Mining the Now

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM     April 22, 2023

The spring itch for greening was upon me and, even though my days here in “The Yukon” still held the possibility of frost, I simply had to find something leafy to plant. I bought a few lettuce plugs with the intriguing name, “Salad Bowl,” a mix of romaine and red leaf, and set them in their new home in a container on the patio. When I told a friend, I added, “I’m sure they’ll be okay because lettuce really likes the cold.”

With a grin, she asked, “Oh, so has it told you that?”

Why yes, yes it has, I thought. Immediately, I thought of my Dad, deceased almost forty years now. He was probably the first mystic I ever knew, living close to the earth with an eye to the heavens. When I was eight years old and the spring itch for greening was upon me, he carved out a small patch of our back yard for my garden with the caveat, “You can plant anything you want but you have to learn their names and take care of them.” That was enough for me. My choices reflected a whimsical bent, sometimes pumpkins and zinnias, sometimes string beans and marigolds, sometimes jonquil and narcissus and daffodil bulbs that would magically make an appearance next season.

One day I was proudly ticking off the names of all of the plants in my little plot when my Dad observed, “You know they have names for you, too, don’t you?” I was stunned into silence. How could it be that all those tender shoots for whom I lugged the watering can outside, whose every fraction of an inch of growth I crowed over, knew who I was? It’s true we spent an awful lot of time together but I wondered, was there more to this than caretaking? That began my journey into what we now call creation spirituality.

And it is a spirituality, a shift in our place in the Universe, a movement away from attitudes of domination and the thinking that all creation was made simply for our use and consumption. It’s about recognizing, in the face of every violet and dandelion, in the pleading eyes of a beloved furry companion, in the sweet repetitive song of the cardinal, in every wing and fin and cell a profound kinship. A deep knowing that our lives are connected even to the cellular level, that our shared future is bound up together. That we are about more than surviving. That at our core is a longing for thriving together, a yearning for the abundant life the Holy One desires for all creation.

I remember one occasion when I was carrying a heartache so terrible, crushing, and suffocating that I couldn’t find the words to articulate it to anyone. One day I arrived at my sister’s house before she came home and I was greeted by Bobbie, the family’s Golden Retriever. He came and sat at my feet, resting his head on my lap as I pet his soft coat. Suddenly, a torrent of words and tears was liberated in me and I sobbed my story to Bobbie. He simply listened as the sweet and wise spiritual director he was. His presence was my entry point into healing.

How graced we are to live in a Universe where we are comforted and companioned and inspired by the company of all creation! As we celebrate Earth Day, may we resolve to make of every day a celebration of all that God named as good. To greet the fuzzy bumblebee who mines the sweet scent of lavender beside us. To pick up the struggling earthworm on a morning after rain and carry it from the pavement to a grassy area so it won’t shrivel in the afternoon sun. To nuzzle and pet every four legged friend who says hello. To greet with reverence and awe the two legged ones as well. May we befriend them all and love them all and be in relationship with them because, after all, it’s very possible they may know our names as we know theirs. We pray that their names will always be safe and holy in our mouths.

I leave you with Rudy Francisco’s tender poem about how kinship transforms our actions:

“She asks me to kill the spider.
Instead, I get the most
peaceful weapons I can find.

I take a cup and a napkin.
I catch the spider, put it outside
and allow it to walk away.

If I am ever caught in the wrong place
at the wrong time, just being alive
and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted
with the same kind
of mercy.”

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to pause and pray outside, or sit near a window with a view of creation, or invite a pet companion to be by your side as you reflect.
If Earth, our Common Home, could speak to you, what might she say?
Listen, and act on what you hear.
Offer profound thanks for your Mother.

Featured Image:  Daniel Öberg, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of Earth Day to you!
May we cherish and reverence the terrible, fragile beauty of this home that holds everything we love, and may we commit our lives to moving our world closer to the fullness of God’s dream for every bit of creation.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   April 8, 2023

I wonder how many Palm Sundays I’ve heard Matthew’s account of the Passion. I wonder because, listening this past Palm Sunday, I sat up straight when I heard the ending, the final sentence that follows Joseph’s taking the body of Jesus, laying it in his new tomb, rolling a huge stone across the entrance, and then departing.

And then this: “But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb.”  (Matthew 27:59-61).

How had I never noticed those words? The image of a bereft Mary Magdalene and Mary remaining, just the two of them. Exhausted by the spectacle of crucifixion. Bewildered by the consuming weight of grief. Their posture simply stated: they were keeping vigil, sitting there, facing the tomb.

We don’t know what their thoughts were at that time, but any of us who have sat facing a tomb might offer a guess. Dreams collapsing. A sense of being enveloped not by a loving embrace, but by utter emptiness. A feeling of shouting our despair into surroundings that are suddenly dry, lifeless, and unresponsive. And perhaps worst of all, a sense of being abandoned by the God we counted on, the Holy One who promised victory over death.

Yet we have access to a perspective that Mary Magdalene and Mary did not have at that moment: the rest of the story that we call the Paschal Mystery. The suffering and dying, of Jesus, yes, but also his rising. The continuum of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday.

And let’s not forget Holy Saturday, that liminal, Kairos space, so full of waiting for what might be, hovering somewhere between despair and the audacity of  hope. That’s where I picture the two Marys. Not far from the burial stone. Not looking away. Not averting their eyes. Not putting distance between themselves and Jesus whom they love. Sitting there. Leaning on one another. Holding silence and grief in loving community. Waiting. Remembering.

And in the darkness of Easter’s dawning, making a pilgrimage back to the tomb (Matthew 28:1-10). To an earthquake. To a stone rolled away. To the announcement of an angel whose appearance terrified the guards but resonated with the knowing women. To these women, to the ones who waited and refused to surrender hope, were delivered the words we all long to hear, especially on the Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays of our lives: “Do not be afraid!”

Today, may we hold in tenderness and prayer all those in our world who are at this moment facing the tomb and carrying the oppressive weight of grief. If we are among that number, may the Holy One meet us on the way. May we, like these women who were “fearful yet overjoyed,” live lives that continually announce the good news of Jesus’ rising in our time and place. And no matter how or where we are sitting this Easter, may we recognize the nearness of the Holy this day and always.

Takeaway

Sit in silence with the Holy One.
Imagine yourself seated with the two Marys outside the tomb.
Listen to their story and share with them your own heartache and loss.
Share also your container of hope and hold onto theirs.
Let the Holy One Easter in you.

Featured Image:  BBC Creative, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of Easter, Passover, and Ramadan!

For many years, my Good Friday practice was participation in the Pax Christi Good Friday Way of the Cross in Manhattan. Since I moved from New York, my practice has become a prayerful viewing of the film, “Of Gods and Men.” It’s the true story of the Cistercian monks of Algeria, a peaceful and loving presence among the Muslim people. At a time of deepening strife, the monks struggled to discern whether to move to a place of safety or to remain with their neighbors. Ultimately, they gave their lives over in love and surrender as Jesus did.

Please remember in your prayer my Sister, Elizabeth DeMerchant, and my IHM Congregation as we celebrate Elizabeth’s final profession of vows on April 15. May the Holy One continue to Easter in her and in our beautiful yet wounded world! 

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    March 26, 2023

Thirteen years ago, I moved from the Metro New York area, where I had lived and worked for over twenty-five years, to Northeast PA. During those twenty-five years, thanks to the kindness of friends and strangers, I learned my way around Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island by subway, train, and car. I could identify the skyscrapers jutting above the Manhattan skyline and felt confident in navigating that large geographic spread.

In my move to NEPA, I expected to experience culture shock (I did). A sense of being uprooted (I did). What I didn’t expect was to discover how keenly I felt that I was “not in Kansas any more, Toto.”All my hard-earned New York commuting skills didn’t easily transfer to my new landscape, and I was once more a stranger in a foreign land. Sometimes, long-time residents of the area referenced landmarks that no longer existed like, “Go to where the old St. Mary’s Church used to be” or “Turn left at the former Dairy Queen.” Until I bought a GPS, my first few years involved frequent experiences of being lost. Fortunately, I also encountered once again the neighborliness and kindness of strangers when I had taken a wrong turn and lost any sense of direction.

Recently, I attended a session led by the luminous Naomi Shihab Nye that reminded me of these experiences. She read aloud some of her exquisite poetry, including the well-known “Kindness.” She said that she was only the secretary of this particular poem, that it nearly wrote itself. She was on her honeymoon in Colombia when she and her new husband were robbed and left with nothing. Alone, far from home in a foreign land, she was certain it was only the kindness of strangers that saved her. She wrote,

“Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.”

What welcome gifts kindness and hospitality are to any of us who experience life’s swiftly changing landscapes: a sudden and unexpected relocation; the letting go of a cherished home or place or people; the termination of employment; the unwanted journey from full health to diminishment of any kind; the empty ache of a severed relationship; the sense of God’s seeming absence in prayer; the weight of a terrible grief we have swallowed.  We may feel that we have taken a wrong turn that carried us into alien territory. We may intuit that we’ve arrived in a desolate landscape where the old maps and landmarks no longer apply. We may realize

“Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”

Whenever we experience the depths of lost-ness and we feel ourselves utterly bereft, may we know ourselves companioned by our loving God in whom “lost” always moves towards “found.” And with the grace of the Holy One, may we be agents of healing, offering kindness and spaciousness of heart to all those we encounter, today and always.

Takeaway

Sit in silence with the Holy One.
Reflect on an experience you have had of finding yourself in the desolate landscape “between the regions of kindness.”
Name how that felt for you.
Remember those who showed you compassion, or welcome, or spaciousness of heart.
Say their names aloud and hold them in tenderness and prayer with deep gratitude.

Featured Image:  Aron Visuals, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of Holy Week, Passover, and Easter! May you and our world experience the fullness of hope and the new life that ushers in this season.

I’m grateful for all the ways you continue to follow and comment on Mining the Now and to support my Mobile Spirituality Ministry. Thank you!

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM    March 12, 2023

No worries, she was never truly lost, just left behind. I was sitting in my car after leading a Lenten retreat day in Ocean Grove, NJ, calling my sister to let her know when I would arrive at her house. Just then, Jean, one of the volunteers who helped with the virtual aspects of the retreat, came running out of the house, waving a book. Apparently, after I read Oliver’s “Rice” during the retreat, I put the book to the side and missed it when I was packing up. When Jean returned the book to me (thank you, Jean!), I remember thinking, “I didn’t even know Mary was lost, but I’m so grateful she has been found.”

If I had lost my 1992 copy of New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, I could easily have bought another. But with that new copy, I would have lost all the words and images highlighted, all the notes scribbled on dog-eared pages, all the remembrances of where I was and how I was and why that particular phrase grabbed my soul. I would have lost a bit of the story of who I was becoming.

For you see, over the years poets became some of my dearest and most intimate friends. We met each other thanks to my teachers and my parents who had a love affair with words. Poets sat with me in the company of apple trees in our yard, whispered to me under the covers at night as my flashlight illuminated new worlds, consoled and comforted me on my worst days, emboldened me to believe that I, too, carried a bit of their magic within me.

Often during retreats, I share poems that resonate with the theme of a day or the reality of a person I’m companioning. Few comments make me happier than hearing, “I was never really into poetry. But these poems touched me. I got them.” Oh, sayer of those words, your life will never be the same! You have tasted and been fed and you will now always be hungry for more. You have discovered words that Mary Oliver describes as “fires for the cold, ropes let down for the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

May you also discover, if you haven’t yet met them, some of the cherished friends with whom I’ve sat and conversed: Mary Oliver, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jessica Powers, Rumi, Hafiz, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wendell Berry, Joy Harjo, May Sarton, Denise Levertov, Lynn Ungar, Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, Alison Luterman, Gregory Orr, Jeanne Lohmann, and so many more than this partial listing. Their words are rich, deep, and accessible, and will fill your soul. Feel free to comment and share the names of other friends you’ve met along the way.

I have worn out my copy of Healing the Divide, Poems of Kindness & Connection, edited by James Crews, and Poetry of Presence, An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby B. Wilson. Every morning when I pray, I read aloud one poem from Love Poems from God, Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, edited by Daniel Ladinsky.

I hope you will join me in feasting each day on a poem of your choice, reading every word out loud as it was meant to be spoken. Bring your breath and attentiveness to each syllable that the soul of the poet has struggled over. Taste the words. Let them linger on your tongue. Savor their rhythm, their cadence. Notice their fierce strength and their soft sweetness. Devour, devour, devour. And share.

I leave you with “On How to Pick and Eat Poems” by the luminous Phyllis Cole-Dai.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing.
Come down from the attic.
Grab a bucket or basket and head for light.
That’s where the best poems grow, and in the dappled dark.

Go slow. Watch out for thorns and bears.
When you find a good bush, bow
to it, or take off your shoes.

Pluck. This poem. That poem. Any poem.
It should slip off the stem easy, just a little tickle.
No need to sniff first, judge the color, test the firmness—
you can only know it’s ripe if you taste.

So put a poem upon your lips. Chew its pulp.
Let its juice spill over your tongue.
Let your reading of it teach you
what sort of creature you are
and the nature of the ground you walk upon.
Bring your whole life out loud to this one poem.
Eating one poem can save you, if you’re hungry enough.

Take companions poem-picking when you can.
Visit wild and lovely and forgotten places, broken
and hidden and walled up spaces. Reach into brambles,
stain your skin, mash words against your teeth, for love.
And always leave some poems within easy reach for
the next picker, in kinship with the unknown.

If you ever carry away more poems than you need,
Go on home to your kitchen, and make good jam.
Don’t be in a rush, they’re sure to keep.
Some will even taste better with age,
a rich batch of preserves.
Store up jars and jars of jam. Plenty for friends.
Plenty for the long, howling winter. Plenty for strangers.
Plenty for all the bread in this broken world.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may want to place before you a jar of jam or a piece of bread.
Read Phyllis Cole-Dai’s poem aloud, as you would a prayer.
Feast on her words.
If you wish, taste the jam or slather it on a crust of bread, and eat it slowly.
Offer deep thanks for this poet and for all who offer us “fires for the cold, ropes let down for the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

Featured Photo: Mario Mendez, Unsplash

NOTE:

Thank you for your prayerful support of all who were part of the Lenten retreat day at the Sisters of St. Joseph Spirituality Center in Ocean Grove, NJ. In many ways, the day was a homecoming of sorts, reuniting me with dear friends from my years of spirituality work, and welcoming new friends into my life. I’m deeply grateful!

On another personal note, I’ve lost track of the number of times a person has asked me, “Do you write poetry?” The short answer is, yes, I do, but I don’t call myself a poet. I simply love words and I care for them. And when I write prose, such as this blog, I’m aware that I write with the ear of a poet, tending to sound and cadence and reading my words out loud before I send them to you. It’s a side effect of a steady diet of poetry since childhood, a practice that helps me to notice and listen to my longing.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   February 26, 2023

Anyone who knows me would never list “penitential spirit” as one of my striking attributes. Why, then, does Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, evoke such eagerness in me?

The answer is straightforward: because Ash Wednesdays past hold a particular place in my treasured memories. For quite a few years on this very day, I helped to distribute ashes at a parish in Southeast Queens. The first time I did this, I was not prepared for what would happen. Each subsequent Ash Wednesday, I lived in hope that it would be repeated. And I was never disappointed.

Because, you see, on Ash Wednesday I got to peer into the faces of every person who came forward to receive blessed ashes. Whether I recognized the individual or not was of no consequence. On that day, I didn’t need to know names or stories to discover on every upturned face a raw, unfiltered longing laid bare. Faces lined with sorrow, or marked by weariness, or timid or hesitant or hopeful of a new beginning. They all carried that singular emotion: a longing so pure that I wanted to whisper, “How did you come to be this beautiful person?” A longing so unmistakable that I wanted to weep and fall down in worship at the same time.

Because, you see, while I was blessing with ashes whoever stood before me, all the persons in the approaching line were blessing me by their transparent yearning for the Holy. They were offering me a food I hungered for without recognizing the insistent pangs. Something to remember during all the months my prayer felt like nothing but silence and dry dust. Something to nudge me when my shadow resisted being coaxed into the light. Something to cling to and lift me up when discouragement wrapped itself around me like a winter cloak. Something to bolster my insistence that dreams of a more just and tender world were indeed possible.

Ash Wednesday is past, but I invite you to stand with me now and see what I see. Peer into the faces of those Ash Wednesday strangers.

Better yet, stand in front of a mirror and gaze at the image that gazes back at you. Can you find there the face of one who came from dust, stardust, and was dreamed of since the beginning of time? Can you reverence this body imagined as a unique gift to the universe? Can you recognize the face of a creation who is beloved of the Holy One, every second of today and forever? Can you name the deepest desires of your heart?

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
You may wish to place before you a mirror or a photo of yourself.
Take a long, loving look at the image which gazes back at you.
Allow your longing to surface. Savor it.
Give thanks to the Holy One who longs in you.

Featured Image: KTMD Entertainment, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of this season to you.

May I ask you to hold in your prayer this Lenten event:

March 3-4: Travel and a retreat day I’ll be leading at the Sisters of St. Joseph Spirituality Center in Ocean Grove, NJ. Please remember all who will be part of this day as we remember you and your intentions. Thank you.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   February 12, 2023

Perhaps you know the feeling. For me, here in the Northern hemisphere in February, it manifests as an overwhelming desire to see something blooming, some living being that’s not merely displaying its greenery, but wildly, extravagantly, colorfully flowering. By now, gone are my fuchsia Christmas cactus, purple or lavender African violets, deep red-and-white-edged-with-pink amaryllis. They delighted me in stages from November up until January’s end. Now they are dormant and resting and empty of buds.

And I get that, I do. As their roommate, and especially as a writer, I understand the utter exhaustion that follows weeks of creative growth and inspiration. But I find that living through flowerless seasons grows increasingly difficult as the outer world lacks living color. I wonder if the inner world is also dormant or if this near constant desire for blooming in February is somehow connected to hope.

When I turn on the news or check my email, the images I see are largely absent anything resembling flowering. My heart aches at the growing count of lives lost in the horrific earthquake that killed thousands in Turkey and Syria, including hundreds of already battered and broken Syrian refugees who saw Turkey as the place that would shelter them from danger. No blooming. My heart aches over the growing divisions in my own country that express themselves in acts of hatred, racism, refusal to accept differences. No blooming. My heart aches over yet another school shooting, snatching tender lives to gun violence. No blooming.

But my times of prayer reveal that I’m overlooking the flowering of the spirit unfolding all around me. The White Hats in Turkey dig with shovels and bare hands in a desperate search for the living buried under rubble, each miraculous find exploding in cheers and hugs. Flowering hope.  Members of Sandy Hook Promise turn the tragic deaths of their little ones and teachers into an urgent advocacy to protect children from gun violence and prevent tragedies. Flowering hope. A stranger with a desire to express peace for Ukraine in an artistic way asks for permission to use the Prayer for Peace I wrote as an accompaniment to bracelets she makes so her creations can inspire others to pray for peace in Ukraine. Flowering hope. The IHM EarthCARE committee meets each month to pray and work to restore our land, cultivating native species of trees and plants that then invite native birds and other inhabitants to again return home to the land we share. Flowering hope. The list is long.

Whether you live in the northern hemisphere where winter has a grip, or you live in the southern hemisphere where a riot of colors is in bloom, today might hold an invitation to explore fresh ways of growing the spirit of compassion and welcome. What flowering do you long for in your life? What is the Holy One coaxing to bloom in you?

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Place before you a flowering plant or a photo of one.
Reflect on all the elements (water, sun, etc.) that came together to bring this plant to a time of blooming.
What flowering do you long for in your life?
What might be needed to bring something to bloom in yourself?
What is the Holy One coaxing to blossom in you?
Ask for the fullness of flowering.

Featured Image: Chris Koellhoffer, my last blossoming African Violet

NOTE:
I wish every blessing of love and compassion to you this Valentine’s Day.

May Ash Wednesday hold an invitation to work towards the fullness of blossoming for yourself and for our beautiful yet wounded world.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   January 29, 2023

Recently, I read a quote that transported me back to a delegation to Haiti in 1993. Our group had a free day with no travel planned and one of our group, a nurse, asked me if I’d be interested in spending that day at a home for children run by the Missionaries of Charity. I told her I had no medical background but she assured me, “There will be plenty for you to do.” That was an understatement.

At the home, we discovered over one hundred infants and toddlers, many with HIV, tuberculosis, and other illnesses so advanced their families could no longer care for them. There were only four adult caregivers to bathe, dress, and feed those hundred plus, so my only role the entire day was to assist the caregivers by changing diaper after diaper. I quickly got into something of a rhythm, tending as I could to each child’s need for changing, offering a warm smile and hug, and moving on to the next.

This worked smoothly until I got to two-year-old Andre. He attached himself to my leg like a Velcro fastener. So profound was his need for physical affection that he cried, pleaded, and refused to let go. I felt so ashamed to have to loosen his grip and pry him off me that I wept in frustration. “What kind of world is this that I can’t hug a child for as long as he needs?” I wailed to God and to the world.

Today, some thirty years later, Andre still has a grip on my heart and my memory. In a mysterious way, he was still clinging to my leg when I read Ajahn Sumano Bhikkhu’s quote, “Goodness radiates and sticks to people.” Andre was still holding on when I read a few more words, the admonition to “become sticky with radiant goodness.”

Oh, how I savor that kind of stickiness! It’s rather deliciously rich and extravagant, isn’t it? I think of our saints imaged with golden halos surrounding their heads. Isn’t that, after all, why we venerate them? Because they gave their lives over to listening to the Holy One and to practicing deep, inner soul work, leaving a trail of goodness and compassion in their wake. I think of the legion of uncanonized saints living among us whose very being draws us in, deepens our desire to snuggle up as close as we can to the spaciousness of heart we sense at the center of their being.

And I can’t limit radiant, sticky goodness to the human family. Of course not! I must include the fuzzy bumblebees coated with golden pollen dust, delivering that radiant goodness to every blossom they pause to kiss. I must include just about any dog I have ever met, those creatures whose singular and unambiguous desire is to bask in our presence, to radiate love without limits or conditions. I must include the moon in the night sky, shining her love down on us stargazers, and the sun in the day, warming our bodies and brightening our hearts.

Who or what else must we include? Whose presence has stuck with you and inspired you to become even stickier with radiant goodness yourself?

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Call to mind the image of any creatures who have witnessed to sticking power in your life.
What drew you closer to their witness? What qualities do you continue to admire in them?
Ask the Holy One to help you deepen those same attributes in yourself.
Bow and give thanks for your own radiant goodness.

Featured Image: Christoph Polatsky, Unsplash

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   January 15, 2023

Sometimes I can’t help myself. My natural curiosity impels me towards connection with strangers I randomly meet on a street, at a supermarket, in a doctor’s waiting room. That practice may be rooted in my believing that anyone can be a bearer of wisdom and my not wanting to miss a single image or word or story that might supplement my own meager supply of wisdom.

Studies have shown that a person’s overall well-being and happiness can be predicted by the depth of their social relationships, by whether they have close connections with family, friends, or co-workers. More recently, studies have suggested that relational diversity, talking with or connecting with strangers, can also contribute to our overall happiness, can complement the typical close relationships we already have with people more familiar to us.

In this sense, the “stranger” might be a person sitting next to us in church; a person from whom we buy the morning newspaper or grab a cup of coffee; a person struggling to carry a bag of groceries; a member of our choir or book club; a new neighbor; and so much more.

Hebrews 13:2 admonishes us, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that, some have unknowingly entertained angels.” It would seem, then, that our attitude of hospitality, our spaciousness of heart, is what invites the angels into our orbit and our awareness. An open heart leads us to pause, or to greet, or to ask, or to wonder, or to notice, to hold space in our heart to welcome the Holy One who appears in the unexpected, the different, perhaps the uncomfortable, guise.

Our hospitality may be a momentary occasion of intersection, but when we can still remember those encounters many years later, there’s clearly deeper meaning that invites mining. As I write this, I’m remembering two of the many who have blessed my life in a momentary encounter that awakened me to the Holy all around.

The toll collector on the Whitestone Bridge
Many years ago, in the days of tokens or cash only, this New York toll collector broke through the monotony of his everyday job by trying to name the occupation of any driver who stopped at his booth to pay the designated toll. Not knowing that, I greeted him and handed him cash as he scrutinized my face. “You must be a healer,” he guessed, and then explained his practice of naming what he saw. I longed to hear more but the line of impatient drivers honking their horns behind me warned against that, so I drove off, shaken by what he had discovered in my face. I wonder still.

The homeless woman by the entrance to Manhattan’s West 4^th Street subway station  
Every evening, she carefully placed her sleeping bag on the sidewalk and arranged a sheet neatly turned down as if she were in an upscale hotel. As I passed by, she was kneeling by her makeshift bed, head bowed in silent prayer, oblivious to the crowds bustling around her. Her reverent ritual stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly, I was no longer one of the hundreds rushing to be somewhere else. I was here, in this sacred moment, and I was witness to a prayerful presence that lingers with me these many years later.

These angels are all around us, aren’t they? Today might hold an invitation to reflect on and share some of the blessed encounters, brief as they may be, that have startled or touched or surprised us, those times when we have suspected or intuited the presence of the Holy in a seemingly random intersection. Today or any day, may we sit with and mine the resonance that continues to linger still.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Reflect on one memory of an encounter with a stranger that still resonates with you.
Mine the experience:
What did it look like? feel like? What touched you? surprised you? Filled you with wonder?
Thank the Holy One for this visitation and ask to be that same holy presence to all you encounter today.

Featured Image:  Alex Alvarez, Unsplash

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   January 1, 2023

Does resilience flourish best in community?

That’s a wondering I’ve carried every time I watch the news and see images of the people of Ukraine. Women catching a last kiss before a husband, father, brother leaves to defend his country. Elders with canes in hand navigating the ruins of bombed out homes, absent food, running water, or heat in the grip of a frigid winter. Neighbors clawing through rubble to unearth yet another neighbor in hopes of finding signs of breath.

It’s what I’m not seeing that is so remarkable in these scenes. No whining, no complaining, no despondence or despair, no whimpers of “Why me?” Rather, a simple acknowledgment of the hardships of life in Ukraine during this war, followed by an expression of fierce love for their country and a determination to return to their homes in peace.

It’s also what I am hearing that astounds me: the full-throated singing of a passionate folk song or a chorus of defiant resistance, sung by the very people who have just been attacked by a drone strike.

Perhaps it seems so extraordinary to me because I know how easily grief can strike us mute.  How sorrow and loss can utterly devastate or paralyze us. When we’re bereft, we can feel as if we’re in the middle of Psalm 137’s sentiment, “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion…How could we sing the songs of our God in a foreign land?” (verses 1, 4)

In the “foreign land” of grief or heartache or dreams trampled underfoot, we may go to worship or to gatherings and be struck silent when the congregation is invited to sing. It may seem as if the notes of every song simply choke us and die in our throats.

But here’s where community and kinship come into play, much as has been on display in Ukraine. Our fragile, shaky voices are strengthened and encouraged by the many around us who are able to sing, whose voices lift up a melody, a prayer. When our voices are silenced by profound grief or inconsolable loss or a deadening of spirit, the entire community carries us. We may feel as though those assembled are singing in our place, are singing when we simply can’t. And over time, this same community may help us to find our voice again so we can ultimately sing a new song of resilience.

Wherever we are as we enter this new year, the Holy One is with us. We may be beginning 2023 in a state of consolation, a lightness of heart. Or we may find ourselves in the unenviable space of owning a voice that has been struck mute by tragedy or hushed by the heaviness of life. May we sing a new song for a new year as we are able, and if our voice is stifled, may we be tenderly carried by the kinship of the community around us.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
When you feel ready, sing: a peep, a cry, a trumpet, a roar.
If you don’t feel ready, let yourself be carried by the love of thousands.
Ask the Holy One to sing in you through this new year.

Featured Image: Nati Melnychuk, Unsplash

NOTE:
Happy New Year! I’m grateful and encouraged to be going into 2023 in your good company as you follow Mining the Now. May the days ahead be filled with peace and good health for you and for our world that is both beautiful and broken.

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by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM December 17, 2022

Perhaps by now, the tree is already trimmed. Perhaps candles glow from their place in the center of each window. Perhaps a wreath adorns the front door and the aroma of gingerbread or sugar cookies wafts from the kitchen. Perhaps one more stamped card enters the mailbox and carols sing joyfully from your iPhone. Perhaps a creche waits under the tree. Perhaps your life at this moment feels like a Hallmark Christmas movie. Emmanuel, God with us, enters into all these places of “Perhaps.”

Or perhaps none of these signs of the approaching Christmas is visible in your life. Perhaps this year, your heart is disconsolate over the loss of a loved one, and you consider it an achievement to simply pull yourself out of bed in the morning to face a new day. Perhaps the still fresh, still raw wounds of a cherished relationship severed not by your choice have numbed you to all but the necessary motions of daily living. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed by despair at the seeming insignificance or failure of your life. Perhaps the abrupt termination of a job causes you to catch your breath in fear of what your future and the future of your children will hold. Perhaps the empty place at the table breaks your heart open with anxiety over not knowing where your loved one might be at this moment. Perhaps your heart is heavy with a sense of the Holy One’s absence, or your unworthiness, or your own deep regrets over past mistakes and their impact on the people you love. Emmanuel, God with us, enters into all these places of “Perhaps” as well.

The good news: The Holy One comes to us wherever we are, in every possible state of mind or heart, in every form of “Perhaps.” More good news: the coming of Emmanuel, God with us, is not dependent on how we feel or how many carols we can sing or whether the very notes of those songs choke in our throats. Emmanuel comes as grace, searching and welcoming the exile in all of us, the parts of our lives that we hold in shadow, the corners of our being that we’re too terrified to name or befriend.

Who ever we are, and wherever our life may have led us at this moment, Emmanuel, God with us, is here. Here for us. For all of us. No exceptions.

I invite you to accept the invitation in this song, O Come, All You Unfaithful,” written by Lisa Clow and Bob Kauflin for Sovereign Grace Music.

Sit in stillness with the Holy One, and savor these words.

“Come, all you unfaithful.
Come, weak and unstable.
Come, know you are not alone.
“O come, barren and waiting one,
Weary of praying, come,
See what your God has done.
Christ is born, Christ is born, Christ is born for you.”

The Holy One comes into our world, into our lives, into our hearts. No “Perhaps” about it!

Featured Image: Davidson Luna, Unsplash

NOTE:
The blessings of Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and the peace of holy days to all! Thank you for following my blog, Mining the Now, for your comments and your support. Know that you are ever in my prayers of gratitude today and through the new year to come.

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

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