Grace and a thought for Saint Madeleine Sophie

I went to a funeral this year on the feast of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat.  It was a funeral that was important to have someone from the community attend...two others were away and the third was occupied at the school next door.  We had decided to celebrate the Feast tonight instead.  There was dinner with the Associates, some of the community members who live in a building with Sisters of Charity about fifteen minutes away, and the 99 year old mother of a community member.   I helped spearhead the preparation of the main dish--the rest was being brought by others who were coming.  I was also asked to do grace.

It was a different grace than if I'd composed it for her actual feast on the 25th.  I've read two things since then...one was a double page spread article in The Globe and Mail (TGAM) on Saturday, May 27th. "The Forever War," by Mark Mackinnon was a thoughtful piece about becoming a culture acclimatized to acts of terror.  The other was a line in an essay about the bookstore Chapter One in Ketchum, Idaho.  "There is no community without a common resource." (Dale Bates, local architect)

The combination of those two things had me wondering, "What is our common resource?"  What is it that we put out there for the use of the Whole:  the big Whole and the smaller wholes...  It makes sense that an abundance or a scarcity of Resource shapes the community who uses or needs it.  Water; Freedoms; Food; Hate; Shelter; Fear; Stability; Ignorance; Love....  

What is our common resource and how does it shape our identity as community?  In our best moments, I pray that the resources we put forth serve to build up, to console, to lead community toward greater ideals.  And to bring in the article from TGAM, do we make the acquisition or manipulation of those resources into contests of superiority or quantity...or do we see sharing what builds us up as a community as a call to offer it because we have it to offer for the good of the Whole and the wholes?

Anyway, this is what I was thinking about as I wrote grace for Saint Madeleine Sophie's feast.  Thank you, Sophie, for understanding why it was a couple of days later than usual this year.

Grace for the Feast of Saint Madeleine Sophie, 2017

The print on pages,

staining fingers and
provoking a sigh already
at a day’s fresh rising,
has said “The memorials are always sad
and beautiful, but
the fact that they’ve become common scenes
tells us love
isn’t winning the contest
with hate.”

Madeleine Sophie, you
lived a revolution
of fire and vision;
courage, challenge, and
strength measured in Love.

For you, it was never a contest to win;
it was a call to answer…
A life to live for the sake of a child,
for neighbor, for Sister, for All.

We ask that you bless each of us.
Bless each of us who desire to
make known with our lives the Love
that is the Heart of Jesus:
a heart that is wholly given,
given without reservation,
so that tomorrow may be met
with hope, in faith, and with the confidence
that we are not alone.

May this meal nourish us and strengthen us

that this might be so.

Amen.

(Quotation: Mark Mackinnon in “The Forever War,” The Globe and Mail, 27 May, 2017; written in the aftermath of the suicide bomber in Manchester, England)

Your Voice

This brings me back to thoughts of the voice of God…remembrance of when the choir director told me that notes are made up of harmonic waves.  What if the note of the voice of God is also made up of these waves?  Those waves being bits of the wind, bits of laughter, wailing, loving, soothing, shouting, mourning, foghorns, ram’s horns, car horns…elements of the noise of life’s fullness harmonizing into the note that is the voice of God.  (KMK on CTL, April 8, 2009, “Harmonics.”)

I don’t usually think of you in gendered human terms… but while listening to music recently, I realized that the feeling I get when listening to a rich alto sing is a feeling I associate with you…so relaxing, so open, so soothing, inviting… 

I remembered a conversation I had once at Xavier after John found me flat on my back in the middle of the center aisle, looking up at the ceiling.  (I had thought I was alone.) Then, I started thinking about other sounds: The sirens that pass by day and night; the caffeinated gurgle of the coffee pot; the wind, brushing out the knots and tangles of tree branches at dusk; the panicked shout of parents looking for their child; the fish breaking surface in the wide-quiet of a lakeside morning; the first cry and the last breath; the wake cut by a low flying swift skimming through crops; the rain; the pounding of feet running away in fear…all of this…all of this comes together in your voice. The harmonic waves of all that it means to be alive and part of creation in the midst of our messy and glorious world…they meet in your voice. 

Yours is the voice of understanding; the sigh of awe; the steadying ballast; the strength to let go; the beckon; the scrape of the chair when someone we trust moves closer to listen; the metronome of every heart; the music that bears us home. 

Simply A Good Weekend

In my imagination, I could see myself picking up words, looking through them at what lay beyond; draping them like shawls; offering them on raised hands—lifting them up; scooping them from puddles and pools, allowing them to wash over me and make me laugh and smile; drinking them from waterfalls, filling up with the life their waters contain…allowing them to take my shape and feeling my own shape change and swell with liberation as they lived into my marrow and whispered their secret beauties. (KMK on CTL, May 6, 2009, ‘Playing with Treasure’)

~Vincent VanGogh, in his letters to his brother, Theo, outlined a life filled with the tangible.  Vincent loved to look, to touch, to smell, and to taste the world about him.  Most of all, he loved to look, and then feel, with his hands grasping the charcoal or brush, what he had just seen.  His hands roamed all over his mind, trying to decipher the different grains of thought and emotion…~Writer Lucy Grealy in an essay called “My God.”

I spent the last several days at the Religious of Atlantic Canada conference which took place at a local university.  The theme was “Keep your Hand on the Plough.” Over the course of the gathering, I found myself talking about things that are important to me with around 40 other Sisters from at least six different congregations:  It was so refreshing to splash my hands in the pools of my heart and draw forth JOY…draw forth DELIGHT and FREEDOM…to feel the sustaining vibration of LAUGHTER as it saw new light… Each of these words are filled with experience…they wriggle with those grains of thought and emotion; they wriggle with the divine stuff of life that cannot be contained…and it was gift to hear and to feel them whisper their secret beauties once again. 

That was gift, just as it was gift to hear the life-words of others…to hear the sound of voices merging when we prayed by singing…to have newly met many people who have also said Yes to God and to great mystery and grand adventure with all that they have to offer.

With Pen and Fork and Fog

From my notebook...

I love hanging out with you in the kitchen…I love celebrating the diversity of textures and flavors, taking them in, arranging them, marveling at the science and delighting in the sensory experience. I love eating poetry that I created…I love the freedom that comes with the time to concentrate and the space to let go. I love fiddling, experimenting, using basic ingredients in different sorts of ways to achieve contrast, harmony, cohesion, surprise, intrigue, comfort, interest, nourishment.  I love that this time with you is more about learning through intimacy rather than complexity.  I love that carrots are more carrot-y when roasted simply with olive oil and sea salt on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. I love knowing that tomato paste makes red lentil lemon soup eversomuch more punchy without leaving a trace of tomato taste and also knowing that something would be discernibly missing without it.  

I love cooking with you and I love writing with you and I love that those two activities are not so different, really.  Putting a thought to paper or screen, putting a meal in a bowl or on a plate, and sharing them via blog or print or the place setting across from me… They are manifestations of your delight made known in the universe; your love made known to the senses.

Somehow especially these days when the world around me has been shrouded in fog and steeped in rain, these simple wonders, these deep joys, have been like the brilliant “new green” leaf bundles at the tips of the branches brushed clean by the wind outside the room where I pray: a great delight, most welcome, and dearly satisfying.

Mushroom and Red Pepper Stroganoff over Rice

A bit less than a tablespoon of oil and a small blop of butter into a hot skillet

Two handfuls of chopped onion into the skillet to cook for some minutes

A healthy teaspoon and a half of paprika and a good pinch of chipotle pepper into the skillet

Stir and shoosh around

Add a handful of red bell pepper (in pieces about a quarter inch wide and about an inch long)

(START THE RICE—I SUGGEST A STICKY RICE LIKE CALROSE)

Add sliced/whole mushrooms (cremini hold up well)

Shoosh around until mushrooms have reduced in size and most of the liquid is gone

Add a glug or two of cooking wine or dry white wine and stir

Sprinkle a bit of flour over skillet contents and stir to thicken

Cook until a good gravy clings to everything and there isn’t too much extra liquid.

Add cooked rice to skillet, stir, and serve

Divine Gravity

In one way, this began yesterday with a walk in the rain and an RSCJ sister (who blogs here) who wrote in praise of ordinary happiness.  In another way, it begins when I listen to the news every day, so little of it good, so much of it a picture of potential or actual devastation on a scale that makes me shudder.  And yet...and yet...I know there is more, something foundational, that is also real... I know...I believe... I find that I must.

Divine Gravity

Amidst the grey and the grim,

when the luminous theorems of physics

with their lenses and prisms and mirrors

bending light into beautiful

melt into the dampness and certainty wavers,

hold fast to the promise of divine gravity

that grounds us in the hope,

the in-breaking salvation,

of elemental joy.

When forsythia blooms her symphony;

The perfection of a plum’s design;

The unforgotten possibility of flight

at the height of the arc of a swing.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Easter Grace, 2017

Easter Grace 2017

You ask each of us to hold with our lives

a portion of this Holy Chaos—

a portion of what it means to be human,

made in your image and likeness,

and yet, and still, and completely, free.

So it is that we make our way

and we find our lives holding

the Truth of our world and the truth in faith

of who you call us to be, by your life, your witness. 

It is a sometimes contradictory fullness, that Truth:

Bombs, blooms; evil, awe;

Love, Humanity; Love, Divinity;

Love, Death; Love, Resurrection;

Love.

We ask your blessing

upon this meal we are about to share

and upon the company we keep

so that by the nourishment of both

we may continue to live and move and have Being

as Easter people.  As a people who believe

that there is a light no darkness can overcome;

that death does not hold us bound;

that Love will be what sets us free

to Rise; to Rise; to Rise.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Radical Style, Holy Chaos

From my notebook…

11 April, 2017

6:45 AM…Cat on the window sill, coffee in the mug.  With the window open about an inch, fresh air eases the closed in feeling of a winter whose time has past.  It’s nice.  This, from the reflection in Give Us this Day, before reading the front sections of the paper…

~The death and resurrection of the Lord is not a past event we re-enact through the tableaus of Holy Week.  Rather, it is a dynamic mystery that plays out in the holy chaos of our lives.~  Fr. Edward Foley

I like that…and then, I look at our world and wonder—Is it *holy* chaos, the bombings of whatever sort in Syria; the Coptic church bombings in Egypt; the lorry-as-a-weapon crashes in London and Stockholm; the volatility of Russia’s relationship with nearly anyone of late; the fact that Arkansas wants to execute seven inmates in one week? 

There seems little that is holy in any of that. And an enormous amount of chaos.

And then I remember the Kandinski mobile of evening light on the buildings last night during prayer.  I recall seeing seams of earth splitting with the life force of a stem less than a centimeter long.  I notice that Lauds is again being sung by a robust choir of songbirds, recently returned from unnamed adventures during their migration. 

There seems plenty holy in that. And a healthy amount of chaos too, though of an entirely different sort.

When I hold both of these sets of observations together, I arrive at a somewhat unexpected place. In the middle of our General Chapter 2016 document.  Specifically, I find myself considering one of the four calls named by the Chapter:

To live more humanly:

In the radical style of Jesus of Nazareth, we wish to be in closer relationship as sisters with one another and with others; we wish to be simpler, more human and closer to people and their experience, in order to show forth the joyful and compassionate face of God and to be at the service of Life, wherever we are sent.

To hold as much truth as we can is an extraordinary amount of chaos to bear.  And if I am honest, I hold my portion best when I am at my most human.  Most vulnerable.  Most free, transparent, honest… because that makes room within me for Love.  Love is what allows me to hold Truth, to bear the chaos that comes with it and not be completely undone by it.

Love allows me to enter the whole mess of Truth that is what it means to be fully human.  Bombs. Blooms. Evil. Awe. Love. Humanity. Love. Divinity. Love. Death. Love. Resurrection. Love.

And my model is Jesus. Who was hated and loved. Rejected and followed. Who was anointed and who blessed. Who cleared the temple, wept, and asked that “if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”  Who died on a cross. Who rose.

Radical style…holy chaos...indeed. 

Should it be your will, O God, may I have the courage through Love to enter in so entirely and with such fullness of Humanity.

 (NB:  Image is of an icon painted on the wall in the RSCJ novitiate in Poland)