Mining the Now

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM for January 7, 2018

What is the gift of winter? After more than a few days of fierce wind, snow measured in feet rather than inches, sputtering car batteries, and layers of ice so thick it laughs at the puny scrapers with which we threaten it, we might be tempted to utter an incredible “Gift? You call this a gift?” Understandably, our recent winter experiences here in the North might easily tempt us to name this season as more of an inconvenience, a disrupter of plans, a foe of travel, an enforcer of hibernation, and nothing more.

True, our sister, winter, brings all of these experiences to many of us. The deep freeze, the unrelenting cold, the snowy blanketing of landscapes, the slowing down or absolute halting of plans. As we experience all of these harsh realities, might we also acknowledge that winter comes bearing gifts? Sabbath time, hush and stillness, fierce beauty, rest, gestation and deepening. Winter reminds us that, no matter what appearances seem to imply, the universe is always invested in healing and growth and renewal, gifts of this season.

Winter is not a season of standstill. She often moves below the surface and the seen, ushering in a time of contemplative, expectant waiting, of dreams and inner visions. She calls us into a slowing of our steps, into mindful movement, into a hush of silence, into a rhythm of seeming to do nothing but go deeper. She offers us the grace to mine her presence, to reflect on the bareness of trees, the stillness of landscapes, the darkness of star-filled nights. She invites us into sacred rest. Most of all, she challenges us to foster and nurture a winter soul.

In “Winter Spirituality,” a guest post for the Monk in the World series, Nancy L. Agneberg reflects on her own preference for the gifts of this season and on having just such a soul.

“I value the harvest of fall, the energy of spring, the secure lingering of summer,” she notes, “but even more I covet the lairs of winter, the hidden passages, the unlit corridors, the streamlined views, the bareness of the horizon. The action coldly stopped, frozen without conscious time. I’ve done what I can all those other days and months and now it is time to leave what is undone and to unwind the sweater til once more it is yarn. It is sheep. It is essence.”

So especially during this season, may we cultivate patience to listen to the unresolved questions frozen in our hearts. May we believe in our resiliency when we are wintered. May we trust the love and mystery deep within ourselves and others. May winter reveal to us the hidden, the invisible, the heart of what really matters. May we foster a winter soul.

Takeaway

Take a few minutes to sit in the stillness of this season.
If you are in a wintered area, gaze out the window or walk outside if it’s safe, temperature-wise. What do you see?
What are the challenges, places where you feel frozen, stuck, or hardened in your life? Where in your life might you be dreaming of a softening or awaiting a thaw?
Invite the Holy One to winter in you.

Images:
hdwpro.com
livescience.com
animalsaustralia.com
pixabay.com

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, for December 24, 2017

Sometimes a word and a moment collide and their merging breaks open fresh meaning.

Not long ago, I had left the TV on and went to take a shower. As I was exiting the bathroom, I could tell, even without seeing the TV, that whatever program I had been watching earlier had now switched to the daily liturgy. Just as I was slathering Aveeno on my winter-dry skin, the words of the Eucharistic consecration filled the room: “This is my body.”

I stood up straight with recognition. Suddenly my hand filled with cream, my skin glistening with lotion, my fingers gently smoothing moisturizer over rough elbows—all were suffused in a moment of nuanced definition. It was as if a light had shone on my body and I was seeing my flesh for the first time. Yes, I thought, this is my body, the keeper of memory, the recorder of pain and delight and wounds and dreams. This is my body. And it is so much more.

My very flesh, my human flesh, my blessed and broken flesh is no ordinary thing, graced as it is by the Holy One. My flesh embodies the Holy One. In this season of preparing our hearts for the coming of a vulnerable Child, haven’t we been reflecting on what it means to have a body? What it means to take on our human condition as Jesus did, like us in all things save sin? What it means to incarnate the Holy in our own lives?

As we stand on the edge of celebrating the Nativity, we remember how God’s love, so great it could not be contained, expressed itself and became enfleshed in our humanity. This divine expression is Jesus, whose body shivered in the cold, succumbed to fatigue, hungered for bread and for fish, felt the sting of the whip and the weight of the cross, slipped away for quiet prayer, drank wine at a wedding, enjoyed the company of cherished friends. Jesus, who during his time living on this Earth gave flesh to the words, “This is My body.”

The Holy One, living in each of us right here, right now, continues to proclaim, “This is My body.” This is My body today, breathless at the sight of a sunset, crippled with arthritis, savoring a meal, parched with thirst in migration, perspiring during manual labor. This is My body, reading a story, writing an email, sleepless with worry, delighted in play, grieving a loss, longing for renewal.

Simeon the New Theologian (949-1022) has been trying to tell us this mystical truth for all of our lives. May we listen to him with a heightened consciousness these days as we pray his poem prayer, Awakening the Beloved:

We awaken in Christ’s body, as Christ awakens our bodies.
There I look down and my poor hand is Christ,
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.
I move my hand and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ,
Becomes all of Him.
I move my foot and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous to you?
–Then open your heart to Him.
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ’s body
Where all our body all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
And he makes us utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged
Is in Him transformed.
And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His light,
We awaken as the beloved
In every last part of our body.

Takeaway

Find some quiet time over the Christmas holidays.
If possible, pray near a crèche or Nativity scene and gaze on it.
Reflect on the wonder that is your human body:
For what are you most grateful?
What aspects of being human are challenging for you?
Share this with the Holy One as you sit in stillness and in gratitude.

You are in my heart and prayer for blessings for you and all in our beautiful, yet wounded world at this Christmas and into the new year to come.

IMAGES:
Modernday.org
Lettinggo
Chris Koellhoffer, Nativity from Mexico

NOTE:
Thank you for your prayerful support of the retreats and presentations that formed my Advent journey this year.
Please now hold in prayer my days of stillness and reflection during January as I prepare for a full calendar in the new year. Thank you.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM for December 10, 2017

Have you ever had to move? Whether that reality is recent or in the remote past, you may still remember what evolved in the wake of your decision-making: sorting through possessions, discerning which belongings to take and which to dispose of or leave behind. Packing and unpacking. Tending to your own emotional well-being in the transitioning. Feeling disoriented even after you settle in to your new home.

Whether the experience of moving is the outcome of your own carefully selected choice or was set in motion and dictated by circumstances you had no control over, one thing is clear: even in haste, there are discernments needing to be made about what to let go of and what to make room for in your new residence as well as in your unfolding life.

In the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus tells us how discerning and deep listening fit into his definition of neighbor. The neighbor, he insists, is one who makes room, who stretches the boundaries of hospitality, who sets in motion a journey that fosters spaciousness of heart.

In reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jon Sobrino says, “This meeting [between the passersby and the injured man] is where the human part is decided: Either you make a detour around the person who fell in with robbers, or you heal his wounds.” Either you cross to the other side of the street in an act of avoidance, or you make room in your heart for the presence and the stories of others.

In telling the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus indicates what he makes room for: the broken, the forgotten, the smelly, the bleeding, the overlooked, the wounded, the needy, the inconvenient, and on and on.

As we prepare for Christmas, we revisit the familiar passage in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2:6-7) that recalls in two brief sentences the lack of space that greeted Emmanuel, the infant God-with-us, on his arrival:

“When they were in Bethlehem, the time came for Mary to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Perhaps we’ve occasionally wished that we could have been present on that moving day, at the moments leading to Jesus’ birth. Perhaps we’ve reflected on how we would have re-written the story so that the circumstances of Jesus’ birth would have offered decent housing, warmth, ambiance, a welcoming environment. But Dorothy Day admonishes us to shift to another way of thinking about the Nativity, one rooted in our time and place:

“It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late.

Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it’s with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks; with the eyes of the store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of the office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.”

Where in our contemporary world do we see the realities of Jesus’ life echoed today?

Jesus, coming into a world that has no room for him.
Jesus, in forced migration, moving from Nazareth to Bethlehem while still in his mother’s womb.
Jesus, an outsider, finding no safety or shelter in the inn.
Jesus, a refugee, fleeing for his life in the company of his parents.
Jesus, finding no place to rest and lay his head during his public life.

We have to wonder what every one of these experiences of being an outsider did to Jesus. Did they grow his own spaciousness of heart? Did they make him even more tender in welcoming the outcasts and the misfits? Did they root in his heart and impel him to dream and work toward a world where all are welcome and none are turned away?

In Howard Thurman’s beautiful prayer, “Christmas Comes,” the call of this season is made clear:

“When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.”

During this Advent and the days to come, may we pay attention to the Holy One’s invitation to greater spaciousness of heart. May the Divine impulse toward hospitality take root and expand in us today and always.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness in the presence of the Holy One.
Reflect:

Who do you easily welcome into your heart?
Who is it challenging to welcome?
What one practice of hospitality might grow your heart and also make a difference in our world?
Ask our gracious God for greater spaciousness of heart, to hold in tenderness all that our world loves, pursues, and suffers.

Images:

faithlifeministries.net
handscoloredheart

NOTE: Thank you for your prayerful support of all the Advent experiences I’ve been privileged to lead in the past two weeks. Please hold in prayer these Advent programs I’ll facilitate or lead in the days before Christmas: 

December 11: Advent Penance Service, Christ the King Church, Springfield Gardens, NY
December 15: Advent retreat day for the faculty and staff of Our Lady of Port Richmond School, Philadelphia, PA

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM for November 26, 2017

The Holy One loves leftovers. I’m not talking about the kind we crave the day after Thanksgiving as we search for new and creative ways to reimagine turkey and all the trimmings from our holidays feasts. No, the divine predilection shows itself in a continual outreach and a tender welcome to all who are excluded, dismissed, ignored, missing from the table. These, all of these, are the leftovers the Holy One is dreaming about today in our beautiful, yet wounded world.

We’ve listened to, read, and prayed with the Gospel accounts of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (Matthew 15:32-38, Mark 8:1-10), where Jesus stretches the capacity of a meager reserve of bread to fill hungry stomachs. Miracle enough, but what Jesus does next is even more astonishing. He directs the disciples to gather up seven baskets of fragments, the broken pieces, the crumbs that nobody wants. In this simple, tender action, Jesus shows his care for the leftovers, for all that is fragile and seemingly insignificant in our human family.  His gaze is focused on those who are overlooked,  undervalued, granted not a second of attention or care.

The crumbs and the broken fragments are called by another name in Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel. Here Jesus highlights his particular affection for those the world might dismiss as lost causes: the wandering or inattentive sheep; the misplaced coin; the willful, impulsive child. Lost, lost, and lost we call them, but far from being forgotten, they are front and center in the memory of Jesus. His constant desire is for their return. He imagines them as temporarily lost but permanently found. All his longing is for their homecoming. All his hope is in someday hosting a feast that celebrates their turnaround.

We stand at the edge of Advent, a season when we contemplate the mystery of God’s love made flesh among us, the Word taking on our human condition. In Emmanuel, God-with-us, we see up close the witness of Jesus’ self-emptying love. We see his lived experience of what it means to be the anawim, the small and vulnerable one, born as an outsider in a stable, rejected by his own people.

We see how the Holy One turns our notion of belonging and worth on its head and evidences a predilection for those who are vulnerable, marginalized, without power or voice, the hidden ones, those who seem to count for nothing. These Advent days remind us that, no matter what is happening this moment—shame or brokenness or beauty or joy—we may recognize our lives as precious and know ourselves as welcomed guests at the divine banquet. May we embrace our neighbor as an equally honored guest as we gather at the gracious table of plenty the Holy One has set.

Wishing you every blessing of the Advent season ahead!

Takeaway

Sit in stillness in the heart of the Holy One.
Reflect on one of your own experiences of being an outsider.
Name what this felt like and looked like for you.
Imagine yourself now as both healed and affirmed in the heart of the Holy One.
Express your gratitude to this welcoming Presence and breathe your blessing to others in need in the universe.

Images:
thepetitionsite.com
Chris Koellhoffer
umc.org

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer the many Advent events I’ll be privileged to lead in the next two weeks: 

November 29:   Pre-Advent evening for Lay Ministry Formation, Diocese of Scranton, PA
December 3:     Advent afternoon for the Churches of Sullivan County, NY
December 4:     Advent Evening of Prayer, Christ the King Church, Springfield Gardens, NY
December 5:     Advent Evening, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish, Swoyersville, PA 

Thank you for your prayerful support! 

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, for November 12, 2017

Whether the hurried departure is caused by an approaching hurricane, a raging fire, or the threatening menace of weapons and violence seems to make little difference. All who are catapulted into a hasty leave-taking face the same challenging questions: What to grab? What to save? What to leave behind?

This year we’ve watched the terrified flight of families driving their cars in panic as they attempted to outrace flames nipping at their tires. We’ve witnessed images of people clambering to the roofs of flooded homes as rising waters swirled around them. We’ve seen news feed of people carrying bundles larger than they are as they clumsily ran to escape invading forces.

One thing all of these people hold in common: They’re on the move and faced with urgent, seemingly impossible choices that will impact their futures.

In Rohingya refugees: Choosing what to save and what to leave, the BBC’s Shalu Yadav and Neha Sharma met and spoke with encamped refugees who had to make hasty choices about what they could bring with them and what they had to leave behind as they fled. In some cases, people had two hours to pack and hurry to safety; in some cases, mere minutes.

Asiya, a young girl who seemed sheltered from the reality of imminent danger, said she packed her face powder, makeup, and her bangles. She expressed sadness because she couldn’t take her favorite yellow dress with her. Rehena recalled how her house was set on fire as she managed to grab some rice and some oil for her mother’s headaches. Noor, an elderly man who had difficulty walking, said that he was able to take only what would fit in his pockets, so he stuffed them with cash. What he really wanted to take, he confided sadly, was his herd of cattle that he had raised with love like his own children.

What about us? Perhaps we’re among the many fortunate ones who have the gift of time and leisure to discern and choose. Assuming our loved ones would already be safe, what would we choose to take with us if we were limited to only what we could physically carry? What would we leave behind?

Now suppose we expanded our list to include what we cherish and hold dear beyond the limits of what our arms could hold. In this season when we practice thanks-giving, what would make our Top Ten chart of blessings and experiences that evoke gratitude?

Perhaps our list contains good health or relationships that nurture us or success in our chosen career. Perhaps there’s a particular person who has blessed us with understanding and presence through a painful time. Perhaps we might even consider mixed blessings, you know, the kind that aren’t especially welcome and often challenging and difficult, the kind we wish would go away or be resolved quickly in our favor. Moments of joy existing alongside times of sorrow. Blessings in disguise that we can recognize and name as blessings only in hindsight.

Those are the tricky ones, the mixed blessings. Born out of loss, and grief, and suffering of any kind. Coming from the shadow side of life, like the loss of a job that led to the work we had always longed to do. Or a serious illness  that revealed how deeply loved and cherished we are. Or a letting go that offered us the opportunity to redefine ourselves.

Can we offer thanks for all that has brought us to where we are in any given moment?

In Thanksgiving: Grateful for Mixed Blessings, Diane Cameron observes: “Of course the ultimate level of this kind of gratitude is saying ‘thank you’ even before the good part comes. When you’ve had experience with mixed blessings you begin to know—even while it’s painful or unpleasant—that there will be meaning in it, and so we say thank you even when we’re getting hit hard.”

As we gather around the table with friends and family this Thanksgiving, as we volunteer at soup kitchens and serve dinner to those in need or those without loved ones nearby to celebrate with, may we cultivate a grateful heart. No matter what is happening in our lives this holiday, may we learn from everyone and everything, most of all to be grateful.

Takeaway

Take some quiet time to review the significant experiences of the past year.
For what is it easy to be grateful?
Where is it challenging to feel gratitude?
For what are you most grateful at this time in your life?
Share all your responses with our loving God, and give thanks.

Images
travelobservers.org
un.org
bbc.com

Wishing you and your loved ones peace and good health through the days ahead. I am so grateful for your encouragement and good company as part of the Mining the Now online community. Happy Thanksgiving!

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM for October 29, 2017

Just how much can one human heart hold? I doubt we’ve heard anyone complain of experiencing an over-abundance of joy, but could the same be said of what happens when we carry overwhelming pain and loss?  Where can one go, what can one do, when weighted down not only by one’s own significant sorrow, but also by the wounds and grief of others?

Many years ago, I viewed the film, “Ordinary People,” with a discussion group. The film presents a family torn apart by tension and tragedy. One son, the golden child, has been lost to drowning while out on the water in a sailboat with his brother. In the wake of this family tragedy, the surviving son is wracked with grief and bearing the guilt of his own survival. The parents are numb and walking around in a stunned daze.

There’s a memorable scene where the mother, so brittle she looks as if she might shatter into a thousand splinters of glass, has been holding her grief in a clenched heart. She retreats into aloofness and into creating the perfect place setting on the formal dining room table. Over and over she folds and re-folds the napkins, she straightens the silverware, she seems to ignore her family’s emotional collapse unfolding right in front of her.

When discussing the film in our group, we noted the seeming lack of affect exhibited by the mother in this scene where she tends to the details of the dinner table and seems unaware of the living, breathing husband and son in anguish right in front of her. One of the women in our group responded to that scene by observing, “Perhaps that’s all she can do. And perhaps it’s everything.”

Over time, we all experience personally and in the world around us the strange creature that is grief. How we carry it, sometimes named and sometimes unacknowledged. How we hold it in our bodies. How it can disorient us, cause us to misplace and forget, how it can sneak up on us in unguarded moments. How it can seem so supersized as to make a return to the ordinariness of life and the simple routines we once followed seemingly impossible. How it can transport us to a foreign landscape where nothing resembles the terrain we once knew.

In “What They Did Yesterday Afternoon,” Warsan Shire, a Somali-British poet, recalls her own response to seeing and holding the pain of others:

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”

What happens to our heart when we accompany loved ones through many long, lonely hours of the night or on their journey away from us through cognitive losses? What happens to our heart when we assist and comfort people in the worst moments of their lives, the devastation of natural disasters, the abrupt loss of life through violence, the exquisitely painful and unexpected end of a cherished relationship?

At the sight of the brokenness of our world and at the prospect of our own heart’s breaking, the temptation might be to withdraw, to close the door and retreat into isolation. At such times, though, what we may most need is self-care and the affirming company of those who give our hearts a profound hearing. All living creatures benefit from air and water and sunlight and stillness to help them flourish and expand. We are no different, so why not seek out those who offer us these same gifts, those who can own their inability to save and simply be a presence, the face of love and compassion. Those who have felt the collective pain of the world, named it, and entered into the deep, inner soul work that invites their own hearts to become more supple, more open, more gracious, more whole.

What a grace and a gift it is at such times to discover in our world someone whose heart has been enlarged, someone who embodies David Whyte’s wisdom that, “The task is not to live a life in which we never have our heart broken. The task is to become larger with each heartbreak.”

With faithfulness and persistence, may we keep stretching and growing those tender heart muscles.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness and become aware of what your heart holds at this moment.
Return to Warsan Shire’s words:

“i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?” 

What does the world say to you in answer?
Spend a few minutes sending healing energy to this place of pain, your own or others’.
What one thing might you do today to alleviate the dis-ease of someone else?
Carry this desire with you as you go through this day.
Give thanks to the Holy One who inspires this action in you.

Images:
lovethispic.com
lovethispic.com
pinterest.com

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer now all who will be part of “Praying at the Threshold,” an All Souls’ day program I’m leading at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth, Wernersville, PA on November 2.

Please also remember all who will be part of a day on Gratitude held at Our Lady of Grace Center, Manhasset, NY, on November 4.

And all who will be part of a retreat day for the faculty and staff of Our Lady of Victories School, Sayreville, NJ on November 10. Thank you!

 

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM,  October 15, 2017

For those who have lived through the turning seasons over many years, the signs are unmistakable and easily read. We observe trees adopting different hues, some spectacular orange or fiery red, some a subtle gold, some simply making the journey from shades of green to a dull brown. We notice black-eyed Susans spent and releasing their golden petals. We see coneflowers paring themselves down to a bristly center. Even the hardy marigolds, sensing the time of blooming is near an end, have begun to shift their energies inward.

When we live in harmony with the natural world, the season of autumn doesn’t deceive us. We know that what appears to be a time of dying and diminishment is anything but.  Perennials, all of which have delighted us with their greening and growing over the past six months, now are taking stock, reflecting on the remains of the season, and gathering themselves into a state of readiness for the unknown to come.

It’s the perennials, the lavender, the echinacea, and more, that catch my notice at summer’s end. For these neighbors, the questions in this time of change become: How to move from the abundance of spring and summer into the diminished supply of warmth and light in autumn? How to live in this present moment in ways that will nurture us in the stillness and darkness ahead?  What must we cultivate already now to protect our rootstock from a winter breathing unrelenting cold and harsh winds?

The questions of autumn speak to us as well. What does it mean to be perennial, to live through the years mindful of and mining the present moment? To stand at the edge of an unknown season, not knowing with any certainty what lies ahead or how many summers turning to fall we will witness again. To enter both the seasons of greening and the seasons of scarcity with audacious hope. To love extravagantly, broadcasting seeds of tenderness and compassion without calculation or assurance of return. To see beyond present and seemingly hopeless realities, affirming the potential and promise of what has been sown and trusting in the slow work of God.

At this time of harvest when we’re surrounded by the remains of flourishing lives, what do we need to lean into more deeply? Perhaps John Soos’ lovely poem, “To Be of the Earth,” might offer an entry point for our contemplative reflection year-round:

“To be of the Earth is to know
the restlessness of being a seed
the darkness of being planted
the struggle toward the light
the pain of growth into the light
the joy of bursting and bearing fruit
the love of being food for someone
the scattering of your seeds
the decay of the seasons
the mystery of death and
the miracle of birth.”

May it be so, through all the years of our lives!

Takeaway

Center yourself in stillness.
If you live in a place where the changes of autumn are visible, spend some time outdoors contemplating the signs before you.
If you live in a place where seasonal changes don’t occur, look at photos or artwork that depict shifts in the natural world.

What do you notice?
What moves within you as you gaze?

Share this with our loving God whose presence and care abide and endure through every season.

IMAGES:
HighCountry.com
dreamstime.com
burpee.com

NOTE:
Thank you for your prayerful support of the Directed Prayer Weekend at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, PA October 6-8. 

Please hold in your prayer at this time a day of retreat, October 21, that I’ll be co-leading. The day is offered for Red Cross volunteers who have been deployed in a ministry of presence, caring for the needs of others in recent and ongoing disasters in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, California, and beyond. 

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