In Honor of Valentine's Day...

Here are three things currently on my "love list."

1. This photo that Jen, a postulant in our community, took of a snowy tree in our back yard.

2. This quote from Margaret Gonsalves in a Global Sisters Report article that describes consecrated life:

Embodied consecrated living is a constantly evolving nomadic community, a band of inspiring seers and cosmic dancers having paradoxical celebrations of creation's goodness; embodying profound brokenness, structural injustice and suffering of humans and creation; marching valiantly and consistently; radiating the expansive wisdom of being one cosmic community.

3. And this poster from the New York Times of all the women in the 116th Congress hanging in our library.

Feelin' the love. Happy Valentine's Day!

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Working on the Single-Hearted Love of God

Perhaps these thoughts connect with some of my thoughts on stability, which I offered after returning from spending a week at the border last month.

I have been reading Ilia Delio's memoir, Birth of a Dancing Star, and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. Her ability to articulate God as cosmic, divine Love is beautiful and inspiring. Here, she is writing about how this all fits within the lens of religious life:

Religious life is a perpetual fitness center for the soul or a "training center of love." The pursuit of holiness is learning to integrate the threads of our many loves into the single-hearted love of God. "You truly exist where you love," Bonaventure wrote, "not merely where you live." Where we grow in love is where we find our true being because it is where we find our freedom; and where we find our freedom is where we grow into our true identity in God.

"Religious" life is a life tethered to God and should be a life of growth in freedom and thus growth in courageous love, a life bountiful in love and thus the most daring life possible.

There are so many things I love about these words. They provide another example of what stability can do for one's heart. When we do the inner work to ground ourselves solely in God, uniquely as that might look in an individual's life, we can become free to live "courageous" and "daring" lives rooted in the gospel message of Love.

And yes, one must stay perpetually fit in exercising her spiritual life, but isn't the feeling of being truly free to love as one's best, fullest self worth it? Even if not vowed to religious life?

How can a monastery become the local Y for the spiritual life of its community?

Let us walk in the holy presence.

the gift of sunshine on a winter day, but don't be fooled...
the photo on the left was last week, the right was yesterday!

The Latest in "From Scratch"

I don't hide the fact that I am a "foodie." I really, really like really, really delicious food. So, my most recent request was to learn to make homemade enchiladas from scratch.

This past weekend, my friend and I made two different salsas, red used to dip the tortillas and green used to top the finished product. She had already made the homemade tortillas before I got there. We mashed up the boiled potatoes as filling.

The assembly line went something like this: dip the tortillas in the red salsa, fry them up in oil, fill them with potatoes, roll the tortillas. Much messier than it sounds!

Then, we topped them with sliced cabbage, tomato, sour cream, and salsa. Olé!

What a delicious undertaking!

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Mornings at Blackwater

Mary Oliver

For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

it was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.

So come to the pond

or the river of your imagination

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live

your life.