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Reflections

Category: Lent Easter

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Notes from New Orleans

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

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Serving the Mysteries

A couple of weeks ago, in my interview with Heather Williams Durka, she used a phrase to describe her work as an artist that has stayed with me: “Serving the Mysteries.”  I was really entranced by that image, because for me the spiritual journey is not so much about growing in certainty as it is about learning how to move more deeply into the heart of Mystery.  And so the idea of my work as an artist being about serving the mysteries resonates deeply. In the January/February 2008 issue of Spirituality and Health magazine, Thomas Moore wrote in his column about religion and the

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Abbey Bookshelf: Ash Wednesday Edition

I love Ash Wednesday.  We have so few rituals that are quite so earthy.  Everyone is welcome to come and receive those ashes on the forehead, that reminder that we are from dust and to dust we shall return.  It doesn’t strike me as morbid in the least, but a compelling reminder of the preciousness of our days. In the Christian liturgical calendar Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent, that season we so often associate with giving things up.  Last year I shared a reflection I gave at my church the year prior suggesting the need for lament

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Preparing for Lent

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

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Practicing Resurrection S-l-o-w-l-y

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

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The Fire of Courage

   In the Christian church, today is the feast of Pentecost.  It is considered to be the birthday of the church because it celebrates when the Spirit descended upon the disciples and filled them with the fire of courage to go and spread the message of liberation witnessed to them.  Vestments and banners usually are red, filling the church with a sense of the energy that must have rushed into the room that day. It is a joyful feast, bringing the fifty days of the season of Easter to a dynamic close. I like to imagine that ragtag group, gathered together “in

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Practicing Resurrection

A couple of years ago it occured to me that we spend a lot of time in church talking about what practices to take on for Lent, but when Easter comes, the glorious season of resurrection, we slip back into our ordinary lives.  Hopefully we arrive transformed by our Lenten journey, but the season of Easter is not just that amazing day when the tomb was discovered empty.  We celebrate Easter for 50 days, days that grow longer and more brilliant as blossoming continues and we head toward the summer solstice.  What might it mean to practice this resurrection in our everyday lives?

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