The View Up Here

This Christmas and New Year's Eve, I am spending time with family and old friends in Massachusetts. I'm always happy to return to the place where I grew up, enjoy the holidays with loved ones, and worship in the very church where I received my First Holy Communion.  Fr. Jim's homily at Christmas yesterday was short on time but long on meaning. The closing of his homily was an encouragement to hang on to Jesus as an anchor . I love this analogy, as so often it does feel like we are tossed around by big waves, storms, wind, and the uncertainties of where we are going.  From the Catholic News Agency , quoting Pope Francis in his Christmas homily: ...the Pope asked that we open our hearts to receive the grace offered on Christmas Day, “which is Christ himself.” Jesus, he said, “is the radiant day which has dawned on the horizon of humanity. A day of mercy , in which God our Father has revealed his great tenderness to the entire world. A day of light, which dispels...

Is mercy really for EVERYONE?  The recent kurfluffle over the Pope's meeting with Kim Davis has demonstrated to me that despite claims of being tolerant and open-minded, some of us are only willing to display mercy to those who are in alignment with our views.  First of all, if you're not up on this issue,  read this clarification on what actually did and did not take place. Also, feast your eyes on this gem of an article  by Robert David Sullivan for America Magazine that warns us of more of this kind of incendiary and wildly inaccurate reporting in presidential campaign coverage to come. Oh, yay. If you don't feel like reading all that, here are a few salient points: The Pope met with dozens of people in what amounted to an assembly line-type of visit, including Kim Davis. Davis described her 15 minutes with the Pope as a private meeting. It was not.  The Pope DID have an audience with an old friend of his, who happens to be gay...

CNS Rome bureau: Catechism, yoga, Zen cannot open people's hearts to God, pope says:  http://t.co/utL2Y7geou #CNSstory — Catholic News Svc (@CatholicNewsSvc) January 9, 2015 I cannot agree more with this little article, as a person who tried all kinds of ways in my younger adulthood to be healed and connect with...SOMETHING...I tried Buddhist meditation, EFT, Reiki, even pagan moon rituals. Nothing led me to the Love of God. The moment of my "resurrection" or conversion experience had absolutely nothing to do with my own effort. It was the Holy Spirit, a shaft of light piercing the darkness that had become my inner world, and the Spirit showed me the Heart of Jesus on fire for me. For me!  I'm not talking down to Buddhists, pagans, Yoga and Reiki practitioners, or anyone else... I know that those practices come from the same desire to be loved and to love. My own experience is that those are limited forms that do not do the "trick," and only God c...

The journey of discerning God's will for me continues.  I still feel the draw to contemplative life, but I question it at the same time. Why? For one thing, I won't know until I actually am able to live the life in some kind of trial/live-in experience. There's still much about this journey that I'm not clear on because I just don't have enough first hand information, and that takes time. I know I want to be a consecrated religious, a little spouse of Jesus. That's about all I know for sure. Carmelite? Love love love Carmelite spirituality. Cloister? Not so sure. Franciscan? Love love love Franciscan spirituality. Active apostolate? Not so sure. I'm starting to understand on some level that what I desire is balance: contemplative and active apostolates in fruitful harmony.  "St. Francis Starry Night" by Sue Betanzos See (and buy) more of this artist's work here: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/sue-betanzos.html And I feel that a...

Pope Francis expressed far more eloquently than I did in my last post the Good News of the Living God. That's fitting, I suppose, seeing as he's the Pope and all. Full text of Pope Francis’s homily at the Easter Vigil | CatholicHerald.co.uk Pope Francis processes into St Peter's Basilica for Easter Vigil 2013 (AP) Dear Brothers and Sisters, 1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died...