Looking Glass Connections

“I sought the LORD, and he answered me,

delivered me from all my fears.

Look to him and be radiant,

and your faces may not blush for shame.

This poor one cried out and the LORD heard,

and from all his distress he saved him.

The angel of the LORD encamps

around those who fear him, and he saves them.

Taste and see that the LORD is good;

blessed are those who take refuge in him.”

(Psalm 34: 5-9)

I was in middle school when one morning my father didn’t go to work as he usually did and my mother got up very early to get ready to go somewhere. I remember waking up to her telling me to get up and ready for school. I couldn’t miss the bus that day because they had an appointment. Neither one of my parents told me what was going on, but I knew in the pit of my stomach that something was not right. I worried all day during school and even broke down in tears in the guidance counselor’s office. As it turned out, my father was waiting for me when I got home from school and said, “your mother is in the hospital. She had surgery for bladder cancer and the doctor said he got all the cancer out. Let’s make dinner and then I will take you to see her tonight.” I struggled as my young mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. All I knew was that I was afraid.

My family was heavily dominated by brothers and my only sister got married and moved away from home when I was six years old. Thoughts of having to survive in an all-male household without my mother was more than I could handle. My mother was the only one who could follow along with my long stories, vivid dreams and crazy aspirations for life. She was fine after that bout with cancer, but it never left our minds even though the doctor said the cancer left her body.

Later in life it was no longer my mother doing the caregiving but me taking care of her. In the last summer of her life she was in a nursing facility and I visited her every day for lunch. It never phased me to make the hour drive through traffic to spend a little bit of time with her. One day, as I was going to my car after our visit, the cloud formations in the sky caught my attention and, in an instant, I was aware of a Divine Presence walking with me. God was watching over both of us as we journeyed closer to that day when she would take her last breath and our relationship would be change forever. In the evening of August 25th, I sat by her bedside and prayed for the Holy Spirit to come and take her. My fears and anxieties were gone as I knew God was present and would care for each of us.

I think back to that time and often remember the challenges St Elizabeth Ann Seton endured in her life.  She faced illness, trauma, loss, and separation from her loved ones just like we have been experiencing in this pandemic.  May we not lose heart and trust in the loving presence of God as we journey through each day often without our loved ones by our side and think of the words of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton,

““God is like a looking glass in which souls see each other. The more we are untied to Him by love, the nearer we are to those who belong to Him.” ”

Let us pray: Loving, healing Father, we know that our fears and anxieties are part of being human. We do not fully understand where our loved ones are since having passed from this life to eternity, but we trust you to care for us and for the souls of our loved ones. Give us courage to move forward and help us to share laughter and tears and know we are not alone as we grieve. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen

- Sandy Monier

(Sandy is a Roman Catholic Pastoral Minister and offers Grief Support to groups and individuals.)

The seedling of my parent’s Rose of Sharon tree, in bloom, on a foggy fall morning.

Racism, Renunciation, and Contemplation

This morning I read Richard Rohr’s daily meditation on the topic “Contemplation and Racism” which takes to task white privilege and puts the ball in the court of the privileged – what do we do next, who are white, who have benefitted from unearned and undeserved ease in this troubled country.  I woke up at one in the morning thinking about this topic, and as I am a believer in and lover of contemplative practice as a stepping stone in creating individual and cultural transformation, I read a chapter of “The Way of the Pilgrim,” a Russian text that details the wanderings of a Pilgrim as he looks to unite himself in prayer with God.

The chapter I read last night was about a prince who, with callous indifference, kills one of his serfs and feels nothing—nothing, until the serf begins to haunt his dreams and then appears to him in visions in his daytime hours.  Along with the man he has killed, the women he treated badly and other men he had wronged begin to haunt him continually.  Nothing helps this sickness until he frees the rest of his serfs and resolves to give away what he has and live his life as a beggar.  He loses the world and regains his soul.

Christian Bobin, in his meditation on Francis of Assisi, The Very Lowly, writes that the moment of St. Francis’s conversion involves letting go of his old life of privilege, a moment of change that he resists “like one of those children who have a marble in their left hand and won’t let go till they have the coins they’re trading it for in their right: you would like to have a new life as long as you don’t lose the old one” (38).  Change is hard.  And a new world, a more fair and just and kind one, means those afforded these unfair privileges must be willing to let go to see what the new one looks like.  The spiritual world, Bobin continues, “is nothing different from the material world.  The world of the spirit is just the material world finally set right.  In the world of the spirit, one makes one’s fortune by going bankrupt” (53).  How different this is from the “Christianity” of the White House, from the prosperity gospel that promises more stuff to those who believe.

In a class I team-taught last semester on “Interfaith Dialogue:  Christianity and Islam,” my faith was confirmed that we can be more loving by listening and letting down our guard.  My students marveled at the similarities between religions—the common emphasis on social justice, personal accountability, and love. Even in difference, by learning to honor those differences, we can live as one.  I think that white America is being asked, person by person, to let go of privilege, of distorted and harmful narratives about what this country is, and in this time of common hurting, where the hurt is still being disproportionately dispersed, we are each called to enter our inner rooms, confront our own complicity, failings, and guilt, and emerge as agents of change.  I believe that contemplation allows us to do this, but contemplation without action does little.

In the 4th Century, Basil the Great wrote of the inequities of his time, “’But whom do I treat unjustly,’ you say, ‘by keeping what is my own?’ Tell me, what is your own?  What did you bring into this life?  From where did you receive it?  It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common.”  Meditating on this question might yield different answers for different people—and beget a call to volunteerism, a vocational change, supporting something greater than our own individual lives.  We have a charge now to work towards change, but losing privilege means being willing to let go of what is extra, for those who live with more to live with less, to live differently.  I am not trying to collapse class and race here, and each individual walks a different path in this world.  I am trying to walk my own, better.  May those of us who have been complicit in this culture of privilege, whether intentionally or not, try to do the same.

- Alison Umminger

Photo by Keith Helfrich on Unsplash

““I think that white America is being asked, person by person, to let go of privilege, of distorted and harmful narratives about what this country is, and in this time of common hurting, where the hurt is still being disproportionately dispersed, we are each called to enter our inner rooms, confront our own complicity, failings, and guilt, and emerge as agents of change. ””

The Jesus Prayer

Several years ago, while reading the Russian spiritual classic, “The Way of the Pilgrim” I was reminded of The Jesus Prayer – “Lord Jesus, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” I decided to recite this prayer each day as many times as it came to my mind. It has become a valuable spiritual practice for me that may prove valuable to you, too, if you are willing to try it.

Whenever I say the prayer, I am reminded of Jesus’ parable of the two men praying at the temple. The Pharisee informs God “I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” In contrast the tax collector beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Jesus said the tax collector rather than the Pharisee went home from the temple justified in the eyes of God. Ironically, both the Pharisee and the tax collector received exactly what they requested from God.

In his excellent book on the parables, Robert Farrar Capon uses his theological imagination and comes up with this interesting story: The Pharisee noticed the tax collector praying and invited him out to lunch. He soon enrolled the tax collector in his school of prayer and within a month the tax collector stood at the temple and prayed, “God I thank you that I am not like other people…”

Sometimes we may imagine that this prayer of forgiveness is beginners level prayer and we should soon graduate to a more serious level of prayer! Nothing could be further from the truth. We are continual sinners in need of continual forgiveness. Learning to pray The Jesus Prayer in humility will remind you that you need grace everyday and that God longs to give it to you. As a forgiven sinner you will also be reminded that everyone around you needs daily grace as well and you might be more inclined to offer it to them.

You may be surprised what an eleven-word prayer can do for your spiritual life, not to mention your relationships with others!

- Kenny Payne

“Learning to pray The Jesus Prayer in humility will remind you that you need grace everyday and that God longs to give it to you. As a forgiven sinner you will also be reminded that everyone around you needs daily grace as well and you might be more inclined to offer it to them. ”