Coincidence - Luck - Chance - Happenstance...Are they God’s way of being anonymous?

Dear Friends,

As believing people, many of us grew up with two rather divergent world views:

          One world view encompasses our everyday lives: work, school, family, neighbors, friends, sports, shopping – by and large, a world we love, value and enjoy.

          The other world view is the God world: Sunday church, prayer, keeping the commandments. Often this world seems rather distant, not particularly warm or inviting.

          The Feast of Pentecost, which we celebrated last Sunday celebrates and reminds us of quite a different world view.

Pentecost celebrates and reminds us that there is only world:

The world of  Genesis in which God looked at this earth and said “It is good. It is very good.(Gen.1.31)”

The  world of  which Jesus said “I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.(John 10.10)”

The  world of which Jesus said “I will send the Holy Spirit to be with you always. ( John 14.26)”

The challenge of Pentecost is twofold:

-         to recognize the Holy Spirit  present in every facet of our lives

-         to understand that the Spirit of God comes where and when the Spirit will it and not at our command..

Think about the people who were present in Jerusalem at the time of

the First Pentecost.. They came from places with tongue-twisting names. All came for other reasons, but they were privileged to hear Peter, newly infused with the Holy Spirit, and to experience the power of the Spirit themselves. Coincidence that they were there?

A woman  in New York City, hesitant about taking a job in Rochester  was considering her options when a jogger passed her on the street, wearing a tee shirt that said “ I’d Rather Be in Rochester.” Coincidence?

Walking through a courtyard at the University of Pavia, Italy last month, my friends and I came across a graduate with her family. We applauded her, engaged her in conversation, then she said to us  “ I have

been considering going to America. You are my sign I should go.” Concidence?  Luck? Chance? Happenstance?

          Someone once said that “Luck and chance are just God’s way of being anonymous.”  Where has God been anonymous in your everyday life?     

~Sister Joan Sobala

The Great In Between

Dear Friends,

I call this this week “the great in-between”. The Ascension of Jesus is past. We, the Church, await  Pentecost, with all it will mean and however it will happen in us. Together, we cling to Jesus’ promise: “… it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”(John 16.7)

This week, I invite you to think about/remember when the Holy Spirit has moved you, moved in you. For example the times you:

• were in the right place at the right time,
• asked the right question,
• spoke and had no idea you thought what you voiced.
• had the sense that some course of action was appropriate, indeed compelling for you and you didn’t have verifiable data to back you up
• had the hunch that, in your interactions with others, sometimes one plus one added up to more than two?
• found yourself changing or changed in the direction of a broader vision and couldn’t figure out what prompted it?
• felt confirmed in your conviction?
• wondered where your courage came from?

In all these moments, and more, the Holy Spirit has overshadowed you.
 

There is an  intensity in the formal prayer of the Church this week. Let there be an echoing intensity in us.

But suppose there can’t be? Suppose we can’t muster up enthusiasm for this sort of realization? Don’t worry, for as Paul reminds us in Romans 8.26: “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, for when we do not know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

This week, choose a mantra (a line) to pray over and over again. It may be

• Living Flame, burn in me.
• Fountain of life-giving Water, well up in me.
• Breath in me, O Breath of God.

Whatever it is, say it often, pray deeply to welcome anew the Ever-Renewing Spirit of God.
~Sister Joan Sobala

Happy Mother's Day

Dear Friends,

Happy Mother’s Day, extended  into the week, to all you women and men who mother the Earth’s people!

True – only women can give physical birth, but men join women in offering spiritual birth and nurturing, the milk of compassion and mercy.

Did you know that Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Doctor of the Church, wrote in the late 11^th century about Jesus being our mother? This is how he frames it:

And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother?

Are you not the mother who, like a hen,

gathers  her chicks under her wings?

Truly, Lord, you are a mother;

for both they who are in labor

and the who are brought forth

are accepted by you.

Christ, my mother,

You gather your chicks under your wings.

This dead chicken of yours puts himself under those wings;

for by your gentleness the badly frightened ones are comforted,

by your sweet smell the despairing are revived.

Now let’s have some fun!  With some family members and friends, try to recall the “momilies” that came from your mothers when you were young. The word “momily” was coined in 1985. Michelle Slung’s  book of remembered Momilies  included these gems:

                                                                If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well!

                                                                I’m only doing this for your own good!

                                                                It’s only your mother who will tell you the truth!

                                                                This is not a hotel!

                                                                It’s not what you wear, it’s who you are!

                                                                If you’re quiet, you must be up to no good!

Hope that’s enough to whet your memory.

Whatever this day/week means to you or doesn’t, all  year long,  we can make moments to honor the special ones who have created us: our God, our Christ, our mother earth, our birth mother, all the mothers of our lives.

~Sister Joan Sobala

Discovering Connectedness

 

Dear Friends,

It’s that season. The pruning of trees and vines is in process wherever the green grows.  Pruning is a necessary means to an end – to increase the yield – to bear more and better fruit. In the vineyards combing the Finger Lakes, this spring, workers with a professional eye, will go out to examine new shoots growing on the grapevines. The workers will decide which shoots hold the most  promise. The rest, they’ll snip away, so that the yield of grapes will be the best possible.

Pruning also helps people, although we don’t necessarily find the idea initially appealing. The story of Paul’s pruning is told in the  first reading for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (B Cycle). Paul has been pruned by his encounter with Jesus on  the road to Damascus, but the community is still suspicious of him. It takes  Barnabas – trustworthy Barnabas-to  introduce Paul to the community, and graft him onto the vine. The graft took.

One attribute people associate with pruning is a certain meekness – a diminishment of zest or feistiness. But Paul was never meek – before or after his conversion. Meekness is not the purpose of pruning.

The Gospel of the Fifth Sunday takes the pruning metaphor a step further, for it is also absolutely necessary to be connected to the vine. We are connected to Christ. We are connected to each other. Yet connectedness is an incredibly hard lesson for Americans, in particular, to internalize.

Robert  Bellah observes in his  classic, Habits of the Heart, that “Clearly the meaning of life for most Americans is to become one’s own person, almost to give birth to oneself." Much of this is negative. It involves breaking free from family, community and inherited ideas or as Frank Sinatra crooned and the public still quotes “I'll Have It My Way."

Yet,  if Christ’s life is to be grasped at all, if we are to understand  his message at all,  this Gospel passage is pivotal, for it says that everything and everyone is somehow connected with everything and everyone else and that isolation does not exist, although we would like to think so.

You and I do not create connectedness. We discover it. We discover that we belong to one another and that we belong to Christ, in whom we grow, and who sustains and nourishes us. Once we discover our connectedness, admit of its meaning and value in our lives, then self-centeredness has no part in us, nor violence or killing competition.

Being connected with one another through Christ does not mean we lose our individuality with all its grandeur and funny little quirks. On this particular vine, the branches do not all look alike or act alike. We are ourselves – always in the process of becoming more ourselves. At the same time, we do not fear pruning, and we draw courage, example, energy, nourishment from one another because we belong to Christ .

Just a side note, You are invited to join me for:

The Synod on the Family

The Perspective of Married Couples

Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 7 to 8:30 pm
SSJ Motherhouse
150 French Road

This is a follow- up to our March program,

when Bishop Clark gave a comprehensive  overview

of the Synod on the Family which is to resume in October.

You need not have been to hear Bishop Clark

to take part in this conversation.

Barbara and Jack Clarcq, Bob and Janet Fein and

Barbara and Bob Finsterwalder

were asked what positive points they would make

if they were invited to speak at the coming Synod.

Come, hear their thoughts, and add your own as

we hone our perspectives and our language  

and draw encouragement

from them and from each other.

Please let us know you are coming. Just call the Fresh Wind phone line

and let us know you’re coming.          585.641.8184

  ~Sister Joan Sobala