The River Speaks . . .

Once upon a time there was a town that was built just beyond the bend of a large river. One day some of the children from the town were playing beside the river when they noticed three bodies floating in the water. They ran for help and the townsfolk quickly pulled the bodies out of the river. One body was dead so they buried it. One was alive, but quite ill, so they put that person into the hospital. The third turned out to be a healthy child, who they then placed with a family who cared for it and who took it to school.  

From that day on, every day a number of bodies came floating down the river and, every day, the good people of the town would pull them out and tend to them – taking the sick to hospitals, placing the children with families, and burying those who were dead. 

This went on for years; each day brought its quota of bodies, and the townsfolk not only came to expect a number of bodies each day but also worked at developing more elaborate systems for picking them out of the river and tending to them. Some of the townsfolk became quite generous in tending to these bodies and a few extraordinary ones even gave up their jobs so that they could tend to this concern full-time.  And the town itself felt a certain healthy pride in its generosity. However, during all these years and despite all the generosity and effort, nobody thought to go up the river, beyond the bend that hid from their sight what was above them, and find out why, daily, those bodies came floating down the river. 

This story is often used to have the listener reflect on the difference between charity and justice. Author and storyteller, Megan McKenna, would frequently pose the following questions after she told a story: 1) How does the story make you feel? 2) What is disturbing for you in the story?   3) What is true in that story?  I’m sure you are pondering these questions right now in light of COVID-19 and the call for justice throughout the world.  That’s a good thing.

Sacred Life!

Litany Prayer ~ Chief Seattle

Every part of the earth is sacred,
every shining pine needle, every sandy shore.
every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy.

The rocky crest, the juices of the meadow, the beasts and all the people,
all belong to the same family.

Teach your children that the earth is our mother;
whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.

The water’s murmur is the voice of our father’s father,
we are part of the earth, and the earth is part of us.

The rivers are our brothers; they quench our thirst.
The perfumed flowers are our sisters.

The air is precious, for all of us share the same breath.
The wind that gave our grandparents breath
also receives their last sigh.

The wind gave our children the spirit of life.
This we know: the earth does not belong to us;
we belong to the earth.

This we know: all things are connected, like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected. Our God is the same God,
whose compassion is equal for all.

For we did not weave the web of life: we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
Let us give thanks for the web in the circle that connects us.
Thanks be to God, the God of all.

Printed in CRCN/CiRCLe M Newsletter May 2011

Another opening with a soft heart!

The Rocking Chair:   

There was once an elderly, despondent woman in a nursing home. She wouldn’t speak to anyone or request anything. She merely existed – rocking in her creaky old rocking chair. The old woman didn’t have many visitors. But every couple mornings, a concerned and wise young nurse would go into her room. She didn’t try to speak or ask questions of the old lady. She simply pulled up another rocking chair beside the old woman and rocked with her. Weeks or months later, the old woman finally spoke. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for rocking with me.’” (Author unknown)

Opening with a soft heart . . .

An Unlikely Pick:    

With a big smile, a little boy approached a farmer to buy one of his puppies. But the farmer discouraged the boy. “These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal.” The boy dropped his head for a moment, then looked back at the farmer and said, “I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?” The farmer responded by whistling for the dogs. Out from the doghouse peeked a pup noticeably smaller than the others. Down the ramp it slid and began hobbling in an attempt to catch up with the others. The little boy cried out, “I want that one,” pointing to the runt. The farmer knelt down and said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you the way you would like.” The boy reached down and slowly pulled up one leg of his trousers – revealing a steel brace. Looking up at the farmer, he said, “You see, sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.” (Author unknown)     

timone davis preaches for the Thirteeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Joan S. Grey Preaches for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A Celebration of God's Love!

 

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The story is told that once a young boy was about to have open-heart surgery.  To prepare him the surgeon said, “Tomorrow I will look at your heart.”  Smiling, the boy interrupted, “You’ll find Jesus there.”  Ignoring his remark, the surgeon continued, “After I have seen your heart I will try to repair the damage.”  Again, the boy insisted.  “You are going to find Jesus in my heart.”

The surgeon who had suffered losses in his own family and was still in pain from a failed marriage, felt very distant from God. He replied in a chilling tone, “No, what I’ll find is damaged tissue, constricted arteries, and weakened muscle.”

The next day he opened the boy’s chest and exposed his heart.  It was worse than he expected – a ravaged aorta, torn tissue, swollen muscles and arteries.  There was no hope of a cure, not even the possibility of a transplant.  His icy anger at God began to surface as he thought, “Where is God? Why did God do this?  Why is God letting this boy suffer and cursing him with an early death?”

As he gazed at the boy’s heart, he suddenly thought of the pierced heart of Jesus, and it seemed to him that the boy and Jesus shared one heart, a heart that was suffering for all those in the world experiencing pain and loss; a heart that was redeeming the world by love. 

Struck with awe at such goodness, such redemptive, unconditional love, tears began rolling down the surgeon’s cheeks, hot tears of compassion for the little boy.  Later, when the child awoke, he whispered, “Did you see my heart?”  “Yes,” said the surgeon.  “What did you find?” the boy asked. The surgeon replied, “I found Jesus there.” (Source Unknown)

The heart can be understood as a physical part of each of us – that hidden yet vital organ that circulates the full human blood supply three times per minute and whose hundred thousand beats a day are often taken for granted.  The heart is the very core of a person.  When that very center is deeply affected, one’s whole way of thinking about the world, one’s whole way of feeling it, of being in it is profoundly altered.  As in our opening story, the doctor experienced a conversion of heart – a healing from heartlessness to heart-fullness. And the child – who was all heart and shared in the heart of Jesus – had a heart filled with redemptive and unconditional love.

Today’s feast is the celebration of the “enlarged heart” of God as it was enfleshed in the heart of Jesus through the womb of Mary – a heart filled and overflowing with unconditional love and mercy.  Today is not necessarily a feast of our devotion to the heart of Jesus, but it is a celebration of God’s devotion to us by offering us a heart of love beyond our comprehension, a heart of love beyond any Hallmark card expression, and a heart full of love that is unfathomable. Our God’s love is tender; Our God is totally in love with us, and desires to be of one heart with us.  For as John writes: God is Love!

As we celebrate this feast today of God’s love for us it was different in the Middle Ages – as the devotion was not to the heart of Jesus but to the wound in the side of Jesus.  In later times, especially rising from the visions of St. Margaret Mary, the focus shifted more to the Heart of Jesus.

In the writings of Margaret Mary, she describes what happened one day as she was praying when she received a vision of Jesus:   “For a long time he kept me leaning on his breast, while he revealed the wonders of his love and the mysterious secrets of his Sacred Heart. Till then, he had always kept them hidden; but now, for the first time, he opened his Heart to me.”

Margaret Mary continued to describe in her writings how Jesus revealed his heart as a heart on fire with love as he said: “My divine Heart is so passionately fond of the human race, and of you (Margaret Mary), that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning love any longer.”  She then reveals what followed. “Next, he asked for my heart. I begged him to take it; he did, and placed it in his own divine Heart.  He let me see it there – a tiny atom being completely burned up in that fiery furnace.  Then, lifting it out – now a little heart-shaped flame – he put it back where he had found it.”

In Scripture we find a number of examples of how Jesus’ love was lived out. . .
• Let the children come to me . . .then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them
• At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them.
• Moved with pity, Jesus touched their eyes and immediately they received their sight.
• (Rich man) Jesus looking at him loved him.

So what is the good news for us today?
Let us through our daily reflection imagine ourselves resting in the heart of God hearing the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our own prayer. 

(Nouwen)- “when we come to hear the heartbeat of God in the intimacy of our prayer, we realize that God’s heart embraces all the sufferings of the world.  We come to see that through Jesus Christ these burdens have become a light burden which we are invited to carry.  . . It is in the heart of God that we come to understand the true nature of human suffering and come to know our mission to alleviate this suffering not in our own name, but in the name of Jesus.”
For God’s heart goes out to us and God’s love is always there for us –

God comes . . .

 Silent Steps

Rabindranath Tagore

Have you not heard God’s silent steps?
God comes, comes, ever comes.

Every moment and every age,
Every day and every night
God comes, comes, ever comes.

Many a song I sung in many a mood of mind,
but all their notes have always proclaimed,
‘God comes, comes, ever comes.’

 In the fragrant days of sunny April through the forest path

God comes, comes, ever comes.
In the rainy gloom of July nights on the
thundering chariot of clouds
God comes, comes, ever comes.

In sorrow after sorrow
it is God’s steps that press upon my heart,
and it is the golden touch of God’s feet
that makes my joy to shine.

 

+++Photos taken at Franciscan motherhouse in La Crosse, WI.  Reflections of the Adoration Chapel in the nearby puddle. . .

Corpus Christi . . .

Liturgy

Irene Zimmerman SSSF

All the way to Elizabeth

and in the months afterward

she wove him, pondering,

"this is my body, my blood!

"Beneath the watching eyes

of donkey, ox, and sheep

she rocked him crooning

"this is my body, my blood!"

In the search for her young lost boy

and the foreboding day of his leaving

she let him go , knowing

"This is my body, my blood!"

Under the blood smeared cross

she rocked his mangled bones,

re-membering him, moaning,

"This is my body, my blood!"

When darkness, stones , and tomb

bloomed to Easter morning,

She ran to him shouting,

"this is my body, my blood!"

And no one thought to tell her:

"Woman, it is not fitting

for you to say those words.

You don't resemble him."

True Grace . . .

 By James Krabill, in Keep the Faith, Share the Peace,

the newsletter of the Mennonite Church Peace and

Justice Committee, Volume 5 number 3, June, 1999.

 Imagine this scene from a recent courtroom trial in South Africa: A frail black woman stands slowly to her feet. She is something over 70 years of age. Facing her from across the room are several white security police officers, one of whom, Mr. Van der Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman's son and her husband some years before.

It was indeed Mr. Van der Broek, it has now been established, who had come to the woman's home a number of years back, taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then burned the young man's body on a fire while he and his officers partied nearby.

Several years later, Van der Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then, almost two years after her husband's disappearance, Van der Broek came back to fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten, but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips as the officers poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame were, "Father, forgive them."

And now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confessions offered by Mr. Van der Broek. A member of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission turns to her and asks, "So, what do you want? How should justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?"

"I want three things," begins the old woman, calmly but confidently. "I want first to be taken to the place where my husband's body was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give his remains a decent burial."

She pauses, then continues. "My husband and son were my only family. I want, secondly, therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining within me."

"And, finally," she says, "I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van der Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van der Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven."

As the court assistants come to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr. Van der Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom, friends, family, neighbors — all victims of decades of oppression and injustice — begin to sing, softly, but assuredly, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me."                                                  

                                                                               

The box of kisses . . .

A Box Full of Kisses!

The story goes that some time ago, a man punished his 3-year old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper.  Money was tight and he became infuriated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift to her father the next morning and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

The man was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his anger flared again when he found out the box was empty. He yelled at her, stating, “Don’t you know when you give someone a present, there is supposed to be something inside?” The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and cried, “Oh, Daddy, it’s not empty at all. I blew kisses into the box. They’re all for you, Daddy.”

The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness.

Only a short time later, an accident took the life of the child. It is also told that her father kept the gold wrapped box by his bed for many years and, whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

Author/source unknown

Becoming more of our best selves . . .

An aging Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it.

"How does it taste?" the master asked.

"Bitter," spit the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake, and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."

As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?"

"Fresh," remarked the apprentice.

"Do you taste the salt?" asked the master.

"No," said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside this serious young man who so reminded him of himself and took his hands, offering, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. . . . Stop being a glass. Become a lake." 
(Author Unknown)

Awareness, Awareness, Awareness . . .

A little girl was sitting on her grandfather’s lap as he read her a bedtime story. From time to time, she would take her eyes off the book and reach up to touch his wrinkled cheek. She was alternately stroking her own cheek, then his again.

Finally, she spoke up, “Grandpa, did God make you?”  “Yes, sweetheart,” he answered, “God made me a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she paused, “Grandpa, did God make me too?”  “Yes, indeed honey,” he said, “God made you just a little while ago.”

Feeling their respective faces again, she observed,
“Ya know Grandpa, I think God is getting better at it.”

(Author Unknown)

The courage to live . . .

There was a very cautious man

Who never laughed or played;

He never risked, he never tried,

He never sang or prayed.

And when he one day passed away

His insurance was denied;

For since he never really lived,

They claimed he never died!

Source unknown

Beatitudes . . .we are all blessed!

 

Reflecting on the Beatitudes

Blessed are the poor in spirit…

Do I fear being poor, in spirit or otherwise?

Do I prefer to be rich in money, brains or influence?

Blessed are those who mourn…

Do I grieve over the pain in the lives of others?

Do I mourn over war, poverty, hunger, injustice?

Blessed are the meek…

Do I understand nonviolence as a way to fight evil with good?

Do I live that way?

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice…

Have I kept myself ignorant of current events that are clearly injustices?

Am I trying to improve life for others?

Have I kept silent when I should have spoken out against injustice?

Blessed are the merciful…

Are there places in my life where others are suffering because of my

lack of mercy?

What is my attitude toward capital punishment, ex-convicts, the poor?

Blessed are the pure of heart…

Am I open and honest about who I am?

Do I take time for prayer, solitude, community?

Blessed are the peacemakers…

Is my presence a source of peace?

Do I support violence in films, sports?

Have I read and supported official church statements against war and

violence in all its forms?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…

Do I worship security and fear costly discipleship?

Who are my heroes?

Do I live a truly Christian life in witness to the teachings of Jesus?

Author/original source Unknown

 

A New Serenity Prayer

By James Martin, sj

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the people I cannot change,
which is pretty much everyone,
since I’m clearly not you, God.
At least not the last time I checked.

And while you’re at it, God,
please give me the courage
to change what I need to change about myself,
which is frankly a lot, since, once again,
I’m not you, which means I’m not perfect.
It’s better for me to focus on changing myself
than to worry about changing other people,
who, as you’ll no doubt remember me saying,
I can’t change anyway.

Finally, give me the wisdom to just shut up
whenever I think that I’m clearly smarter
than everyone else in the room,
that no one knows what they’re talking about except me,
or that I alone have all the answers.

Basically, God,
grant me the wisdom
to remember that I’m
not you.

Amen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Martin_(priest,_born_1960)

Dancing Francis ~ Viterbo University campus

A Franciscan Prayer for Peace

Lord, make us instruments of your Peace.  In a world all too prone to violence and revenge, we commit ourselves to the Gospel values of mercy, justice, compassion, and love.

We will seek daily to promote forgiveness and healing  in our hearts, our families, and our world. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, let us cultivate peace.


Fear and distance prevent people from recognizing all as brothers and sisters;
tensions lead to violence and mistrust; We will strive to honor the dignity that God places in each and every human person.


Grant that we may not seek to be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. Our failure to understand the other can create exclusion in all its negative forms – racism, marginalization of those who are poor, sick, the immigrant;
it can also create situations of domination, occupation, oppression and war.

We pledge to seek the way of solidarity, to create hearts, homes, and communities
where all people will experience inclusion, hospitality, and understanding.
For it is in giving that we receive, in pardoning that we are pardoned and in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Let us Pray:
Lord God, create in us:
-the Capacity to hear and understand the voices of those who suffer from
every form of violence, injustice, and dehumanization;

-the Openness to receive and honor people from other cultures, languages,
religious traditions, and geographical regions;

-the Creativity to explore new ways of communication and dialogue through
music, poetry, performing arts, and the mass media;

-the Audacity to undertake the building of communities of forgiveness, healing,
and reconciliation.
To God who is above all and in all are the glory and the honor. Amen

Sharon Zaenglein Chipman Preaches for the Solemnity of the Trinity