Year: 2024

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    December 22, 2024

This is the season of the small. Of the anawim, who, in their seeming insignificance, depend on the sustaining love of the Holy One. It’s the season of the overlooked and ignored. Of the easily dismissed, lacking power or prestige. Of the poor and vulnerable, so dear to the Holy One.

We can be taken by surprise, can be disarmed by the small. In the years that I lived or worked in New York, I took public transportation whenever possible. One of the unwritten protocols of subway riding: avoid catching the eye of other passengers, a sort of self-protective behavior as you never knew what response your glance might invite. I was aware of this but didn’t always practice it, as I found ways to glance subtly at other passengers and pray the Metta (blessing self and then others).

I still remember one of the little ones who reminded a subway car full of weary, jaded riders seated facing one another that we belong to one another. A tiny girl of about four or five years old let go of her nearly sleeping mother and began a slow, deliberate walk down the middle aisle. She paused in front of each rider and gazed intently at that person. She would not move on until the person returned her gaze and they exchanged smiles. Every passenger, including myself, held our collective breath, abandoned subway protocol, and looked on intently as the child continued her journey around the car. By the time she finished her rounds, we were all smiling broadly at her and at one another, having witnessed the disarming power of the small.  

I imagine this as the miracle of Jesus’ coming among us, fully inhabiting our human condition. He entered this world a fragile and helpless infant, vulnerable to the elements, needing constant tending. Shepherds with the smell of the sheep clinging to them were initially intimidated by the appearance of an angel. But they had no fear in approaching a helpless baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger. So touched were they by what they gazed on that their fear disappeared and they went back to the hills, “singing praises to God for all they had heard and seen.” (Luke 2:20)

Who, after all, would be fearful of drawing near to an infant? Those of us fortunate to have little ones in our lives know how a tiny baby can awaken compassion and protectiveness in us, can open up reserves of tenderness and gentleness in us, can invite us to make fools of ourselves in play and delight. Holding a fragile life just beginning opens us to wonder (What will this child become?) and to dreams and hopes and the sentiments of Rabindranath Tagore, who announces, “Every time a child is born into this world, it comes bearing a message of joy. And this is the message: God is not discouraged!”

God is not discouraged. Neither shall we be. The Holy One enters this world as a little one, offering peace, summoning hope, melting our resistance. In this Christmas season and in every day to come, may we recognize and name the areas in our life where we may feel lacking or broken or not enough. May we approach the manger with confidence and peer into the face of the Word made flesh. May we know ourselves made whole and complete in that gazing. And as we see our own blessed flesh created in the image of Incarnate Love, may we offer profound thanks for the miracle of the small, for the ways the Holy One gazes back at us always with tenderness, always with unconditional welcome.

May we pray with Kate Compston in Bread of Tomorrow:

Thank you,
scandalous God,
for giving yourself to the world,
not in the powerful and extraordinary,
but in weakness and the familiar:
in a baby; in bread and wine.

Thank you
for offering, at journey’s end, a new beginning;
for setting, in the poverty of a stable,
the richest jewel of your love;
for revealing, in a particular place,
your light for all nations.

Thank you
for bringing us to Bethlehem, House of Bread,
where the empty are filled,
and the filled are emptied;
where the poor find riches,
and the rich recognize their poverty;
where all who kneel and hold out their hands
are unstintingly fed.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to pray while gazing at a Nativity scene. Or a photo of a little one you love. Or maybe even into the face of a baby who’s gazing back at you.
Savor and bless what you see, and reflect on what the Holy One might be saying to you for your life.

I invite you to share what you have seen and heard.

Featured Image: Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of Christmas and Hanukkah! May these holy days bring us together in ways that are for our renewal, and may the new year be filled with peace and good health for you, for those you cherish, for our beautiful yet wounded world.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    December 8, 2024

Of all the beautiful and rich Scriptures that visit with us during the Advent season, few speak more powerfully to me than this one from Isaiah 11:1:
On that day, a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,
and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

The Message Bible phrases and capitalizes the text a bit more differently:
A green Shoot shall sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.

It’s possible some of my attraction to the text is grounded in my gardener’s heart that so rarely finds a shriveled plant beyond redeeming. A drenching in water, some clipping of dead leaves, a relocating to gentle sunlight, and often such tender care and attention are all that’s needed to reverse desiccation and near death.

Oh, but it’s even more than that. It’s the life force. It’s the call to greenness and hope that cannot, will not, be denied. As we imagine the prophet Isaiah speaking to us, can we also imagine a life force, the grace of the Holy One, pulsing and at work even when all outside appearances speak of dryness, dying, decay? Even when dreams have been deferred or have dried up? Even when our best efforts, our passion for justice, our hopes for a more tender and inclusive world seem to be permanently mired in an inability to move forward? Can we imagine grace at work even when all we can see is the dead end of failure?

 When our lives seem unfinished, incomplete, or stuck in ways that lean toward despair,  that might be exactly the time we’re most in need of revisiting Isaiah 11:1. The Old Testament scholar Walter  Brueggemann offers us rich insights into the hope of this text. He notes that for Isaiah, the stump represents any closed-off possibility, anything that may have failed, collapsed, or ended in despair. The prophet insists that outward appearances are never the ultimate or last word. He imagines that the Holy One can and will raise up new life where none seems possible.

May Isaiah’s prophecy trumpet hope for us as well. For all who may be longing for encouragement, who may be searching for signs of hope, who may be near desperation over what’s unfolding in their lives or in the lives of those they love, may the words of Isaiah enable us to see and move beyond stuck and closer to the fullness of audacious hope.

I leave you with this prayer I wrote for a 2018 Advent reflection booklet, According to Your Word:

Come, O Holy One!
To the dry and withered landscape, to the thirsting root, to the parched desert, come!
To the lonely and severed branch, to the shriveled stump that longs for green,
to the broken heart that cannot imagine wholeness, come!
When we doubt our belovedness, when our future stands uncertain,
when our lives feel unfinished and incomplete, come!
Even as we wait to celebrate your birth,
Come, O Holy One,
green and bud in us this day.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you a plant that’s green, growing, or budding (or one that’s not!) or an image of the same.
How does this plant speak to your present state of the heart?
Name your deepest desire for flourishing.
Ask the Holy One for the Advent gift of new life for yourself and for our waiting world.

Featured Image:  Lee Sosby

NOTE:
Please remember all Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), as we celebrate together the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 9 (usually it’s observed December 8 but the holy day has been moved because of the Second Sunday of Advent).

December 13-15:
Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of an Advent Guided Retreat Weekend that I’ll be leading at Villa Maria by the Sea, Stone Harbor, NJ. Thank you!

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   November 24, 2024

They seem to be going out of fashion or at least have become something of a rarity these days. I’m talking about thank you notes, those expressions of gratitude that require putting pen to paper and hand delivering or adding a stamp for postage.

When one of my nieces was in grade school, she took them very seriously. If I were visiting with her family and gave her stickers or some other small token of love, by the time I was ready to head home that day there would be a thank you note already written and tucked into my pocketbook. I’m in no position to ever break her record for speed, but I do regularly take time to send thank you notes as well as notes of encouragement, or affirmation, or consolation, both in writing and through social media.

Some circles of friends or families have the custom of gathering around a Thanksgiving table and, before anyone makes a move on the mashed potatoes or Grandma’s stuffing,  naming one thing for which they’re especially grateful. What a lovely practice to hear those expressions of gratitude spoken aloud in a communal setting!

I’d like to go further and suggest that we stretch that beautiful practice beyond one day in November to include every single day of our lives. Brené Brown calls it the confirmation bias, noting that if we look for things to be grateful for, we will certainly find them. If we exercise our gratitude muscle, it will grow into an everyday, lifelong practice. We will notice, pay attention to, and live with awareness of how the seemingly ordinary and routine shine with uncommon beauty and grace.

Perhaps no one captures this practice of noticing what’s unfolding in the everyday more tenderly than the poet, Anne Sexton, in “Welcome, Morning”:

There is joy in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.   

Takeaway
Ground yourself in awareness of the presence of the Holy One.
As you go through your day, notice the seemingly small and ordinary elements that comfort or cheer or nurture you.
Thank the Holy One for bringing these elements together to bless your day.
Repeat this practice tomorrow and in the days ahead.

Featured Image:  Courtney Hedger, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of the Thanksgiving holiday to all in the United States, Canada, and in the global community! Today and every day, may you find a long list of reasons to be grateful. Please know of my gratitude for your continued supporting, following, and sharing around my blog, Mining the Now.  

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM     November 10, 2024

Last weekend, I spent time in silence and reflection. I was bone tired after seven consecutive months of offering both guided and directed retreats. That fatigue was no surprise after such an investment of deep listening and of emotional energy. But my exhaustion was also a weariness of spirit and I hoped for a few days to remove myself from the constant barrage of political ads filled with messages of fear rather than inspiration. I was hoping for nothing other than to drink in stillness, to replenish my spent spirit, and to be renewed. And I was.

I devoted the better part of last weekend to simply gazing at the Hudson River Estuary. As I imagined what has unfolded within it and on its banks over the centuries, I sat and gazed in remembrance of the Indigenous Peoples who settled the area some 10,000 years ago, the Mohicans and Mohawks along the Upper Hudson and the Lenape making a home along the Lower Hudson. I held their hopes and their dreams in reverence and wondered at the challenges they had encountered in their lives. I reflected on the rich diversity of life, the more than two hundred species of fish, blue crab, and waterfowl that live peacefully in habitats along the estuary. I recalled how, closer to our own time, our human family’s impact on the river included sewage discharge, quarrying, water intakes, and toxic chemicals, but that it was also members of our same human family who grieved that damage and came together in tenderness and care, successfully demanding change and working to protect and preserve what is now an American Heritage River.

All of this sitting, gazing, and reflecting braced me for my return to a post-election country. Here, I am not only profoundly disappointed; I am deeply grieving. I will not rush my grief, but I will also not wallow in it. Instead, I will listen to my grief and invite my mourning to guide me. I will grieve and act for my undocumented neighbors, especially those whom I know by name and story. May they be comforted, may they know many friends are standing with them in the waiting room. I will grieve and act for Earth, our Common Home. As once we banded together to protect and preserve the Hudson Estuary and other threatened ecosystems, may we now stand firm in our deep knowing that what we do to the Web of Life, we do to ourselves, to all of creation. May that knowing guide us.

I am grieving but also grateful for the many who share both their wisdom and their light with me these days. As we move forward together, may we pledge our lives to the common good of our fractured country and our wounded world. May we walk in the company and witness of our ancestors, the holy ones who companion us. May we keep stretching worldviews, keep welcoming in the other. May we choose tenderness and audacious hope rather than hardness of heart and despair. With the grace of the Holy One, may we recognize and claim our shared vulnerability, act out of our common kinship, and become more fully, more completely agents of healing in this moment and far, far beyond.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Name what you hold in your heart in this moment.
Where is your hope?
To what might that hope be calling you?
Ask the Holy One to bless and sustain your hope for our shared future.

Featured Image: Verina Waldner, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold my IHM Congregation in your prayer as we celebrate Founders’ Day, November 10. On this day in 1845, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were founded in Monroe, Michigan by Theresa Maxis Duchemin, IHM and Louis Florent Gillet, CSsR. These many years later, we continue to celebrate and give thanks for our graced story.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    October 27, 2024

Several seasons ago, I wrote about one of the bumblebee neighbors who cultivated a little garden alongside me as we worked in the early hours of dawn. I observed my industrious friend dive deep into petals, linger for a bit, and emerge blanketed with a sheen of gold dust. Eventually the bumblebee flew towards home, wearing her rich golden treasure like a mantle. What stuck to her, what she carried back to her hive, served as food and feast and blessing for the future of her apiary world.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the image of the bumblebee and what stuck to her. Because of her, I became deeply aware that whatever I put into my garden might be converted into food to be carried away to the bumblebee community. I took care to avoid any harmful chemicals, any weed killers, anything that might inadvertently stick to her and eventually become poison for the bees with whom she shared golden, life-giving pollen.

We are living in a most challenging time in every corner of our world, a world which can appear more broken than beautiful, although it is both. It’s a time when our tiny winged neighbors might offer us both a learning and a warning. Learning: That what we choose to consume changes us. That our diet of words, attitudes, images, news, worldviews ought to lean towards our wholeness and the well-being of all creation. Warning: That we would do well to avoid taking into ourselves whatever is mean-spirited, demeaning, cruel, or exclusionary. That we do not want to risk carrying any toxicity back to our “hive” and into the rest of our lives.

So we’re invited to reflect: Do we consciously include some element of beauty in the diet of our everyday living—poetry read aloud, inspiring music, art that uplifts? Do we cherish time spent in the natural world and protect, as much as possible, time given over to rest and renewal? Do we cultivate relationships that affirm and challenge and encourage? Is there space for silence and a reflective pause or two somewhere in our day? In all that we take in, are we feeding our better natures, the selves that long for a world marked by largeness of heart and movement towards the fullness of God’s dream of abundant life for all creation, no exceptions?

We hold the power to discern what is needed to be agents of healing, to be the presence of love in our time and place. By the grace of the Holy One, may all that we consume each day, all that sticks to us, all that we carry back to our local and global hives, always be food and feast and blessing for the common good. May it be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Spend a few moments reflecting on what you’ve been consuming and taking in today.
Have you been fed in ways that support, inspire, and encourage you? If so, how?
If not, what steps might you take to move towards a diet that will uplift your spirit and move you towards greater wholeness?
Hold in tenderness and prayer the well-being of our beautiful yet wounded world.

Featured Image:    József Szabó, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold me in your prayer as I spend an autumn weekend of silence at Linwood Spiritual Center in Rhinebeck, NY. After a summer that was unusually full of retreat ministry, I’m feeling the need to rest, reflect, and be restored, and am grateful for the privilege of this time. I’ll be remembering you and all your loved ones as we celebrate All Saints, All Souls, and el Día de los Muertos.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM      October 13, 2024

In his letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:1-11), Paul reminds us that we see from where we stand. Our hope is that we always stand among the vulnerable and the oppressed and on the side of the poor. Our prayer is that we always see from the perspective of the Gospel.

In the Gospel (Luke 7:36-50), we’re introduced to another way of seeing: gazing. In the days of this retreat, we’re invited to spend time not just looking, but gazing. So what’s the difference? The iconographer, William Hart McNichols, helps to clarify that. He writes about gazing as a way to pray with icons. We keep our eyes focused on the image before us. We linger. We notice: What do we see? feel? What’s happening in the image? What might God be saying to us through the icon? This way of praying connects closely with Ignatian contemplation, imaginative prayer where we place ourselves in a Gospel passage. We notice, we pay close attention to everything that’s unfolding. We gaze.

McNichols, the iconographer, makes this startling statement: he says that we are formed by what we gaze at. We are formed by what we gaze at. Think of how we might spend time when we’re not on retreat. Perhaps we gaze at the Scriptures or a book of prayer. Perhaps we gaze at our partner or our children or grandchildren. Perhaps we gaze at our phone, our computer, the TV, the weather, the news. Whatever we gaze at and spend time with is shaping us, forming our worldview.

So who or what has been forming us? These days of retreat invite us to explore that question and enter into a deeper, more focused gazing. Gazing at the face of the Holy One. Noticing the divine at work within us and around us. Gazing at the Scriptures as we break them open. Gazing in awe at the natural beauty around us.

When we listen to today’s Gospel, it’s clear what this woman who had no name other than “sinner” had been gazing at: Jesus. If we’ve ever been in love, we understand gazing, don’t we? We just can’t get enough of focusing on our beloved. From experience, we know that love sometimes makes us do daring things, and fixing her gaze on Jesus is what gave this woman boldness and incredible courage.

When she heard that Jesus was having dinner in a Pharisee’s house, she decided to show up uninvited. In Jesus’ time, it was utterly scandalous for a woman to interrupt a gathering of Jewish men, so we can imagine this woman trembling as she entered the room where Jesus, and Simon, and a group of men were eating. Immediately, she could feel disapproval, perhaps anger, certainly annoyance. But clearly, she kept her gaze fixed on Jesus, and that gazing emboldened her to do what she had come to do.

First, she wept. Her tears were a welcome anointing of Jesus’ feet in the Pharisee’s house. We can imagine her bending low and wiping his feet with her hair, kissing them, anointing them from the alabaster flask. That’s a pretty extravagant and dramatic gesture of love, isn’t it?

While all this was happening, Simon, who had invited Jesus to dinner, sat in judgment. He looked at this woman with a critical, disapproving eye. It’s a pretty safe bet that this was not the gaze of love! So Jesus asked him an interesting question, “Simon, do you see this woman?” Jesus was asking, do you really see this woman who has dared to enter your home? This invisible, unnoticed, silenced woman? Can you look beyond the gossip that surrounds her, and see who she really is? Can you see that she’s done for me what you completely overlooked? She washed my feet in welcome, anointed me, and wept. And she will be forever remembered for what gazing inspired her to do.

In a special way during our retreat, the Holy One invites us to gaze upon the face of God, upon ourselves, upon our neighbors, upon our beautiful yet wounded world. To gaze in love and in kinship. And with the certain knowing that as we are gazing at God, the Holy One is surely gazing back at us. With tenderness. With understanding. With extravagant and endless compassion. With a love that knows no limits and has no end.

So, let’s keep on gazing. May it be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Fix your gaze on a houseplant, a pet, a bird, another living being, or a photograph of a person who is beloved to you.
For several minutes, linger and simply gaze at whatever/who ever you have chosen.
Focus your love on that being. Notice: What do you see? feel? What might God be saying to you through the being on whom you gaze?
Give thanks to the Holy One for the gift of this life in yours.

Featured Image:  Frank McKenna, Unsplash

NOTE:
Thank you for returning to Mining the Now after a hiatus during the month of September. I hope you’ve been well and blessed during this time. Since we last met, I’ve been privileged to offer a guided retreat for the Sisters of Mercy in Sea Isle City, NJ (September 6-13), a directed retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House, Gloucester, MA (September 17-24) and a guided retreat at St. Joseph’s Convent, Brentwood, Long Island (October 6-11, including travel). I’m most grateful for your prayer and support of my ministry in those holy places.

As you can see, this blog post was adapted from a homily I offered on September 19 during the directed retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, MA. I decided to share it as a blog post because I believe that the practice of gazing can transform us and change our world. May we  keep gazing with love at our beautiful yet wounded world and all who are part of it.

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Enter your email address in the space provided and then click on “Subscribe” and follow any prompts. You’ll then be subscribed to automatically receive any future blog posts from Mining the Now. 

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    August 25, 2024

Let’s look at what unfolds between the young person and Jesus in today’s gospel (Matthew 19:16-22) and how this might speak to our time of retreat. There’s a question  for Jesus: “What good must I do to gain eternal life?” In some ways, we’re here because we’re also asking questions: How might we deepen our spiritual life? What does God desire for us and of us?  Where are our lives in right relationship with God, others, and ourselves? So we pay attention and we listen.

Jesus responds by telling the young person that the good he must do is to keep the commandments. What amazes me is that when Jesus tells him which ones, the young man announces, “All these I have observed.” All of them? Really? Every commandment? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t say the same for myself! 

It’s the next question the young man asks that I think is the most significant. “What do I still lack?” Perhaps this is a question we carried with us into retreat, not in the sense of dwelling on our deficiencies, but as a desire to do the deep inner soul work that makes space for the Holy. “What do I still lack?” is another way of asking, “What more might I become with God’s grace?”

I’d like to focus on that word, “lack.”
Jan Richardson notes that, in his lifetime, Jesus reached out to people who lived and struggled with lack. Lack of food, lack of welcome, lack of freedom, lack of health, lack of affirmation, lack of peace, lack of acceptance, lack of belonging. Today, Jesus continues to inhabit those spaces of lack and waits for us to show up to reach out to those who are fragile and vulnerable. He also waits for us to recognize places of lack in ourselves, and of course we will, because to be human is to be limited. But we must never be discouraged by what we find. Jesus reminds us that grace is limitless and God’s love is unconditional. No matter what is happening in our lives, the Holy never abandons us. We recognize our poverty and our shadow and we trust that we are not alone, that the Holy One accompanies us in this seeing. And when we name and claim our own limitations, we can more easily grow our compassion and tenderness for others in theirs.

Jesus invites the young person to follow him. But the young person “went away sad for he had many possessions.” “Possessions” here might mean riches but we might also read it as another kind of owning. Could it also mean that this person wasn’t willing to surrender and let go of whatever stood between himself and a deeper relationship with God? Perhaps he wasn’t willing to do the necessary inner soul work that might transform him. Perhaps he didn’t trust that his openness to God’s grace was enough or that grace itself was enough.

In this desert time of retreat, Jesus also calls us to follow him. He knows that in this time of prayer and silence and reflection, we may uncover places of lack in ourselves. There is hope in the uncovering, as Jan Richardson notes about our time in the desert. She writes that this solitary time in the desert, in our retreat, is also the place where God provides: Manna. Wellsprings. Angels. And honey from the rock.

So may we enter into these days with confidence. With the deep knowing that every minute of every day, the grace of the Holy One accompanies us. May we experience the truth that whatever is revealed to us, God’s grace is not only sufficient. It is more than enough!

May it be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Might there be a place of lack in yourself that you notice or are struggling to work on?
Share it with the Holy One.
Ask for the grace to enter into whatever spiritual practice will move you, with God’s grace, closer to wholeness and well-being.
Offer this practice for the life of the world.

Featured Image: Vadim Bogulov, Unsplash

NOTE:
This reflection was originally offered on August 19 during a directed retreat at Mercy by the Sea in Madison, CT. I was a guest director there August 18-25.

Please note that this will be my last blog post until October 13. Every year it’s my practice to take some time away from writing my blog in hopes I can return refreshed and renewed. So this year, I won’t be posting in September but I will have a very full calendar that month. Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of these upcoming retreat experiences:

September 6-13:
Guided retreat for the Sisters of Mercy in Sea Isle City, NJ
This is a re-scheduling of a guided retreat planned for autumn of 2023, when I tested positive for Covid. I’m grateful to the Sisters of Mercy for their gracious understanding at what was, for them, a great inconvenience.

September 17-24:
Directed retreat at Eastern Point Retreat House in Gloucester, MA. I’ll be one of the guest directors for this retreat.

October 6-11:
Travel and guided retreat at the retirement home for the Sisters of St. Joseph, Brentwood, Long Island.

Thank you for your prayerful remembrance of all who will be part of these retreats. Thank you!

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM     August 10, 2024

As a person who’s often on the road for eight or more days of retreat ministry, I usually return home to a space that has gathered dust in my absence. To some, dust is a nuisance, the stuff that accumulates on our windowsills and surfaces and makes its presence known when afternoon sun puts a spotlight on a TV or table and announces the need for serious cleaning.

I suppose I’m the odd person who actually enjoys cleaning, and there are two reasons for this. One is that most of my ministry is spent in working with the human condition, which is always in process and unfinished and without immediate results. With cleaning, by contrast, there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end, at least temporarily. The second reason is that dust can also be viewed as stardust, a graced reminder that we are the stuff of stars, that every atom in our bodies was created inside a star before Earth was born. As Carl Sagan notes, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.”

But here’s what upended my attitude toward dust even more: At the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, I was living on the tenth floor of a high rise in Jersey City, NJ. From my corner apartment, I had an unobstructed view of the Manhattan skyline, including the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. For days after their disappearing, I could both see and smell the smoke rising from that empty crater across the Hudson River.

During those first few weeks of unimaginable loss, I witnessed what was for me an unsettling development. City living always means more dust being kicked up by traffic and construction, so with my windows open on balmy days, I was never without evidence that I lived on Manila Avenue. Soon after September 11, however, I began to notice an unusually large amount of dust settling on my windowsills. I began to wonder: could this be something more than commonplace, everyday, household dust?

I was rather unnerved by the wondering, so in those early post-9/11 days, I dusted my apartment with a tenderness that had been missing from my previous cleaning efforts. I shook my dustcloth not down the trash chute but instead into a box that I added to my ritual center. Each morning when I sat in silent prayer, and each day after I glimpsed the scar across the river, I sat with that sacred dust, grieving vibrant lives lost and the survivors who mourned them. To this day, I cannot pick up a dustcloth without remembering the sacredness of the tiniest particles of our lives and proceeding with reverence. 

My intuition has been supported by NASA, which notes that it is actually dust, stardust, that connects us all. NASA writes that, “though the billions of people on Earth may come from different areas, we share a common heritage: we are all made of stardust…nearly all of the elements in our bodies were forged in the fiery hearts and death throes of stars.” Ah, we have so much in common, don’t we? Could it be we are more alike than we ever realize?

How would our lives be different if we imagined each neighbor as a sacred body, as a living, breathing container of the heavens itself? If we cultivated wonder and awe when greeting a stranger, the same wonder and awe we feel when gazing at a night sky alive with stars? May the deep knowing of our shared stardust infuse our everyday lives with reverence and tenderness for our kin everywhere in the heavens and the earth. Yes, may it be so!  

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to enter into this practice by going outside and taking a long look at a night sky OR sitting quietly and gazing at your own body in wonder and in delight.
What do you see? hear? feel?
What moves you?
What fills your soul with gratitude?
Savor the wonder within and around you.

Featured Image:   Rad Pozniakor, Unsplash

NOTE:
August 18-25:
Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of a directed retreat at Mercy by the Sea in Madison, CT. I will be one of the guest directors for this retreat.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    July 26, 2024

I saw a pamphlet recently that asked this intriguing question: “Did you know you could actually miss heaven by 18 inches?” It seems that 18 inches is the average distance between the top of a person’s head and a person’s heart. (And I just know that now you’re all going to be looking for a measuring tape or a ruler to check this out. Remember, that’s the average distance.) 18 inches is really about two things: our call to avoid judgment and criticism, which we imagine to reside in the mind, the head. And our call to practice mercy and tenderness, which we imagine as residing in the heart. That call is at the heart of today’s Gospel.

The Gospel passages that bookend today focus on the gracious and unfailing tenderness of the Holy One. Finding rest in the heart of God–that’s what we do especially during a time of retreat. Coming closer to the Holy One with our exhaustion and our worry and our heartache and also our joy, our delight, our dreams. Perhaps finding in a time of retreat a new clarity or a sense of what it means to be held in grace.

So with so much mercy and tenderness on either side of today’s readings, it seems a bit jarring to hear today’s Gospel (Matthew 12:1-8). Here the Pharisees see the hungry disciples picking heads of grain and eating them. The disciples were hungry, yes. And  it was the Sabbath, yes. But the Pharisees see only right doctrine, not right relationship with God, others, and themselves. They pass judgment and condemn the actions they interpret as breaking the Sabbath. It seems they haven’t traveled those 18 inches between the head and the heart, between criticism and compassion.

Jesus reveals to the Pharisees their distance from others but also their distance from themselves. Did they fear bringing before God all they did not accept in themselves? Did they fear their shadow being brought into the light? We might wonder: Do we?

Jesus inhabited our human condition fully so he understands that sometimes we get hungry and tired and anxious, whether it’s the Sabbath or not. Jesus understands this because he’s so close and so engaged in our way of being in this world.

As a parent or mentor or teacher or really anyone who works with children, we may sometimes come across suspicious-looking activity. You know the look that says, “We’re up to no good!” As a principal, I learned from experience to pause and give the benefit of the doubt, especially when the activity was engaged in by the usual suspects. My learning was this: that I could save myself a whole lot of grief and frustration if I set judgment aside and instead asked the culprits: “Could you tell me what’s going on here?”

And you know what I learned? That about 90% of the time, there was an innocent explanation for the behavior I interpreted as mischief. And let’s be honest, the other 10% was exactly what I suspected! But I must have practiced this a lot because over time, the boys would sometimes stop me in the hallway and say, with a big grin on their faces, “Sister, could you tell us what’s going on here?”

Pausing and suspending judgment can be a very good thing, can’t they? Jesus certainly thought so. And so did the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. He once defined healthy adult maturity this way: “A state in which tenderness prevails.” A state in which tenderness prevails. During this retreat perhaps we’ve been asking ourselves, “Does tenderness prevail in me?”

Let’s pray for the grace to embody tenderness as Jesus did. To be the conduit of compassion. To insist on love against all evidence and repeat as many times as necessary. To travel those 18 inches between the head and the heart and become the face of love in our beautiful yet wounded world. May it be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on a time when you experienced compassion and tenderness rather than harsh judgment or criticism.
What did the acceptance of another person feel like? look like? sound like?
Ask the Holy One to grow your spaciousness of heart so you may offer a judgment-free zone to someone in need.

Featured Image: Bart LaRue, Unsplash

NOTE:
This reflection was originally offered on July 19 during a directed retreat at the Sisters of St. Joseph Center for Spirituality in Ocean Grove, NJ. The reflection has been adapted for this blog. Thank you for your prayer for all who were part of that directed retreat, including for me as a guest director.

Please hold in your prayer my Congregation, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton) as we gather for our annual Assembly July 26-28. Thank you.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    July 13, 2024

Perhaps you, like me, were raised to show respect to everyone. To greet familiar faces. To hold the door for another. In a restaurant (the few times our family dined out) to wait til everyone was served before diving into a meal. At home, to pause before supper to offer a blessing and thanks. To ask permission to be excused, “May I, please…? What a different world it would be if we showed to all of creation the same respect that was a pillar of our upbringing in our family, school, group.

I’m reminded of asking permission every time I’m sauntering along and come across a field of wildflowers. No human hand has planted them. No human heart has cared for them. And I want to pick them. Just a tiny bouquet to take to a friend who is homebound. That’s when Robin Wall Kimmerer’s concept of the Honorable Harvest wells up in me. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. In her astonishing book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she combines indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Essential to the Honorable Harvest are the practices of asking permission and giving thanks as well as the habits of self restraint, respect, and courtesy for our kin of the natural world.

The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, but they’re reinforced in small acts of daily life. Kimmerer’s book has become for me a sort of Bible of the natural world. So when I encounter wild Moss Phlox or New England Asters or Wild Strawberries, I try to follow those practices. I introduce myself as the one who comes asking for life. I seek permission from the flowers or berries. I pick carefully, minimizing harm to the remaining members of their family. I take what I need and share what I take with another. I reciprocate the gift, offering something in return. So I might thank the Moss or the Asters or the tiny berries by weeding around them so they have more space to flourish. I might offer them a blessing. I might give them a drink from the small flask of water I carry with me on my walks. I never pick the last one of any plant and I never pick a solitary flower.

All of these are truly deep spiritual practices that acknowledge the beauty and the inherent value of all creation, of the human and the animal and the plant families and beyond, out into the Universe. When we follow the Honorable Harvest, we stretch our worldview and expand our sense of who our neighbor really is. We become fiercely protective of these precious neighbors and their well-being. We grow in our awareness of how a single action of ours affects the rest of our planet. Truly, we deepen our communion with the Holy One who creates. And we find ourselves living in a state of wonder and awe and wanting to constantly bow down in profound and lasting gratitude.

Takeaway
Sit or walk in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to enter into conversation with a living, growing neighbor outside.
Follow the practices of the Honorable Harvest: introduce, greet, ask permission, share, and give thanks.
Spend time basking in awe, in wonder, and in profound gratitude.

Featured Image: Amy Humphries, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer for July 17-20: 
All those who will be part of a directed retreat at the Sisters of St. Joseph Center for Spirituality in Ocean Grove, NJ. I’ll be one of the guest directors for these days of retreat. Thank you.

To automatically subscribe to receive new posts from Mining the Now: 
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