Knitted in Your Mother’s Womb

What mortal hand can e're untie

The filial band that knits me to thy rugged strand.   
Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832 – The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Little Owl cardigan for my grandniece

Is it the Book of Psalms or the Book of Wisdom in which we hear that our creator God knew us as we were being knit in our mother’s womb? Could it be that our God is a knitter? That may be more than a bit of a stretch. But knitting is an apt image of the work of creation – a slow and deliberate effort of the benign artist. Someone once said that “The act of creating is all we know of God.” When we create something with our own hands, out of our own imagination, from our own design – written, painted, sculpted, woven, knitted, embroidered, molded, carved, sewn, constructed, drawn, etc. – we experience the vital creative function of the divine.

Silk and wool vareigated lace weight

A few weeks ago I posted some pictures of knitted lace shawls, the making of which has become a passion of mine. That some of my life be dedicated to the creation of something beautiful, whatever the art form, is a necessity for me. Handwork of many kinds especially knitting, quilting, and spinning fit as hand to glove into contemplative life. This is true of any effort at artistic creation. Designing a garden, arranging flowers, as  well as any and all of the visual and creative arts fit the life of prayer and serve it well. Each is a creative, slow, repetitious, contemplative process that can remove us from the noise and distraction of 21^st century life in the first world.

Handspun merino wool lace weight knit-on edge

Needlework is something practically bred in the bone of my history. I was urrounded by a family and a neighborhood dominated by talk of New York City’s garment industry. Sewing machine operators, sample and pattern makers, pressers were joined by my mother in her youthful pursuit of fashion design. My father would often survey his daughters gathered with their mother around the dinette table all absorbed in needle work of one kind or another and declare, “Another meeting the of the Idleness is Sin Club!” I do not remember being taught to crochet. I just seemed to have always been able to do it beginning with mini-items of clothing for Ginny Dolls of the 1950s. My mother started us in embroidery by handing us a scrap of white fabric, probably torn from an old sheet and stretched in a hoop, along with a sewing needle carrying colorful thread. She would say, “Draw a picture.” Thus we learned how to make a friend of that pesky needle.

Variegated wool sock weight with crochet edge

My mother introduced me to knitting when I was about ten years old but I was significantly helped along by a neighborhood friend a couple of years older who at least knew the knit and purl stitches. Mom’s help was limited. She could not follow written directions and made all of her gorgeous boucle tops via step-by step instructions at the local yarn store. I remember a white blouse with evenly spaced black jet hanging beads and another with a checkerboard motif highlighting the scoop neck. Every Brooklyn neighborhood had at least one yarn emporium in which a sorority of knitters filled chairs pushed up against walls bearing floor to ceiling shelves of  woolen fiber in a riot of color. In high school I decided to knit a real sweater for the first time. Mom was not encouraging and warned that she could not help me with directions. But the older sister of a friend promised I could do it under her guidance. The rest is history. Most of the people I have loved in my life received products of hasty needles performing in the rythym of the continental style of western European knitting.

I tell friends that if I sit in front of the TV without any needlework in my hands they can safely assume that I am dead tired. Years ago, when I began to find myself at many and various meetings, especially evening meetings following a long day of work, knitting came along to keep me attentive and awake. This seems counter intuitive but knitters universally report this phenomenon. We always have a simple project put aside as ‘meeting knitting”. This knitting also helps me to keep my mouth shut. There is also some truth in what Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the author of At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, declares: “...the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting. Knitters are so compellingly clever that they simply can't tolerate boredom. It takes more to engage and entertain this kind of human, and they need an outlet or they get into trouble… knitters just can't watch TV without doing something else. Knitters just can't wait in line, knitters just can't sit waiting at the doctor's office. Knitters need knitting to add a layer of interest in other, less constructive ways.”

Natural handspun lace weight

Having tired of sweaters, hats, socks, Afghans, plain shawls, and baby attire I tried lace knitting a few years ago. I failed abysmally when following written directions and was told, “You just must learn to read charts.” It is consoling that at my age I could, with discipline and attention, pick up a new skill. So now I am enchanted by knitted lace. The treasures of antique patterns from European countries are being published, particularly those of the British Isles and Estonia. Yes, lace is knitted. What we call Belgian lace is not knitted. It is woven with intertwining threads each one on its own bobbin. But while women of the Low Countries and France were producing this lace, women in Spain and Ireland were creating wedding ring shawls, lace knitted in such fine yarn that the entire thickness of a shawl could be gathered and run through a wedding ring. Interestingly the history of knitting reveals that it probably originated in the Middle East and that Muslims brought the craft to Europe around the 10^th century.

Today knitting has enjoyed a great revival, especially in its appeal to the young, and not just women. Taught one of my own sons how to knit as we enjoyed a pre-concert picnic on the great lawn of Tanglewood, the Bershires summer home of the Boston Symphony, in Massachusetts. Later he said, “Mom, now I know why you love doing this.”

Links:

http:///www.ravelry.com
(everything knitters want to know about knitting and a zillion patterns)
http://www.knit-a-square.com/history-of-knitting.html  (history)

Book:    No Idle Hands: The Social History of Knitting by Anne L. MacDonald

 

A Spiritual "In-Service" Recommendation

With the closing of ministry at Mount St. Alphonsus as of January 1, 2012 many things that we have enjoyed there will come to an end. One of them is a tradition begun by Father Francis Gargani, CSsR in the early 1990s. At that time, Brother Donald Bisson was serving as novice master in the Marist community down the road on Route 9W. Never one to miss an opportunity to get first class presenters on the Mount's program schedule, Father Francis arranged for Brother Don to give two Saturday presentations in the fall and two in the spring each year. Brother Don's expertise is in the areas of spirtuality and Jungian psychology. At. first amature recordings were made of the presentations and now most of them are available on CDs available at his website.

The last presentations that Brother Don will be giving at the Mount will be offered on Saturday, October 8 and Sautrday, November 19, 2011. Each begins at 9:30am, ends at 3:30pm. The cost for the day is $60.00 which includes lunch. Reservations are reququired.

Call 845-384-8000.

Saturday, October 8 - Intentional Community

In Our hectic and individualized society, ther is a growing hunger for intentional communities of faith and growth. This workshop will attempt to assist all forms of communities: families, religious congregations, support groups, parishes, etc., to become more conscious and intentional in living the call to unity and love.

Saturday, November 19 - Intentional Pilgrims

We re all called to the holy, but the pilgrim is an individual who is consciously on the quest of life long conversion. This workshop offered from a Jungian and Christian perspective will examine the cost and joy of being a daily pilgrim to the Divine even from the margins of our lives.

Vassar Students on the Spiritual Path

What a privilege it was to offer spiritual direction to students of the Catholic Community of Vassar College! Was I ever impressed by them and their advisor, campus minister Linda Tuttle. Just two weeks into the fall semester freshmen to seniors, male and female, from so many different countries and cultures that I lost count, committed themselves to a three-day "busy person's" retreat. This was an opportunity to discuss family, faith, life, meaning, and vocational commitment with two contemplative nuns, one sister from an active congregation and two diocesan priests assigned to a variety of campus and seminary ministries. From the gathering of campus faith organizations (called a "bounce" because students and guests can go from table to table - bounce around - checking out each group, the faith it represents and what they have to offer to students) Friday evening to Mass on Sunday afternoon celebrated with the young people by Fr. Richard Lamorte, students consistently expressed their conscious journey with God - a journey maintained in spite of busy schedules, impressive academic programs and goals as well as study and travel abroad.

Vassar College Chapel

Linda Tuttle and Alyssa Pabalan

Katrina (senior and president of Vassar Catholic Community)and friends preparing scripture readings for Mass

Fortunately our monastery is less than a half hour away from the beautiful Vassar campus in Poughkeepsie. The nature of the retreat made it possible for me to spend just a few hours a day at the school from Friday to Sunday. Over and over again the invitation was issued for students and staff to come to our monastery to share prayer, to get input on some spiritual topic or just to experience the monastic way. Since we have four fine colleges within easy commute of our monastery we have been working on developing relationships with students and professors. We hope that we see some Vassar students at our door in the near future.

Contemplative Spirituality

"When the Going Gets Tough..."

Sister Constance FitzGerald, OCD (Discalced Carmelite) is a woman I have admired from afar for a long time. When I had the great good fortune to meet her at a gathering of the Association of Contemplative Sisters (lay women and religious) I did not have a clue as to her background and achievements. That she was a lovely, well-spoken, gracious women of great spiritual depth and commitment to her contemplative vocation was obvious. What I did not realize was that she is a highly respected scholar, well-known for her studies of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. In our monastery collection of audio tapes I found some of her lectures, presented here over twenty-five years ago. The teaching was solid gold. How I wish there was time to transcribe them. Today, Sr. Connie is among the elders of her vibrant and growing Carmelite community in Maryland.

Recently, I twice came across citations for an article written by Sr. Connie in the 1990s. At first it seemed there was little chance of getting my hands on a piece first published in a journal in the mid-90s. But the second citation was for a book of essays, a volume in our own library collection. For me, it was a great find. The book is Women's Spirituality - Resources for Christian Development (second edition, ed. Joann Wolski Conn, NY:Paulist Press, 1996).

Two essays by Sr. Connie appear in the volume: Impasse and the Dark Night and The Transformative Influence of Wisdom in John of the Cross. Here I will refer only to the first essay concerning spiritual impasse or the dark night of the soul. Sr. Connie explains:

By impasse, I mean that there is no way out of, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In true impasse, every normal manner of acting is brought to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted...Dorothee Soelle [Suffering, Fortress, 1975] describes it as "unavoidable suffering"...Moreover, intrinsic to the experience of impasse is the impression and feeling of rejection and lack of assurance from those on whom one counts. At the deepest levels of impasse, one sees that support systems on which one has depended pulled out from under one and asks if anything, if anyone, is trustworthy. Powerlessness overtakes the person or group caught in impasse and opens into the awareness that no understandable defense is possible. This is how impasse looks to those who are imprisoned within it. It is the experience of disintegration, of deprivation of worth, and it has many faces, personal and societal.

This essay is so striking because first her description rings so painfully true and then she explores the realm of potential within an experience that not only seems to offer no options but, very realistically, does not have a way out at all.

Paradoxically, a situation of no potential is loaded with potential, and impasse becomes the place for the reconstitution of the intuitive self. This means the situation of being helpless can be efficacious, not merely self-denying and demanding of passivity. While nothing seems to be moving forward, one is, in fact, on a homeward exile - if one can yield in the right way, responding with full consciousness of one's suffering in the impasse yet daring to believe that new possibilities, beyond immediate vision, can be given.

I could go on and on because what Sr. Connie expands upon is the course that might be taken rather than the more common phenomenon of bailing out of the relationship, the marriage, the job, the responsibility, the religious community, the priesthood, the impasse of whatever kind. Another very wise friend of mine, Brother Donald Bisson, FMS (spirituality and Jungian psychology) speaks of this as the inability to live with paradox, to hold the often opposing factors simultaneously, at least for a while and let them work, give them time to become life-giving instead of life threatening.

Sr. Connie goes beyond the individual experience of impasse. She applies this analysis to societal impasse, impasse unexplored which leads to bailing out in the form of military attack or bailing out by refusing to deal with an issue vital to the entire country or the world. She also applies the concept to the impasse experienced by so many women who feel that their gender has hit the glass ceiling or the glass wall which allows them to go no further on the road to gender equality.

Have I recommended this piece highly enough? It seems a must for those seriously pursuing the spiritual path. I am very grateful to Sr. Connie for this work and so much more.

Feast of the

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Today is a great feast for the Redemptoristine/Redemptorist family or, as we refer to it, the double institute. It is the feast of the Redeemer, Christ Jesus, from whom our Order and the Redemptorist Congregation take their names. We say with Paul, "May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

In addition, today is the feast of our foundress, the Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa, who died on this date in 1755, in Foggia, Italy. It is told that she had received Viaticum and then asked the priest to read aloud the Passion as described in the Gospel of John. At the words, "It is finished," uttered by Jesus from the cross Maria Celeste breathed her last.

With the joy of our celebration fresh in memory and with Jesus invitation, "Take up your cross and follow me," reverberating in the passage ways of the heart, our community enters into an eight-day retreat. You may ask, "How do contemplatives enter retreat time?" My prayer is to have it be different time, slower time, more carefree time, to contemplate the face of Jesus, to gaze upon the face of God.

(Should you be interested in how the friendship between our foundress, Ven. Maria Celeste Crostarosa, and St. Alphonsus de Liguori founder of the Redemptorists played itself out just go to Archives in the side bar, click on 2006, and then scroll down to the entry for May 11, 2006.)

The Passion of Mother Teresa

Out of the effort to gather the writings of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta in accord with the cause for her canonization has come a collection of her journal entries and correspondence with a variety of spiritual directors. They reveal the startling news of her lengthy and very deep 'dark night of the soul'. For forty to fifty years she lacked any felt sense of the presence of God or assurance of the intimacy of her Spouse, and questioned the existence of God.

This is the topic of the cover story in the August 23, 2007 issue of TIME MAGAZINE. One wonders not only at the profound mystery of God's work in the soul of such a servant as Teresa but also at the respectful and lengthy consideration of such revelations in the secular press.

This great woman who ministered to the most abandoned languishing in the streets of India has now become REAL to me, and her reality is both consolation and encouragement for all who struggle at the depths of the human condition - weakness, lack of courage, depression, and the struggle to maintain energy for perseverance in the journey.

With the help of one of a long line of spiritual advisers, Mother Teresa came finally to see that this stark and painful reality was the answer to the sincere desire she uttered in prayer, "I want to give all." With nothing material left to give and spending all of her energy on God's "little ones", the last gift she had to give was the consolation found in certainty. In another sense, as she experienced greater and greater success in her mission she was provided with the corrective to any tendency to cater to the ego.

With this in mind, I now experience Mother Teresa as a flesh and blood figure, no longer a one dimensional caricature of the perpetually joyous and perpetually certain. Out of this revelation of her truth she emerges as an even more heroic figure yet, at the same time, also more accessible. Is a fearless soldier ever truly brave? He has no inner struggle to conquer before stepping into the line of fire. How much greater the the bravery and achievement of the one who must acknowledge and overcome paralyzing fear and revulsion in the gut in order to enter into battle?

Mother Teresa, we now know, overcame more than we ever imagined and persevered in spite of harsh interior desolation. How much more heroic she appears in a three-dimensional portrait!
How does this news hit you?

Saints Remind of the Presence of Suffering

August 9 - St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Carmelite Martyr

August 14 - St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

Long before the word "holocaust" came into popular use as reference to the Nazi killing machine which practically eradicated Eastern European Jewry and assorted "undesirable" others, the reality of that horror was known to me. The area of Brooklyn, New York in which I grew up was shared by Italian Catholics and Jews of mostly Russian or Eastern European heritage. While the former came to this country largely to escape poverty in the Mezzogiorno of southern Italy and Sicily, the later had come to escape military service in the army of the Russian tsar or lethal pogroms periodically declared to clear the countryside of a Jewish presence.

After World War II, many new immigrants began to arrive in the neighborhood. Many Italians came and along with them a smattering of young Jews from the displaced persons' camps of Europe. They had to be young because only they had the stamina to survive if survival was at all possible. Their young bodies had great resistance to deprivation; they could work hard; they could run and hide; or they could be hidden by some extraordinary non-Jew willing to risk life and limb. And some of these refugees had numbers tattooed on their arms. When asked about them by her observant daughter my mother replied in hushed tones, "They were in the camps." She gave no details but I intuited that this was a grave circumstance of which one did not speak.

Most of the history I know I learned from reading great historical novels as a teenager. From the fiction of Leon Uris (Exodus, Mila 18, Armageddon) I learned about the Warsaw Ghetto, the concentration camps and the refusal of the United States to wave immigration policies to receive more Jews into this country as the intentions of Hitler became undeniable. Later Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, proved that the truth was even more horrid than the fiction.
The Saints Teresa Benedicta and Maximilian Kolbe are our Holocaust reminders in August of each year. Yes, we have the moving Diary of Anne Frank and the film Schindler's List to remind us. But as Catholics following the liturgical year these names and their stories come before us year after year to bring to our eyes the inhumanity of which we are capable. But they also speak of the heights of courage, fortitude and generosity of which human beings are still capable.

With such memories in mind, I thought today of the 'holocausts' of our own days in the streets of Baghdad, on the parched earth of Darfur in the Sudan, in the wee hours of the morning as four young people are gunned down execution style in Newark, New Jersey.

A few years ago I read an old book by Caryll Houselander, The Comforting of Christ. Houselander is best known for her book about the Blessed Mother, The Reed of God. The older book, published in 1947 in England, reflects the horrors of World War II. The author's bold suggestion is that by our lives, our prayer, our sacrifices, our attentiveness and availability we have the power within us to comfort Christ who suffered and continues to suffer for us. At the end of the book Houselander offers A Meditation on the Mass of Reparation. I have been using it as a preparation for receiving the Eucharist and find it very powerful. Houselander was a poet and a mystic and these affinities are expressed so well in this lengthy meditation. After speaking to each Person of the Blessed Trinity she follows the movements of the Rite of the Eucharist. Of the moment when the priest adds a drop of water into the wine-filled chalice she writes:

Receive the tears of the world, in the drop of water in the Chalice; receive the tears of old mothers who weep in the ruins of their homes, rifled nests of the little birds that were once their sons; receive the tears of frightened children, of homesick children. Receive the privileged tears of those who can weep for contrition; receive the tears that are not shed, that are hard as salt-water frozen in hearts that can weep no more; that ache in the throats of those who have no more tears to shed. Receive, O God, from my hands, who am not worthy to breathe the air He breaths, the tears of Christ in the Chalice of our salvation, the tears of the Infant in Bethlehem, the tears of the little foreign Child in Egypt, the tears shed over Jerusalem, the tears shed over Lazarus...O God, we offer Thee the tears of Christ in the tears of the world: "We offer Thee the Chalice of Salvation, humbly begging Thy mercy that it may ascend to Thee for our salvation and for that of the whole world."

With Loins Girt and Lamps Burning

A Reflection for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time - Luke 12:32-48

My mother taught me to "suffer in silence." For her this concept was applied to two main spheres of life. The first was the silent suffering of being a woman - especially a beautiful woman (eyebrow plucking, tight girdles, electrolysis treatments for nasty facial hair, etc.). To any complaint she would reply, "You have to suffer to be beautiful." The second predominant application of the adage was for the personal suffering required in order not to offend people or not to indicate in any way that you thought too highly of yourself. In these contexts, silent suffering was a requirement for self-protection - an image thing.

Silent suffering always seemed unfair to me. It seemed that I got swallowed up by it - my feelings, desires, preferences and all concern for equity and mutuality in relationship were subsumed in favor of appearances and/or the desires of others.

In today's Gospel Jesus instructs:

Sell your belongings and give alms...Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like the servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks...Much will be required of the person who is given much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.

What I hear in this teaching today is a call to silent suffering; the silent suffering of accepting what is, of doing ones duty, of the generous availability of the servant, of patience in a time of waiting. This call is naturally repugnant to me because, by virtue of my all too human history, I have been left with a bad taste in my mouth from force feeding in childhood. Rejection of such a call to self-sacrifice is also the product of cultural conditioning in an affluent society and exposure to the "me generation" as well as the high value Americans assign to rugged individualism. It is so necessary to recognize these sources of resistance in order to move along the way to conversion of heart.

Jesus's call to quiet, patient, waiting and service without the usual comforts ("Sell your belongings and give alms...") is an appeal for silent suffering - and I balk at it. What is required for conversion is a maturity that removes me from the resentments of childhood and allows for reinterpretation of honored familial, societal and cultural values. I must ask, "How can I wait for the Master with less self-assertion and less preoccupation with the needs of my ego?" "How can I reset the default position in my own psyche to accept personal deprivation or sacrifice (silent suffering) as a condition for establishing the reign of the Kingdom of God in my heart, in my family, in my community, in my nation and in my world?

Wherever your treasure lies, there your heart will be.

Luke 12:34

Love Alone: The Anointing at Bethany

Today I rejoiced in one of my favorite episodes in scripture, the dramatic scene of Jesus' anointing in the house of Simon the Pharisee by an unnamed women. All of the synoptic retellings indicate that she is a woman of bad reputation. (Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9; Luke 7:36-50). Testifying to the importance of this pericope is its fourth appearance in the Gospel of John (12:1-8). There however, the woman does not go unnamed. She is Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Many have mistakenly assumed that the sinful woman of the synoptic versions was Mary Magdalene but scripture scholars do not support this conflation of characters. However, the scholar C.H. Dodd, in his book "Historical Tradition", argued that there was one actual incident behind these Gospel versions and that the variations arose in the course of oral tradition.

It is a story rich in lessons on faith and love, on sinful righteousness, on the largess of the mercy of God. Perhaps I am so partial to it because I spent a great deal of time studying this narrative and comparing the synoptic versions for a graduate school research paper. That work may yet see the light of day on this blog. But today my heart went in another direction.

I was struck by the motif of lavishness, of opulence, of generosity that does not keep count but is rather poured out in prodigal fashion. So prodigal that it annoyed Simon. With or without full appreciation of the culture of the time, the actions of the woman do seem quite over done, over the top. And Luke does not hesitate to embellish the story with tears so copious they literally wash the feet of Jesus and hair so thick and luxuriant that it can be used to dry them. To justify the woman's actions and his own in allowing them, Jesus tells another story of prodigal generosity - the forgiveness of debts. In the end he over shadows the story by extending God's forgiveness to the woman who was presented as a great sinner.

These expressions of prodigal love and forgiveness enlarged my own understanding of the quality of utter openness and generosity God desires from me. It is thoughtless abandon to the acts of giving and availability. And in this pericope Jesus assures that God will not be outdone in generosity. The prodigality, the lavishness of his unmerited mercy cannot be measured. Perhaps the mystery here is that one opens the other. In this quality of giving we are opened up to receive and God rejoices in our new availability to absorb the ever flowing shower of love and mercy which by the very nature of God cannot be staunched.

New Vision - A Fruit of Contemplation

Christian Unity Week – 2005


Often when Violeta Chu, our Peruvian sister was here, it became necessary to try to explain what was meant by some difficult technical term. As we waited in the airport for her return flight the word paradox came up. How would I explain that? In the face of deficiency in language one often resorts to example in an effort to communicate a difficult concept. So I said, “You know how it is said that when women enter a monastery they leave the world. But in reality we in the monastery know that in this life we draw closer to the world. This is an example of a paradox.” Thinking about Christian unity and the unity of all people brought me back to that example and the paradox of moving away from the world only to become more united with it.

During this week we have been called to maturity and action recognizing that God the Creator is the source and the Son, Jesus Christ, the foundation on which we build. Sister Peg’s reflection yesterday elaborated on the act of “building” as one of conversion of heart which Lonergan described as a conversion to love – unrestricted, unconditional love.

Today’s theme and the suggested readings indicate that we will be judged by the effort we make to move toward that conversion, the conversion to love. I waited until yesterday to write this little piece because my impulse was to make it intimately relevant to our lives as contemplatives and I was searching for a way to do that. Here is my focus. We may not be called to create ecumenical services with our Protestant neighbors or to sponsor an ecumenical prayer group, although those are nice ideas. However, we do know that we are definitely called to contemplative prayer – it is our life. This is the realm in which we build. And what do I mean by that?

We know from the great writers and practitioners of contemplative prayer that one of its fruits is that paradoxical yet sure sense of connectedness to the world, to the people in it everywhere and to all of creation. Last night, I ‘googled’ the words “Fruits of Contemplation”. Post haste I found a very apt and concise list.

1. You learn to discern what really matters – and let go of what doesn’t.
2. You are less likely to judge other people.
3. You accept your own basic goodness.
4. You cultivate an open mind.
5. Your private and communal prayer grows deeper.
6. You transform your motivations and purify your intentions
7. You achieve inner freedom to serve truthfully in the outer world.

In short, we can say that the prayer to which we are particularly called transforms vision. Douglas Steere said, “Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it all, all people, and all the history of humankind, in the light of God.” (Intro. To Merton’s Contemplative Prayer)

We are all familiar with the story of Thomas Merton’s experience on the street in Louisville where he was suddenly transfixed by the graced realization that each and every person in the crowds before him was loved by God and that he love them too. It was truly a conversion experience. It was built upon, made possible by, a lifetime of contemplative prayer – a going inward to the place of transformation which we call union - and then a going outward to that unconditional, unrestricted love of which Lonergan spoke.

What is it that is happening? Maria Celeste might describe it as an exchange of hearts.
Through surrender in contemplation our ever discriminating heart is exchanged for the heart of Jesus - the heart of the Jesus who knew no distinctions; seemed oblivious to divisions of culture, gender, class or condition; who did not see separation, barrier, or difference. We see with new eyes and feel with a new heart and know the primacy of love and the essential unity of all humanity and all creation. We emerge with a new psyche. It is this condition that makes lists of rules printed inside missalettes about who can and who cannot receive Communion and the statements of bishops about refusing the Sacrament to public officials, repugnant to us. Especially so because we know that the sacrament of Holy Eucharist is the ultimate expression of Jesus’ desire to be one with us. And we know the rest of the equation. If Jesus is united to all then all are united with each other. In every Eucharistic Prayer we hear Jesus’ words, “Take this, all of you.”

I experience Holy Eucharist as the Sacrament of contemplation, both the food for and the fruit of contemplative experience.

Our unique lives as contemplative religious are God’s gifts to us. We are asked today to build on the central platform of that life – contemplation in Jesus – that we may increasingly bear as witnesses the mark of our essential oneness with all that is. May we share that unique vision of Jesus, allow all dualisms and distinctions to fall away and rightfully and worthily assume that prophetic voice which cries out to the world, “God is Love!”

Living Life Contemplatively

It would seem that contemplative living is in vogue. Do a search on Amazon.com for “contemplation” or “contemplative living” and you come up with over 15,000 citations! It would seem that the idea of living more contemplatively has become as cozy a notion as “Martha Stewart living.” Here are some of the titles you would find:

A Listening Heart: The Art of Contemplative Living by David Steindahl-Rast
Organic Spirituality: A Six-fold Path for Contemplative Living by Vandergriff
The Better Part: Stages of Contemplative Living by Thomas Keating
The Monk in the World: Cultivating a Spiritual Life by Teasdale & Wilber
New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton
The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s
Religions by Teasdale
Mirror of the Heart: Consciousness at the Root of Identity also by Teasdale

There must be something to this. Since such a list (and the shelves of Borders and Barnes and Noble too) reflects that a lot of other people must be coming to that conclusion.
In my first talk I tried to convey the meaning of Redemptoristine lives, indeed all contemplative life. But I tried also to communicate how this orientation in life is not just for us as official contemplatives, official nuns and monastics. All of us are called to great union with God. That is why we are here. Remember the Baltimore Catechism teaching? Why did God make me? Answer – “To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him.” To know, to become more intimate with any one we must engage in loving companionship and mutual sharing.
Earlier I spoke of our call to be “living memories” of Jesus. If we profess the faith, if we listen to our baptismal call, isn’t that what we are all meant to do within our own particular life circumstances?
The fruits of such contemplative living are a strengthening of faith, an increase in charity and clarity of vision. How could this look in your every day life? Another way of talking about this is to ask, “How can we, indeed all of us, whether we are monastics or lay people, how can we live in a way that is consistent with trying to be a living memory of Jesus. How does trying to keep your “eyes on the prize” look in the day to day of relationships, family life, career, the line at the supermarket, the crowded waiting room of the doctor’s office, participation in local and national politics and, on the grand scale, being a citizen of the world?
But giving witness to an interior disposition, an interior dedication IS what we are talking about here. We have an old mimeographed copy of a translation of a scaled down version of Alphonsus’ The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ done by Father Bernard Haring, the great Redemptorist theologian. In his note on the translation he wrote, “Over and over he [Alphonsus] reminds us that ‘surface’ Christianity is not enough. We must surrender to the overwhelming force of the love of Christ, and allow ourselves to become transformed into the redeeming Christ.” Therefore to live contemplatively is to give witness, to become Celeste’s “viva memoria”, a living memory of the Redeemer for ourselves, those with whom we live in family or community and those with whom we share the planet.
In his book, Contemplation in a World of Action, Thomas Merton wrote:
…I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development,
which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated busy-busy
existence. This does not mean that they are incompatible with action,
with creative work and dedicated love. On the contrary, these go together.
A certain depth of disciplined experience is a necessary ground for fruitful
action. Without a more profound human understanding derived from
exploration of the inner ground of human existence, love will tend to be
superficial and deceptive. Traditionally, ideas of prayer, meditation and
contemplation have been associated with this deepening of one’s personal
life and this expansion of the capacity to serve and understand others. (Chap. 9)

A contemplative life is lived: prayerfully, simply, consciously, and faithfully.
To live simply – here I have to tell you a bit of my story. Over the years, to defend myself from the incursions of three growing sons I made my bedroom at home into my little kingdom complete with TV, VCR, radio, tape and CD player, computer, sewing machine and, of course, a telephone. My feet would hit the floor in the morning and at least one, if not two, of these devices would be turned on. I cooked while talking on the phone; never worked without media accompaniment of some kind. About two years before I entered I began my shift into the contemplative way by not turning on the car radio for the drive to work. Big sacrifice! A year before I entered I began to do my morning routine in silence. That was a big change and you may not want to go there but I share it because I was as addicted to it as anyone else. But the truth is to live simply we have to say “no” more often so that we are not constantly bombarded and shaken from our efforts toward interior contemplation. And we may also consider that it is necessary to live simply in order that others may simply live. It seems to me that this is where “the rubber hits the road” when we speak of ministry to the most needy and abandoned. Can we in some ways, even though they be small, put our money where our mouth is, where the charism has meaning?
To live consciously – is to be fully present, fully aware. We may not need to change anything we do but it is valuable to ask ourselves occasionally, “Why am I doing this?” “Why do I come here; why do I buy these things; why do I spend time with these people or doing these things; why do I vote the way I do?”
To live consciously also implies being AWAKE. Did you ever find yourself talking to someone and suddenly realize that they had zoned out, left you and gone off to some other world,that they were no longer listening. We may ask ourselves, “Who is it that I may not be paying attention to, listening to, being present too?” Could it be your spouse, your child (small or grown up), your friend of many years, your newly widowed elderly neighbor, the person sitting nearby at Mass, the hungry or homeless who flock to Catholic Charities and Family of Woodstock, the starving people of Sudan? I don’t know. But I do know that I tune people out all the time. A contemplative stance requires that I be present and accounted for.
Another aspect of living consciously is to be awake to our surroundings. God can speak to us in the beauty, wonders, and awesomeness of nature. Fr. Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine monk who became famous as one of the first Christians in history to look with deep respect and genuine spiritual curiosity at the great religions of the East, eventually came for form a Benedictine ashram community in India. He recorded this little description of his earliest “religious” experience. As a young teen he was walking near his school playing fields on a summer evening.
A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where
I was standing and pour out its song above my head, and then sank still
singing to rest. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the
veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of
awe which came over me. I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as
though I had been standing in the presence of an angel.
(The Golden String:An Autobiography 9)

Can we allow ourselves the kind of time to experience such things? Can we stop and smell the roses?
The last of the over-riding principles on the contemplative way is to live faithfully. Each of you, I am sure, has lived out of your faith for a long time. And each of you, I am just as sure, has lived faithfully committed to a vow, an ideal , a work. So this is nothing new to you. This is the grace to persevere in the daily; to keep on keeping on.
I am going to give you a bookmark with some additional thoughts that may inspire in the future. Just a few comments about them:
Nothing you do is really wasted time. Prayer is time “wasted” on relationship with God. The “silent witness of brotherly presence” is time “wasted” for the sake of charity in community.
Finding a balance we can live with … including Sabbath time. There is so much that calls to us to minister, to serve, to help, to organize, and even to listen. Without balance these are invitations to discouragement and burnout. Thoughtful, conscious consideration on how you balance your commitments and your needs is an expression of a contemplative value, the value of what we call monastic leisure.
Allow your particular community to “work” on you. In your rule and ours the section on the vows is preceded by a call to life in community characterized by charity, a life that by is very nature is to be an instrument of our conversion. The call to love is a challenge and formation by community can sometimes be painful. But to be attentive and receptive to it and God’s voice within it is to be contemplatively surrendered to cooperation with grace.
Attending to issues of peace and justice for all people, the earth and our cosmos. Sister Paula spoke to this value in her words about living consciously. The only thing I might add is that we may experience the call to this in very small ways and therefore ignore them. It speaks to our ability to live with difference in our most intimate communities and all the way out to the family of nations. We can hope that the prayer of contemplation that “fixed gaze” will heighten our awareness.
And finally, aspire to an attitude of gratitude. A few years back Oprah Winfrey steadily advised her listeners to keep “gratitude journals”. It became quite the rage. Her viewers wrote in about how taking a few minutes a day to write five things that they were grateful for had produced massive changes in attitude, relationship and morale. And for us, who are so very blessed by our communities, our families, and the wealth of this country surely this is an exercise we cannot ignore.
This is the new saintliness to which you too are called – to keep our eyes on Christ so that we might see Christ Jesus in all things.






Now we would like to give you some time to consider how this contemplative attitude might fit into your lives as you live them today.

Is any of this appealing at the outset?
What might the challenges be for you?
What might your life, daily routine, choices look like?
Do you find this realistic or off-putting?

“Afterwords”
Sr. Hildegard Magdalen Pleva before the Final Blessing
at the Mass of her Solemn Profession in the
Order of the Most Holy Redeemer
March 25, 2006


Loved ones, dear sisters, Redemptorist brothers, faithful friends; let us rejoice. The age of miracles has not passed!

What a story! In Sicilian we would say, “che romanzu” – what a soap opera – seems I’ve had almost as many lives as Erica on All My Children! Some might use the Yiddish word “mishigas”, a craziness of the improbable proving that “truth is indeed stranger than fiction.” What else can it be other than pure miracle? And each of you, in one way or another, in large part or small, has been an instrument of God’s beneficent grace, a sustaining gift; a sign of love in some part of the story.

The ritual you witnessed today was suffused with spousal imagery. It is a ritual concerning a promise rooted in the baptismal promises shared by all Christians. In the limited vocabulary of human experience there is no better metaphor for the quality of these promises than that of a long, loving, joyful, mutually generous, faithful, and sometimes painful marriage. Perhaps no one here can better attest to the requirements of life-long promises of commitment than my own mother and father poised as they are to celebrate the 63rd anniversary of their spousal love.

The faithfulness and devotion to commitment that we prayed for today are meant for each and everyone here. It has been my hope that this celebration would be inspiration and encouragement for your own myriad promises and commitments; whether it’s fidelity in marriage, dedication to nurturing children, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness to honoring your true self, obligations in earning a living or the duties of citizenship and service. We need all the help we can get because as we know from first hand experience none of it is easy. But remember, the age of miracles has not yet passed. So be stout-hearted in sure knowledge of God’s covenantal promise, “I am with you always.”

Gratitude can never be adequately expressed but one must try. First of all, to my sons, Jonathan, Matthew and Andrew, thank you for being who you are, for forgiving me and loving me, and for allowing me to be what I am.

To the elders of our community of women – those already in God’s embrace and those with whom I live who continue to be wise mentors, models of perseverance, wisdom, and charity - your lived promises have made this life available to me.

I look out now not on a sea of faces but at a panorama – the panorama of a lifetime of relationships. Beginning with my parents who gave me everything, each of you knows the part you played, the gifts you gave to me and those you continue to give.

Many are united with us in spirit whether by virtue of friendship, family ties or sisterhood in the Order; from British Columbia to Chulucanas, Peru; from Liguori, Missouri to Fort Erie, Canada, to Mason, New Hampshire; from Dublin, Ireland to Modena, Italy; from Merrivale, South Africa to Bielsko-Biala, Poland; from Kezmarok, Slovakia to Legazpi, in the Philippines. Isn’t that a wonder!

I feel very much also the presence of many who are now enjoying the embrace of God: the grandmothers I never knew, my grandfather and aunt who influenced my childhood, sisters from the community and friends, some of whom have only recently left us. They are together with us in the Communion of Saints.

I am, at least in part, the sum total of what they and you have been to me.

In a life centered on contemplative prayer one is joined to all people and to the world in ways that surpass the boundaries of time and space. Our foundress, Maria Celeste, heard Jesus say,

“I want you to be espoused to all souls and to experience
the same delight which I experience in them.”

Be assured of the faithfulness of my prayers for you and know that our loving creator God has truly delighted in you and in all the promises you’ve kept. May we continue on our way in covenant with God, as gift to each other, as witnesses to love, hope, fidelity and peace, in a challenging world.

Just as Robert Frost’s traveler in darkness stopped in the snowy wood to revel in beauty and be renewed by awe, we have stopped to connect with the wonder of God. Now we too have “promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep.”