to the very great, “I AM,” which is God. If nothing else, getting up close and personal to the most annoying “prophet” you can find, may help you to know and understand what you do believe. It is not just about changing our mind, it is about how we are transformed by God.

Oh yes, I truly do believe in the Holy Spirit and am annoyed by Her on a persistently regular schedule.

Go find someone who annoys you, near or far. And when you do, experience that flame that wants to flicker upon your head, like that of the Apostles on Pentecost. That flame will shape us all, so that we may be One.

How annoying!

No more pencils, no more books! Well, not really…

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Thanks be to God, and to the many people who supported me in so many ways, I graduated! My husband and stepdaughter put up with the most challenges, such as extended absences due to class, study, or just my preoccupation with staring at the computer while trying to write a paper.

I am grateful for the support I received both practically and spiritually from my home parish of St. Edward the Confessor, Clifton Park, and my work parish, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Glenville.

There were my professors, all of whom offered great and generous gifts of both challenge and knowledge. The staff also gave without reservation – both the Albany staff, and the Rochester staff. My classmates and peers cannot be left out here, either.

And then there are the many, many, many people who generously prayed, talked, suggested, cajoled and so much more. Thank you one and all.

So today, I who never thought I would ever return to school, have a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies from St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry.

What will I do with it? Frame it and hang it on the wall, silly!

Hopeful pessimist or hopeless optimist? Thoughts on Ascension Thursday

“May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call…” – Ephesians 1:18

A little lectio divina led me to savor this particular line of today’s Scripture, for Ascension Thursday. While I’m a little wistful that Easter draws to an end, I also find myself hopeful. Now I’ve been floundering around for something to say about my hope, and wouldn’t you know it, God pointed me to some words on the topic. Just yesterday, in the throes of my final floundering, I came across a post written by Bridget at Women in Theology, where she, among other things, reminds us of something very important:

“…hope is not optimism. In fact, in certain cases (I suspect most of the cases where it actually matters) optimism can be a vice opposed to hope. An optimist can discount and ignore evidence against her conviction that things will right themselves. An optimist is threatened by others’ pain. But someone acting in hope—the conviction not that things will right themselves, nor that we’ll be able to right them, but that God’s power will work to overturn whatever wrongs our systems can devise—that person can face pain. Without denying pain or being swept away by it, she can face her own and others’ suffering.”

Hope is not optimism. Do a little lectio with those words – they are most powerful!  I find this so helpful – and so hopeful, as I return to those words from Ephesians that open this post. I also appreciate that Bridget reminds us of the importance of language and of depth of reflection, something we can easily forget in the land of status updates and tweets, in the land of “optimistic opinionating” that social media can represent. (This is not a swipe at social media, without which there would be post today, but rather a call to reflection. Add to that a reminder that God uses all things for good – including social media, which provided the incubator for both this post and the WIT post that ultimately inspired it.)

Today my reflection, along with it my prayer, is to be anchored in hope and free from optimism. This does not make me a hopeful pessimist, any more than the opposite would be a hopeless optimist… although I can see the allure of the latter. No, it is the banality of optimism that I was reminded of at the last minute, and the power of great hope that grows out of faith.

Pentecost will arrive on Sunday, May 19. In these days in between, we await the Holy Spirit. What will your prayer be during this powerful time? Suddenly, my own prayer which was centered around the ways that I “hoped” that God would shape my life, has shifted. Today – at least just today, just this moment – pray that hope grows more deeply in my heart. If I am able to string my prayer of hope from moment to moment, and day to day, between now and Pentecost, who knows what will happen? Maybe, just maybe, the “eyes of my heart will be enlightened.” And to that I say, amen, and amen, and amen.

In the meantime, don’t just go staring at the sky, waiting for Jesus to come back down. Open your heart and notice Jesus all around you, especially in the most pessimistic of places and in the people you would never imagine finding Jesus is, but where Jesus might be found with the open eyes of a willing heart.