Hope

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If Not Now, Then It’s All Meaningless

Well, chalk up one more for the record books — Christmas 2025 is a wrap! Many will have sung O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, even Frosty the Snowman. Some of us made our biannual appearance at church (except for funerals, of course, or fewer and fewer weddings now and then).

Most of us have our trees disassembled with ornaments from the past tucked away in boxes until next year. Gifts have been hung in closets or tucked in drawers. Some may even intend to send thank you notes, digital to be sure! Others will return gifts not to their liking or to make sure it’s precisely the correct color or complimentary fit.

The whole spectacle and pageantry can get rather tedious year after year causing us to breathe an exhausted sigh of relief after “the Holidays”. Where is the meaning of our spirited greetings, the sentiment of frantically sent cards? Conjured memories are fleeting and we yearn for the elusive wonder and mystery of Christmases past. We settle for “Maybe next year!”

With growing certitude I’m finding when our rituals and stories do not find grounding in our current lives, in the very reality we experience here …now, all our efforts to conjure some fantastical past is sorely incapable of satisfying our hearts’ insistent hungers. Christmas’ redemptive word of hope for a suffering world — racked with conflict and fraught with greed and self-absorption — gets packed away with the artificial Christmas tree to be forgotten for another year.

But the Word still comes, takes flesh and finds expression! Take this, for example, from Pope Leo’s Christmas Day homily:

…brothers and sisters, since the Word was made flesh, humanity now speaks, crying out  with God’s own desire to encounter us. The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then,  can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those of so  many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent; or of the makeshift shelters of  thousands of homeless people in our own cities? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried  by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. Fragile are the  minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness  of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them  to their deaths. 

If not here? Now? When? Where?

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Pope Leo’s entire Christmas Day homily may be found at http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/homilies/2025/documents/20251225-messa-natale.html

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An Elder’s Hope

First, a poem…

At the center of every crisis 
is an inner space 
so deep, so beckoning, 
so suddenly and daringly vast, 
that it feels like a universe, 
feels like God. 

When the unthinkable happens, 
and does not relent, 
we fall through our hubris 
toward an inner flow, 
an abiding and rebirthing darkness 
that feels like home. 

— Dr. Barbara Holmes, “What Is Crisis Contemplation?”

As one who at 74 wants to get old well and who is consciously trying to discover what being an elder looks like, I consequently want to honestly embrace my mortality and remain curious and deliberate about my dying (spoiler: it’s a process and not just an event).  That’s where Holmes’ poem comes in. I’m intrigued by the second stanza and drawn to the potential of death as a life process, an “inner flow.”

My rumination has been enriched by a response shared by a friend with whom I did hospital chaplain residency a dozen years ago. She wrote: “Amen!  Ask: Is this darkness, darkness of the tomb? Or darkness of the womb?”  

Yes, death certainly “does not relent, and we fall through our hubris” into a dark tomb — echoing all those creedal formulae we babble unwittingly throughout our lives… “he descended into hell and on the third day…” And, yet, as Christians we proclaim this to be the darkness of the womb — “an abiding and rebirthing darkness that feels like home.” 

As we age, and especially in our elder years, we recognize this growing awareness not so much as a “profession of faith” but as an experiential foundation for our burgeoning hope!  As elders we transition from being persons of naive, doctrinal beliefs to those living with a reassuring, alluring hope we increasingly experience, at last, as HOMEcoming!

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Preposterous!

Been thinking the unthinkable… what if the burgeoning number of people who describe themselves as “not religious” and a culture that no longer reflects Christian values actually reveal the precise place of the Holy Spirit’s action, desire and intentions?

We only half-jokingly mumble “it’s over” for religion as we have known it! Paraphrasing Pope Francis’ prescient observation: “Ours is not simply an epoch of change; we live in a change of epochs!” Like it or not, this is the world in which we find ourselves. There is certainly resistance and grief woven through our denial or resignation. Yet, why would we expect to find God anywhere else?

What elements of “the faith” would we want passed on? Yes, the kerygma for sure. But what form or expression does the proclamation of Good News need to take? What of current methods, structures, practices or traditions are essential, effective and deserve to be preserved? And the always more relevant question: “What’s God up to?”

Christian faith and religious expression have not always been as we’ve experienced in our lives. Imagine the rich diversity of styles and configuration of community spawned by the Reformation. Only in the nineteenth century did Rome disentangle itself from the political shackles set in place by Constantine in 313 CE.

Consider a specific example near and dear to my heart: How must Ignatius of Loyola’s revered Spiritual Exercises — composed in the 16th century at the dawn of modernity — be reformulated for a fast approaching post-modern world? Some would dismiss my question out of hand and charge me with heresy, apostasy, sacrilege, ignorance, even arrogance for imagining such a preposterous idea. But, again, “What’s God up to?”

Observing how Christianity has been transformed, even co-opted, over the centuries, who are we to say that the forms, structures and expressions of religious faith we have known, treasured and served are even suitable or relevant to whatever the future holds? So much around us is crumbling — much needs to crumble! There’s plenty of precedent for that in Judeo-Christian faith.

“Unless a grain of wheat fall to the earth and die it remains but a single grain, but…” My faith suggests that the Spirit is up to something great, grand and unimaginable! We are never left orphans. Might the self-proclaimed “not religious” actually be clearing the land and preparing soil for the seeds of faith most relevant for our grandchildren’s children? Preposterous?

“They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” (John 20:9). This is the kerygma, the faith we too need to better take to heart.

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To Everything There Is a Season

Hello from Ireland where I have been on a personal and ancestral pilgrimage. An image captures a mercurial grace I’ve been trying to articulate. It is of Mount Melleray Abbey outside Cappoquin, County Waterford very near my ancestral roots. On Thursday when I participated in Sext (noonday prayer) there were five monks in choir stalls. Two were clearly pushing 90! None of the others are what we would call young.

I’ve always loved the Cistercian/Trappist tradition and have visited New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa as often as I’ve been able. As the name suggests, New Melleray is an offshoot of Mount Melleray — seven or eight monks were missioned from Ireland in the mid-1840s to establish an abbey in response to an invitation by the bishop of Dubuque.

You will recall that Henry VIII abolished all monasteries and confiscated their lands. Irish monks fled to France. After a few centuries, and with Catholicism again being tolerated in Ireland (1829), a group of Trappists returned home to establish Mount Melleray in 1832. The photo only shows a portion of a sprawling abbey campus. A train of serpentine buildings probably add an equally sized footprint to the complex. The campus is huge and immaculately maintained.

Fr Donal, OCSO with whom I spoke said they now lease out their farmland, have a cafe which is open to the public, a gift shop and heritage center. These are their sources of income. He noted that New Melleray in Iowa had recently helped them financially with the planned transformation of an old building into a hostel for pilgrims after they discovered the building was riddled with dry rot. I have no clue who is paying for the significant repairs suggested by the scaffolding in the far left of the photo.

Here’s my impression… as with Archbishop John Ireland’s determination to build the Cathedral in St Paul to be taller and in a more commanding location than the Minnesota State Capitol, I fully appreciate how important it was for the Trappists, and Irish Catholics in general, to erect a monumental edifice to make a profound statement regarding their presence and the restoration of their public practice of Catholicism in the 19th century.

But this is the 21st century. Times have changed. The practice of Catholicism in Ireland has shriveled. Thus, my further impression and belief… God certainly intends to foster the Cistercian/Trappist charism within the Church, but not as currently manifested in the “behemoth” planted in western County Waterford. When visiting and since, I felt nothing of the cloistered, contemplative asceticism I love and still find at New Melleray. Absent was any salient presence of my understanding of the rich, communal, singular dedication to God found in the Rule of Benedict; or even the vitality and joy I find at St John’s Abbey/Collegeville. What would Bernard of Clarevoux or the reformers of Our Lady of La Trappe counsel today? An ember burns. The Spirit hovers.

Loving the tradition as I do I’m left wondering, “What young person aspiring to the contemplative life of stability, obedience and conversion-of-life would be attracted to Mount Melleray today?” Not many, I am fairly confident. Similarly, I found the Abbey to be an apt expression of the contemporary Church whose tradition I love and cherish. It hovers as an invitation, a yearning — we all need to become much more humble, simple, God-centered, communal, and grounded in place/earth/creation. We need what the Benedictine tradition seeks, a thorough conversion of heart!

I talk a good talk and have noble aspirations. Yet, I like the consumer culture in which we are enmeshed and moribund Church structures I can so easily criticize, Mount Melleray Abbey stands as a symbol and indictment of me personally every bit as much as this faithful remnant of monks, the stifling clericalism of the Church or the dry rot found in so much of American culture.

Perhaps the most lingering impression and telling symbol in this photo is the graveyard lying in front of the edifice.  Finally, from death comes life!

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How Bad Is It?

Now ensconced in that “curmudgeonly old uncle” demographic, I’ve become particularly attentive to holiday gatherings, weddings, even the birth of great-grand-nieces and nephews. I envy the prospects, insights and opportunities of younger generations. And though I try not to belie my trepidation, I twitch at some cultural practices beyond my comprehension or those that jolt my moral conscience.

Being of the generation we are, my husband and I recently delighted in the chance to fold an embossed wedding program into our suit pockets. It seems we reenact that gesture much more often with memorial cards these days! We celebrated all the more in the warm glow of our grandniece’s wedding — the couple’s promises of faithful love, long awaited reunions with family, surprise encounters with friends we haven’t seen in decades.

Only the birth of a baby is better than a wedding! Fortunately we have a family flurry of these as well — flashes of unmitigated joy hold us in an embrace of love. These are all special occasions, liminal moments, transitory times grounding us before an inevitable return to the hum-drum of a daily routine — what we typically call “reality”.

That confounding admixture of exuberant revelry with that which love really looks like day-to-day, moved me to pull aside a favorite nephew-in-law for some honest talk. He’s a career meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Witnessing the youth, promise and expectations filling the banquet room, I needed to know, “How bad is it?” His professional perspective would be unvarnished — if only because we will soon be celebrating the marriage of his son and a fiancé who charmed us with their presence at our table.

Pat’s ever present smile and the Irish glint in his eye revealed his indomitable good humor. “It’s serious, Richard!” With dance music muffling his words, he explained that his attention is focused on North America. Still, he soberly reported that we are “well on our way” to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. We will have winters when Minnesota lakes do not freeze over. It will be worse in the northern part of the hemisphere. The poor will be especially hard hit! My mind reeled while recognizing this is a mere 28 years from today.

Perhaps it is best to hear such sobering assessments in the context of a family celebration of birth or while witnessing the exchange of promises to love one another in good times and bad, in sickness and health, forever! In none of this are we to be naive, delusional or unrealistic. As in marriage, that is not an option!

Whatever hope we may muster has to be grounded in a love that — finally, in the end — is really what its all about! Am I an old curmudgeon for worrying and questioning what gift we are giving to young couples and our newly born?

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Spring of Hope or Winter of Despair

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Charles Dickens would be hard pressed to find any who would say these are the best of times…

Despite optimism projected out of Scotland, the world’s top climate analysis coalition warns we are on track for disastrous global heating of 2.4C;

As a retired person living off limited assets I shuttered to learn that prices climbed 6.2 percent in October compared to last year, the largest increase in 30 years;

Action by bishops of my church individually and collectively bely an anti-intellectualism that is, sadly, not uncommon in other sectors of American society today. Many church leaders — not just Catholic — believe themselves to be sufficiently situated to make moral judgments about things they know nothing about and to distrust actual experts and professionals.

A former President recklessly undermines confidence in our elections while the Electoral College, equal State representation in the Senate, passage of laws to suppress voting and carefully crafted gerrymandering assures that we will be a “democracy” where the minority rules;

And there is Covid-19. No longer is there realistic discussion of eradicating the virus. Rather, efforts are directed at transforming the pandemic into a “manageable” epidemic.

Ufduh!!! as we say in Minnesota. There appears to be plenty of evidence to suggest these are the worst of times.

Wisdom broke through the gloom’n’doom in words spoken by Bryan Stevenson in the rebroadcast of a late 2020 interview: “The reckoning that has to happen in the country has to be rooted in a moral awareness, a moral awakening; a consciousness that evolves in a way that we begin to do things that we must do if we’re going to not only save the country, but save ourselves.”

Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, notes what we understand or forget at our peril… injustice, despair and violence prevail where hopelessness persists! Are there solutions for our societal and global crises? Do we have enough hope, confidence and resolve to believe we can do better? Do we? Really?

We truly do become that which we live and believe. Those who despair, hate, exclude or are consumed by fear and anger come to embody it. Scenes from January 6 flash through my mind. Those who truly dialogue, remain curious, build bridges, weave community, embody hope come to personify that which they practice. Teachers in classrooms, volunteers of all stripes, most local government officials, those who quietly do the heavy lifting of caring for others or restoring justice are among the many who call me to hope.

The future — if there is to be one — rests in our individual and collective hands. Will we reap a winter of despair or a spring of hope? Will ours be an age of wisdom, an epoch of belief? It feels perilously up for grabs.

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The On Being interview with Bryan Stevenson and Krista Tippett can be found at: https://onbeing.org/programs/bryan-stevenson-finding-the-courage-for-whats-redemptive/

Credit goes to Brian P Horan, OFM for the insightful critique of Catholic bishops and other church leaders. https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/archbishop-gomezs-comments-reveal-anti-intellectualism-among-church-leaders

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Tenacity Suited to a Pandemic

Barbara Brown Taylor and the dean of the National Cathedral shared a conversation last evening. I love everything BBT has to say as well as those all too familiar ribes from church-types she deftly sidesteps. Two things really rocked me…

She shared a favorite quote from theologian Walter Brueggemann: “The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you, and this by the grace of God.” Yowzer!!! Sit with that for awhile.

Second, BBT referred to the destruction of the Temple in 70CE as a source of consolation for her at this time in the life of Christianity. The Jewish people had to change, adapt, transform in unthinkable ways. Yet, they endured!

Hmmm… maybe God’s in charge after all; a “jealous God” who will have no truck with idolatry (magic, fantasy or superstition)!

Just some random thoughts percolating this morning on the Feast of the Ascension, that occasion when the departure of the Risen One yet again leaves his friends befuddled!

Are we to simply keep doing what we’ve been doing, frantic to return to what we knew as “normal”? How do we stay true to Christ? How do we avoid being co-opted by a past — not all bad — that needs to fall to the earth and die if it is to yield a rich harvest?

Somewhere in all this is the secure footing for a tenacious hope.

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Everyday for 7 Years

Again and again, rain or shine, through ice or humidity! JebTheDog has faithfully taken me for a walk virtually every afternoon since 2011 along Minnehaha Creek. Nothing I post on Facebook is as popular as photos from these outings. Friends consistently remark about how they look forward to seeing the latest in the “creek series”.

At first, the walks were a duty I accepted as part of dog “ownership.” Self-interest motivated me during bleak February freezes — why else would I get out for a 30 minute walk in the depths of Minnesota winter? …it was good for me! Hassles were not limited to obligation or inclement weather. In 2017 I tumbled over a granite boulder on an idyllic summer afternoon. Surgery, screws, plates and physical therapy over a couple months were required to return my left wrist back to normal.

What happens when we do the same ritual time and time again over a considerable period of time? I now annually await the bluebells on the north slope. These are followed by an explosion of violets. Unintentional comparison of water levels are noted from year to year. JebTheDog remembers where to look for the snapping turtle each June in case I forget. Worried curiosity wonders what’s happened to the coy white squirrel. The rotting stump of a ginormous willows plucks a cord of grief, followed by grateful memories for what remains and for all that has been.

Beyond the uniqueness of each day and incidental occurrences, something cumulative and and rhythmic takes hold. Shifts in motivation creep in over time. Obligation morphs into anticipation. Laughing water reliably softens a knot of worry. Trees become faithful sentinels. Field mice consistently entertain and confound Jeb. The migration of mallards and the cyclic flow of seasons nudge us to notice patterns in our lives.

After seven years, the creek no longer presents itself as a destination. Rather it has become an extension of home, a harbinger of relationship, a sanctuary of wisdom, a grounding in matter — and in what matters. The Shakers had it right:

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
It will be in the valley of love and delight

Seven years of mentoring by my faithful companion, JebTheDog, casts a gentle glow on my 68 years of “occupancy” on this planet. I recognize how so many years and relationships have been characterized by action/reaction, effecting change, leading the charge, not simply being driven but being the driver. Perhaps a certain intensity needs to characterize seasons or transitory roles in our lives — they too can reveal the bulwark of a life well-lived. Yet, these can too easily come to dominate. In dire cases we accept them as our destiny — such is the death rattle of stifling monotony!

The demise of leonine willows, the laughter of rollicking water, the tenderizing cycle of seasons unmask my patterns of foolishness. A smile begins to replenish worry lines framing my eyes. With a spiritual master extraordinaire leading my way, doing the same thing everyday for seven years nudges me to awaken, let be, listen, allow and behold — recognizing we are in the place just right and precisely where we ought to be.

I’ll be glad for another seven years of dog-duty!

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The familiar Shaker quote is from “Simple Gifts”, composed in 1848 by Elder Joseph Brackett.

I am indebted to Martin Laird, O.S.A.; An Ocean of Light: Contemplation, Transformation, and Liberation; Oxford University Press, 2019 for the distinction between reactive and receptive mind as well as the perfectly prescriptive words: let be, listen, allow and behold (p. 94).

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These Times

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

This winsome melody of the popular Shaker tune filled our space and perfectly expressed the sentiment of the moment. We had gathered to celebrate friendship and send Susan and Claudia forth to their new home in Rhode Island. Love and letting go are polarities of life.

In most other times and settings — times like ours — such lilting tunes seem better left to a more sentimental time. Too often today we feel disconnected from community, kin and country. These are not simple times. The weight of scandal and complicity within core institutions of church and politics ensnare us, rendering us desolate. Seems ours are not “times of love and delight” this Shaker melody celebrates.

Today at Tuesday morning prayer group, someone expressed a petition with the clarity and precision befitting of a Shaker meeting. He asked for the grace “to live well in these in-between times, times when we witness the dying of that which is already dead; but a time that yields no clarity, offers no assurance of that which is laboring to be born, the new life in us that desires to be lived.”

The prayer was perfect, poignant, one might even say pregnant! Isn’t that where we find ourselves — amid the discomfort of these in-between times, witnessing the death of that which is all but dead, powerless to deliver that life which comes in its own time, as it wills!

This is not only the place we find ourselves — this is the only time we have! As with all times, this is a moment of gift, our time of grace. This morning’s petition finds fulfillment in our living precisely within these contradictions, amid the tension, our labor pangs, holding the poles of paradox, in our ever-present now, the only time we are given…

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,
  To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
  Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

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This Most Contradictory of Seasons

The bottom is about to drop out! We’ve been living on borrowed time. Still reluctant to face reality, it is what it is.

It’s not as if we haven’t been warned — today’s high in Minneapolis is to be 57; tomorrow’s temp is forecast to be 22! The redolent release of Fall is past. We are in for a full-bore collapse into the depths of winter.

We Minnesotans pride ourselves in being of hearty stock. Each year we enter this season with a conflicted mixture of reluctance and pride, reenactment of a familiar script and rehearsal for an even bigger drama that lies ahead.

Natives counsel new arrivals to our state with sage advice — learn to play in it; skating, cross-country skiing, show-shoeing, ice-fishing, “walk” the lakes. Those of Scandinavian descent advise the rest of us, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Through Minnesota’s own expression of “natural selection” those of less hearty stock concoct veiled excuses to bail. Their loss!

What the uninformed protest as “harsh” Minnesota winters actually preserves our famed North Woods. Quail and other wildlife need snow cover to burrow into for cozy quarters. You haven’t truly relaxed until you know the solitude of cross-country skiing across of a frozen lake encircled with verdant pine, sentinel birch and the silhouettes of naked bur oak. A good hard winter is also nature’s best defense against the devastation of Emerald Ash Bore and the invasive Asian beetle. Then there is the hearth — that place where hearts are warmed, friendship deepens, and love finds expression.

So why such resistance? Why this talk of the bottom falling out? Why such reluctance and resignation? …a hunker-down survivalist stoicism? …the insistent urge to escape? Some seem captive to the sparseness of winter, afflicted with tunnel vision, willing to wallow in a life of hibernation. They appear constitutionally incapable of embracing beauty, recognizing promise, and plumbing life’s depths.

But is not this hardness of heart an unyielding refusal to change, a fear of any disruption to preferred routines, a denial of the passage of time, a poverty of imagination? We can too easily and stubbornly hold the promise for any potential future in a straight-jacket of our own making.

You need not be a privileged Minnesotan to embrace the offering of this sparsest of seasons. Our lives are also lived according to passages not made of uniform chronology. At any time of year we may bear the brunt of loss, the trauma of a potentially terminal diagnosis, the breakup of a relationship. Thankfully not all disruptions to the way things are, or want them to be, are as harsh or traumatic. We must engage them all to their depths if we are to fully live.

Mary Oliver lives on the easternmost tip of Cape Cod and has long been our most loyal chronicler of life’s fury, simplicity, sparseness and sublime beauty. Her poem, On Winter’s Margin captures both the timeless potential and promise of this most contradictory of seasons:

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now
With half-forged memories come flocking home
To gardens famous for their charity.
The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins
Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;
By time snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing
Like children for their sire to walk abroad!
But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk
Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;
And what I dream of are the patient deer
Who stand on legs like reeds and drink the wind;—

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow
Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.