Mining the Now

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    February 25, 2024

I was back. Back in the healing waters of the aquatic therapy pool. And apparently, it showed.

“What’s your secret?” One patient asked as we passed each other walking the length of the pool. “You’re absolutely beaming,” another remarked. A third person wondered, “What’s behind that smile?”

After an absence of nine months, I was back in the pool, back in the community of bodies and souls seeking healing. What had kept me away? Not a lack of desire. Not a lessening of my appreciation for what aquatic therapies offered my wounded body. Quite simply, time and space. A full schedule of retreats from May through December had meant I would be away from my home base for many days.

So of course I was beaming and smiling at my return to the pool. As anyone who’s engaged in physical therapy knows, water is so much easier than land as a medium for exercise. The pool was the conduit to wholeness and that partially explained my visible joy. But beyond that, entering the therapeutic waters was a deeply spiritual experience.

I imagined myself returning to my mother’s womb, afloat in that warm, protected, nourishing space. No wonder babies wail when they emerge under the glaring lights of the delivery room! Who would want to leave such a sheltering place? I imagined myself at my Baptism into the faith, feeling the holy waters poured over my infant face. I imagined standing knee-deep in the Jordan as Jesus stepped into the water and heard the words addressed to him but also to me: “You are my beloved.”

In the healing waters of the warm pool, stiffness was soothed. Limbs were set free. Bodies were no longer fettered. The pool offered all of us a liberation, a loosening, a harbinger of what might be possible.

Which led me to reflect on this Lenten season, for after all, isn’t that our call in these forty days? For the hardened heart to become tenderized. For the dry bones to take on muscle and flesh and move freely, maybe even dance in gratitude. For the crushed in spirit to discover hope. For the tight fist to unfurl itself in a handshake or an embrace. For the soul hardened by anger to open in a slow, halting knowing that grudges hurt only the one who holds them, that it is forgiveness that tenderizes and heals.

A few questions to accompany us on our Lenten journey:

What healing do I long for in my life at this moment?
What might help to loosen or unfetter my spirit during this season?
What is the kindest thing I could do for myself right now?
What practice could grow my spirit and also draw me closer to the heart of the Holy One?   

Takeaway
Sit in silence with the Holy One.
Place your hands on your lap, forming a tight fist.
Reflect on any issues that constrict or limit your ability to be a loving presence to others.
Slowly open your fists and keep your hands on your lap, palms upturned.
Ask the Holy One to fill you with the gift of healing for yourself and for our beautiful yet wounded world.

Featured Image: Haley Phelps, Unsplash

NOTE:
March 4-6:  Please hold in your prayer my travel and presentation of a Lenten retreat, “A Heart for Our Time and Place,” at the IHM Conference Center in Bryn Mawr, PA. Thank you.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM  February 11, 2024

Some people dream in technicolor and are able to recount their dream in full detail. Some remember portions of a dream to share. And then there are people like me who rarely remember even the smallest fragment of a dream, never mind descriptive details. I wonder if that’s because I dream while awake, if my imagination is so exhausted by the time I get into bed that it mercifully allows me to slip into a deep and seemingly dreamless sleep.

If I recall anything at all, it seems to happen in the twilight hours of dawn, you know, that in-between time when you’re just awakening from a night’s sleep but are not yet fully alert. That’s the time of day when I sense most clearly the palpable presence of the Holy. I’ve learned to pay particular attention to what I see, hear, feel.

One morning last week, I awoke to the image of a massive poplar tree. The poplar was bowed down from the weight of thousands of harps hanging on its branches. I was standing under the tree, looking up into it. That’s the fragment. 

Just that week I had been praying Psalm 137, that poignant song of separation that begins,  

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, remembering Zion;
On the poplars that grew there, we hung up our harps…
O, how could we ever sing God’s song in a foreign land?”  (Psalm 137: 1, 4)

Perhaps when praying the psalms, you share my practice of relating the psalmist’s words from hundreds of years ago to what is unfolding in your life, our world, at this moment. In this song from the Babylonian captivity, we hear the contemporary ache of refugees driven from home by war, conflict, famine, threats against life, or natural disasters. We hear the terror of displaced families forced to flee to places that may be safe but that hold constant reminders that home is not where they now find themselves. We hear the utter weariness of those who live in chronic, unrelenting pain. We hear the unspoken anguish of people who have been struck mute by grief, struggling to navigate a foreign landscape in the absence of their beloved.

When there simply are no words, when the notes die in our throats, may we remember that the Holy One never ceases singing for us. May we remember that our longing to find meaning in the place of exquisite pain and fragile dreams has not gone unnoticed. May we remember that the communion of all the holy ones is here for us. Carrying us. Standing with us under the harp tree. Holding us in tenderness and prayer.

When our songs have been struck silent and our harps abandoned and stilled, others are singing when we cannot. By the grace of the Holy One, may our voices ultimately be restored and find their way back to us so that some day we can finally sing a new song. Whether soon or late, we trust that it may be so!

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you an image of our world’s suffering or an image of someone you love who has been lost to you.
Simply hold that image in love and compassion.
Thank the Holy One for constantly companioning you and all who are in pain of any kind.
If you’re able, sing. Play a piece of soothing music. Or sit in silence.

Featured Image: Victor Serban, Unsplash

NOTE:
This week we celebrate Valentine’s Day, the feast of love, and on the same day, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season when we remember that we are dust–stardust–and when we accompany Jesus in the crucified peoples of the world. Blessings on all who begin this journey deeper into the loving heart of the Holy One.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    January 28, 2024

I heard her long before I saw her. Howling might be an accurate description of the shrieks that filled the front of the plane. Wailing, perhaps. No doubt about the source. Clearly it came from the high pitched decibels of a child’s distress. I found myself wondering about the why. Wondering about the when. Wondering about…and then the inevitable thought, “Oh, please, not my row!”

I was comfortably seated in my preferred place, an aisle seat, but the other seats in row 14 were empty as people were still boarding. Then began the scanning of each approaching passenger as the sobs grew closer. Could it be that woman? Did he look like someone searching? Was she holding the hand of a passenger under the age of five?

Finally, a man with weariness written across his face approached and murmured apologetically, “So sorry, but we’re in your row.” I stood up to allow them passage and smiled at the little girl. “Mommy! I want Mommy!” she cried. Her father tried gently and unsuccessfully to soothe her.

Once we settled in, something prompted me to ask, “Is ‘Mommy’ on this plane?” The father nodded yes. “By any chance, is she in an aisle seat?” Yes, again. I’m slightly claustrophobic and the pre-holiday flight was long and full, so his answer was important. “Do you suppose she might want to sit here?” became my next question.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” he replied, “because she’s in a bulkhead row and there would be no place for you to put your purse.” He was pointing, of course, to my gigantic, overstuffed shoulder bag that I dig out of the closet only when I’m flying. Between that and my wheeled carry-on loaded with my laptop, Bose speaker, and electronic equipment for a retreat, I more than filled the luggage restrictions.

“Let’s try,” I replied. “Mommy” was five rows ahead of me across the aisle, so I approached her and asked if she might want to switch places. Her face lit up, she nodded, her eyes filled with tears. Within two minutes, we had switched seats, both parents mouthing their gratitude. Even more remarkably, the incessant wailing ceased.

That might have been the end of this story except, as we landed, I remembered that my wheeled carry-on was five rows behind me in an overhead bin and I had a brief window of time to get to my connecting flight. How would I ever squeeze through five rows of passengers pulling their luggage from the bins and crowding the aisles?

That’s when I noticed the little girl’s father pointing overhead and mouthing to me, “Do you have something up there?” I nodded yes, and shrugged. “Mommy” got out of her seat, looked into the bin and questioned, “Does it have a floral design?” Yes, again. She pulled it down.

Another passenger who had witnessed our earlier switching places announced to everyone, “This kind lady,” pointing to me, “gave up her seat so a little girl’s mother could sit with her. Let’s return the favor by passing her luggage up the aisle.”

Like something out of a choreographed ballet, all hands between me and my bag immediately went up and passed the carry-on forward and into my arms. “Thank you,” I exclaimed gratefully. “There’s so much kindness around us, isn’t there?” With that, everyone in coach broke out into cheers and applause.

Why am I re-telling this story? Because when the pain of the world becomes too much for me, when I’m feeling overwhelmed at news of yet another account of shootings or violence, of cruelty or meanspiritedness, I return to stories like this one from last December. I give thanks for the impulse to good that lies in the heart of every person, even if we’ve yet to see it. I hear once again the cheers and applause of a plane full of holiday travelers, all of us simply trying to find our way home. And I remember that no act of love is ever lost, forgotten, or wasted.

Now it’s your turn. What might you add of your own story?

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Call to mind a time when you were moved or touched by the kindness of a stranger, or when you yourself offered an act of thoughtfulness to another.
Savor the feelings that were part of that story.
Ask the Holy One for the grace to be the face of love wherever you might be this day.

Featured Image:  Marco Aurelio Conde, Unsplash

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    January 14, 2024

Because we’re human and limited, some element of imperfection or incompleteness may be found in whatever our hands and hearts attend. The typo scanned by multiple sets of eyes that jumps out at us only after we’ve finally hit “Send.” The letter sealed and mailed without the enclosure we intended to include. The shot missed at a critical juncture in a basketball game, no matter how many times we’ve practiced.  

At the foot of my bed is a folded quilt, a compilation of dreams, of beauty, and of human error. My childhood is filled with the memory of my thrifty grandmother saving scraps of fabric from threadbare blouses and many-times-mended-skirts to create parasol quilts, each square displaying a woman with a parasol, its scraps of fabric matching the colorful pieces of her billowing dress.

Those parasol ladies planted in me a long-held desire to one day craft my own quilt, so  I enrolled in a class for beginners. While every other student followed precisely the template and colors of a baby’s quilt, I was seduced by my search in a fabric store. Rows of batik, the delicate watercolors of Indonesian artistry, lured me over to their shelves. Once I saw those intricate designs of waxing and dyeing, those swirls of emerald and teal and rose and raspberry, there was no going back to ordinary.

In my sewing and piecing together, I was so dazzled by the batik fabric that I sometimes lost focus and veered away from the prescribed quilting pattern. As we neared the end of the classes, the instructor gently pointed out where I had gone astray but I decided to leave things as they were and keep the quilt for myself. I’d like to imagine that I was unconsciously following the spiritual practice of those who deliberately include a flaw in their artistry, a nod to the imperfection of all that is humanly made. But let’s be honest, the errors were unintended and all mine. I wore them like a badge of honor. As someone who had always tried to do things perfectly, I discovered in this quilt a newfound compassion for my own humanity, a knowing that I was part a world at once both beautiful and broken.

Since then, I have given away countless works of my hands and heart: Phlox and Black-eyed Susan cultivated and carried to a friend wounded by life’s cruelty. Italian Lemon Pound Cake feeding co-workers during a meeting break. Cherished words spilled out into poems and essays and reflections like this blog post you’re reading right now. Each of them created with care and thoughtfulness, each of them a container for my hopes, my whimsy, and sometimes my human error. My constant youthful striving for perfection as an end goal has given way at last to a world in which I offer the best of which I’m capable, move on, and am at peace with that reality.

In “The Liberating Lessons of Imperfection,” Sheryl Chard is not asking us to cease trying our best. But she proposes that our seeming mistakes and our carefully thought out plans gone awry can be schools of profound learning. She wonders, “What if all of us could remember to ask ourselves: When was I searching for the ‘perfect’ (fill in the blank here) and instead was surprised and delighted by something completely different? When were my imperfections met with compassion, and how was I shaped by that generosity?”

Going into a new year she asks, “What if this year I could walk through my days appreciating all the imperfections that actually bring me joy, tell a story, teach something, invite my contribution, or add surprising beauty?”

What if, indeed? A few weeks into this fresh and young new year, may we move forward with trust in the Holy One who always accompanies and completes us. May we learn to look at what is askew, awry, lopsided, ludicrous, or unexpected in our plans with an unfailing humor that carries us through this year and far, far beyond.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Name any scars, bruises, fractures, or pain that your body has experienced.
 Reflect on a learning that has come to you through limitation or diminishment.
Ask the Holy One to bring to fullness and completion the dreams of all who struggle in our beautiful yet broken world.

Featured Image:   Chris Koellhoffer, My First Quilt

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by Chris Koellhoffer, December 30, 2023

This deep into the Christmas season and approaching a new year, I can’t escape our present realities when I gaze at my beautiful little clay Nativity from Mexico. I see Jesus coming over 2,000 years ago in history and Jesus continuing to be born in our time and place. Jesus entering a world that had longed for his appearance for centuries and Jesus born anew in a world yearning for the fullness of his kin-dom. Jesus, Prince of Peace, arriving at the little town of Bethlehem and into a world marked by oppression, and Jesus, the embodiment of peace, coming now into a world equally wounded by conflict.

Already here and not yet, this kin-dom. That’s the mystery of its unfolding. That there is still, amid days and nights of terror and the unnerving nearness of bombs, the milk of human kindness. That there are still signs of the kin-dom of justice and inclusion, the kinship that proclaims and acts and hopes in God’s dream for our world. That there is still the desire to live lives of meaning, to in some way make a difference in our world. Still the longing to leave the space we inhabit more tender and more welcoming, to leave things better than they were when we came onto the scene.

These thoughts surfaced as I listened to a podcast, This American Life, a special December edition on “Yousef’s Week.” Over the space of a week, producer Chana Joffe-Walt recorded phone conversations with Yousef Hammash, who lives in Gaza and works for the Norwegian Refugee Council. The calls were often interrupted when bombings drew closer to Yousef’s location. In his 30’s and married with two children, Yousef also shoulders responsibility for his large extended family which includes four sisters and their children. He was having a hard time persuading his sisters to leave Khan Yunis and move to Rafah, which he believed would be safer. In Khan Yunis, the sisters had a home where their basic needs were met and so they were reluctant to pack up and move. Until a drone strike leveled the house next to them. Then moving was the only choice. And moving was made more treacherous because of the nearness of bombs.

And yet, even with the concrete dust next door still rising in thick clouds, the sisters didn’t immediately move.  Yousef noted that his sisters refused to leave the house before they did something unbelievable: they cleaned everything—the kitchen, the bathrooms, every part of the house, cleaned while bombs were falling all around them. “I really respect it,” commented Yousef on his sisters’ behavior, “because we leave it better than the way we have begun. This is how we show respect.”

To leave this world, our corner of the world, better than it was when we first arrived on the scene–that has the sound not so much of a New Year’s resolution as a mantra for all of life. To leave our family, friends, neighbors, community, employment more loving, more compassionate, more welcoming than when we first entered those relationships. To leave our house, our workspace, more clean than when we first inhabited our living areas. Oh, Yousef, you and your sisters are right! This is how we show respect.

As we stand at the edge of 2024, may we carry with us, may we deepen within ourselves, this awareness: to leave our beautiful yet wounded world more beautiful and less broken than when our lives began. As we enter into a fresh and unknown year ahead, may it be so!

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you a 2024 calendar, a journal, a diary.
Reflect on any choice you’ve made or action you’ve done in the past year that brought into our world a little more beauty, a little more compassion, a little more justice.
Ask the Holy One for the grace to leave your mark of kindness on the year to come.
Ask this for all of us who inhabit this beautiful yet wounded world.
May it be so!

Featured Image:  Chris Koellhoffer, Nativity set from Mexico

NOTE:
Happy New Year!
Thank you for your prayer for my safe and uneventful flights home from Monroe, Michigan and for your prayer for all who were part of the Advent guided retreat. It was my great joy to be with my Monroe IHMs. Special thanks to Sister Paula Cooney, IHM for her technical support and to Sister Judith Bonini, IHM for the initial invitation and encouragement.

May you and all of our beautiful yet wounded world know the peace and kinship that are the Holy One’s dream for all of us in this new year, and beyond.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   December 15, 2023

The Advent and Christmas seasons trumpet the significance of the small and the hidden. This time of year reminds us that our seemingly small practices can set in motion on a spiritual plane what casting a tiny pebble into a lake causes in ripples on a physical level. Continuous movement forward out into the expanse of the universe.

The mystic and writer Annie Dillard relates a childhood practice—I would call it a spiritual practice—of taking one of her precious pennies and hiding it for someone else to find. She delighted in imagining the first passerby who would receive her free gift from the universe. This spiritual practice was the starting point of her learning to see and pay attention, to notice, as she says, that “The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.”

Perhaps you’ve engaged in this spiritual practice by paying in advance for the Dunkin Donuts driver behind you in the Drive Thru. Or left your shopping cart unchained at the supermarket so that the next person coming along might find your quarter still in the slot, pre-paid. Maybe you’ve straightened up part of a messy, picked over aisle of Christmas items to spare a weary store employee some extra time on the job. Or applauded a restaurant server, overwhelmed and harried by having multiple roles because of staffing shortages. How can these acts of kindness and compassion not be called spiritual practices? Surely, they are the stuff that makes the universe a more gentle, welcoming shelter and home for all of us.

In these days leading to the celebration of the birth of Emmanuel, God-with-us, we remember similar small acts of kindness that are memorialized in the Nativity accounts. In a recent Advent retreat I led, one of the participants, who had spent many years ministering in Africa, shared something she had learned from the African women. Of course, they observed, Mary would not have been left alone to face the pain of childbirth by herself. Without knowing anything of her story or her background, the women of the village would have seen her distress and anguish and would have immediately hurried to assist her.

Shepherds, considered outcasts because of their long days and nights apart from the community and because of “the smell of the sheep” which Pope Francis urged pastoral staff to cultivate in a spiritual way, approached the newborn baby and his family. They knew what it was like to be hidden and to exist outside a loving community and so they offered the gift of their presence. Perhaps a wool blanket for the little one as well?

Travelers from the East, foreigners to the community of Bethlehem, dressing differently, speaking a strange tongue, braved the dangers of a long and difficult journey. Impelled by their research and spiritual practices, they followed a star, firm in their belief that wondrous events were still possible. How amazed and how deeply grateful Mary and Joseph must have been, every treasure and every bow from these wise ones a wonder.

So in this season that lifts up for us the Divine taking on our human flesh, let us celebrate the small. Let us be open to the tender Presence that transforms us and changes the world: a newborn baby lying in a manger and hidden away. And however we celebrate the holy days of our traditions, whether our hearts are alive with joy or weighed down by grief and worry, may we be comforted, consoled, and encouraged by the coming of Emmanuel, the Holy One choosing to be God-with-us in our time, in our place.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you a Nativity set or object that is small but significant.
Gaze with love at this symbol.
Ask the Holy One to deepen in you the gift of noticing and paying attention to the small and the hidden in your everyday living.
Breathe a blessing to our beautiful yet wounded world.

Featured Image: Greyson Joralemon, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please continue to hold in your prayer all who are part of this ongoing guided retreat for the Sisters of IHM of Monroe, Michigan. Please also pray for my safe and uneventful flights home on December 18. Thank you!

Wishing you and those you love every blessing of these holy days. Thank you for giving me the gift of following my blog, Mining the Now.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    December 2, 2023

Amazing what connections come to our consciousness when we pay attention. I’d like to think I was doing exactly that when I came across a local honey display at a favorite health and wellness store.  I sometimes use honey in recipes (brussels sprouts-honey-balsamic vinegar) and have recently become fond of adding a bit of sweetness to a morning cup of tea. But in the average supermarket what I find is pretty much honey. Period.

Here in this specialty market the choices were more expansive and varied. Raw and unfiltered honey. Honey with pieces of the comb clearly visible. Descriptive names of seasons and origins. Buckwheat Blossom. Cinnamon. Fall. Orange Blossom. And this one that called out to me: Wildflower.

I purchased it, hurried it home, and spooned out a drop of syrupy, concentrated wildflower magic. Bliss! I suspect this is what Mary Oliver felt “At Blackwater Pond” when she cupped cold water in her hands, took a long drink and exclaimed, “oh, what is that beautiful thing that just happened?” When I took these sweet wildflowers into my body, I tasted fields of purple aster, goldenrod, pink phlox, and wild clover. I saw them blossom under summer sun. I heard them calling out to every passing bumblebee. I imagined worker bees covered with pollen and carrying their dusty gold back to a waiting colony. I felt the tender care of a thousand beekeepers. And yes, all this I could do–take in bee-ness, blossom-ness, wild-ness, essence of wildflower and essence of bee–because I have a body, because they gave their bodies over to transformation and to service of the whole.

And since it was the beginning of Advent, my thoughts connected with this season of preparation. With Jesus, who fully inhabited our human body, taking on the wonder and the limits of our human condition. Had he perhaps, like me, enjoyed this liquid bliss? In the wanderings of his public life through the land of milk and honey (Exodus 3:8), in his trekking through fields and meditating on the natural world around him, had he also at some point dipped his finger into a dish of honey, tasted it, and exlaimed after he swallowed it, “Wow! This is really good stuff!”

The call of Advent is to prepare our hearts and our consciousness for the coming of Emmanuel, God-with-us, in our time and place. Perhaps part of that call might be to spend some time reflecting on our human condition. To whisper prayers of gratitude that we actually have a body with all its dazzling complexity and its persistent limits. To give thanks at all times for our human bodies, even when we are weary, or arthritic, or wrinkled, or slowing, or aching, or confined to a chair or a bed. To look at our human bodies as fearfully, wonderfully made, no matter that these same bodies sometimes seem to betray us and sometimes cannot take us where we want to go or do what we once did.

So when you first get up in the morning and shuffle into the bathroom, take a long look into the mirror. Notice that gazing back at you is a human body, perhaps one whose hair is disheveled and scruffy, perhaps one whose eyes are bleary and shaking off sleep. Remember then the mystery of the Incarnation and the mystery of you, with your human and holy and wondrous body. And when you do remember, say aloud for all the world to hear, “Wow! This is really good stuff!”

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Wrap your arms around yourself in a gesture of love and tenderness.
Thank your body for helping you enter into yet another Advent season.
Show compassion for any part of your body that carries pain or wounds or sadness.
Ask the Holy One for the healing you desire, and then ask for healing for our beautiful yet wounded world.

Featured Image:  Dmitry Gregoriev, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please hold in your prayer my air travel and all who will be part of a guided retreat I’m leading:

December 12-18
Monroe, Michigan
“Advent:  Pilgrimage of the Heart” for IHM Sisters and friends

Blessings of this Advent season to you. As we wait for the coming of Emmanuel, God-with-us, may the witness of our hope contribute to the healing of our beautiful yet wounded world.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   November 19, 2023

As a constantly curious person, there’s one question I’m perhaps most curious about and will voice to anyone, but especially to wisdom figures. I want to know, “How did you come to be the person you are today?”

Inevitably, the person on the receiving end of that question will mention someone who knew how to mine. This spiritual miner might be a parent, a teacher, a mentor, a friend. This miner possessed singular sight, able to see beyond the bravado and swagger of younger years and to uncover the timid or frightened or doubting child within who needed assurance or affirmation. This miner whose “I believe in you” litany offered an unfailing source of encouragement. This miner whose cheerleading evolved into a speech act.

In Loose Leaf Lectionary, Mark Strobel writes that a speech act is a single word or phrase that carries the power to effect change. A speech act happens in a circumstance where someone says something and the mere fact of saying it actually makes it happen. Imagine the first time a person utters the words, “I love you” and what that sets in motion. Scripturally, think of the Genesis account of creation where God says “Be!” and calls into being the universe, creating light and sky and oceans and all that swims there and all that crawls or runs on land. “Be!” God says to us and all our kin. And so it is. And it is good, so very good.

On the wall in the space where I write is a print with the reminder, “Words are so powerful, they should only be used to heal, to bless, to prosper.” Words, then, are potential speech acts.

So there’s an invitation to reflect on our own words, uttered or written. They may not be as dramatic as the primordial word spoken to creation by the Holy One, but like that divine invitation, they also possess immense power. Perhaps we’ve been blessed to hear in our lives speech acts such as, “You can do this!” “You got it.” “You have a gift.” “I believe in you.” How a life can be transformed by a steady hearing of such speech acts! These words or phrases invite our own mining and deep inner soul work. These words help to coax or spur into being our best selves, our infant talents, our transformation into generous, compassionate members of the human family.

In this season of voicing gratitude, may we reflect on and give thanks for the significant persons in our lives whose words set into motion our journey from a shaky and wavering belief in ourselves to a profound knowing that we are beloved of God. May the Holy One, who rested with contentment after the work of creation, gaze at us with all our quirks and limitations and doubts and say once again “Be!” And find us good, so very good.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on a person who has invited you into greater confidence and deeper belief in yourself.
Hold that person in tenderness and in your prayers of gratitude.
Remember as well those in our global family who long to hear words of affirmation voiced for them. Give thanks for all the gifts you have received.

Featured Image:  Ashley Whitlatch, Unsplash

NOTE:
In this season of giving thanks, know how grateful I am for your following of Mining the Now, for your comments, and for all the ways you use words and you encourage me to use words that heal, and bless, and prosper. Happy Thanksgiving, and blessings to you and all those you love.

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Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   November 3, 2023

As someone who often drives distances of three or more hours at a stretch, I’m delighted to be living in the age of podcasts. I’m grateful for their company at any time, but especially on monotonous highways that might offer little by way of breathtaking scenery or diversity of landscape. Besides, there’s something intimate about being the only person in a car and having one or more of those sonorous podcast voices speak directly to me on a long trip or a lonely road.

Recently, I chose to take Route 206 in New Jersey. It was one of several options for my destination, and it was the longest one, but the fall foliage was at its peak and 206 would take me on roads promising autumn’s brilliant colors on full display.

Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz, was streaming, and it featured an interview with writer James Patterson. As the prolific author of over sixty books on the New York Times bestseller list, Patterson was asked what motivated him. He said that early on in his career, he heard a quote that reminded him his time was limited, and because of that, he should ask himself, “So what can I do most beautifully?” For Patterson, that clarified what became his life’s calling: telling stories.

As I heard Patterson ask the question, I was passing under archways of trees shining crimson and gold and orange above me. I sat up straight, always an indication that I’m meant to pay attention. I reflected on my conscious choice to take the longer way to my destination, simply so that I could experience beauty and thank the trees for sharing with me.

The question Patterson noted took me in another direction, towards the importance of bringing beauty into our lives. As much as we possibly can. Whenever and wherever we can. Seeking the beautiful with intentionality is soul work that can lead to our own transformation over time and can enable us to share the beautiful with others.

On the day I chose Route 206 because I knew it would bring an experience of awe and gratitude into my day, I was doing just that kind of intentional soul work. That leaning explains why I cultivate a tiny garden and welcome fuzzy bumblebees, the scent of lavender, the wildness of black eyed Susans. That’s why I don’t use headphones on my walk, so that I can better hear birdsong and the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot as well as the movements of my own heart. That’s why every day, yes, every single day, I read a poem aloud as part of my practice of prayer. That’s why I delight in relationships with others who appreciate my love affair with words, my need for whimsy, for the arts, for story telling, for compassion, and of course, for chocolate.

What I can do most beautifully is also related to how I can be most beautifully. It invites reflection on and a closer look into what we are taking into our lives. If our entire diet consists of a twenty-four hour news cycle that blares stories of humankind’s inhumanity to others through war, conflict, racism, and cruelty, we can become numb to and perhaps worst of all, indifferent to the suffering of others. But beauty can be an antidote to violence. To live beautifully, we need a nutritional supplement of wonder and awe, of music and poetry and dance and painting. We need to take in whatever makes us more alive and hopeful, whatever moves us further away from apathy or callousness, whatever moves us closer to the wholemaking the Holy One desires for all of us.

So let’s ask of ourselves today: What can I do most beautifully? How can I be most beautifully? And what will help me to consume the beauty all around me and in some meaningful way share it with a world that longs for more? 

Some of you who have followed my blog for a while know of my practice of picking up earthworms from the pavement after a rainstorm and carrying them over to a patch of moist earth or grass so that they don’t die when the afternoon sun dries up the pavement. Well, imagine my delight this morning when I turned the page and the next poem to read aloud and savor in my morning prayer was this sweet one from Lynn Ungar. I suspect it’s no coincidence that it speaks of what we take into our lives.

Earthworms

Imagine. The only thing that
God requires of them
is a persistent, wriggling, moving forward,
passing the earth through
the crinkled tube of their bodies
in a motion less like chewing
than like song.

Everything they encounter
goes through them,
as if sunsets, drug store clerks,
diesel fumes and sidewalks
were to move through our very centers
and emerge subtly different
for having fed us—looser somehow,
more open to the possibility of life.

They say the job of angels
is to sing to God in serried choirs.
Perhaps. But most jobs
aren’t so glamorous.
Mostly the world depends upon
the silent chanting underneath our feet.
To every grain that enters: “Welcome.”
To every parting mote: “Be blessed.”

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you a photo, image, or object that speaks of beauty to you.
What do you notice about your choice?
What moves within your heart as you gaze at it?
How might it draw you into wonder or awe?
Spend some time in reflection, then bow and give thanks.

Featured Image:  Annie Nyle, Unsplash

NOTE:
Please remember in your prayer my Congregation, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), as we celebrate Founders’ Day on November 10. We were founded on November 10, 1845 in Monroe, Michigan by Theresa Maxis Duchemin, IHM and Louis Florent Gillet, CSsR.

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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. 

NOTE: If you are trying to subscribe while using a mobile phone, you may have to take another step. As you look at the blog post, there should be 3 horizontal lines at the top right of the page. Click on these lines and you’ll be taken to what’s on the left hand column (on a laptop or PC). Scroll down and follow the directions at * above.

Thank you for following!

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   October 20, 2023

This is a difficult acknowledgement for me as a writer. But let me acknowledge it and admit that sometimes, there simply are no words. Sometimes grief is so searing, so massive, so leaden, so overpowering, so consuming that in its presence we are struck mute, we become utterly inarticulate, we collapse under its deadening weight.

From the past five months, I’ve accompanied retreatants through six to eight day stretches of time in beautiful retreat centers through retreats both guided and directed. Usually in beginning to accompany a person through a week of directed retreat, I ask about what they carry into the days, about what their hope might be for the time of retreat. I am in awe of the stories I hear: about a longing to live meaningful lives that make a difference in our world; about a desire for richer relationship with the Holy; about attention to some deep inner soul work; about profound joy or gratitude for the way their lives are unfolding.

Sometimes what I don’t hear is telling. Sometimes we’ve completed our second day together and I still have no idea of why persons have come to this place at this time. Because they haven’t been able to utter a word. Because their language spills out in a torrent of tears, a flood of strangled sobs. Because the weight of what they’ve swallowed both silences and engulfs.

So I sit with. I wait. I listen. I pray to the Holy One. Help me to accompany as you would. Help me to be your face, the tender face of love in this room.  

Ever so slowly, words emerge. Sometimes of relationships estranged. Of connections severed and not by choice. Of a beloved friend, soul mate, partner, mentor taken by illness or death. Of finding oneself left out, excluded, overlooked. Of loss unimaginable. Of the cruelty of which our human condition is capable.

As I sit with, listen, and pray, I muzzle my Big Sister tendencies that want to fix, to make everything better, to push pain away, to offer solutions. I try to stay grounded in the Holy and to be fully present. Sometimes that is all we can do, and yes, it is everything.

Now that the extended summer retreats have paused, I step back, assess, and reflect on the blessings and the challenges of the people and places that have occupied my heart and my prayer. I give thanks for my call to bear witness to how the Holy is at work in our world in times of utter delight, in times of profound sorrow, in all times.

Wherever we may be at this moment, may the Holy One who makes all things whole move each of us ever closer to the fullness of abundant life. And when we are in need of reminding that wholeness is always God’s dream for us, I leave us with this blessing, © Jan Richardson, janrichardson.com:

Blessing for a Broken Vessel

Do not despair.
You hold the memory
of what it was
to be whole.

It lives
deep in your bones.
It abides
in your heart
that has been torn
and mended
a hundred times.
It persists
in your lungs
that know the mystery
of what it means
to be full,
to be empty,
to be full again.

I am not asking you
to give up your grip
on the shards you clasp
so close to you

but to wonder
what it would be like
for those jagged edges
to meet each other
in some new pattern
you have never imagined,
that you have never dared to dream.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you an image of something that is broken or mended or entirely whole.
Share with the Holy One why you have chosen that specific image.
Ask the God of wholemaking to help you hold in tenderness everyone in our beautiful yet wounded world.

Featured Image:  Brett Jordan, Unsplash

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

NOTE: If you are trying to subscribe while using a mobile phone, you may have to take another step. As you look at the blog post, there should be 3 horizontal lines at the top right of the page. Click on these lines and you’ll be taken to what’s on the left hand column (on a laptop or PC). Scroll down and follow the directions at * above.

Thank you for following!