Category: religious/spiritual

SoCS: contrasts

I attended vigil Mass this afternoon at a church in the town across the river. Everything seemed to be arranged to afford the most contrast. The pews finished in a blond or clear stain over a cream floor contrasted with a dark-stained wood ceiling with multicolored stenciling. The white marble, ornately carved altarpiece surrounding the tabernacle and the white walls contrasted with the deep blues and reds of the stained glass windows.

The silence after the end of the prelude contrasted with the loud organ and miked songleader and the congregation singing the opening hymn. (I’ll spare you the treatise on the techniques of leading congregational singing as an organist and the  – let’s call it – discrepancies from the ideal that I experienced.) Even the contrast of the ancient instrument playing music written within my lifetime that was composed to be played by guitars and other instruments.

The biggest aural contrast was between the voice of the pastor who was presiding at the liturgy and the answering voice of the congregation.  The priest is from Nigeria and speaks with a very distinct accent. I think that his first language was a tribal one and that he later learned English in school. The answering voices were speaking in American-accented English. Although the parish was founded by Polish immigrants – the inscriptions on the Stations of the Cross and the stained glass windows are all in Polish – the current congregation is largely generations removed from “the old country.” A recent parish merger brought in descendants of immigrants from other Eastern European countries and the entire congregation today was European-American. I find that listening to Father Charles praying and preaching makes me focus in a new way, exactly because I need to be extra-attentive because of his unfamiliar pronunciations and cadence.

There was one other thing that being at Mass today brought to me, not as a contrast, but as a gift. The Stations of the Cross, which are often paintings or bas relief, in this church are actually wall-mounted sculptures. From my seat in the pew along the wall, the sculpture of one of the men helping Jesus from the first fall was looking directly at me. It was comforting to see an expression of concern and compassion watching over me as I prayed with the rest of the assembly. An extra gift and grace for today.

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week was most/least. Come join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/23/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-january-2415/
socs-badgeBadge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

And might as well add Linda’s Just Jot It January link:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ You can join that, too!

 

SoCS: Heal

Healing feels like a life theme. There have been a lot of health challenges in our family for a lot of years, some big, some small. The small ones seem to heal; the big ones – not so much. Though the situation becomes less acute, full healing isn’t possible. It’s hard…

So, instead of full physical healing, we have to work on spiritual healing, which involves coming to a state of peace and acceptance. It’s also hard, a constant challenge, but the key to moving forward in a positive direction.

This is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/16/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-january-1715/  Please join in!
socs-badge
Badge by Doobster @MindfulDigressions

Also, Linda is hosting Just Jot It January. Join in with this, too!  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

2015: The Year of Love | Global Sisters Report

2015: The Year of Love | Global Sisters Report.

I had to share this beautiful and insightful post from Sister Ilia Delio on the centrality of love in our lives and the universe. Although anchored in the Christian tradition, it can also be read from a philosophical viewpoint apart from any sense of divinity.

Along with Sister Ilia, I wish for 2015 to be a Year of Love.

A different Christmas/Eve

This Christmas does not look like others at our house. There are far fewer decorations. There is a wreath on the door only because I ordered one many weeks ago through a Garden Ministry fundraiser at church. We do have a fir lovingly decorated with decades-worth of special ornaments, including one we bought this year that was crafted by an artisan on the BIg Island of Hawai’i, but only because my spouse B and daughter T did the stringing of lights and hanging of ornaments.

My angel cardholder is full of Christmas greetings from friends and family.

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And that is about it. No creche on the mantel. No carol singers in the dining room. No Christmas-theme magnets on the refrigerator. No needlework nutcracker hanging from the doorknob.

As those who know me personally or who always read my blog or Facebook posts know, this December has been challenging for me. Assisting my mother-in-law through health issues, including a five-day hospital stay, following on several months of prior difficulties, was time-consuming, so I had already pared down my to-do list for the holidays. Then, last week, I developed shingles and the list got pared down some more with most of the tasks getting allocated to B and T.

The one major task that I retained was sending holiday greetings to friends and family. There are a number of people with whom I only connect at Christmastime – faraway friends who I have not seen in years but who still hold a special place in my heart, family that I used to see on a regular basis, but who are now living in different states, friends whom I have known for decades – and others that I still see on a regular basis but want to greet and reminisce with for the holidays. I prefer to choose individual cards, signed by hand, with small handwritten notes or longer printed personalized letters enclosed, sealed with a Christmas Seal and posted with a holiday stamp appropriate to the recipient. I accepted early in December that this was not going to be an ideal year, so I settled on writing a letter that would go to nearly everyone on my list sans card.

Writing the letter proved to be difficult as it involved re-living some very emotional times of the past year. It was lucky that I drafted it when I did, as the bulk of the work was done before my mother-in-law’s hospital stay. When I came down with shingles, I still had not had a chance to print the letters and address the envelopes, so, as B and T took over everything else, I sat and folded, addressed, sealed, and stamped, so that nearly all of them went into the mail on Saturday. Most will arrive in time for Christmas or the end of Hanukkah, while some that have a longer journey may not arrive until closer to New Year’s Eve, but I feel warm-hearted, knowing that I have sent part of myself out to friends and family at this special time of year. (Full disclosure:  There are several shameless plugs for Top of JC’s Mind in the letter. We’ll see if anyone actually visits because of it. 😉 )

We have already completed an important part of our Christmas celebration. My sisters and families came for a couple of days to see us and my parents. In recent years, we have exchanged meals rather than gifts, with their meals being in area restaurants and ours a traditional meal at our home. We make a rolled beef-rib roast, prepared on the 50+ year old rotisserie that belonged to my parents before they moved to an apartment. For dessert, we always make pies. This year it was apple, apple blackberry, and maple-and-brown-sugar pecan.
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B got extra fancy with the crust for the pecan with tiny Christmas tree cutouts along the edge!
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I was too tired from the shingles to be much help in the kitchen, although I did peel and slice most of the apples for the pies. It was odd not to be (wildly) orchestrating everything and everyone in the kitchen, but I and everyone else enjoyed the meal immensely. I had to absent myself from some of the activities while my sisters were here in order to rest, but I was grateful to be well enough to enjoy their visit. Anti-viral meds are wonderful!

T and I attended Christmas vigil Mass tonight at 6, with T’s former handbell choir and the instrumental ensemble and choir providing music. During the intercessions, we prayed for Sister Rose Margaret Noonan, csj, whom I consider one of my spiritual mothers. She passed away last night. She lived a life of service to God and people as a Sister of Saint Joseph of Carondelet for many decades – she was in her upper 90s – and lived the priestly life to which she was called to the extent possible within the current structure of the Catholic Church. While I’m sad that she is not here any longer, I rejoice knowing that she lives in the joy of God’s presence in heaven.

B has baked date and cranberry breads for Christmas breakfast. There will be stockings and presents to open, although that will be relatively quick as not much Christmas shopping transpired. No one is very fussed about there being many fewer than usual Christmas presents this year. Anything we really need will get purchased in the days and weeks ahead. There is a brunch reservation up at Good Shepherd Village dining room for us to eat with the three resident grand/parents. There will be time for gift exchange with them and then it may be naptime. While I am lucky that my case of shingles is not very severe, there is still some pain and fatigue, so I am trying to be reasonable and plan some down time.

I wish a very merry Christmas to all who celebrate it and gifts of peace, joy, and harmony to all!

Joanne C.

One-Liner Wednesday: Heaven

“All the way to heaven is heaven.”
– St. Catherine of Siena

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! More information here:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/12/24/one-liner-wednesday-festive-edition/

Susan Cushman on Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward

My spirituality group at church studied Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward two years ago and is currently studying the follow-on book Immortal Diamond. They are both rich repositories of wisdom that I highly recommend. Today, I am pleased to share a wonderful reflection by Susan Cushman on Falling Upward.

http://susancushman.com/faith-on-friday-embracing-the-second-half-of-life-a-bright-sadness/

Fall-ing

As some of you know, this fall has been rough, as we deal with myriad health issues with one of the family elders.  (In truth, the fall had a bit of a rough run-up as we dealt with both of my parents having their own medical issues, but things are going much better with them now.)

I have been doing much to-ing and fro-ing and have needed to grab little snatches of consolation, comfort, and beauty as I can find them. I was grateful for the unusually vibrant fall foliage this year, beginning early with the first peaks of gold among the green of the hillsides and ending with our neighbors vivid red Japanese maple.

 Even after all the leaves had fallen, I continued to marvel at the white chrysanthemum on our front porch. I had originally bought the plant from the grocery store to clip some blossoms to fill in for some wilted flowers in a Christmas centerpiece almost three years ago. I had managed to keep it alive indoors and it offered a blossom here and there, but this spring, I asked my husband to re-pot it and put it outdoors.  To my surprise, it flourished and offered hardy white blossoms that withstood several hard frosts until the snows came.

With the cold weather, we started to put out birdseed and suet in our feeders and I delight in catching glimpses of chickadees, jays, finches, woodpeckers, juncos,  tufted titmouse, cardinals, and nuthatches enjoying the food.

The best gift of the fall was the visit of both of our daughters and our son-in-law for Thanksgiving.  I am still holding in my mind the picture of us around the Thanksgiving table with the three grandparents.  We were too busy eating and enjoying each others’ company for photo ops, but here is a photo our older daughter took of her spouse and sister tending to the birdfeeders in the snow. Larry, who grew up in London, was relishing in the eight inches of snow we received. Now living in Hawai’i, he was not used to that much snow at once!

Still, despite my best efforts, I have recently had a bit of a crash. Last Friday, I spent hours working on a letter that I plan to send in lieu of holiday cards this year. I needed to recap the year and finally cried over a lot of the difficulties that I had been powering through because I had to keep going for those who were depending on me.

I thought I had gotten the melancholy out of my system until I was sitting next to my parents in church Sunday morning. The handbell choir and adult choir were both participating, which was emotional for reasons I wrote about here.  The First Sunday of Advent, I had been in church with my daughters and son-in-law all singing beside me. On this Second Sunday, the handbell choir was processing and the choir and assembly were singing “Christ, Circle Round Us”, a setting of the “O” antiphons by Dan Schutte, and my daughters weren’t there to join in. I started crying and barely sang the hymn, even though I love it. I had my face turned away from my mom, hoping she wouldn’t see my tears. I found out later, she was also emotional, thinking back to all the years she had heard her granddaughters singing and ringing in church.

Like the autumn leaves, sometimes tears need to fall, too.

The Thinks You Can Think: Dreams of Indigenous Intent

Sharing Oscar’s vision of love. Thank you, Oscar, for this hopeful post.

unity

At vigil Mass on Saturday, while we were praying the Nicene Creed, a thought flashed into my head at the second filioque – and the Son – wondering if it will be removed when the Orthodox and Catholic churches are reunited. Its insertion in the creed was one of the reasons given for the schism in 1054 – and one in which the Catholic side was almost assuredly in error. I certainly have no problems with dropping it…

What is more enlightening for me than the thought itself this weekend but that it coincided with Francis’s visit to Turkey. I hadn’t had the chance to keep up with news from the visit over the weekend but was catching up on some of the coverage through NCR today, reading about how Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew had both spoken very strongly in favor of unity in the immediate future. Talks between the two churches have been ongoing for decades and I share in the hope that this unity will come soon.

Francis made very clear that all the various churches that make up the Catholic and Orthodox communions would retain their own identities, that unity is only in profession of faith together. Bartholomew spoke poignantly about how unity among Christians is already evident in the lives of those being persecuted for being Christian, whatever their denomination.

So, I guess the Catholics would not have to drop the second filioque, but I think it would be a nice gesture.

Thanksgiving journal

In the United States, today is Thanksgiving Day. There were eight of us today at our home for the traditional turkey dinner – and what I am most thankful for was that there were the eight of us together around our table today.

B and I had our younger daughter T on break from her master’s program at ESF in Syracuse and our elder daughter and son-in-law all the way from Honolulu, Hawai’i, where they are both graduate students. The last time the five of us were together in our home was at Christmastime almost three years ago, when a Christmas morning marriage proposal set the stage for the happy addition of L to the family.

Rounding out the party were three members of our elder generation, my parents – Nana and Paco – and B’s mom – Grandma. They have each had their share of health issues over the last few months, so it was a true blessing that they were all able to be there, especially Grandma. This was her first extended sojourn anywhere other than for medical appointments this fall. We were grateful that the lovely eight inches of snow we got yesterday didn’t derail the transport plans.

A special feature of the celebration this year was that T was doing an extended entry in her journal for an ethnobotany course she is taking. They have been writing about their personal and cultural relationship with plants and they had a bonus assignment to write about their family traditions in celebrating Thanksgiving. T filled several pages with stories about how our apple pie techniques have evolved over time, how the bread stuffing with sausage came from my side of the family while the baked onions came from B’s side, and how B learned to flatten a turkey to help it cook more quickly. T got to ask Grandma about where her Aunt Gert had acquired the Indian pudding recipe that we make and L got to experience eating it for the first time. As a British-Filipino, American Thanksgiving is a relatively new phenomenon, much less a New England dessert like Indian pudding. For the record, he enjoyed it!

This was definitely a Thanksgiving to savor. As our children proceed with their adult lives and establish their own households, they may be able to travel to our home less and less frequently. While we hope to have all of our elder generation with us for more years, the recent health scares remind us that they may not be able to be out and about as they were today.

All the more reason to be especially thankful this year.