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Well, I had a nice Pentecost reflection ready to put on paper, until this weekday morning as I did lectio on the day’s Gospel, John 16: 12-15. During his Last Discourse to the Apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus says that he has much more to tell them, but that they’re not yet ready to hear it all, that the Holy Spirit will be with them to reveal it at the proper time. So the Gospel, the Good News, is not a tightly-wrapped package that we open to inventory its contents and put them on their proper shelves. It’s rather a gift that keeps on giving, as we become more transformed by what we have already heard and seen, more ready for the next revelation. Thus the Good News is always good, and it’s always new. Its goodness is easy to accept, but its newness can be a challenge. This Good News has a way of shattering things: age-old assumptions, etched-in-stone certainties, tightly-held identities. Spirit-sourced insights can shatter our well-meant assumptions that turn out to be based on part
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  Be the Dance Here at our monastery, and in Catholic parish churches as well, we’re listening to daily readings from the Acts of the Apostles during this 50-day Easter season. The calendar also tosses in a few apostles’ feast days, like Philip, James, and Matthias, and we get a sense of the amazing stretch of the Gospel message as it begins in Jerusalem, spreads rapidly through the Middle East, and by the end of the Acts of the Apostles, comes to Rome in the person of Saint Paul. The more those early Christians were persecuted, the greater the spread of the Gospel. The small band of disciples who had followed Jesus and later experienced him as alive again had grown to the point where the Gospel message was now, only a few decades later, at the center and capital of the then-known world. And remember, there were no social media platforms or 24-hour news cycles to convey the message. As I listened to the readings for the feast of Philip and James, I asked myself: how did this happen
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  What do you think is the most important word in the Gospels, if not in the entire New Testament?   According to one writer (and if I could recall who wrote the article and where it was published, I’d give her/him full credit)    that word is “WITH”.    Not God, or Jesus, or love, or peace, or any other word you might expect, but “WITH”.   Once   I encountered that insight,   I began to see “WITH”   everywhere:   in the common life I live with my sisters in the monastery,    in the companionship of praying/working/eating/recreating with them,   in the care and concern that Jesus calls us to show to others,   in the life of our Three-Personed God who is an eternal, infinite “WITH.”    In fact, it’s that divine “WITH”    relationship that’s the source and energy of all the “WITHS” that we are called to sustain, because that same God lives in each of us, is WITH us in the most intimate way possible. When we pray in solitude,   we are not only with (I’ll stop the capitalizing!) God
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Spacious and Gracious... Have you ever been in the presence of someone who makes you feel that you’ve come home?  If our global community, slowly emerging from the depths of the pandemic, has learned anything, it’s that we are simply not meant to be in isolation. Human beings are meant to connect, are built to connect: with one another, with the earth that’s been given to us as our home, with God.  In fact, it’s God who gives us this pattern of connectedness; as Christians we believe in a God who lives in intimate connection as Trinity, as a Center of both radical stillness and vibrant loving action. And that Reality lives within each of us. So, when spiritual writers talk about a “God-shaped hole” within, it’s precisely that longing for connection, for intimacy, for the spacious and gracious love that pulsates continually from God. Jesus has incarnated this love and taken it to its utmost length through the Mystery of his death and rising. And now the same call is ours. Baptized into
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Wallflower

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 I went out for an early-morning walk today on the monastery grounds,  and on the spur of the moment (can we say "Holy Spirit"?)  decided to cut through the little play yard from the days when we had a pre-school.  Straight ahead of me was what  you see in the picture.  That wall stands against a sort of hill and was built in 1968.   This brave,  still-blooming plant found its way through the opening left by a missing brick and even in these days of autumn-looking-to-winter,  it's there,  sending a message. In this difficult and challenging year of 2020,  as we face unknowns in the world,  in our nation,  in our own personal lives,  can we take a deep breath,  look at the implications of this picture,  and re-ignite our hope?   God is never, ever, far off.  
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Can't Catch a Break? Neither Could Jesus.

Some of the Gospel readings  from Matthew over the last week or so have shown Jesus in a series of interesting situations. First, he hears about the execution of his cousin, John the Baptist.  He needs to get away,  to process this tragedy quietly in communion with his Father.  Undoubtedly he sees some frightening implications for his own future.   So he invites the apostles to "come away"  for a while,  to get away from the daily press of the crowds that are hungry for his words, his healing, his presence.  Yes, Jesus was fully the Son of God...but he was also fully human,  "like us in all things but sin",  as the Letter to the Hebrews says.  And so, like us, he needed some down time.   So off he goes with his close friends,  and when they arrive,  there are the crowds!   The people found another way to get to the same destination,  and he feels such compassion for them that he scraps his own plans.   He sees them as "sheep without a shepherd",  hapless, 
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The Certainty of Uncertainty

If these last five months have brought any single thing to all of us,  it's been....uncertainty. There's the uncertainty of how long the pandemic will last,  and if it will kick up again, and if it does,  how bad will it be?  Yes, in many places it's waning,  but we have those disturbing questions of what will happen if and when restrictions are lifted. There's the uncertainty of its effect on the economy,  on people's jobs and government benefits and mortgages and investments,  and most important, on their health. There's the uncertainty of  our necessary visits to supermarkets, banks, pharmacies:  even now,  with masks and social distancing and better statistics,  how safe is it? There's the uncertainty of the heroic essential worker who must brave the virus and arrive at his or her job, hoping that this will be another day free of infection. And for those who still work the front lines as first responders and health care personnel, there'
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