Mining the Now

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM  October 6, 2019

Over the past year, I’ve spent a significant amount of time in doctors’ waiting rooms. Orthopedists’ waiting rooms, to be specific. So much time, in fact, that I’ve come to recognize the faces of other patients who are on a parallel schedule with me.

I think it’s a safe bet to say that the twenty or more people in that large room with me are in some sort of pain—physical, most certainly, dealing with fracture repair, the tearing and straining of muscles and ligaments, the wearing away of bones. Perhaps the pain is also emotional as people carry feelings of limitation or loss or uncertainty about a hoped for outcome. Financial as well, burdened with anxiety over insurance coverage or whether they can afford the treatment needed to restore their health.

Whatever the type of pain, all are joined in a fellowship, a club of those seeking healing. Although sitting in the waiting room–or waiting of any kind–can seem like a waste of time, it can also be approached as an invitation to stillness and intention. As I sit in that room for what can grow into an hour’s wait, I have a simple practice of prayer that grounds and stills me: gazing and breathing.

I subtly gaze at the faces of the people sitting with me. Gazing, Jan Vennard tells us, is a type of noticing. It’s a form of prayer that helps us to see through the eyes of God. Gazing helps us to pay attention to the holy that surrounds us in art, nature, and other people. So I notice, I subtly gaze at the faces of the people sitting with me.

And as I gaze, I also breathe my prayer. Breathprayer is a way of praying based on our breath, our inhaling and exhaling. In essence it invites us to pause and take in a breath of God, to be in communion with God’s Spirit hovering over the waters of creation, breathing life into the universe; to be in communion with the risen Jesus appearing in the locked room to his frightened disciples and breathing the peace and reassuring presence of the Spirit on them. Breathprayer connects us to the practice of statio, where, instead of rushing from one thing to another, we pause, take in several long, slow breaths, and open up a space of intention where the Holy One can work. All of this is being repeated and recreated in that waiting room as, one by one, I gaze at my companions and breathe compassion and tenderness towards them.

Recently as I was quietly breathing my prayer, a woman whom I recognized as one of the regulars approached me.

“We like it when you’re here,” she said.

Unsure of her meaning, I queried, “Pardon me?”

“We like it when you’re here,” she repeated. “The room feels different. More peaceful somehow.”

And then she turned and headed back to her seat, leaving me speechless.

The room feels different.

Is it possible that one person’s gazing with love, one person’s breathing compassion might actually change the climate of a room in ways that are palpable? I believe this on the deepest, most intuitive, most primal level of my soul. But if we need further proof, perhaps we’ve experienced the other side of this, where we’re gathered with a group of friends, relaxing and enjoying one another’s company, when one additional person joins our group. Carrying negative energy. Don’t we immediately absorb that presence? And doesn’t the room feel different? So why could the room not also feel changed when we absorb the positive energies of tenderness and blessing? When we live the Christian vocation that Pope Francis described in a May 2015 homily, as “to remain in the love of God, that is, to breathe, to live of that oxygen, to live of that air.”

Whenever I lead a retreat and we gather as an intentional group, we breathe our prayer together. The power of our presence, our contemplative consciousness, is palpable. I imagine the force of this great river of lovingkindness bursting through the windows of our gathering space and sweeping over our beautiful yet wounded world, bathing it in compassion and healing.

May each of us, in the many and diverse waiting rooms of our everyday lives, set our intention to be a peaceful presence, to breathe in and out in blessing the space around us and the space beyond us. May it be so.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One, the Breath of life.
Take time to center yourself.
Notice the rhythm of your breathing, your inhaling and exhaling.
Set an intention to bless, using words or the breath itself.
Breathe.

NOTE:
Thank you again for all the ways you have breathed the blessing of healing to me and on me. This month I’m resuming my mobile spirituality ministry and ask your prayer for: 

October 19-25, a guided retreat at the residence of the Congregation of the Infant Jesus, the Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor, in Rockville Centre, NY. Members of several other Congregations of Sisters who share the same residence will be part of the retreat also. Thank you!

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   September 22, 2019

Today I’m mourning the slow dying of some dear friends. Many years ago, I spent time in the Canadian Rockies and visited the Athabasca Glacier, part of the Columbia Icefield. At that time, the glacier covered over two miles and at its thickest measured 980 feet deep.

Unaware of that comforting statistic, I wanted reassurance of the solidness of the ice before I put a hesitant toe on it. When I finally did venture onto the glacier, I was struck dumb. It was as if I had suddenly been plugged in to an ancient story. Centuries of ice formation, the patient growing of crystal beauty, the journey of flow and retreat: all this was under my feet and I was shaken by a deep, familiar knowing of my place in the universe. I have been in love with my glacial friends ever since that profound experience and have followed the news of their relatives worldwide.

So imagine my distress when I learned of the death of the Okjökull glacier in Iceland this summer. “Ok”, as it is now known, was Iceland’s first glacier to disappear, falling victim to warming summers over the past two decades. To commemorate this significant loss and to underscore the imminent possibility of further glacial deaths, geologists, activists, and politicians hiked up to the area that Ok had once occupied and held a solemn funeral service. Children installed a memorial plaque to the glacier that reads:

“Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and know what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”

Only we and future generations will know if we listened to the cry of our Earth and stepped up to preserve her. Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, makes a case for protecting all of our kin, including the great aquifers and glaciers. (38) We can no longer believe ourselves separate from and indifferent to the future of these dense bodies of glacial ice as well as the majestic mountain peaks, mysterious whales, and Amazon rainforests that are the lungs of our planet.

I’m reminded in this past week’s global Climate Strike of the central role of children and youth in returning us to right relationship with the family of creation. In mourning the death of Ok, children placed a plaque on her now invisible footprint. In the recent Climate Strike, students left their classes and swelled the streets of cities and towns worldwide to give voice to our Mother’s pain. I suspect young people, more recently birthed from the heart of God, might carry a fresher remembrance of all that’s cherished in that holy Heart. I suspect they intuitively know, without ever having stood on the Athabasca Glacier, that when you befriend someone, when you place yourself squarely in relationship to them, you must then give your life over to loving, praying, and acting  on the beloved’s behalf.

May the mystics, the lovers of creation, the children and youth of our world continue to call us to live in the right relationship lifted up in Marilou Awiatka’s poem, “When Earth Becomes an ‘It’”:

When the people call Earth “Mother,”
they take with love
and with love give back
so that all may live.

When the people call Earth “it,”
they use her
consume her strength.
Then the people die.

Already the sun is hot
out of season.
Our Mother’s breast
is going dry.
She is taking all green
into her heart
and will not turn back
until we call her
by her name.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Hold in tenderness and prayer our Earth, our Mother.
Tell her what you cherish most about our Common Home.
Commit yourself to caretaking, and give thanks.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   September 7, 2019

We drop many things: toast on the kitchen floor; soap in the shower; pens and Smart phones almost anywhere. Sometimes the things we drop aren’t easily retrieved or restored, like keys down a storm drain grate; a toddler’s stuffed giraffe on its way  down a swirling toilet; a cast-off or shattered relationship.My reflecting on the things we drop is largely a consequence of a post-surgical reality, the repeated warning not to bend over to pick up anything for fear of displacement of bones or metal. What to do, then, with the salad greens that have tumbled onto the floor or the paper copy the printer has spit out and that landed, of course, just beyond one’s reach? Enter the amazing and helpful Grabber, a long, stick-like device that can be viewed as an extension of one’s arm and that can latch onto and retrieve almost anything. Skilled as it is, though, the Grabber, like our lives, has its limitations in restoring to a rightful place what one has dropped.

I used to quickly bend over and automatically scoop up whatever had tumbled onto the floor. In my new normal, my restrictions have offered me a fresh perspective. I find myself pausing and finding a deeper meaning in the things we drop. This may sound like a shrinking of one’s worldview, but it’s actually an expansion, a challenge to live with greater mindfulness, a call to notice how the entire universe is present in the smallest, seemingly most insignificant of things. It’s an echo of the mystic William Blake’s desire “to see the world in a grain of sand.” It’s an imitation of St. Therese’s Little Way, making a blessing of the simple gesture of picking up a pin. It’s a reminder of Mary Oliver’s insightful words about “the first, the wildest, and the wisest thing I know, that the soul exists and is built entirely of attentiveness.”

So in noticing and reflecting on the things we drop, I’m reminded of the subtle, rather gradual falling away of relationships that sometimes occurs due to distance, making it difficult to sustain ties. Or the occasional, deliberate choice to drop a person from our list of acquaintances because of their toxic presence, their negativity, their anger. Or the parting from another in the wake of an intense argument or following harsh words uttered in anger. This dropping, as we know, may be temporary or may subtly grow into a state of permanence.

And what of our connection to the Holy One? In my ministry of spiritual direction and retreat work, I often hear persons confide that they feel guilty because they’ve “dropped” God from their lives. Sometimes that sentiment follows the sudden and tragic loss of a loved one, or a desperate plea for a miracle that seems to have gone unheard, or their general sense of the unfairness of their life and their consequent blaming of God.  Most often, though, I’ve found that when people talk about dropping God, what they generally mean is that they’ve forgotten or let go of the practices of daily prayer or meditation or that they no longer work at finding a few minutes of stillness each day in which to hear the Holy One speak. For any of us, this can start as an occasional happening and then simply melt into a routine forgetting. Yet we know that every relationship, both with the Holy One and with others, needs to be fed by making time to check in, share what’s unfolding in our lives, and then listen deeply to the other as well as ourselves. And the wonderful reality is that, no matter our lack of engagement, the Holy One never drops us. God is at every moment longing for our return, our desire to repair and restore, no questions asked.

If we believe, with the poet, that our souls are built of attentiveness, may we then deepen our practice of pausing and truly noticing what is right in front of us—in the things we drop, in the things we retrieve, in the things that are beyond our reach, on where we are in the moment and on how the Holy One is present. May we grow in the practice of noticing and paying attention to the Divine at work in our world in our time and place.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Ask for the grace of awareness and openness to the people and events that may drop in and out of your life today.
What might these messengers be calling you to notice?

You might also, as you move through the morning, afternoon, and evening, reflect on anything you may drop in the course of the day. If you’re able, make the simple action of pausing and picking it up a prayer itself.

NOTE:
Thank you for your patience and understanding of my absence from writing for Mining the Now the past few months. I’m continuing my journey towards full healing which is many months in the future, but I hope now to return to a regular schedule of posting blogs. Your prayerful support is welcome and gratefully received now and in the months to come.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM  August 11, 2019

I’ve always been fond of pearls, the jewels associated with my birth month of June. I love their simple elegance: not showy, not gaudy, a classic statement of beauty. There’s also some sentiment attached to my fondness for pearls, because my mother often put on her faux string of pearls to complete an outfit for a special occasion. That gesture was sort of like the period at the end of a sentence, announcing, “Finished and ready. Go out and meet the world.” When no one else was interested in my mother’s costume jewelry after her death, I claimed her double string of pearls. I feel her nearness when I wear them, and I continue her ritual: pause for an observant glance in the mirror and then go out and meet the world.

Perhaps I’ve been so taken in by the loveliness of pearls that until recently I’d given little thought to the path of their creation. A path that begins in pain or discomfort. A path that is usually unexpected and pretty much unwanted—it’s an irritation, after all—but an irritation that brings forth treasure from an oyster.

Oysters can filter fifty gallons of water in a single day, taking in whatever impurities of silt or sand the current sends their way and purifying that water. This discernment of sorts reminds us that pearls are formed inside a living, breathing creature. A grain of sand, a bit of debris is all it takes to initiate the forming of a new shape. An oyster immediately responds by covering the unwanted visitor with layer after layer of nacre, mother-of-pearl, until a new gem is formed. Pearls, objects of exquisite beauty, are born out of intrusion and the uninvited. Their singular beauty begins in a place of discomfort, a locus of accommodating newness.

In “Working Mindfully with Physical Pain,” Mark Coleman, founder of the Mindfulness Institute, notes that our experience of pain is influenced by the quality of our attention. “If we meet pain with resistance and fear, or with an agenda to get rid of it,” he notes, “it often feels worse because we grip in contraction against it. If we meet pain with a sense of surrender, of softening the contraction or the tight muscles around it, this can increase a sense of space or ease, even when the difficult experience continues.”

The practice of mindfulness—and it is indeed a practice—invites us not to run from the pain that comes into our lives. Instead, to name it and accept it with an open and kind attention, to reframe difficult experiences from being a burden into being a chalice of growth and understanding, to open our heart to ourselves and to broaden compassion for all those who suffer physically.

This has echoes beyond physical pain and offers parallels for the life of the spirit. The path of the pearl invites us into reviewing our day and asking:

What has been my response today to pain, to irritation, to newness? How have I embraced the interruptions that have come into this day? Where did I welcome the stranger who arrived in need but at an inconvenient time?

Today and every day, may we grow in our practice of facing whatever breaks us open, look within to our deepest talents, and ask for the grace of spaciousness of heart to welcome whoever and whatever each moment brings us.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.

“Pearls, objects of exquisite beauty, are born out of intrusion and the uninvited.”
Reflect on an experience in your life when you were challenged beyond your comfort zone: to welcome a person different from yourself, or to embrace a fresh idea, or to lean into a different way of doing things.

What did that invitation feel like? Look like?

How did the Holy One invite you to expand your worldview at that time?

Where might you be called to show spaciousness of heart now?

NOTE:
In case you’re wondering what happened to Mining the Now:

This blog was originally written to be posted on June 30. However, the day before, I slipped and badly fractured my femur, so I had to have emergency surgery to repair and reconstruct my thigh bone and at the same time to have hip revision surgery to relieve sciatic pain resulting from a compressed nerve. After 35 days in the hospital, rehab and physical therapy, I’m now continuing my recovery at home. I’ve canceled all my commitments for August and September while I enter into the slow work of healing, but I hope to begin offering new posts for Mining the Now sometime in September.

Thank you for your understanding and for the continued prayer and healing energies you send my way. I hold you in my heart and in my prayers of gratitude. Blessings!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM  June 16, 2019

Whenever a friend of mine sees me, she calls out, “How you be?” The way she utters my name, the way she inquires into the state of my soul immediately conveys that I’m approaching safe harbor and the shelter of a compassionate and listening heart in her. That I’m about to encounter someone who cares deeply for my well-being, someone who will accompany me through the changing terrain of my life.

My friend witnesses what it means to actually become Sabbath. While we usually speak of observing, keeping, and honoring it, Barbara Reid, writing in Abiding Word, stretches our thinking when she explains, “Sabbath is so much more than regulations about how to keep from profaning it.  It is the space in which to enter into awesome mystery, to be embraced by the creative and liberating love of God, to give thanks together as a freed people, and to bring those gifts to birth in the remainder of our workaday world.” In a very real sense, Reid is also describing what it’s like to be in the presence of another who’s engaged in the deep inner soul work of embodying Sabbath. 

Sometimes it takes the primal intuition of a child to distill a definition down to its essence. When children were asked in a survey to answer the question, “What is love?” their responses also offered fresh thinking about becoming a source of Sabbath for others. One child evidenced a particularly profound recognition of what love is. “When someone really loves you,” the child wrote, “the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth.”

When we offer others the certainty that their name and all they cherish is held as sacred by us, when we embody sanctuary, a space that honors and respects the secrets and the fears and the hopes our neighbors carry, we are becoming Sabbath. Clearly, Sabbath is so much more than the stillness and space in which we honor the Holy One, pause to reflect, and look inward as a way to provide self-care. It is extending spaciousness of heart outward by saying to the other, “There is room in my heart for you.” It is cultivating the ability to sit still in a room, ready to open the door to whoever knocks. It is entering into Mystery. It is echoing the invitation of Jesus, “Come to me, all who are burdened and heavy laden.” (Matthew 11:28) When we live from this sense of Sabbath, we are open to whatever comes into our lives.

In a post on Spirituality & Practice’s Spiritual Practice of the Day, Wayne Muller reflected on the call to enlarge our hearts. “At our best,” he wrote, “we become Sabbath for one another. We are the emptiness, the day of rest. We become space, that our loved ones, the lost and the sorrowful, may find rest in us.”

May we work at becoming our very best selves. May we keep the empty space so that the broken and the wounded, no matter when they enter our lives, will find room in our attitudes, our consciousness, our worldview. May we offer shelter and sanctuary and haven from the storm to all who are seeking a place to pause, to all who are battered by the fierceness of everyday living. Through the grace of the Holy One, may there be space enough and compassion enough and welcome enough in us so that we may truly become Sabbath.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on Sabbath as spaciousness of heart, a place to rest, a sanctuary.
Call to mind an experience of being welcomed and loved by another in this way or a time when you offered Sabbath through your attitude or action.
Ask the Holy One to deepen the practice of becoming Sabbath in you.
Close this time with a bow and with thanks to the Holy One who is forever a welcoming Presence.

NOTE:

Happy Father’s Day to all who are becoming Sabbath in your roles as nurturers, protectors, wisdom figures, mentors. 

Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of this upcoming event: 

June 23 – 28: A guided retreat I’ll be offering for the Sisters of St. Cyril and Methodius at St. Cyril Spiritual Center, Danville, PA. Thank you!

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