Mining the Now

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, June10, 2018

Many of us follow a daily practice of prayer, and there’s a reason we call it a practice. We need to return to it over and over, connecting ever more deeply on a soul level with the Holy One. Whatever the practice, we hope to enter into a contemplative space where we can most clearly notice the Spirit at work in our lives, where we can open ourselves to listen to whatever the day may offer. We may follow a routine including meditation, morning and evening prayer, lectio divina, or pausing during the day to review how the Holy has accompanied us and how we’ve responded to that presence.

We may also engage in informal practices that have a contemplative feel to them although we might not name them as contemplative prayer. Does sitting on the beach gazing at the ocean restore your soul and invite you into stillness and wonder? How about breathing in the scent of mock orange, lavender, or freesia? Pulling weeds or broadcasting seeds? Filling the kitchen with the aroma of baking bread? Sitting back and inviting the sounds of a loved piece of music to spill into a room?

One of my favorite spiritual practices is walking, walking any time but especially in the early part of the day. In a rural area, that’s the hour when nervous rabbits nibble and curious fawns move on shaky legs, their mothers standing, statue-like and ears erect, nearby. That’s the hour when honeysuckle and phlox are shaking off the night’s rain, when all of creation seems to wake, to come alive, to wait expectantly for what the unfolding day may bring. In a busy city, that’s the hour when the work of renewing the face of the earth is revealed in trash collectors clearing a path on sidewalks, maintenance workers hosing down pavement, delivery persons dropping off bundles of the morning paper, and grocers arranging symmetrical rows of apples, pears, and other produce. While life is bustling all around, that’s the hour when it still feels as if there’s a hush and the fresh promise of something new.

Whether we stroll or saunter, walking—as any spiritual practice that renews our soul—offers us many gifts. Walking mindfully is sometimes described as massaging the Earth. I’ve come to believe that when the body is in motion, the rhythm of walking liberates the mind and engages the unconscious. The steadiness of the pace, the mindfulness of our steps, can open up creative space and offer a pathway to centeredness and peace.  This spiritual practice can jump start our imagination and deepen our awareness of the world around us and our place in it. Whether we walk alone or in the company of others, whether we are in silence or engaged conversation, walking invites us into a space of listening, noticing, paying attention, all elements of a spiritual practice.

Walking was one of the few methods of transportation available to Jesus. He trekked up mountainsides, strolled the seashore, wandered the desert, and walked through the small towns and villages of his time. Sometimes he walked alone enjoying the stillness; other times he trudged the dusty roads of Nazareth and Nain and Bethany surrounded by his disciples or the crowds that were drawn to him.

After the chaos, confusion, and heartbreak of Jesus’ passion and death, and during that period of intense mourning before his rising became known, what were two of his grieving disciples doing? Walking on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). Luke tells us that while they were conversing and debating about the horrific events they had just witnessed, Jesus himself drew near, and what did he do? He walked with them. And what a conversation came out of that walk!

In How to Walk, Thich Nhat Hanh shares that the Buddha was also a walker. “During his forty-five years of teaching,” writes Hanh, “he visited and taught in perhaps fourteen or fifteen countries of India and Nepal. That was a lot of walking. Many of his teachings, many of his insights, came from his time of walking everywhere.”  

 So what about us? How and when and where do we pray most easily? What helps to create or support a graced space for our own growth and for a deeper understanding of our place in the universe? What slows us down, pushes our “Pause” button, renews and restores our soul?

While you’re mulling that over, please excuse me. I think I have to shut down my laptop, go outside, and practice. It feels about the right time for a good, long walk.

Takeaway

Sit in a relaxed stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on your own spiritual practices.
What do you currently engage in that nourishes and restores you?
Might there be anything new that seems to be inviting you to deepen your way of praying?
Offer thanks for the practices of renewal that are part of your life at this time.
Now, go out and practice!

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of these events I’ll be leading in the near future: 

June 9 – 16, Guided Retreat, “Bearing Witness to the Holy,” Sisters of Mercy, Sea Isle City, NJ 

June 20, Social Justice Ministry, Christ the King Church, Springfield Gardens, NY

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, May 27, 2018

Where our feet take us reveals something about us. Where we choose to invest our time and energy underscores both the desires of our heart and the beliefs we cherish. So where have our feet taken us lately?

Perhaps to the same place that Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s feet took him in the march in Selma. Remembering that time of joining Martin Luther King as they walked together, he noted, “My feet were praying.” He implied that the act of marching for the sake of a more just, inclusive world was itself a prayer. His feet were showing the world what he valued, how he wanted to invest his time, and where he simply was compelled to be.

Recently, the collective feet of sisters in my IHM community led us to show up in ways far beyond our usual patterns of living. We experienced the death of one of our sisters and a dear friend and co-worker through an act of domestic violence by a relative, who also died. As we prayed for healing from our own raw wounds and the ache of our inability to locate our sister’s remains, there was no question where our feet had to take us. As IHM Sisters we proclaim an unshaken belief in the unconditional love of God, a God who insists we are each better than our own worst act. How could we not be open to praying for both victims and perpetrator? How could we not reverence the remains of all who were part of this tragic story? How could we not witness to the never-ending mercy of the Holy One and follow where our feet led us: offering comfort, receiving condolences, weeping with our neighbors, attending every wake service and funeral, and praying for all that is broken and wounded in ourselves and in our world?

This, for us, was an extraordinary experience of witness and of what it means to show up when it counts most. Yet all around our beautiful yet wounded world, in the seemingly ordinary and everyday, we hear the footsteps of holy feet showing up to advocate, to demonstrate, to pray, to forgive, to empower, to speak truth, to console, to celebrate, to accompany.

Our own feet are leading us in the dailiness of life, leading parents and guardians and teachers and siblings to show up in support, to remain through the ongoing cycles of sports events, recitals, academic programs. All this so that we can be the face of love our children and students will glimpse as they scan the crowd and find, in that sea of faces, one that belongs to them.

Casting a look back at the past week, where else have our feet taken us to tend to the needs of others or to tend to our own self care? Perhaps we’ve been tutoring or helping with homework. Perhaps we’ve written a letter, made a phone call, carried a sign on behalf of an immigrant or a farm worker or a Dreamer. Perhaps we’ve stood at the bedside of a loved one or been the sole visitor for a lonely stranger in a hospital or nursing home.

May our feet lead us to navigate this world with care, with attention, with tenderness. May our feet lead us to show up, prayerfully and lovingly. May Isaiah’s words be spoken of us: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring the good news of peace.” (Isaiah 52:7)

Takeaway

Sit in silence with the Holy One.
As you review the past week, reflect on where your feet have led you as you “stood in” as a messenger of peace.
Into what acts of compassion or beauty or accompaniment have your feet taken you?
What did you learn from the places you stood?
Whether you are in good health or have limited mobility, show some extra care for your holy feet in the days ahead.
Bless them and the Holy One who fashioned them with love.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM  May 13, 2018

A brilliant sunset. A newborn’s first emphatic cry of arrival. The seemingly sudden budding of an orchid we had given up on. Sitting in front of the ocean’s vastness. Hearing a dreaded diagnosis. Losing our beloved.

Wonder and awe can leave us speechless. Tragedy, grief, the enormity of life can also render us mute. As a writer, I can feed on almost anything, yet I’m quick to admit that there are times when words are inadequate, when words are not enough, when there simply are no words. We’ve probably witnessed the well-intentioned offerings made at wake services or in the face of profound tragedy or loss—the softly mumbled condolences, the awkward searching for a meaningful phrase. We want to believe our words make a difference, that they can somehow salve the fresh wounds of loss and profound heartache. I suspect that, more than the words we utter at those times is our statement of witness: that we are here, that we have chosen to show up, that we desire to offer the only gift that is ours to give at these moments: the gift of being present to another even as we own our inability to save them from the heartache that summoned us to gather.

What to do, how to be, in the aftermath of the stunned silence that comes happily in the wake of profound beauty yet also sadly in the wake of profound loss? Our faith assures us that, just as the Holy One holds us in tenderness always, so we are called to a faithful presence. This may play out in real time as sitting by the bedside of a loved one as their breath becomes more labored on their final journey. Or deep listening to a friend whose pain spills out in torrents and underscores our inadequacy to reduce their suffering and loss. Or entering the stillness and allowing ourselves to feel our smallness before a mountain ridge, a midnight sky heavy with stars, a moon hung so low and large on the horizon that we just might believe we can touch its roundness.   The challenge is not to run away from Mystery but to remain, to accompany, to open ourselves to new learnings.

When words are not enough, I bake. Others cook and drop off casseroles, or babysit, or make phone calls or arrangements, or sit with in silence, or hug, or companion in a multitude of ways. These are all expressions of the presence Henri Nouwen describes in Out of Solitude.

“Still, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.”

That is our call when words are not enough. We pray, we sit, we listen, we accompany. We show up in our powerlessness. We remain even as we feel our inadequacy and own our inability to save.

When words are not enough, we are present. It is sometimes all we can do, and it is everything.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness in the presence of the Holy One who remains with you always.
Invite into the stillness someone for whom you desire to be more fully present.
Surround this person with a field of compassion and affirmation.
Entrust him or her to the tenderness of the Holy One.

NOTE:
I’m writing this blog post while sitting in a lanai on Sanibel Island for a few restorative days. You have been present to me in my sitting and I send you blessings from this place of beauty and peace. 

Please hold in your prayer these upcoming events I’ll be leading: 

May 17:           Evening of Reflection for Women and Men Religious, Diocese of Scranton, PA
May 19:           Spiritual Spa Day, Our Lady of Grace Center, Manhasset, NY
May 23:           Social Justice Ministry, Christ the King Church, Springfield Gardens, NY

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM – April 29, 2018

Period. Over. Complete. The End. Nothing more to say. Nothing else to do. It seems that very little about the human condition lends itself to the emphatic conclusion of a declarative sentence, the final chapter of a novel, or the last frame of a film.

I was reminded of this when reflecting with a group on the humanness of Jesus and the reality that, though he was divine, he also fully embraced and inhabited our human condition. The reflection became personal when we turned and looked at our own humanness and sat with the question, “What are some of the things we like most/like least about being human?”

Our shared responses were sometimes humorous, sometimes profound. Eating, hugging, spending time with friends, and being able to love topped many lists of the qualities or activities the group was thankful for and appreciated about our human state. On the list of what we liked least about being human were aging, suffering, loss,  heartache. And then there were the limitations—of time, energy, resources, the reality that not everything can be resolved or successfully and finally brought to conclusion.

In my experience of working with the life of the spirit, a final resolution where all details are tidily in place remains in the realm of mystery. Being unfinished is an integral part of a life where we are at every moment in process. Hopefully, we see progress and movement toward growth and are able to hold the tension of incompleteness with a peaceful heart.

We’re not the same person at dusk that we were when we climbed out of bed at dawn. We experience the evolving and the incomplete: relationships begging for our time or our mending. Questions that remain unanswerable. Heartache, grieving, brokenness that yearns for healing. Our own deep inner soul work that accompanies us at every moment. The hunger for God that is as continual as our heartbeat. On some level, all of these experiences of unfinishedness can be echoes of our longing for the Holy.

Perhaps that’s why during the Easter season we may notice with fresh eyes the rather abrupt ending of Mark’s Gospel. Scholars debate whether Mark 16:8 was the actual conclusion, for clearly not everything is resolved, tidied up, squared away. In fact, it appears as if Mark has simply left the room and his writing and handed it over to us in its incomplete, unfinished state. Perhaps the message is that we’re to take up the story of Jesus and continue it in our own lives.

James Harnish, in Easter Earthquake appears to echo that sense when he asks,

“What if Mark’s incomplete story serves as an invitation to every one of us to complete the Resurrection story with our own story? What if he purposely planned for every follower of the risen Christ to add his or her own chapter to the never-ending story of God’s work of salvation in a sin-broken world? What if Mark’s nonending is the call for us to get in on the action and become part of a story that never ends?”

What if being unfinished is an invitation to cooperate wholeheartedly with grace? To live in hope, in trust, in possibility? To move whatever is incomplete in the lives of our ancestors closer to fulfillment in ours? To see in our lives the unfolding and evolving of a universe in bud? To trust that spring and blossoming are all part of the slow work of God?

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on your own human condition and some of the things you like most/like least about being human.
What images come to mind when you reflect on what is incomplete or unfinished in your own life or in the world around you?
What possibilities do you see in what is unfinished or still unfolding?
Give thanks to the Holy One whose love completes you always. 

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM April 15, 2018

Walk the curious dog. Watch the focused robin. See how the cat’s ears twitch at the vibration of a noiseless bug inching across the carpet.

In the presence of these neighbors of the animal world, we can be profoundly humbled by the limits of our own hearing, smelling, noticing, sensing. How is it that we of the human species navigate this world so often unaware of what these creatures see or hear in the everyday: the stirring of the earth, the sound a green shoot makes as it propels itself towards the light?

I remember accompanying my sister’s Golden Retriever, Bobbie, on walks outdoors: how he would pause at a nondescript edge of lawn, utterly engrossed in that moment and all that was before him. How, when I tugged on his leash to nudge him forward, he would turn and give me a quizzical look, as if to say, “Already? Can’t you smell the wren who paused here for a rest? Can’t you hear the grass leaning towards the sun?” Sweet boy that he was, Bobbie didn’t judge me, just shrugged over my insensitivity to a hidden world. If it’s possible to envy a dog for its ability to mine presence, then yes, I was envious. Read Lisel Mueller’s poem, “What the Dog Perhaps Hears”, and you’ll understand why.

These days when all of the natural world seems to be hearing voices and seeing visions beyond me, I’m keenly feeling the limitations of my senses, much as Laurens van der Post felt in the presence of the Kalahari bushmen. When he admitted to these tribesmen, who live in a primal connection with all of creation, that he couldn’t hear the stars sing at night, they didn’t believe him. They led him away and stood with him under the night sky and whispered, “Do you not hear them now?” Van der Post sensed their profound pity when he had to answer truthfully that, no, unfortunately, his ancestors’ loss of hearing was also his loss now.

Still, that effort was not without some encouragement. The time he spent in intuitive company opened van der Post to wait in silence and know himself surrounded by the music of the stars. That comforting outcome hints of the possibilities open to us as well: to learn to listen more closely, to see more clearly, to notice with a deepening awareness the energies of God, the Holy One who lives and moves within us, between us, around us at every moment.

I’m still left wondering, though, what I might be missing. I wonder if there’s a  correlation between one’s closeness to God and one’s ability to listen and to notice. If that’s so, what are we to learn from our relatives in the plant and animal kin-doms? Lacking fluency in their languages, we might not recognize the dog name, the tulip name, the bee name for the Holy One. What we do witness is a bit of how they perceive and point to a Presence, one that our distracted and preoccupied hearts often pass by unnoticed. What we do witness is how they fully inhabit and tend to their leafy and furry and finned and winged world. What we do witness is how they hear and see and smell and sense life pulsing through them and around them.

The 15^th century Indian poet, Kabir, might have witnessed these same movements, might have sat with these same wonderings when he mused of the Holy One,

“What kind of God would He be
if He did not hear the
bangles ring on
an ant’s
wrist
as they move the earth
in their sweet
dance?”

What kind, indeed? This is a God so intimately present that the divine engages in counting the hairs of our head. A God who refuses to let even one sparrow escape notice. A God who lovingly tends to the smallest details. A God who tells us to walk out into the fields, drink in the wildflowers, and read in their carefree joy a metaphor for the Holy One’s consciousness of our needs. A God who notices.

And what about us? About me? About you? Even with our limited senses of sight and hearing and taste and smell and touch, do you, like me, feel the energies of the natural world coming alive in this moment? Do you sense new life greening in you, pulsing in you, brimming with desire? Do you, like me, ache with all your heart to enter fully into this season of rising?

Takeaway

If possible, sit in stillness outside. If this is not possible, sit near a window and gaze at an outdoor scene.
Notice both the sounds and the silence around you and within you.
Breathe in the life forces, seen and invisible, that are present.
Unite your own deep desire for renewal with the longing of the Universe.
Give thanks to the Holy One who longs in you.

NOTE: Please remember in your prayer all who will be part of these upcoming events:

April 16:          “Waiting in Graced Company,” a day I’ll be leading for spiritual directors at the Franciscan Spiritual Center, Aston, PA.

April 19:          Dedication of the IHM Welcoming Space and Land Restoration, Scranton, PA

April 25:          Social Justice Ministry, Christ the King Church, Springfield Gardens, NY

Thank you!

 

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, March 31, 2018

And so we wait. With whatever is unfinished. With whatever is incomplete. With whatever is held captive by fear, imprisoned by anxiety, entombed by despair. With whatever seems unable to move forward. With whatever longs for wholeness and fullness of life.

This is the waiting of Holy Saturday, which occupies an unusual place in Holy Week, sandwiched somewhere between the wrenching grief and horrific suffering of Good Friday and the exultant confirmation and hope of Easter Sunday.

Absent on Holy Saturday are the dramatic elements of the day before: the sun disappearing and the sky turning black; the curtain in the Temple rent in two pieces; the outpouring of blood and water; the women standing beneath the cross in their collective grief; the earth itself quaking and trembling.

Now that same ground is eerily silent. Now it seems that the last word has been spoken, the final chapter written. Now it appears that the dream of the kin-dom is a song whose end note has been sung. This is Holy Saturday, described by Steve Garnaas-Holmes in Unfolding Light:

“Poor Holy Saturday,
hung out to dry between
Good Friday’s drama
and Easter’s miracle.
Not much going for it,
this empty day bereft of tradition,
just an in-between time.
A day of waiting around,
a day of thinking we knew.

Welcome home.
This is the day we live most of our life in,
the wide space between tragedy and recovery,
the emptiness between the pain and the healing.

Only later, not on this day, do we know
we’re not waiting for a future;
we’re watching God unfold.

That is enough.
That is why this day,
drab and ordinary,
is holy.”

So let’s not be fooled. This day is its own kind of extraordinary. Here in this in-between time, this liminal space, this place where life is already now and not yet, is the where and when of our everyday living. We wait not only with our own stories, but with a global community that also longs for the fullness of God’s dream.

In Following Jesus on the Way to Calvary, Joe Nangle, OFM writes that Holy Saturday is a metaphor for where we often find ourselves today, in the in-between times, between life and death, sadness and joy, between what has been and what will be.

He notes that our call is to wait with the world. To wait in the tomb, what he calls “the womb of solidarity”, the place where we are in communion with our neighbors around the globe. At that tomb, in that space, we wait with all those in our world who are longing: for justice, for freedom, for relief from their suffering. In that space, we feel the desire of those who live in deprivation. We’re bruised by the wounds of those who are imprisoned by fear or oppression. We stand with those who are overcome with despair.

“The tomb is cold, dark, and lonely,” Nangle observes. “It smells of death. It is not a comfortable place to be. But it is where the Christian community is called to be.”

Called to be and to wait in the in-between times. Called to be and to wait as carriers of hope. Called to be and to wait as followers who refuse to bury God’s dream for our world. Called to be and to wait as disciples who live resurrection.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness by the tomb of Jesus.
Listen to what he has to say to you as you wait with him.
At what other times in your life have you kept vigil?
What did that waiting feel like? look like?
How did the Holy One companion you at that time?
Sit in solidarity with all those in our world who, at this very moment, are waiting and longing to rise.

Images: fotolia.com

Happy Easter, and thank you for following Mining the Now. Know that I wish you every blessing of new life this Easter and all through the days ahead!

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, March 18, 2018

Call it convergence. Call it repetition. However we might name it, we know that having the same message present itself to our consciousness over and over in myriad shapes or formats demands our attention. Sometimes the invitation calls to us in print, in sound, in image. Whatever form it takes, it is persistent and will not retreat until we’ve either treated it as an intruder and slammed the door shut, or  approached it as a visitor and accepted its invitation for a closer look. So it was for me recently with the word, home.

Home seemed to pop up in multiple commercials and advertisements. Then I noticed how many times I pressed the “Home” key while writing on my laptop. Next, home arrived in my Inbox in an email from Catholic Relief Services about support for Syrian refugees who live in a kind of limbo, a neither here-nor-there space. They exist between a war-torn country to which they can never safely return and a temporary shelter providing for their basic needs, but with no sense of a permanent residence. The headline on the email about these refugees was, “Help them know home.” Not find home. Know home. To know home is one of the deepest desires of the human heart.

Home was also referenced for me in a video clip where Oprah Winfrey interviewed Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius behind “In the Heights” and “Hamilton.” Miranda noted that being born in New York City to Puerto Rican parents, he very early in life had to navigate different cultural, linguistic, and artistic worlds. He spoke of traveling to Puerto Rico years ago to stage “In the Heights” and coming to the realization that, even though he was of Puerto Rican heritage, his mainland Spanish was sometimes inadequate or made him feel a bit unsettled and out of place in the land of his parents’ birth. In speaking of that experience of being in-between, Miranda observed, “That’s a great way to make a writer—be a little out of place everywhere.”

To be a little out of place, to be not fully at home. Many immigrants, even those who are second or third generation, feel the psychological homelessness that raises its voice in questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What is truly home for me?

Most probably, all of us at some time have had the experience of being emotionally or geographically distant from the place we love, the place where our heart resides. Perhaps none have expressed this separation, this sense of not-at-homeness, as poignantly as Psalm 137:

“By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered you, O Zion. On the willows nearby, we hung up our harps. There our captors asked us for a song and called for mirth: ‘Sing for us one of the songs of Zion.’ How could we ever sing God’s song in a foreign land?”

In an online E-course, “Exploring the Psalms,” Barbara Crafton reflects on this same psalm and invites us to imagine what it must have been like to be forced to sing a song of home by the very persons who took home away and changed the understanding of where and what home was. She notes that, even years later when the Israelites were allowed to go home, not everyone left. They’d been in Babylon for years, put down roots as much as was possible, learned the language and customs. “They experienced the peculiar pathos of the immigrant,” she writes, “Fully at home in neither the old country nor the new.”

In the gospel of John, Chapter 14, the beloved disciple writes of the tenderness of Jesus who, even in his last moments among us, loved us to the end. Jesus named our deep longing for home as he spoke of the house of Abba God where he was going to prepare room for us.  A dwelling place being lovingly fashioned. A home where all would be forever welcome.

As we stand at the edge of Holy Week, we remember with gratitude how Jesus made his home among us and embraced our human condition with both its glory and its wounds. May we enter into the sacred days of Jesus’ suffering, dying, and rising and accompany him with tenderness on his own journey into homecoming.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on your sense of home.
What contributes to a sense of well-being, wholeness, and welcome for you?
Who or what do you cherish?
Hold in your prayer the many in our world who are right now searching for safety, security, belonging.
Give thanks that you and all people are held in the tender heart of the Holy One, where every person finds a lasting home.

Images:
amppob.com
ben-tzion.com
christianchronicle.com

NOTE:
Thank you for your continued support of my mobile spirituality ministry. Please now hold in your prayer the last of the Lenten events, a retreat weekend, “Standing at the Edge of Holy Week,” that I’ll be offering at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, PA, March 23-25.

My deep gratitude for your accompanying this blog through every posting. Know that my prayer is for every blessing for you and those you love as we enter Holy Week and the risen life of Easter.

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