The View Up Here

Yesterday morning, my heart was heavy. So heavy I had a hard time getting out the door and to work. I know it's a symptom of depression, that kind of darkness. It was the 10th anniversary of my mother's death, and I felt the wound of loss more keenly than I have since that night in 2009. It was as if my body remembered exactly what it had felt like.  I made it just barely in time for one of our killer 2-hour staff meetings, got ready to attend a service fair at the local college, and ate two hotdogs for lunch (which NEVER HAPPENS, people!). At the last minute I invited our seminarian Steve to join me at the service fair, and happily he was able to. Having him for company was a boon; he is a nerd and a man of spiritual integrity, so we get on very well. Afterwards, we grabbed a bite to eat at the local Wegmans, then I had a decision to make:  do I go to choir practice or go home and sleep? I was absolutely exhausted in mind and body. Steve, who is also in the Tradition...

The answer, of course, is yes. Everyone around me seems so relieved that summer is over and can't wait for fall to look like fall. Not me. I barely noticed the summer months because I was immersed in discernment, decision making, and moving. I tried to move to Massachusetts, but interviews and trips out there notwithstanding, it didn't happen. In fact, I wasted a whole lotta time worrying about that. As if... as if Jesus weren't right here, as if God doesn't have a plan for me, as if he's not guiding me. I am sometimes haunted by the past, which as we know, doesn't exist. What God has forgiven, what right have we to keep dredging up? Renounce it and stay with God in the sacrament of the now. Ultimately, I made my peace with staying where I am with the parish in Elmira, but I did end up moving apartments (not without some drama involving mice, a parking ticket, and random weirdness in my new neighborhood - but that's for another post!). In June I mad...

I am waiting in the silence for Messiah, the One who saves, the One who is Love, to come into my heart. Ah! He is already here, yet He seeks even more of my heart.  This Advent I was wracked with mono (since October) as well as stomach flu (last weekend). At first I was angry: how unfair, why did this happen to me, why now? I was planning to go "home" to be with family on the South Shore of Boston for Christmas as usual, and as usual, the hype and stress of getting everything done before I hit the road for a 7 hour drive to stay at other people's houses (even people I love) was starting to ramp up. To give you an idea of how this feels: One night in the midst of stomach flu ickiness earlier this week, I was awake, sweating, feeling so horrible I almost felt out of my body. And that's where I met Jesus. "Accept everything." That's what my spiritual director had said in his voice mail message that morning. "Jesus I trust in You." It...

Friends,  I will be going to visit two more communities at the end of this month and beginning of June. They are the Religious of the Assumption and the Visitation Nuns . Both communities are beautiful. They are also quite different, although the founder of the Religious of the Assumption, St. Marie Eugenie, had her early formation in a Visitation monastery , so there is a connection as far as spirituality and charism. Neither community is Benedictine. They are both spiritualities of the heart (Religious of the Assumption being Augustinian, and the Visitation nuns being Salesian and the historical setting of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In the Benedictine charism I have found balance and a call to simplicity, openness and the desert spirituality. But... I may be seeking for more than that. A "feminine genius" as Pope Francis has named it, perhaps not found with the Benedictines as I have experienced them. I may find this elsewhere or I may discover it...

Another Purple Liturgical Season is upon us. I look out my window at Stella - Nor'easter Stella, that is, not my Aunt Stella, may she Rest in Peace *makes Sign of the Cross* and I think how fortunate I am that I got to:  a) work from home during the two days of this storm, and b) watch St. Francis measuring the powdery snow (not the heavy wet stuff that was predicted, thank you, Jesus). 3/14/17 at 9:18 a.m.                 3/15/17 6:32 p.m.   After getting my work done and filing my taxes today (yay, me!) I hopped onto Twitter and discovered an article that encapsulates many of my past ramblings. First, I'll hit you with a quote: If you can’t see God’s will in the present moment, right where you’re standing, and embrace it then and there, you’ll never discover it for the future. Now please go read the rest of the article here .   On Friday, I will take one more turn around the block of discerning a re...

A couple weekends ago, I went on a vocation discernment retreat with the Benedictine Sisters of Elizabeth, NJ. It was a beautiful weekend away, and I came home with a renewed intimacy with Jesus. I accept that as long as I am in the world serving in ministry, I need a monthly renewal retreat. That had been a long time coming after months of ministry with no time set aside for God alone outside the normal every day routines. I won't make that mistake again! I am still discerning my life path and listening. What is Jesus whispering to my heart? For now, I am in Elmira, praying and striving to be present as I help prepare young people for the Sacrament of Confirmation, hold a bi-weekly women's prayer group, and bring Holy Communion to the homebound. I am drawn to the woods, to quiet nature. I am drawn to water in any form - stream, brook, river, lake, ocean. I am drawn to silence and certainly to contemplative prayer. I am drawn to rhythms, seasons, pulses, not the unrelentin...

I have no good excuse for not writing here. Reasons, yes, but laziness combined with a certain obsession with re-watching the Battlestar Galactica reboot from the mid 2000s really took up a lot of time that could've been spent elsewhere. So why the BSG binging? I'd been hankering to see it again, and after listening to some of the soundtrack on YouTube, I decided to dive in. What did I glean the 2nd time around? I didn't dislike the ending as much as I did the first time. I still have some issues with plot holes you could fly a, well, a battlestar through, and it still made no sense why Cavill would off himself at the end. But seeing the mixed human-Cylon settlers on "new Earth" decide to start over made sense to me, and it resonated on a personal level. How many of us want a "do-over" in our lives, or at least in some situation in our lives? The good news is this: we DO get to start fresh. Because when you reconcile with God, the sins and mistakes o...

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...

I'm at school right now, subbing for a religion class of Senior girls. I decided to conduct a little informal research in the form of an oral questionnaire. There are 34 girls in this class today, and of those 34, only one had heard of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Then I explained to them what the image was, and most of then nodded as if they'd seen the image before. I asked them if they knew anything about it. Only this one girl could respond. Here's what she said: Oh, isn't that where there is blood and water coming out? The water is because wasn't he given nasty water to drink? And the blood.... symbolizes something else. I asked them where they had seen this image. Almost unanimously, they reported that they'd seen it at their grandmother's home. Many of these girls are being raised by their grandmothers, in fact, so it only shows that religious art and symbols, while present, may mean nothing to them. I didn't lecture them on the Sacred Hea...

This year's theme was 'Hope: A World Afire!' I'm winding down the weekend after an intense two days at the Religious Education Congress (Friday and Saturday). I only went for two of the three days, mainly because I needed my one day to stay home and gear up for the coming week. I day tripped to Anaheim for the event, which was more of a challenge with Friday traffic both going and coming home, but I definitely feel the 'conference high' even with the commuting and not making it for the last day (which was today).  The sessions I chose back in December and got into (I had to choose my top 3 for each period) seemed to interlock with an ever-unfolding message of forgiveness, reconciliation and God's Love. In fact, it would appear that this Lent, the journey I'm taking with Yeshua is one of forgiveness.  Friday I arrived frazzled from rush hour and Disneyland traffic (the Anaheim Convention Center is across the street from California Advent...

At long last, I've finished something.  Happy Valentines Day!

During my six days off at Thanksgiving break this past year, I realized how stressed out I was at the administrative job (I had already given my notice, but it really hit home that I'd made the right decision). One of the things that happened during that time was that I started writing furiously, again. Then I happened to find a competition at a local church called "Poetry Alive Word, Art and Film Festival," so I had a brain wave to make a short film meditation. Mind you, I haven't made anything remotely like a film in a very long time. The Korea Dreambus! project stalled (no pun intended) a few years ago, but maybe after I've proven to myself that I can still make a film, I can get back to that with renewed vision and get 'er done. Anyway, so the short film meditation is called "Desire of the Everlasting Hills" (or "Desire" for short on my hard drive in which the current rough cut is called "Ruff Ruff Desire"). I've lifted ...

I realize, of course, that I am lamentably behind in blogging. However, it is a new year, and there are new situations and dispositions in my life that will hopefully help me to be more prolific here. I usually wrap up the old year before delving into my hopes for the new year, so here we go: 2013 Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Last year was very much about letting go of the illusion of control and surrendering completely to God.  It was also about recognizing that my charism is Carmelite , marked by simplicity. Sometimes God closes doors to open a new portal for us to walk through; other times, He asks us to close the door ourselves so that we are free to walk through the next door He has already opened for us. In April, I was not hired back for the permanent position at Ithaca College Los Angeles, but the very next month, I was offered a job as an administrative assistant for a Catholic high school. In July, my father-in-law passed away, and that very same week, my divorce was...