My sweet Abbess Petunia needs to have another surgery today.  Back in November she had a tumor removed that was cancerous but tested as low-grade and they thought it had all been removed.  We discovered another small lump near the same spot last week and so they are going back in to remove it.  I have been relishing the wisdom found in this week’s Poetry Party.  Be sure to go take a peek and share your own poem about the Lenten journey, where an awareness of our mortality and death bring us closer to the beauty of life.

Lent What will you give up for the season, To help life along In its curious reversals? As if we had a choice. As if the world were not Constantly shedding us Like feathers off a duck’s back – The ground is always littered with our longings. You can’t help but wonder About all the heroes, The lives sacrificed In the compulsion toward the good. All those who dropped themselves Upon the earth’s hard surface – Weren’t they caught in pure astonishment In the breath before they shattered? Forget sacrifice. Nothing is tied so firmly that the wind Won’t tear

I spent the last several days in New Orleans at a meeting for Loyola’s adjunct faculty in their ministry extension program.  I began this role in the fall so this was my first time at their campus, even though I used to do some group facilitation for them while living in the Sacramento Diocese.  It was a great trip in many ways.  There were four new faculty members this year and we were warmly welcomed by returning faculty. So much has been stirred in me from this trip.  Some of it has to do with witnessing the slow work of rebuilding

I have been sitting with what I am being called to practice more attentively during the Lenten season that begins tomorrow. There are lots of possibilities calling to me and I have held them in the space of my heart and listened as well as I can in the midst of what has been a very busy week.  In fact, as I look ahead, I see February is one of the fullest months I have had in a long while, in part because next weekend is the second part of the intensive class I stepped in to teach and later

For the season of Easter I made a commitment to practice resurrection of the body, both my own body and the Earth’s body.  It has been a good process as I continue to discover places of my own healing and how they are woven together with the healing of the greater body. As a part of this journey I started seeing a nutritionist whose approach to food I love.  When we first sat down and she asked about my previous experiences with seeing a nutritionist, I told her that the couple of times I had gone before they had me try