Time: Enemy or Friend? Advent might provide an insight

Have you ever felt like time was your enemy.  That’s my reality this week. I know time is priceless and we each are allotted the same 24 hours each day but I’m feeling pressured by the “musts” on my “to-do-list”, the “coulds” that I really want to do, and the reality of the limits of time as I perceive it.   I keep whispering to myself that time is my friend but today I wasn’t for believing it..

With this oppressive feeling of time lingering in my heart, I watched Sr. Marie Angela Presenza prepare the center for Advent and I began to feel a certain excitement. Her decorations and her simple pondering filled me with a calm certainty that this is a special time. Ed Hayes in A Pilgrims Almanac (1989, p. 187) reminds us that Advent is a time to be aware that in the very busy preparation for Christmas (or completing our “to-do-list”) Christ is waiting to be reborn in the Bethlehem of our homes and our daily lives.   He advises us to take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present each and every day.

Advent and time go hand in hand.  Advent is about waiting in expectation.  It's about
preparing our hearts.  It's about taking time, slowing down, being awake.  But most of all it's about remembering with gratitude, remembering the ways God has been born to me today and yesterday and tomorrow.  Last night there was an unbelievable moon that we watched together; it made me forget about the frantic anxiety of "not enough time."  Sunday I spent the day with some friends in a fun but profound discussion about life that nourished me to the core.  In moments like that, time is not pressured; it truly is my friend and enables the Christ within to be born again.  In moments like that there is no past or future but only present--the REAL PRESENT that warms our heart, the real present that comes each moment if we can remain empty and aware.  Staying empty when we are stressed by time is essential.  Only if we are empty can we wait in expectation for God to fill us with the beauty and gift of ordinary time.  And only if we're aware can we remember and really notice with gratitude the surprises that time can bring.  Time is our friend if we have the right attitude.  Ange's decorating helped me to remember that.

Tomorrow as our first Advent retreat begins, I choose to make peace with time.  How about you?.   

Thanksgiving

Time has been getting away from me!  How about you?  It is good to see Thanksgiving approach – a time when we “take the time” we need to honor all the good in our life and in our world.  I have learned that for me, gratitude is the essential virtue; and, in many ways, it determines my life.  When I take life for granted I am often filled with anxiety and the drudgery of routine living.  On the other hand, when I approach life with deep gratitude I find myself filled with joy, happiness and enduring peace.  How could one virtue transform me so much?   It somehow turns what I have into enough and even more.  And, for Americans on Thanksgiving Day, it turns a meal into a feast, a house into a home and even a stranger into a friend.

Perhaps it is our “remembering” to say thank you that is the key.  All of us hold memories of our family traditions on Thanksgiving Day or of that special time of celebration that awakened gratitude inside our hearts.  Gratitude is holding the memories but it is more.  It is the homage, within our heart, given to God and to others for their goodness to us.  Meister Eckhart tells us that “if the only prayer you said was “thank you”, that would be enough”—pray that prayer often!

Evelyn Underhill tells us that God is always present to us in the “Sacrament of the Present Moment” and it is there that we meet God often and with gratitude.  Sometime it is easier to be grateful for the divine action in our life but it is also important to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity that has nourished our lives moment by moment, and to take the time to simply say “thank you”.  I know I need to do this over and over again each day of my life.  God is so good! and she is revealed to me each day by all those I meet on the journey. 

From the staff of the Franciscan Spiritual Center, “thank you” for the many ways you reveal God to us.   These past few weeks we have been nourished by the Quaker community, by the Mercy of God Community, by the genius of Mickey McGrath’s portrayal of Dorothy Day, the painful sharing of our Human Trafficking seminar, by your participation in our Centering Prayer and Grieving and Loss workshops and by those who come simply for the quiet of retreat.  To all of you we say thank you!  We hold you in our heart!

This link is a gentle entry into gratitude:   Gratitude Link

Election Day

Today, we the American People, do something quite sacred.  We make a choice that determines the future of our country and possibly even our world and our universe.  George Jean Nathan tells us "Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." so be sure to vote today.  My prayer is that we choose someone who focuses on the common good, is compassionate and supportive to those who are most vulnerable, has the wisdom to create peace in our divided world and the strength to reverence the earth and work toward its well being.   The choice is ours.  The responsibility is ours. I believe in WE THE PEOPLE who desire a more perfect union. 

Here's a YouTube clip of scenes of America with Kate Smith singing our prayer:  God Bless America

Celtic Blessing

The picture above is Glendoloch, Ireland and it appropriately goes with this Beannacht blessing from John O'Donohue.  

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue ~

 (Echoes of Memory)

I first heard this poem read by John O'Donohue in an interview with Krista Tippett.  It was written for his mother, Josie O'Donohue, and it was written shortly before his own death in 2008, like Sr. Ann Michele, he was found dead in bed.  This poem just seems to fit the time of year and the numbness of the hearts of our staff as we go through the motions of making life run smoothing in our Spiritual Center.  It is a bit of a resurrection blessing--from darkness to life, from drudgery to love, from pain to peace.   As the leaves let go of their tree limbs risking all, letting go into God, so we allow a slow wind work these words of love around" us and "an invisible cloak to mind [our] lives".  We have been blessed with understanding retreatants who have adapted to the inconveniences of Sandy and the grieving  hearts of the staff and brought us sunshine and peace each day.  For them we are grateful and for our ability to work as a team to create a hospitable environment worthy of those who enter our doors.

Here is the Beannacht blessing with some soft music and graphics to calm your soul:   
Blessing by John O'Donohue  May it do for you what God is doing for us!

Sr. Ann Michele Zwosta RIP

Yesterday we had quite a shock in the Spiritual Center as we discovered the sudden death of our sister/friend/hospitality coordinator, Sr. Ann Michele Zwosta, OSF.   There was a stunned numbness about us as we tried to move through the day.  It was All Saints Day and today All Souls Day.  For those of us working in the Spiritual Center these two days have merged in ways we never expected.  

All Saints Day is a time of remembering the officially canonized saints and perhaps All Souls Day is a day to remember our families and friends who have gone before us and undoubtedly have a sacred space within our hearts; they may well have been every bit as holy as some who have been canonized.  And so, as well as praying for Sr. Ann Michele and all those we hold deep in our heart, we also pray to them asking that they intercede for us.  Yesterday, All Saints! Today, All Souls!  And tomorrow and the next day we shall have perfectly ordinary days for perfectly ordinary people like you and I whom no one might call saints.  Yet that is what St Paul called all the Christians of his little churches and that is what our hearts desire. Isn't this where the distinction between Saints and Souls breaks down? Only God knows the secrets of our hearts, and how far we have progressed along the road to holiness. So be very aware -- today you may be next to someone who, if you could see them as they will be glorified in heaven, you would bow down in reverence before!  Today, let us remember to cherish one another for in this present moment we still have one another.  Sister Ann Michele will be sorely missed here at the Franciscan Spiritual Center but her legacy lives in our hearts and we are more and more awed as we realize all that she accomplished among us in such a quiet and simple way.