Fig trees, Manure and the spiritual life

Excerpted from a reflection I gave at our Saturday Lenten vigil service.

This gospel of this 3rd Sunday of Lent (Luke 13:1-9) once again gives us that very biblical image of a fig tree.  At least in Luke's gospel, Jesus isn't cursing it because it hasn't bloomed as he does in Mark and Matthew.  Here, the fig tree gets another chance and extra care...but the threat of later being cut down still lingers.   

We have a sanitized translation where the gardener says he will cultivate around it and fertilize it.  The literal translation is manure.    The ancients were smart enough to know to use animal waste even if they might not have known why it was so helpful.  If you go into the Lawn and Garden section of Wal-Mart you can find numerous sacks of various fertilizers or boxes of plant food to meet all of your planting needs.   If you look carefully at the description of the fertilizer usually three alphabet letters will stand out - N, P, K.  These letters stand for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.   These are the three main ingredients that plants need.  Think of them as “up, down and all-around”.  Manure is extremely rich in these ingredients, especially nitrates.  

Nitrogen helps keep leaves green, promotes healthier blooms and aids in the manufacture of chlorophyll. Phosphorous is primarily responsible for keeping the trunk/stalk healthy and helps with root growth and development. Potassium is a general help to the entire plant. 

The phosphorus component of our lives helps our trunk/stalk and helps us put down strong roots.  I would think of this as our monastic, Catholic infrastructure - the Rule of Benedict, the teachings of our Catholic faith, the sacraments, our monastic horarium.  

The nitrogen component of our lives is what we can see - the leaves, the blossoms, the fruits we bear.  I would think of this as all the acts of our daily living, speaking words of charity, acts of kindness, faithfulness to the Divine Office, Mass, lectio and adoration; how we live in community.

The potassium component of our lives is whatever is a general help to us.  This will vary for each of us.  It is those things that we do that help our spiritual growth and deepen our relationship with God.   For some it might mean keeping more silence, for others it might be some sort of fasting.

If any one of these components is missing, the whole plant will suffer.  If we don’t have the right quantity of each, those parts of us don’t develop like they should.

The thought I would leave you with is to have you ask yourself:  What areas in my life may need a little more fertilizer or different fertilizer?  Do I need more nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium?    Am I honestly bearing any fruit at this time in my life?  Or am I just exhausting the soil?  ouch!!

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!

Star of Wonder

I love the Feast of the Epiphany.   In fact, I love it so much that I chose the name ‘Elaine’ to be added to ‘Ruth’ when I made First Profession so I could claim it as my Name/Feast Day.  We have the option of changing our names when we make Profession so I was considering what my name should be.   That meant I had to change my baptismal name of ‘Ruth’ to something else or add a middle name to ‘Ruth.’  I really didn’t want to totally change ‘Ruth’ because I had been called that the last 31 years of my life and wasn’t keen on getting used to something else.  So, I decided to try and find an appropriate middle name.

I had been considering choosing a name that would relate to one of three different feasts as I went through my 2nd year of novitiate.  I had narrowed it down to Pentecost, the Transfiguration and Epiphany.  What helped me choose Epiphany was a homily I heard during Mass on this feast.  The priest talked about how the Magi were searching for something and they had to travel in the dark in order to be guided by the light that caught their attention.  They were willing to put up with the hardships of desert travel and leave the security of their homes to embark on the search.  There was no guarantee of what they would find at the end of their search but they just knew they had to go looking.  

Those words struck me as so similar to my own spiritual seeking and journey to God.  I felt like I was in a ‘desert’ much of the time and traveling by night without a lot of light.  Yet I kept going.  I was constantly asking God for more light but seemed to be only getting what you can see in the ring of a dim flashlight when walking outside at night.  

So after pondering his homily I decided the Epiphany was meant to be my feast day.  I then had to find a name to connect with it.  The name ‘Epiphanata’ didn’t appeal to me or ‘Epiphania‘ or ‘Manifestina’  :)  

My last name is the fine German name of ‘Starman’ but I knew that wasn’t enough to make the cut for choosing the Epiphany as my nameday.   (I’ve often thought how cool it would have been to be an astronomer or astronaut with my name but God didn’t lead me down those paths)

I can honestly say the name ‘Elaine’ just kind of popped into my head one day as one to consider.  Somebody handed me a book of baby names where the meaning of each name is listed.  So I excitedly looked up ‘Elaine’ and to my delight found it to be a derivative of ‘Helen’ which means light.  So it all seemed to be very God inspired.  

I've always loved going out to look at the stars.  In my growing up years on the farm in Nebraska I would often head outdoors to walk down our lane and lay on my back and gaze at the constellations.   I suppose it's one reason I've always preferred living in the country, I don't have to go too far to get away from all the artificial light.

My journey can still often feel like I'm in the desert and I'm mostly in the dark.  But I do know that one has to lose the bright light of day in order to see the beauty of the stars at night...even if the dark is a little scarier.

Entering the chaos of our world

Here we are at 2013 already.   Praise the Lord, the Mayan calendar did not prove to be the end of the world as we know it as some were predicting!  (I wasn't too worried that it would.)  

Christmas was beautiful AGAIN here at the monastery in Clyde.  We decided many years ago to have our Midnight Mass earlier in the evening.  At first this was hard for our traditionalists, but I think most of us are glad to not have to go to bed at 2am anymore.  (We always serve refreshments to our guests afterward)  We haven't had guests in our chapel for Christmas for the past 2 years because of our renovation, but this year over 100 souls braved the cold weather to join us once again.  It's the only Mass during our year where we hear a lot more babies and little children rustling around in our choir stalls.  With organ, piano, harp and flute music filling our chapel - surely our Lord felt properly praised on the celebration of his incarnation!

Jesus is the Prince of Peace but the headlines tell us that it doesn't seem to be apparent to our world.  I read an article entitled "Why God?" by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times and would like to quote this small section from it - 

A contemporary theologian has described mercy as “entering into the chaos of another.” Christmas is really a celebration of the mercy of God who entered the chaos of our world in the person of Jesus, mercy incarnate. I have never found it easy to be with people who suffer, to enter into the chaos of others. Yet, every time I have done so, it has been a gift to me, better than the wrapped and ribboned packages. I am pulled out of myself to be love’s presence to someone else, even as they are love’s presence to me.

I will never satisfactorily answer the question “Why?” because no matter what response I give, it will always fall short. What I do know is that an unconditionally loving presence soothes broken hearts, binds up wounds, and renews us in life. This is a gift that we can all give, particularly to the suffering. When this gift is given, God’s love is present and Christmas happens daily.

May 2013 be the year we help Christmas happen daily!

Here is a poem for the beginning of the new year -

AT THE GATE OF THE YEAR
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied,
'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention."

 by Minnie Louise Harkins 1875-1957

Beacons of Hope

It’s hard to write a blog after a horrible crime is committed.  Twenty-six people getting massacred, most of them little children, has cast a pall over our nation.  Ironically, the 3rd Sunday of Advent which we just celebrated is called Rejoice Sunday.  The reading from Philippians is especially appropriate to be read on this day:  

“Rejoice in the Lord always; I shall say it again, Rejoice!  Your kindness should be known to all.  The Lord is near.  Have no anxiety at all, but in everything with prayer and petition and thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

It was pretty hard to feel like rejoicing anywhere after learning what transpired in an elementary school in Connecticut on Friday.  There are no good answers to any questions we might have about why this happens - especially this one - how could God let this happen?  or where was God in all of this?

I do believe that what helps us ‘see’ God’s presence in all of this is when a father of a 6 year old girl who was killed can say, “I’m not angry...I’m sad.”  

...or when people gather to pray at Vigil services or make-shift shrines on the lawn of the local Catholic church.  

...or when prayers come in from children in Pakistan who can sympathize with the pain.

We have a custom of lighting a star on our water tower beginning the first Sunday of Advent until Epiphany.  As one of our local cooks said to a sister once, “ You sisters are that star to us.  You are a beacon of hope and goodness.”

I wandered out to look at that star this evening.  You can see it from the highway 3-4 miles away.  The ‘real’ stars were overhead in bright array.  I’m going to use an old cliche here but during the winter in Clyde, Missouri the stars are so bright you can reach out and touch them.  A small group of five of us ventured out last Thursday night to view the meteor shower from the top of our hill.  It was freezing cold but it was worth a few numb fingers to catch a glimpse of their beauty.    It is a beauty that is very short lived so one must be alert.  But many of them elicited 'oohs' and 'ahhs.'  Things that are most fragile are the most beautiful because we know they won’t last.  

It has to be dark for us to see the beauty of the stars.  Too much light hides the beauty during the day.   

The only way to survive the darkness in our lives is to be beacons of hope to each other.  And that is where God will make himself known.