When was the last time you saw God's glory?

This second Sunday of Lent gives us the Gospel passage about the transfiguration.  Wouldn't that be something...to see God's glory...in dazzling, blinding light!

Our celebrant at Mass this morning started his homily with the question, "When was the last time you saw God's glory?"  

Hmmm....I thought to myself, I don't know that I ever have...at least not like we just heard in the Gospel.  What came to my mind first was the memory of our  snowstorm this past Wednesday and Thursday.  When the sun finally came out and lit up the landscape, it was rather blinding.  That was sort of an image of dazzling white, much like it says Jesus' clothes became while he was praying.  

But the glory of God is so much more.

In the bible it seems to produce the response of fright most often because it is just too overwhelming.   We don't know what to say.  Those types of manifestations of God have been few and far between for me.   I would venture to guess that it is the same for 99.9% of people who call themselves Christians.  God's preferred method seems to be subtlety.  Which I suppose is a good thing or we'd all be running around building tents (like Peter wanted to do).    God knows how easily frightened I am, I can be grateful he's a little sneaky.

view from my monastic 'cell'

I experienced his subtle glory when I heard robins and cardinals singing the past couple of days.  It's not necessarily unusual for this time of year but it's 20 degrees outside with snow on the ground!  What I like about birds is they follow the rhythms built into their DNA.  It is as if they say to themselves, "If I'm supposed to be in Clyde, MO in February and getting ready for spring, then that is where I will be, whether it feels like winter of not."

I experienced his subtle glory in the sunrise this morning.   I'm fortunate to have a bedroom that faces east so I can catch the first rays.

I experience his subtle glory taking a walk in the snow with a full moon overhead.

God's glory doesn't have to always be dazzling.  But we do have to have the proper eyes to see.  I hope you see God's glory in abundance this coming week!

Popcorn and the spiritual path

I have the great fortune to spend time at our monastery in Tucson, AZ every February because we usually host a discernment weekend at that time.  I always make sure I come after the oranges have been picked and the juice has been squeezed.  If you have ever tasted homegrown and squeezed orange juice, you know it's nectar of the gods!  Praise be to our God for creating such a wonderful drink!

In one of the talks I gave this past weekend I shared about popcorn and the spiritual path.  The reading from the prophet Joel that we heard on Ash Wednesday has a wonderful line in it - 'rend your hearts and not your garments.'    People seem to be rending their garments quite often in the Hebrew Scriptures. It was a sign of grief, anger or despair.  So, Joel is telling us to rend our hearts - in other words, crack open the hard shell we've built around it so as to let God in.

I happened upon an article in our magazine Spirit&Life by our Sr. Dawn Annette while preparing for the discernment weekend that I thought was a good image of letting ourselves get cracked open.  We started a business 1 1/2 years ago called Prayerfully Popped so Sr. Dawn 
wrote about popcorn in a spiritual light.   In it she describes how popcorn becomes popcorn.  

The shell of the kernel is very hard, you can't eat it raw, at least those of us who respect our teeth try not to!  But, there is a drop of water inside that kernel that when heated up, turns into steam and explodes outward changing the glop of starch in the kernel to the fluffy white thing we know as popcorn.  So basically, it turns itself inside out.

On the spiritual path we can either be a kernel that doesn't do anything, or we can let ourselves be transformed.  The heat that gets applied to us are those impulses of grace from God that might be urging us to do something different with our lives such as considering a religious vocation.  If we are resistant, we stay just a hard kernel that doesn't do anything.  But if we are open, (let's face it - exploding outward will not be a walk in the park), God can transform us into something unexpected.

The transformation takes place in our deepest center.  And that little drop of water inside the kernel symbolizes that our heart needs to be moist.  It can't be dry and barren.  A moist heart can soak up the word of God in whatever form it takes whereas hard and dry soil just causes the water to run off.

We have to let go of what we thought we were, the kernel of ourselves, and let God transform us into what we are meant to be.  A scary proposition! 

So, the next time you are eating a bag of popcorn, think about whether you are ready to let God turn you inside out!

 The entire article can be found here:
http://benedictinesisters.org/images/spiritandlife/SLNovDec11.pdf#page=9

Go forth now, if you can!

It’s been a quiet time in the Clyde blogosphere this past month.  My blog has suffered from inertia - that fundamental principle of classical physics:  ‘the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion.‘   So in other words, an unwritten blog tends to remain unwritten unless acted upon by an outside force.  I was traveling on some business trips for the congregation in January so that is my excuse for procrastinating.  :)

display in our hallway on Feb. 10th
 note sign under the umbrella

We just celebrated the Feast of St. Scholastica yesterday on February 10th.  She was the twin sister of St. Benedict.  We only know one little story about her from St. Gregory who wrote Benedict’s biography in his Dialogues - “The Life and miracles of St. Benedict.”   It states she was consecrated to God in early childhood and used to visit with him once a year.  On these occasions he would go down to meet her in a house belonging to the monastery a short distance from the entrance and there they would have conversation on the spiritual life and sing God’s praises.  

On this particular visit they stayed together until it was quite late.  Scholastica asked Benedict to stay on but he replied, “You know I cannot stay away from the monastery.”

When he refused, Scholastica folded her hands on the table and rested her head upon them in earnest prayer.  When she looked up again, there was a sudden burst of lightning and thunder accompanied by such a downpour that Benedict was unable to set foot outside the door.   The very instant she ended her prayer, the rain poured down.

This caused Benedict to complain bitterly, “God forgive you sister, what have you done?”

She answered, “When I appealed to you, you would not listen to me.  So I turned to my God and he heard my prayer.  Go forth now now if you can, leave me here and go back to your monastery.”  (So Benedict ends up staying and they both derived great profit from sharing their thoughts on the interior life)

I love this brother/sister dialogue...it reminds me of my growing up years with my own dear brothers.   I can almost hear Scholastica saying “nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah”...after she said, “Go forth now if you can...”

It is said that St. Scholastica was heard by God because ‘‘she loved more.”  In other words, she wasn’t worried about following the rule to be back in the monastery like Benedict was worried about.  She just wanted to continue the wonderful ‘God conversation’ they were having.  

We midwest farmer folk, especially in this time of drought, would love to be able to call down rain at will like Scholastica.   But the point of the story is not being able to summon weather at will, but about LOVE.  God always hears our prayers but our motivations are important.  

Prayers asked in love united to the will of God, will surely be answered.  Submitting to the will of God is the important part....and the hardest!  

We invite the monks of nearby Conception Abbey over for Vespers and supper every year on this day.   It's a great way for us to continue the tradition of Scholastica and Benedict sharing a meal and conversation.  I understand it snowed heavily one year (before I entered) and the monks couldn't make it over.  However, we had all this food prepared so a couple of the monks came over in a four-wheel drive pickup and we gave them the food we had ready.  So, we didn't feed their souls with conversation but we did still manage to feed their stomachs!