Year: 2022

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    February 27, 2022

Have you ever noticed how our surroundings can alter the speed with which we move?

During some of the years I lived in Jersey City, NJ, I worked in Manhattan. Every morning I would walk to the Grove Street station on the New Jersey side to take the PATH train to the Ninth Street station on the New York side. As soon as I disembarked at Ninth Street, I would be swept up in a crowd of hundreds of commuters, all moving rapidly and as one body before breaking away to their destinations. The movement reminded me of a human murmuration, with the click and squeak of heels and soles replacing the humming of starlings. Even during those years when I could walk easily and without limitations, I found the pace challenging. No dawdling, no idling, no browsing. Move, or be carried along by the crowd.

Quite the opposite experience when I returned home and began to walk along Manila Avenue. The Downtown section where I lived was marked by neighborhoods—Puerto Rican, Dominican, Filipino, Polish, African, Irish–the kind of living space where people might not know your name but they know your face and see you as a welcome resident. Here there was a whole lot of greeting, ambling, strolling, taking one’s time, and yes, sauntering. My kind of walking.

From Robert A. Johnson and Jerry M. Ruhl, I learned the origin of the word, sauntering. “At a certain point in time,” they write, “medieval Europeans developed the custom of ‘sainting’ things…The cross was sainted (Santa Cruz) and even the earth was sainted. This became St. Terre, from which we gained the phrase, ‘to saunter,’ that is, to walk on the earth with reverence for its holiness.”

It seems that sauntering might describe not only a slower-paced stroll but also an attitude, a soul practice of graciously encountering and moving through the world. When so much of our lives feel hurried, pressured, or stressed with our responsibilities and to-do lists, we are in profound need of what I like to call “the power of the Pause.” Earth, our Common Home, invites us into such pauses every day. Even in a pandemic, we can stop and safely breathe in Earth’s breath. Or stand in awe before a sunset. Or make friends of forest neighbors. Or discover the secret code of crows. Or lose ourselves in garden prayer. Or bow before the dome of heaven illuminated by moon and stars. But to do this, we need the attitude of one who saunters, one who walks on our Earth with reverence and respect for her holiness. We need the practice of one who pauses and offers thanks to the Holy One who, I believe, is sauntering alongside us at this very moment in our beautiful, yet wounded world.

Takeaway

For this reflection, you may wish to sit in stillness near a window if that is most comfortable for you, or saunter outdoors.

Whichever movement you choose, be sure to pause and invite the Holy One to accompany you.

Gaze at whatever gifts Earth offers you. Notice where your eyes linger. Offer a prayer from your slowed down, grateful heart.

Featured image: Craig McLachlan, Unsplash

NOTE:

As we stand at the threshold of the season of Lent, may we deepen the practice of sauntering through these 40+ days.

On Ash Wednesday, may we all come together to respond to Pope Francis’ call for prayer and fasting for peace in Ukraine, peace for all the crucified peoples of our world. Blessings of peace this season.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    February 13, 2022

Today is a rarity in my world: though I woke up at 4:30 am, I didn’t move. I simply savored the comfort of the flannel sheets and the utter stillness of the room. I also savored what my calendar revealed: no need to get myself moving immediately into the day, on to a cup of tea, on to a quick shower, on to a car in need of defrosting.

So I lingered in bed for a while, giving thanks for what is surely a life of acknowledged privilege: That I make my home in an environment that’s welcoming, safe, and nurturing of my creative spirit. That I belong to a community that inspires, challenges, and offers my life meaning. That I have friends and family who love and cherish me. That I’ve been granted expansive educational opportunities and profound life-changing experiences. That every day my spirituality ministry brings me into an arena where I get to witness the Holy at work in people’s lives.

I was in one of those arenas yesterday when I offered a retreat for our IHM Associates. I was moved by witnessing their joy in coming together, their hunger for spirituality, the depth of their own lives of prayer. And then, I was emotionally spent, with no thought of writing this blog. When I climbed into bed exhausted, I prayed for Spirit and for words.

This morning, it was my fuzzy, raggedy slippers that spoke to me. Over time, they’ve conformed themselves to the shape of my gnarled toes and bony feet. They feel like home. They feel like a blessing. And they reminded me of Julian Norwich’s comments about putting on God like a garment, because every morning when I slip my feet into them, I pray that the Holy One will walk with me into the day ahead. In My Soul in Silence Waits, Margaret Guenther stretched that image of God to “a favorite roomy sweater, a little baggy in just the right places, or maybe a soft old bathrobe.”  St. Paul called it putting on the mind of Christ (Romans 13:14) like a piece of clothing. (But apparently Paul didn’t share my practice of lounging in bed because the Message Bible’s translation of his words is, “Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger…Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!”)

So what does it mean to clothe ourselves in the Holy? In Putting on the Mind of Christ, Jim Merion notes that to clothe ourselves in the Holy, to put on the mind of Christ, is not just to admire Christ but to acquire his consciousness. This is beyond questions of wardrobe. This is about acting as the Holy One would. How do we see the world through the eyes of God or feel with the divine heart? How do we clothe ourselves in compassion so that we move closer to fulfillment God’s dream of abundant life for everyone? How do we put on the garment of healing for a world both beautiful and broken?

These are the big questions that came from my frayed and tattered slippers. It seems I won’t be discarding them any time soon. After all, they brought me to this. And then they brought me to you.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
If you have a garment that expresses your image of God, hold it, or wear it, or imagine it.
Ask to be in sync with the beating heart of the Holy One.
Ask to see with the eyes with which God gazes at our world.

Wrap this worldview around yourself, and linger in this image.

Featured image:  Source unknown

NOTE:

Thank you for your prayerful support of all who were part of the retreat day I led for IHM Associates. Their living of IHM spirituality continues to inspire all who know them.

On February 14, as we celebrate the feast of love known as Valentine’s Day, know that you who follow, support, and comment on Mining the Now are specially in my heart and prayer.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    January 30, 2022

While driving home this past week in the pitch dark of a late January night, I came upon a lone house with its Christmas lights still displayed and twinkling. I smiled, thinking, “There’s always one that has the lights up way past the holidays.” Somehow, I felt especially grateful for that single home that stood out because its radiance pierced the darkness all around me on a lonely stretch of country road.

I immediately thought of another occasion when outdoor Christmas decorations had overstayed the Christmas calendar but when their timing was perfectly placed.  

When I was new to community life, we were told that we’d be able to go see our families some time in January in one of the first ever family visits. Yes, we’d miss the Christmas holidays but we’d get to spend some winter days with our loved ones. So when the appointed date in late January arrived, my Dad drove to the motherhouse in our family station wagon and picked me up. We chatted all the way home until we neared our long, winding driveway. Then he became strangely silent. Looking around, I slowly understood why. Every other house in our neighborhood was dark and bare of decorations, but there, shining from the second floor deck of our home, hung a huge plywood star, brilliantly lit. I gasped and cried and hugged my Dad, who whispered, “Merry Christmas, and welcome home!”

Later on, my mother told me how proud my father was of that creation. At some point after Christmas, she said, a howling wind had knocked the star off its perch and onto the ground. But Dad insisted on putting it back on the house so that I could see it when I arrived home. My heart was moved at the image of him clambering up a rickety ladder to the second story in what was surely an act of craziness, but just as surely an act of love.

So this past week when I came upon the single house with its Christmas lights beaming, I was taken back to another light that ignored the calendar many years ago. I was remembering my thoughtful, tender, star-loving Dad, the creator of that oversized, welcome home, plywood star. I was remembering the thousands like him who have been lights to me, whose witness continues to illumine my way, especially in my most despairing and lonely hours. I was remembering the brave beacons who persist and endure, who show up even when the timing of another’s critical need for light announces itself at a moment that’s inconvenient and interruptive. I was remembering those who stay and shine.

Surely, we have all met them, those concentrated beams of light that punctuate our everyday living. They are the farolitos, the luminaria our bleak and darkened world waits and hopes and longs for. They are the wisdom figures who have stoked the flame within by entering into deep, inner soul work and cultivating radiant spaciousness of heart. They are the welcoming hearth at which we warm our chilled bodies and thaw our frozen spirits. They are the holy ones who know, with a primal, intuitive knowing, that for some things, there really are no wrong times. There really is no such thing as being out of season.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to set a candle or a light of some kind in front of you.
Gaze at this light for several minutes.
Recall and name persons who have shared their radiance with you.
Give thanks for that holy, light-filled litany.

Featured image:  Timothy Eberle, Unsplash

NOTE:

Please hold in your prayer all those who will be part of a Zoom retreat morning I’m leading for IHM Associates on February 12. Thank you.

IHM Associates are women and men from all states of life and various creeds who are seeking a deeper experience of God for their own transformation and for the transformation of the world. Attracted by the charism of the IHM Sisters, Associates join with the sisters in the living out of the IHM charism within the context of their everyday lives.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    January 16, 2022

In my home, I have a simple ritual center. A cloth from Peru covers a small table. A blue hued painting reveals my IHM community’s founders. A photo of my parents on their wedding day gazes back at me. Memorial cards of community, family, and friends remind me of so many graced companions.

And then there’s the prayer box, filled with slips of paper scrawled with the names of those who have asked for prayer. “Once your name is in the prayer box,” I tell people, “you will be there forever.” The prayer box also holds a tiny plastic bag filled with soil from El Salvador. The nephew of Maura Clarke, a North American churchwoman martyred in El Salvador, placed this soil into my hands from the place where his aunt’s body was discovered after her death. I added soil from my own digging when I prayed at this grave site in 2010. Clearly, there’s nothing on the ritual table without purpose or meaning.

Every morning, I hold a steaming cup of tea and nestle into my easy chair near my sacred spot. I feel myself surrounded, in a primal way, by the palpable energies of love. I can feel love in every thread woven into the colorful Peruvian fabric. Love from my IHM founders captured in oil and canvas. Love from my parents embracing, their young lives spread out before them. Love in the faces stilled, remembered, and printed on holy cards. Love in the dreams or the desperation spelled out on slips of paper and forever finding a home in my prayer box.

Of course, when I’m on the road, as I often am for retreat work, I can’t take all this with me. I have to improvise, to find fresh ways to connect to those energies of love. So I tuck into my suitcase a sachet filled with lavender grown and harvested from my tiny summer garden plot. One whiff, just one whiff, and I am home, grounded in the dirt that yields such beauty and holds such holy connections.

In The Illuminated Prayer, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen observes that, “For those who have come to know God, the whole world is a prayer mat.” The whole world. So what and where can we name as our prayer mats, those people, living creatures, experiences that deeply connect us to the Holy, that open us to the presence of the divine, that remind us that wherever we are, we are on holy ground?

That holy ground might be a prayer table or a lavender sachet. A photo of a beloved soul mate. A Golden retriever nestled against our legs. A cat softly purring its prayers. An African violet surprising us with blossoms. The chirping of early morning robins. The brilliance of a setting sun. The lapping of waves. A place of stillness. The prayer mat is under our feet, before our eyes, outside our ears, within our hearts. Everywhere and everywhere and everywhere.

May each day in this new year expand and stretch our prayer mats and grow our spaciousness of heart so that we may recognize and welcome the holy that is at every moment all around us.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to sit near your prayer table, your ritual center, or whatever serves as your prayer mat today.
In what ways does this draw you to the Holy One?
Ask for openness of heart to recognize the many invitations to prayer that will present themselves to you today.

Featured Image:   William Farlow, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer my congregation, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton), as we enter into a day of prayer and reflection to prepare for our upcoming Chapter, which will include time to contemplatively tend to the work and mission of the Congregation (in March) and time to elect new leadership (in April). Thank you.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   January 1, 2022

It’s a new year, arriving as one of the rituals of a new year begins: taking down the Christmas decorations. Keeping everything displayed until Epiphany or the Baptism of Jesus may be a more traditional practice, but I need to un-decorate whenever time is available, and so for me, that time is now.

Here’s the thing, though: with all the trimmings packed away, the room looks, well, bare. Gone are the sparkle, the bold red splashes of color, the outward signs of joy and celebration. There’s a longing in me to somehow compensate for that dramatic downturn in scenery.

Enter the season of the amaryllis. Every December, I purchase several bulbs as gifts for friends, and I include myself on that gift list. According to its box, this year’s blossom will have dainty red candy cane-like stripes on it. My affection for the amaryllis grows from the fact that, during winters in the Northeast often marked by dull landscapes and invisible gestation, I feel in my soul the need for frequent reminders that quiet growth is happening, even when I can’t see it.

As anyone who has watched an amaryllis sprout from its large bulb knows, its rate of growth is both astounding and eerie. Leave the plant for a few hours, and the light green stem will have propelled itself upwards several inches before your return.

As we observe the amaryllis’ inexorable and seemingly effortless movement upward, we may be hard pressed to find a parallel in the life of the spirit. With our own deep inner soul work, transformation often happens in increments at a glacial pace. Or it can feel as though nothing in us is changing for the good. Or that any tangible progress has halted and arrived at a permanent standstill. Or worse, that we’re tilting towards a backwards slide.

Fortunately, what the Holy One desires of us is our faithfulness, not our rapid and relentless “success.” With God’s grace, we make the big leap of faith that our daily practices of prayer and meditation make a difference. That our efforts to live compassionately and justly make a difference. That our seeking of spiritual guidance to discern where and how God is active in the stuff of our lives makes a difference. Even when, and perhaps especially when, we’re blind to the truth that, seen or unseen, the Holy One is present and grace is at work.  

So this year, as the newly planted amaryllis hastens closer to full flowering each day, may we be reminded to activate gratitude for whatever is unfolding in our hearts. To engage in patient and active waiting. To apply Linda Myoki Lehrhaupt’s plant wisdom, soul wisdom, to our spiritual lives. In her book, T’ai Chi as a Path to Wisdom, she includes a chapter entitled, “Shouting at a bud does not make a flower blossom more.” Helpful wisdom to remember in our own lives as we enter 2022, a season of renewed hope and an invitation to fresh growth and grace in the company of the Holy One. May it be so!

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
If you have a blossoming houseplant or a photo of something about to bloom, place this in your prayer space. Gaze at this image.
What might be longing to unfold in your life as you stand at the edge of this new year?
Ask the Holy One for the grace to commit to whatever soul work is called for and to wait in patient hope.

Featured Image: Mihaly Koles, Unsplash

NOTE:
Happy new year! Thank you for following and commenting on Mining the Now through 2021. May the year ahead be filled with peace and good health for you and for all in our beautiful, yet wounded world.

I send you into 2022 with my prayer and my deep thanks and with the wisdom of Anne Hillman’s poem, “We Look with Uncertainty”:

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

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