Category: religious/spiritual

One-Liner Wednesday: motivation

“Any technical solution which science claims to offer will be powerless to solve the serious problems of our world if humanity loses its compass, if we lose sight of the great motivations which make it possible for us to live in harmony, to make sacrifices and to treat others well.”
— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ paragraph 200
(In preparation for the upcoming Paris climate talks, I am sharing some quotes from the papal encyclical.)

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/11/25/one-liner-wednesday-living/

Re-entry

The poetry residency/workshop with Mass MoCA/Tupelo Press was amazing, but it’s a bit of a jar being back home. It is especially hard to come back to a week that is so far removed from my usual routine.

I spend most weekdays able to arrange my own schedule.  This week, with the Thanksgiving holiday and both B and younger daughter T on vacation, I don’t have my usual solitary time, so I am having to trust that I will be able to go back to processing all the poetic goodness from last week – and get to work on writing and revising I want to do. (Reassurances welcome in comments.)

Today, I got to see all the elders of the family. This morning, I got to share the video of the Boiler House Poets’ reading with my parents and talk a bit about my experience. I also got to play the recording of the piece (begins at about 12:40) on which my poem “Lessons from Mahler” is based.  It was lovely to share this with them.

The afternoon was back to reality, bringing my mother-in-law to a medical appointment. Things aren’t worse, but they aren’t better either. Sigh. At least, she is doing better than she was when she came over for Thanksgiving dinner a year ago.

And tomorrow morning, I will facilitate the spirituality class at church. Poetry may come up…

Our Real Journey

I needed to read this – and will most likely need to read it again and again.

Karen Lang's avatarLIVING IN THIS MOMENT

It may be when we no longer know what we have to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.  –  Wendell Berry

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Disconnecting

We are here at our poetry residency to immerse ourselves in art of all sorts. We are urged to disconnect.

And horrible violence happened or threatened to happen in many places in the world.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news these past few days, reading only a bit and listening to a few conversations with my apartment mates, who are staying more informed than I.

But, even though this time around has its own horrific circumstances, a distinct array of victims leaving behind a particular group of mourning family and friends, the underlying story is all too familiar.

I woke up this morning thinking about the now-shuttered Notre Dame church, sitting there being preserved as a historic landmark, but locked and silent.

I remember when the Drury High School Girls’ Ensemble gave a concert there to raise money to travel to an international competition. They sang an arrangement of “One Tin Soldier.” (Recording by The Original Caste here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTBx-hHf4BE)

One group makes war on another, who had offered to share its treasure with them, because they wanted it all for themselves. When they moved the stone which was concealing the treasure,

“Peace on earth was all it said.”

I can’t get the song out of my head.

One-Liner Wednesday: environmental education

“Whereas in the beginning it [environmental education] was mainly centered on scientific information, consciousness-raising and the prevention of environmental risks, it tends now to include a critique of the ‘myths’ of a modernity grounded in a utilitarian mindset (individualism, unlimited progress, competition, consumerism, the unregulated market).”
— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ paragraph 210
(In preparation for the upcoming Paris climate talks, I am sharing some quotes from the papal encyclical.)

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/11/11/one-liner-wednesday-a-cup-of-cheer/

One-Liner Wednesday: love in action

“For all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity and care cannot but well up within us, since we were made for love.”
— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ paragraph 58
(In recognition of the ongoing Paris climate talks, I am sharing some quotes from the papal encyclical.)

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/12/09/one-liner-wednesday-escape/

One-Liner Wednesday: environmental justice

“Today, however, we have to realize that a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”
— Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ paragraph 49
(In preparation for the upcoming Paris climate talks, I am sharing some quotes from the papal encyclical.)

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/11/04/one-liner-wednesday-goosebums/

acceptance

On my way to church this morning, I heard a report on NPR about the fiftieth anniversary of the Vatican II document “Nostra Aetate” which was a declaration on the relationship of the Catholic Church with non-Christian religions. The report also reviewed the horrible treatment that the Catholic church had inflicted on other faiths, especially the Jewish people.

I am very grateful to have been born at a time when I do not remember the church being against other people because of their religious beliefs or lack of belief.  It saddens and upsets me that not all Catholics have accepted this now fifty-year-old teaching. This gives the impression that Catholics are still condemning others for not being Catholic or Christian, even though most of us do not. Rather, we accept all people of good will as together we strive for greater love and peace in the world.

One of my favorite things about Francis is that he shows this attitude to the world. He regularly meets with people of diverse faith traditions, agnostics, and atheists. He often prays in silence in settings that include people of many traditions so that he does not seem to be pushing Catholic prayer onto others. When he spoke in Washington on his recent trip to the United States, he asked the crowd and television viewers to pray for him or, if prayer was not part of their own belief system, to send positive thoughts.

People around the world recognize Francis as a spiritual leader, not just a Catholic leader, because he does care about every person and, as he terms it, “our common home.”  Although he was brought up in the pre-Vatican II church, he fully embraces and lives the council’s messages.

The message is needed now more than ever. There is so much to do to improve the lives of people and the planet. We, all people of good will, need to move forward together.

SoCS: welcome the stranger

In my faith tradition, we are called to welcome the stranger and extend hospitality. Welcoming the stranger is also part of the civic tradition in the United States, exemplified in the Emma Lazarus poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor, although I must admit that we as a country often fail to live up to our highest ideals.

I was heartened to hear, however, that a meeting called to see if there were people interested in aiding the re-settlement of Syrian refugees in our area was so crowded with local folks wanting to help that they had to expand the meeting room to accommodate them all.

Our Greater Binghamton (New York) community has a long history of welcoming refugees and is an official re-settlement area. Over decades, there have been refugees here from diverse countries, such as Laos, Ukraine, and Iraq. It would be an honor for some of the Syrian refugees who have suffered so much to find a new home here with us as well.

I get a bit choked up thinking about new refugees arriving because one of the main organizations that will help them is the American Civic Association, which suffered a mass shooting as few years ago. Despite that, they continue to do great work, welcoming the stranger, helping them to learn English, teaching them about the United States, and helping them create a new home here.

I truly appreciate their work and their example of what “welcoming the stranger” really means.
*****
Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is:  strange/stranger/strangest. Join us!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-3115/

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One-Liner Wednesday: saint or communist?

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.  

–Dom Helder Camara
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/10/28/one-liner-wednesday-its-a-faux-pas/comment-page-1/#comment-61571