RIGHT CLICKING

When I finally learned to right click, it opened up the door to a whole new world of things I could do on my computer. (For those who are even less computer-literate than I was--if there are any people like that--that refers to clicking on the RIGHT button of the mouse, instead of the usual left button.)

But it's always like that when we step out of our comfort zone: first a period of confusion and darkness, then you can suddenly see lots of things you couldn't see before. I can think of a lot of Right Click Moments in my life. The decision to join religious life was a right click, and oh! the doors that has opened for me. The Enneagram was a right click--that sent my self-knowledge into overdrive. the United Nations experience opened up The World.

We should really be grateful for Right Click Moments, even when they are painful or negative...easier said than done, right?

GROWING UP

I've grown up several times.

Thomas Merton said we grow up only when we discover we are not the center of the universe, that the world is bigger than we are--and that's happened to me several times.

Well, let's see, the first time I "grew up" must have been in that developmental stage of early childhood, when I discovered that other people's needs mattered and needed to be taken into consideration. That might happen later for an only child!

Then there was the stage in my teen years when I discovered that there was a transcendant character to the world, that God really was, and really was FOR ME.

Then there was graduate school when I matured intellectually, and learned to reconcile what I knew about the universe with what I felt about the transcendent. And most recently, my experience at the United Nations showed me how big and how small the world really is.

But Merton went on to say that when we grow up is when we really find God, when we move beyond ourselves. And I think we will not completely do that until the moment of death, when we give up everything into God's embrace. We have lots of "growing up" to look forward to!!!!

My God who beckons...

There are some days when God awakes you in the early hours of dawn. Today was one of those blessed mornings and it just seemed so appropriate today to greet you, My God who beckons with song. 

  As morning breaks, I look to you O God, to be my strength this day, Alleluia!

God's call is constant. It is heard in the silence, in the crisp morning air, in the memory of a loved one that is with God.  Today, I ask for an awareness to recognize the glimpses of God. May these God moments alert me to God's voice calling me to a deeper realization of MYSTERY and PRESENCE. 

  We lose sight of God's love, awaken us once more to the truth of your love.

Yesterday I attended a two hundredth anniversary of the faith community of Saint Romuald Catholic Church in Hardinsburg, Kentucky. It was a beautiful celebration of faith, sacrifice, and community spirit.  I remember well my six years of serving that faith community, and it resurrects in my mind and heart some lasting relationships in my own journey of faith.  I am always humbled when young people come up and seem so grateful for my presence.  I am moved to gratitude when a woman comes up and apologizes for her past weaknesses and asks my forgiveness.  I am thrilled to see that faith has carried on and people are using their gifts for the glory of God and the building up of the community.  God, you are always so ready to open my eyes to the truth of your love.  In gratitude and celebration I am awaken once again!

Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time --“Friend, I am doing you no injustice” (Mt 20:13)


The parable in this past Sunday's Gospel seems to have several great lessons for us. Don’t people who work longer and harder deserve more pay? What about those who do not make a salary?  How can it be just that all reap the same benefits when they have not worked the same amount of time?

I read a reflection that gave me a deepr insight into the interpretation of this parable. At an elderly man's funeral, the priest spoke about how he had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. I will call the man, Rick. Rick was like those who were hired last in the parable. The priest made the analogy of how some people, when they are going on a train trip, buy their tickets far in advance, ensuring their reserved seat. Others rush into the station at the very last moment, buy their ticket and reach the same destination at the same time as those who planned ahead. The assurance that Rick had arrived at the same heavenly destination that all of us were striving for seems fair. In fact I am very trilled and comforted by this. Perhaps this is because for over the past 20 years I have walked with people who were asking to join us in our Catholic way of life.


Perhaps the key for those first hired was to love the ones who got in just under the wire. But how to foster that open and unselfish love for everyone is a question that is hard to embrace.  It is counter cultural, gospel like.


As one reflection I prayed with stated,verse 15 points out the destructiveness of "evil-eye envy in a community." The owner asks, literally, “Is your eye evil  because I am good?” The question is about God’s goodness, which is extended equally to all. How difficult it is for us not to look enviously on goodness poured out on others, even as it has been lavished upon ourselves. Is it not, however, a great relief that God’s justice does not mean that people get what they deserve?

This week I pray and ask for the grace to look with eyes of God, desiring good for all person!

POLISHING THOSE BEADS

When I was about eight years old, my mother and I took a vacation trip to Chihuahua, Mexico. We went to the market, churches, museums, and lovely neighborhoods. But my strongest memory of that trip was when (just on an impulse, I think) we ducked into a religious goods store. Mama told me to pick out ANYTHING I WANTED! My eight-year old eyes settled on a rather baroque (not to say gaudy!) rosary, whose beads were iridescent and multicolored like soap bubbles, with ornate filigreed connectors between the mysteries. I loved that rosary, for not very noble reasons, but when I left home I left it behind with my other childhood things.

Clearing out my mother's personal items after her death, I found and tucked it away where it stayed for another fifteen years, a childhood memento. When I got it out again, the luster of the beads was dimmed, and the ornate connectors were tarnished. But having "rediscovered" the Rosary as a help to meditative prayer, and having broken or lost my other rosaries, I started using that one. Now the luster of the soap-bubble beads has been restored, and the connectors are shiny again.

Every time I use it, I think about how we can rediscover old forms of prayer, about how all prayer gets "shinier" as we practice it, and I reconnect with my generous mother and with my eight-year old self that could be led to God by the beauty of soap bubbles.

What it means to be a daughter of Saint Angela Merici

I grew up in a small community with the Motherhouse of the Dominican Sisters (where my Mother’s two sisters were members), within seven miles of my home. Some ten or eleven miles in the opposite direction is the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth where several cousins were members. Equally distant from my home, and nestled between (and a little south) of these is the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto.

It was to none of these three communities that I was attracted, however, but rather to the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph who had taught me from first grade through twelfth grade. These were the years when the Ursulines were teaching in public schools in Kentucky. I didn’t know anything about St. Angela at that time, but as I reflect back on those days, I am convinced that the decision to teach in those public schools was because St. Angela, seeing the need for educational opportunities in that little pocket of Catholicity in Kentucky, urged her daughters to "risk new things". And it was there in the little hamlet of the "Burg" that I became acquainted with the spirit of St. Angela through the Sisters who taught me. I recall opportunities that were made available to me, not because of any obligation, but because the Sisters who taught me, inspired by the example of St. Angela, wanted to help me make the most of the talents God had given me. I recall Sr. Caroline Wathen, who taught me in 4^th. and 5^th. grades, and who, in the spirit of Angela, went the extra mile to learn how to teach phonics (a totally new subject area at the time) so she could teach it to us. To this day I still use the knowledge gained in that class. Recognizing that I had some artistic ability, she also gave me art lessons after school. I recall my 6^th. grade teacher, Sr. Leona Willett, who challenged me with more advanced work when I had completed the assigned 6^th. grade work. These, and so many other actions on the part of the Sisters who taught me I recognize as the spirit of Angela at work through them to help me be a better person.

If I was impressed by my observations of these Ursuline Sisters in the classroom, I was even more impressed by their dedication and faithfulness to their spiritual life. I offer one example: On any number of occasions, when I popped into Holy Trinity Church for a late afternoon short visit, I would observe the Sisters gathered in silent prayer. Even in the dead of winter, they were there, huddled near one of two coal stoves that were the only sources of heat for the church. The spirit of Angela was alive and well!

So what does it mean to me personally to be a Daughter of St. Angela? It means trying to live an authentic religious life and community life. It means doing what I can through my living and my teaching, to help others reach their full potential. It means doing the very best that I can in my teaching, going beyond the call of duty if someone needs credit in a course that isn’t being offered on the regular schedule, being a good listener when someone needs to talk things out, offering an encouraging word when someone is struggling, and trying to take the high road when myriad other things come up in the course of a day’s work. In short, to be a Daughter of St. Angela is to wholeheartedly live a Christian life.

Contributed by Sister Mary Diane Taylor, osu