MSA Annual Meeting 2011 - The Virgin Mary in the United States and Canada

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Religious Life Discernment

Is God calling you to consider Consecrated Life as a Dominican sister? Come and join our Discernment Retreat [Single Catholic women (18-40)] Friday and Saturday, February 11-12, 2011 Friday 6 PM- Saturday 7PM Dominican Sisters of Mission San Jose Motherhouse 43326 Mission Blvd. Fremont, CA 94539-5829 (entrance on Mission Tierra Pl.) Freewill offering. RSVP by Monday, February 7: vocations@msjdominicans.org or call 510 933-6335.

World Cafe

Today I am going deeper in the World Cafe. I have been reading two books contemplatively for the past few months. One is an Anthology of Christian Mysticism by Harvey Egan, SJ. and the other is Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block. The first is nourishing my sense of God and God's way of being within and with me in love as love. Inspiration from the lives and writings of the mystics is breathing life into my ministry as Director of Information Technology and Prioress at St. Joseph's Priory. Yesterday the idea of "seasoning one another" from St. Catherine's letter to her Spiritual Companion, Raymond de Capua kept rising up in my imagination like something rising to the surface of a still pool. What a beautiful thought that is to me! When we are at our best we season one another's lives. This is what Jesus refers to in reminding us we are the salt of the earth, and warning about what we risk when that salt loses its flavor. How can we add flavor when our own flavor has been lost? We either keep our own true flavor or become something artificial that benefits no one, least of all ourselves. I am resolved to being true and sharing what I know to be true with others. This is why the World Cafe appeals to me. I've known about it for a few years and like the idea, but I am signing up for it today. We will be using it at our Gathering of Prioresses this weekend. I see great possibility for it and hope it really takes off in our community as a way of connecting more deeply with each other and with people in other communities...not just religious communities, but other kinds of communities too, across many different cultures and generations.

Holiday Boutique and Christmas Tree Lighting

The Heavens are Telling

Today I am preparing an Evening Prayer and Reflection on Care for Creation based on the Universe Story and the book Radical Amazement by Judy Cannato. On Friday evenings we gather in our local community and one of our sisters volunteers to share something that is part of her own prayer life. My retreat last summer has brought me into a deeper awareness of the cosmic connection between the inner life, the common life, and the cosmic life. Our Congregational Justice Committee gave each of our Prioresses a prayer to use in community and a book with ideas for prayers on Care for Creation. I volunteered two weeks ago to lead our prayer, and now this idea has providentially landed in my mail. After I worked out how I would set the environment and tone, how to lead off the reading and invite contemplation and start off the sharing, I began to look for music to move us into the social hour that typically follows our prayer. I found on my shelf a used CD I found on the Free Table. Its called The Heavens are Sounding: Favorite Choruses by Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Handel, Bach, Gounod, Haydn & Brahms. I chose Track 13 The Creation: The Heaven's are Telling by Joseph Haydn. This sent me into a search to know the lyrics in English and I found some beautiful things online about the entire work. It is about the story of Creation from Genesis and Paradise Lost.

Cosmic images put to the music.

I invite you to marvel at them and ask yourself as we will be asking ourselves this evening, what is it about the story of the universe that amazes me to my depths? How can I treasure creation more lovingly? How can I give thanks more truly for all that surrounds me with light?

English Lyrics

Newman Symposium

We sponsored a symposium on John Henry Newman at Stanford University and our Motherhouse over the weekend. It was a huge success! I never knew so many people have a devotion to Cardinal Newman. Father Ted Ross, S.J. and Father Michael Barber, S.J presented on Newman's life and writings. There are so many lessons we can learn from him about development of doctrine, preaching, the role of the laity, conscience and morality. I have been especially inspired by Newman's writing about the stirrings in his own conscience in his teen years and later as a adult. I am moved by the integrity and relentlessness of his pursuit of the truth through the study of Catholic teaching through the centuries.

The quality of his writing and the sincerity of his belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist make me want to know more about him. Bishop John Cummins and Timothy Eden, SM joined Father Ted and Father Michael to answer questions here and at Stanford. I am reading the authorized biography by Beaumont and a book on his Inner Life by Father Zeno, OFM,Cap. His doctoral dissertation was on the works of Newman and he is now considered one of the foremost Newman Scholars in the world. I recommend both books highly. I want to read some of his sermons and the Apologia next. If want to find out more about him or his works go to newmanreader.org.

Al di là

Today I went to the funeral of a man who lived in the parish in San Francisco where I studied as a novice. The Mass was a simple and beautiful testimony to a loving dad and family man who lived a good long life and now has gone on to heaven "filled with our love" as the program said. One of the blessings of wakes and funerals is that they call us to revisit places we once worked and lived and prayed. Most of us move about so frequently within the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, that it is hard for us to build the kind of lifelong friendships that these dear old parishioners know. To me it is so touching to meet people who have been friends and neighbors for over 50 years, whose children and grandchildren now are friends. The homily was sincerely affectionate and filled with the kind of tender insights a priest can only have when he has known the family through thick and thin times. The testimony given by the man's grand daughter gave us glimpses into the life of a family man growing up in Italy and San Francisco from 1922 to 2010. This is the kind of old neighborhood many of us remember fondly and long for even though we many not be Italian. We all had them, German, French, Mexican, Irish, Russian, Polish, even English immigrants. We still have that desire for connectedness in the neighborhoods where we live in now but it is harder to find it, harder to build it. There are places we might find it in a parish, a coffee shop and a family business, but we have to look past all the chain stores and evangelical entertainment centers to find it. The closing song, Al di là, must have been the favorite love song of this man and wife when they were young. Now the husband has gone to heaven and his tearful wife is surrounded by neighbors who know how much she will miss him. How blessed she is to have this neighborhood to keep her memories alive and well. My sisters and I didn't know what the words to the song meant, but we could tell it was a love song. I looked the words up and now I like it even more! Here they are for when you are mourning someone a loved one who has gone beyond:

Italian

Al di là

Non credevo possibile,
Se potessero dire queste parole:

Al di lá del bene più prezioso, ci sei tu.
Al di lá del sogno più ambizioso, ci sei tu.

Al di lá delle cose più belle.
Al di lá delle stelle, ci sei tu.
Al di lá, ci sei tu per me, per me, soltanto per me.

Al di lá del mare più profondo, ci sei tu.
Al di lá de i limiti del mondo, ci sei tu.
Al di lá della volta infinita, al di la della vita.
Ci sei tu, al di la, ci sei tu per me.
La la la la la...
La la la...
(Ci sei tu...)


English

Beyond

I couldn't believe it was possible
For these words to be said:

Beyond the most precious good, there you are.
Beyond the most ambitious dream, there you are.

Beyond the most beautiful things, there you are.
Beyond the stars, there you are.
Beyond, there you are for me, for me, just for me.

Beyond the deepest sea, there you are.
Beyond the borders of the world, there you are.
Beyond the infinite vault (=the sky), beyond life.
There you are, beyond, there you are for me.
la la la...
(There you are).

Meeting with the Dalai Lama

I attended the teaching of the Dalai Lama on the eight verses of training the mind in the San Jose Convention Center and the interfaith gathering of clergy afterward. The eight verses are all centered on building compassion. They are similar to the Beatitudes in the way they recommend specific practices that lead away from self and toward love and humility. One of the assets of the Buddhist tradition I really appreciate is that because they have no belief in God, they concentrate all their study and practice on developing the human characteristics that most other faiths attribute to God. This is something very practical about Buddhism that admire, and I think many other people do too. We concentrate a lot of study and practice on identifying and defining God and establishing rules for being in right relationship with God. This can have the effect of drawing us away from instilling the attributes of God we most admire.

The Dalai Lama pointed out that an asset we Christians have is because we believe in God, we do not have to work so hard at avoiding taking credit for our own growth in perfection. We know it is all grace and that it is God alone who deserves praise. We know we are subject to God and not in charge of the universe. Buddhist teaching places great emphasis on humility so that the monks and priests who seek to progress on the spiritual path do not do so for their own sake. The ultimate goal is spiritual union with all that is. We seek this too in our own way. For us, our personal relationship with God, Jesus, Mary and the Saints is woven into the spiritual path. We look for different signs and assurances along the way than our Buddhist brothers and sisters, and we have a rich heritage of stories to guide us.

The Christian mystics teach us that the path moves through stages of purification, illumination and contemplation...all of which require discipline and devotion. The mystic way is not for the faint-hearted or feeble-minded.... although meekness and simplicity are most welcome. These are the lessons I am pondering today as I go about my daily business of photo editing, website administration, data security and coordinating senior transportation options. I am grateful for the eight verses today. They help me with ordering daily life in accordance with what really matters. If you are interested in learning more about them and the Dalai Lama's visit, you can find more online at teaching the mind.

Typical Day

Enjoyment of a daily life that is punctuated by regular periods of communal prayer is characteristic of a Dominican Sister of Mission San Jose. Early in the morning (between 4:00 and 6:00am) we have individual routines. We drink coffee or have a light breakfast. We pray, do spiritual reading or journal. We jog, walk, do yoga, aerobics, swim or do some other kind of physical exercise. We read the newspaper, listen to the radio or the television to become informed about the news of the day. It is customary for us not to talk much during these hours except to greet each other to be polite. This is to keep a prayerful quiet atmosphere in community in the early morning.

Each community sets a prayer schedule that works best with the ministry schedules of the sisters in that community. Generally morning prayer (liturgy of the hours sung chorally) is prayed between 6:00 and 7:00 am. followed by Eucharist. Then we eat breakfast together and converse about something we read, our activities, events in the parish or other news of the day. After breakfast we go to our various ministries. We sometimes each lunch together and sometimes not depending on the ministry and the other events going on. Typically evening prayer (between 5:00 and 6:00 pm) is liturgy of the hours sung chorally. Our prayers in common usually happen in the convent chapel.

We celebrate all the major feasts and solemnities of the Church as well as all the Dominican feasts. After evening prayer we gather together for dinner and conversation. After dinner we spend time in community with our sisters. We do not have formal recreation, but we do recreate in a variety of ways, by watching movies, reading books, playing cards or other games, doing handcrafts or art, practicing music, exercising or going out for a walk. Usually after 8:00 it is quiet again. It is a fairly regular schedule, but sometimes we change it to accommodates special events. In the summer we have a more relaxed schedule to allow vacation time or visiting with family for extended periods. I like the gentle rhythm of our life. It makes for a well-balanced and healthy daily life. We are not bound by a strict rule to keep to what is scheduled, but we abide by it voluntarily as we are able.

Harvest Moon

Tonight the nights will begin to get longer and the Harvest Moon will be there to greet us and remind us that even though there will be longer periods of darkness, the moon and stars are there to keep us from losing our way. I love the Harvest Moon. It is always so much larger and prettier than usual. I'm not sure why that is. I know it has something to do with the fact that it appears lower on the horizon and the atmosphere has some interesting effect on the reds and blues in the light.

I love the autumn sky the best because my old friend Orion, the hunter is always visible with his broad shoulders hovering over us. Also tonight Jupiter will be very visible near the moon shining brightly all night long. I read that this is the only time in our lifetime we will be able to see Jupiter and moon together all night long. Cassiopeia (the Queen) will also be in the northern sky (above Polaris, the North Star) and in the northwest before dawn. She is easy to find because she is shaped like a big letter W or M if you are looking at her upside down. To add to the excitement in the autumn sky this year, Comet Hartley 2 possibly 2010’s brightest comet should be bright enough to see with binoculars by now. It may be visible to the unaided eye by October. Shine on Harvest Moon!!

Prioressing

In our communities we have a role called Prioress, which means "first among equals." The Prioress is not exactly in charge because our Dominican life is not ordered that way. We are a democratic community. The community as a whole makes all the important decisions, but the Prioresses help that to happen.


The main responsibility of Prioress is to act as the spiritual leader and ensure that the community as a whole is spiritually unified and functioning in a positive way for the common good. This year I have been appointed to serve as Prioress for a community of 27 sisters together with my Assistant Prioress, our Health Care Coordinator, a Treasurer and two Community Councilors.

Being Prioress is a way of caring for and about people and using my gifts in building community. It is a challenge because a lot of little things come up all day long needing my consideration and advice. I'm working on adjusting my balance of community, prayer, ministry and study and am grateful to have great mentors and sisters who help me keep a sense of humor. Despite the challenges, I think this new responsibility might just be my "cup of tea".

Common Life

The past month I've taken a break for all my online pursuits to tend other relationships in real time and build community with my sisters at Saint Joseph Priory. Every year our Congregation begins anew in August or September forming community with the sisters assigned to a particular Priory or Convent that is near where they have been commissioned in a variety of ministries. This year I am doing that at Saint Joseph Priory at our Motherhouse in Fremont. Since I entered in 1997 I have lived in eight of our communities, each of them very different from each other. Each community has its own personality and its own history. The Priory is a community of 27 sisters. It is the largest of our 30 communities in the United States, Mexico, Germany and Guatemala.

When I was a postulant (now we call them candidates), I lived at Immaculate Conception Priory in San Francisco and taught at Saint James School in the Mission District. Then I moved to Siena Community, our novitiate house in Mission San Jose. After profession I was sent to Immaculate Conception Convent, a smaller convent that we used to own near San Francisco to finish my doctoral studies at the University of San Francisco and teach at Immaculate Conception Academy. Then I moved to convent in Warm Springs dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe and served as project manager for the relocation of 52 of our sisters in St. Martins and St. Josephs prior to the renovation of the chapel and care center. After that I served for two years as admissions director and college counselor at Saint Elizabeth High School and lived at Saint Elizabeth Convent. I was a lecturer at Saint Mary's College and Santa Clara University when I lived at Saint Simon's Convent in Los Altos. I lived and taught for a short period at Santa Teresita in Los Angeles before arriving at my present assignment as Director of Information Technology and Prioress of Saint Joseph Priory in Fremont.

We have a few sisters who live alone in an apartment for the sake of ministry or are caring for an aging parent, but all our sisters are affiliated with a community. Our community life sustains us spiritually and keeps us centered in the relational life that is the heart of Christ's preaching. We believe like our founder Saint Dominic that community is the preaching. We challenge each other to be loving, authentic, compassionate, well-balanced and generous. Every one of my sisters is an inspiration to me in her daily human striving for Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. I love what we call our Common Life. There is always someone home to exchange ideas with if you want to talk, and people will leave you alone if you just want some peace and quiet. We have many celebrations and deep discussions about life, the universe and everthing of interest. I have come to realize that even though they are truly humble and would never point this out themselves, I live with some of the most well-read, well-educated women in the world. My sisters are women who make a difference in people's lives, laboring quietly and praying constantly to make the world a better place.

In Our Keeping

I attended the Dominican Archivists and Historians Conference in River Forest, Illinois on the campus of Dominican University. Janet Welsh, OP (Sinsinawa) Director of the McGreal Center for Dominican Historical Studies has been such a gracious and joyful host, ready to lend a hand and lighten us with cheer at every juncture. Everywhere we went on campus and off .... even on the local scene on the waterfront in Chicago, the people were so hospitable and engaging. I never knew Chicago was such a friendly city! Suzanne Noffke, OP (Racine) set the tone for the conference with her opening presentation on History as Sacramental Remembrance and our responsibility to help others to gain respectful access to the archival material we treasure with such fidelity and help them to enter into those sacred remembrances within the eternal presence of God. This freed us from feeling that our job was just keeping the dust off the collection, to looking at new ways of breaking it open sacramentally.

We held a Skype conversation with Barbara Beaumont, OP (Fanjeaux) about the Sister Historians of the Order of Preachers (SHOP) and their international distance learning that allows students from parts of the world where advanced learning is inaccessible to study theology by correspondence or online toward degrees in divinity soon to be co-sponsored by the Angelicum. In the afternoon we discussed Cynthia Folquer, OP's (Tucaman) work on the mystical experience of the indigenous peoples of the high mountains and the interweaving of politics and religion in Argentina.
We had a preview of Kathleen Sprows Cummings new book, New Women of the Old Faith: Gender in American Catholicism, about the many valiant ways that Catholic women overcame sexism and forged new ground for women in every field. We discovered new ways for Sister historians and archivists can relate to each other more productively and help to preserve and share the story of Dominican congregations. We reviewed software and hardware available for conserving space, preserving and sharing documents and artifacts. We visited the McGreal Center and talked with the volunteer staff of Library and Information Science Students from Dom U. Then we heard an insightful and stimulating panel of young Dominican friars, sisters, nuns, volunteers, associates, and students talk about what the Dominican family has meant to them and how they understand their role in shaping its future. Our own former volunteer and friend of the congregation, Sara Brabec represented DVUSA and spoke eloquently of the joys, supports and challenges of living in an intergenerational Dominican community and her desire to continue to grow in faith seeking understanding through formal study at GTU Berkeley and teaching. We closed the conference with Liturgy of the Word and Eucharist and Mary Ellen O'Grady (Sinsinawa) preaching on the scholar's call, after learning the answer, to go and do likewise.

I will stayed on at the McGreal Center to update our MSJ file of documents in the archives and insert 10 pages of key dates from our own Congregational history into the 10 page timeline of the California Chronology for Volume II of Dominicans in the US. As a member of the OPUS project I am offering to help with writing and editing of Vol. II while working on my own writing about Dominican Mothers and Mystics funded by the Mariological Society of America.

The truth is in our keeping and telling. I leave here with the awareness deep in my soul that God is eternally present as we tend the sacramental remembrances of the past. Because of this sacred work those who come after us will be able to live in its light and find hope and peace and joy.

Faust's Wager

Ever since my German Professor treated me to Gounod's Faust at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco earlier this month, I've had "Le veau d'or est toujour debout" running through my head. Goethe's story of a man willing to wager his soul for an experience of Divine Wisdom, and the epic struggle that ensues, is my favorite book. In the French version by Goundod, Faust gambles his soul in exchange for wine, women and song instead. In the English version by Marlowe, the exchange is for power and glory. It is interesting how the different cultures interpreted the story of Faust differently. The opera has multiple endings ... sometimes Faust loses and sometimes he wins. You never know how it will turn out until you see it. Th experience at the opera has reignited my passion for truly great music. While on home visit in New Hampshire, I picked up a second hand set of Opera Collection I by EMI Classics with arias from Cosi fan tutte, Carmen, Aida, La Traviata, Madame Butterfly, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, the Magic Flute, Norma, Tosca, Romeo and Juliette, Werther, Les Troyens, Samson and Tristan and Isolde filling the room while I work on Info Tech. These powerful songs remind me to enjoy even the moments of tension in life as part of the great drama of being fully human. We are in the midst of preparing for our 24th General Chapter and tension has begun to mount around the preparations .... discussing the upcoming elections of a new Congregational Prioress and Council, listening to the voices that challenge us from the margins,and identifying key areas on which we will choose to concentrate our collective energy in the coming 5 years. Meanwhile, this magnificent music is animating my days and nights. It puts me in a positive frame of mind and helps me to enjoy life as an unfolding love story of epic proportions, with bits of romantic comedy, intrigue, tragic undoings, and elevating acts of transcendant nobility all woven together in creative ways by our loving creative God. Treat yourself to a good recording of one of your favorite operas, and you'll see (or hear) it for yourself. I like to imagine God as a singer especially today as the thunder storms mount around us rumbling and crashing their cymbals. Now which of the SATB parts do you imagine God would be singing? I'm favoring the Baritone today.

Meta Family

One of the highlights of visiting family this year was spending time at the NH Museum of History and canoeing on Bear Brook Lake with my 11 yr old cousin Bailey. This year I realized that my family, like many in the United States, has metamorphosed into something quite different from what I remember it to be. While I do have relatives who are blood relations, I have many more who are related by marriage, adoption, foster or surrogate family, friendly and neighborly association. So, looking around the family circle at the evening barbecues with my cousin and her children, we found it hard to name the exact relationship of some people present even though we call them family. For instance, Pete, if I have this right, is the former husband of the daughter of the ex-mother-in-law from the 1st marriage of my cousin's brother. Others have similar complicated connections, but this one was the hardest to describe, although the man himself was an obvious fit in the family circle. More to the point, he has a son the same age as her son, and they like each other. Someone who can muster up with a playmate of the suitable age for the children comes with a premium! I think we are not alone in this new shape of family. This is a common metamorphosis happening to many American families. I grew up in the age when the nuclear family was the norm, so I still try to categorize people as brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grammas, grampas etc. In my mind I think of people as unclish, auntish, cousinish, brotherish...etc. I am a celibate religious, but I am also gramma to two delighful Korean American children who need one ... and who think I seem to fit the part. The positive side of all this is that it frees us to be the relation that best fits who we are. But, what does this new reality do to a child's understanding of the Holy Trinity? Can we fathom a Holy Trinity made up of the Stepfather of the Bride to Be, the Son of the 1st Cousin of the Ex-Mother-in-Law, and the Holy Spirit? What would it mean if we really began to think of each other in terms of who we need to be for one another rather than who we happen to be by circumstance? Does this new reality free us to be the mother, brother, sister, father that hears the Word and puts it into action...just Jesus intended?

Home Visit

Our Constitutions provide for us to make a home visit to see our family once a year. If they live out of state, we typically do not do this every year. Most of my family lives in NH and I visit them about once every three years. I also have a Korean American family who live in upperstate New York. This is because I helped to raise who a girl named Song who was an international student at Notre Dame High School when I taught there before I entered. Now she is grown up and has two children of her own. Her two little children are Samantha, age 4, and Noah, age 3. They call me grandma. This makes me feel very old, but I like it because it sounds so cute the waya they say it...even when they say it over and over again. Their other grandparents are in Korea, but they never get to see them because it is so far away. So, they love having a grandma who can come visit and do things with them. They cried a lot today when I had to leave to go visit my family in New Hampshire. Even though Song and I tried to make it as smooth as possible. We had a great weekend together! The picture here is of Boldt Castle in Alex Bay. We took a boat ride out to see the castle and went to the Food & Wine festival. They both are too little for school and need a lot of attention! They tend to do the opposite of what they are asked to do. The person who invented reverse psychology must have been thinking about children like these two! Samantha is the little girl who asked why all the time. Every question is Why? Even after the answer is given, she's right back to you with Why? again. I forgot how persistent little children can be! I am praying for Song to have patience and a good sense of humor. Those two characteristics can get you through a lot of challenges! I'm glad she has a nice home and a good job and supportive friends nearby, and a boss who understands the challenge of raising little children. Today I'm on my way to New Hampshire to see the rest of my family.

Being

At the end of my retreat in the Redwood Mountains I find myself in a deeper state of consciousness and fuller sense of being. I am abiding under the wings of the Alpha and Omega. Even though my excursion to the beach did not lead to the breathing in one with the rhythm of the ocean I had hoped for, my breathing is attuned to God as the plenum out of which all things come and to which all things return. I have an artistic visualization of that as the wings of the Alpha and Omega, a cosmic reality embodied by a new consciousness rising up in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a new image of the spirit taking wing, in humanity. There is a freedom and a bold creativity in that new understanding. I do not need to travel to the ocean to connect with it. God is indeed all around me and within me, breathing in and through me. Christ, the Alpha and Omega, the Mystical Body is our Catholic way of naming this cosmic understanding of the creation of all that is. We are not lightyears away from this reality, it is our being. We are that which is, the I am. But we can only sense this when we can gently set aside the "little" me, the "ego" who wants to claim and control us. I can let the deeper truer me be the gentle mother who sees my own little self kindly like a little child pulling at my skirts saying, "Me, me, me! Watch me, mommy!" Although this new image of the Alpha and Omega stretches my imagination, I have deep faith in its goodness and its truth because I know that it yields the fruits of the Spirit by which I have learned to recognize the Truth. Where there is love (agape); joy (chara); peace (eirene); patience (makrothumia); kindness (chrestotes); goodness (agathosune); faithfulness (pistis); gentleness (prautes); and self-control (egkrateia), there is Truth. My prayer is that all can find their way to being in this Truth for the greater good of all that is and healing of all that divides and dissembles. Here is a good site to learn more about the fruits of the Spirit http://www.spirithome.com/fruitssp.html.

Understanding

The big bang theory has implications for a new way of understanding God as the plenum, or the ground of all being. Our retreat director proposed that we are part of that ground of being that is in a continual state of expansion as a result of the initial explosion of the big bang. Because of this we have an innate sense of oneness that comes from our understanding of the way it was before the explosion of the big bang and resulting expansion. None of this is contrary to a theological understanding of the origin of the universe, if we consider that all that is expanding is God. As many mystics have said in different ways, we are in God and God is in us. We might expand that idea to a belief that all of matter is God too. We do not know enough about space and much of what we think we know is untrue. The truth is we do not know the shape, size, actions or essence of space. There are many theories, some popularly accepted and some wildly speculative. I sense that the shape of space is more organic than geometric and that it fluctuates or ripples. There are some recurring patterns, but the pattern of the big picture is beyond our present ability to discover. We know that it is both contracting and expanding. It appears to be infinite in capacity, but may have limitations beyond what we can discover. I imagine that space, or what we are calling the "plenum" has all the senses we have and some we have yet to discover. I can accept that the plenum from which we come and into which we return is the source of all grace. I believe all its actions are good even those that might appear not to be good to us. I think it is made of fire interacting with all the elements we know, and those we do not. But, I know that the Hubble Telescope found indications in space of celestial activity before the big bang. This has led to speculation that there may be waves of big bangs before the birth of the universe that appear as ripples or ribbons in space. There is no popular consensus yet about this pre-bang space although there are numerous theories. There may be multiple universes or a multiverse. Some of the theories are briefly explained here: http://universe-review.ca/F02-cosmicbg.htm#prebigbang. What we are beginning to find in space discovery is series of big bang points, like portals through which multiple universes appear to be expanding and contracting . . . a breathing or birthing motion. The question that I have is this. “If God is the plenum and the big bang through which God became manifest did not only happen once, but rather is preceded by countless other contractions and expansions; is it then also true that God is not the fecund emptiness out of which all comes and to which all returns, but rather a process of birthing or breathing that continually manifests and transforms all that is?”

Seeing

Today I focus my awareness on seeing. A blue heron flies overhead. I return to the duck pond again to contemplate the patterns in the duckweed. Circling it again and again, I observe it from a distance, from above, from the edges. It is roughly oval in shape and about the size of a soccer field. The plant I am calling duckweed covers most of the surface, it shifts slowly during the day sometimes being like a thin veil over the entire surface, sometimes in patches speckling the surface and sometimes it all moves to one end or the other. The father duck is no longer there, but the mother duck and ducklings are still feeding on the duckweed as they glide slowly along the surface. For the past three days the father duck has been nowhere to be found. The rest of the family hides in the tall reeds, but he is not there. Today after feeding for a while, the mother duck takes up the place of the father duck on the stump in the middle of the pond and preens herself. The little ducklings continue feeding, braver now to move further away from her. They come close to where I am standing by the edge of the pond making gentle little quacking sounds. I continue circling and turtle jumps into the water disguising itself with duckweed. It pokes its head out occasionally to see if I’m still there. The water is very clear but the bottom is covered with thick brown silt. The green plant and brown silt make it uninviting for humans to swim in. I do not see any fish, but the heron had been fishing here for something. There is an occasional bubble on the surface from something breathing underneath. The patches of duckweed must look like clouds from underneath. I see their reflection on the bottom of the pond, creating shady places. The turtle’s experience of the pond reminds me of our experience of the cosmos. It cannot explore too far and much of what it sees is a mystery. The mother duck leads her ducklings for their first venture out of the pond to feed on the grass. They get bolder and move further away from her as they explore this new food. She shows them how to pull down the blades of grass and eat the tips where the seeds are. They try to mimic her but are not as adept at it, stumbling and shaking their heads as they try. Occasionally, one of them is able to pull something up and eat it making a great display of their success. I marvel at how quickly they are growing and wonder about where the father duck has gone. I think he must have flown away. Soon the ducklings learn to fly too. I hope I am here to see it . . . and that the cat is not.

Feeling

All the senses have both an exterior and interior reality. I hear, taste, see and smell many things at once, but I register only a few of my perceptions in a given moment and select which ones to think about and store in my memory. The locus of each of four of these senses is in my head. My ears, mouth, eyes and nose send information directly to my brain. The rest of my body remains relatively uninvolved in what I hear, taste, see and smell unless I choose to involve it. With feeling it is right away obvious it is different because my entire body is covered with the organ that feels. My skin is the largest organ in my body and sends more messages to my brain in a given second than any of my other senses. This creates a challenge when I become conscious of what I am feeling. I am a bundle of nerves! It takes more for this organ to get my attention than the other three senses because it would be information overload to register all of it at once. Starting out on a hike in the redwood forest that is adjacent to the retreat center, I notice there is precipitation in the air. Thousands of tiny little droplets are pummeling my skin. I see the cat has caught a bird and is prancing around with it very proudly. I feel sad for the bird, but feel no blame for the cat. That is its way. It looks so proud of itself. Overhead a hawk is circling. It has a lizard in its beak. I wonder about the coincidence of two proud hunters showing off their catch and think it must be the time of day that makes this a good time for hunting. The overcast skies means the hunters have no shadows to forewarn the prey. A breeze begins to whirl out of the northwest. I have only gone a few meters down the trail when I feel a sharp vibration under my feet and the air thrums with some deep \ loud creaking noise. My feelings serve to alert me to look and listen to discover more about what I am feeling. The vibration continues but grows fainter. I take a few more steps and there is another trembling under foot followed by a loud creak. This time I realize that it is the sound of a large tree creaking in the wind. All the trees are swaying in the wind and I don’t know which one is pushing against another to make the sound. The vibration I feel must be from the ground where the roots are. The wind picks up, the ground quakes under my feet and the air begins to vibrate around me. Birds swirl overhead. One more creak, prolonged this time, and the tops of some of the trees in the forest begin to tumble away from me, down into the ravine. Crash, crash, crash, boom! A tree has fallen and the ground is still. Inside I have a new feeling of reverent awe at being present at the death of a tree. Chickadees and Jays come swirling around me. They look in my eyes and sing out as if to say “Did you see that?!” They swirl ahead of me down trail and off in the direction of the tree that fell. I cannot follow them although they seem to invite me to go deeper into the woods off the trail into the ravine. I know in my bones it would unsafe. All is still and I feel grateful to be alive.

Smelling

I’m out with my nose in the air, actively sniffing what is around. It feels like a comical thing to me, but I’m determined to awaken my senses and be with the wonder of creation through them more fully. Like some kind of animal other than human, I’m sniffing around in the air. I have to say, except when there is a powerful smell that might mean food or danger, my nose usually just takes it as comes and doesn’t exert itself much in doing its job. Walking the perimeter I find that the air here is sweet almost everywhere I go. There is a seemingly infinite variety of sweetness. God is blanketing the earth with sweet smelling flowers, even the trees rotting on the warm forest floor smell sweet. Following my nose I find a greenhouse, an organic garden and an arbor with honeysuckle and grape vines with a bench to sit and take in the aroma. On my contemplative walk, I stop to admire the scent of every plant and tree. Later in the day, I go to the beach to let my nose smell the ocean. I begin to wonder if it is only my nose that smells. It feels like more than to me, my throat, sinuses, lungs and stomach are involved in smelling too. Maybe even my heart smells in the midst of all that. At the beach, the first thing I smell is the decaying flesh of a poor sea lion laid out dead in the sand. Many people are sitting all around it as if it doesn’t exist. A couple nearly stumbles upon it and look at it curiously expecting it to be alive. I steer clear of it and head upwind. The ocean has a less clean smell than I hoped. I remember the Atlantic sea air and the salt marshes. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has research on “Seeing, Hearing and Smelling the World.” I’m drawn to the research on how the sense of smell is powerfully linked to memory: http://www.hhmi.org/senses/d110.html. I notice this ocean does not have the nice salty smell at all compared to the ones I remember from my childhood. This is a disappointment to me every time I come to the Pacific. I still have my nose in the air when it dawns on me that my nose is more judgmental than my other senses. Of course this ocean is just as great and the air is just as fresh, but I rank it lower because of the way it compares to a smell in my memory. I notice that I am far more willing to suspend judgment about whether or not a thing tastes, looks, feels or sounds good than I am about whether something smells good or bad. My nose makes snap judgments that I react to automatically and rate with interior pleasure or disgust. I am dismissive about smells. I notice this today and muse on the connection between making automatic smell judgments and what we mean when we say someone has her nose in the air.

Tasting

After savoring a lunch of wild rice and mushrooms, cucumber salad, and a strawberry sundae, the duck pond draws my attention because I notice the ducks are making an odd little slurping sound. A brown and black father duck sits on a stump in the middle of the pond surveying his duckdom with diffident grace. On the other side of the pond a whitish mother duck wanders all over the pond nonchalantly with six rambling ducklings who take after dad right behind, more or less. As they move through the water they are slurping up the green plants on the surface of the water. Soon dad slips into the water and joins them in the feasting. He stays a distance from them and they move away from him as he moves forward. They do not look at one another. The ducklings follow the mother duck but resemble the dad. They have no interest in him or what he is doing. From one end of the pond to the other the ducks leave an intricate lacework of trails in the green plant. I begin to wonder what the green plant is and why they like it so much. My intuition tells me it must be good because they look healthy and content. I search online for green algae and ducks and find a link to The Charms of Duckweed. It is easily confused with algae because it is so tiny, but it is actually the world’s smallest flowering plant and produces the world’s smallest fruit. It is higher in protein per square foot than soybeans and easier to grow. It is edible for humans and is being used by environmentalists to reduce nitrates in waste water. Here is the site http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/duckweed.htm. It is fascinating to me! So much so that I find that I can’t get the duckweed out of my mind. All day duckweed keeps coming to mind. I want to shift to something new, but for some reason it keeps coming back. I am aware of this and try to let it come and go. But even in the middle of the night it comes back. At 2:30 am, I begin to call it “stuckweed.” It is very interesting and I’m grateful for it, but I’d like to think about something else … like God maybe. What message is there in this duckweed for me? The retreat director encourages me to stay with it although I’d rather not. It seems silly to be thinking about duckweed all the time. We’ll see.

Listening

It is the birds that first become so noticeable when I open my ears to all around me. But soon, my thoughts take me off to recent studies in neurology that has proven birds regenerate neurons in their brains seasonally. Like humans they learn their first repertoire for communication from their parents through listening and repeating. The listening and responding centers of their brains are much like ours. Scientists say they now know that birds generate new neurons in the brain for song learning in the autumn and put them into use in the spring as they try out new songs to attract mates and compete for territory. This gives medical researchers hope for finding a way to people suffering from Alzheimer and Parkinson’s to grow new neurons for communication to replace those destroyed by disease. Each bird has the song of its family, but with its own unique additions that can be detected electronically. I am listening to the songs of the purple finches trying to detect individuality among them but also marveling at them and enjoying. Floating on my back in the swimming pool, I am trying to listen to the birds’ listening. Suddenly a fledgling finch comes and lands on the fence looking at me curiously. She is all covered in tufts of fluff from her nest and looks a bit tuckered out from this early attempt at flight. She sings nothing, but she is listening as her mother and father both sing out encouragement and possibly a cautionary song to her. Then, poor thing, she flies off straight into a window with a little boom. But she is quickly up again and off. I think, this is a good early lesson for a bird, before she can get up much speed or confidence in her flight. No damage done. Her parents seem not at all alarmed. Perhaps they brought her to this fence for that purpose. After a bit more bird brain thinking, I return to rest in God. The Smithsonian has more on bird brains http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/birdbrain.html.

Contemplative Retreat

This week I am making a Contemplative Eco-Spirituality Retreat at the Presentation Center in Los Gatos with Jan Novotka. My plan is to spend time in silence listening to God through the melodies of the universe open to the metaphysical mystery of God present in all of creation. More about Jan and her music can be found here: http://www.jannovotka.com/. My only goal this week is to attune my breathing to the rhythm of the cosmos and to pray for special intentions. On this retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains there are ten sisters from our congregation and ten from other congregations. What follows are some of the highlights of these days as I focus on awakening my senses and deepening my cosmic understand of God. I promise to pray for all of you venturing in this new communal realm of creativity that the Spirit of Wisdom will speak to you clearly and effectively through your interactions on the web and that God will protect you from all harm.

God Give Me Time

I have many different roles and tasks that require concentrated time and energy. I use a fairly simple organizational system to manage my time that you might find helpful too. Here it is: Make three shelves in your mind. One for the things you have to finish by the end of the day. One for the things you hope to finish by the end of the week. And one for things which, if God ever gives you the time, you will try to get back to. This week God has given me time! That rarely happens, so I'm very happy to be able to work on two back burner projects I've been wanting to get back to for some time. I found a good user-friendly study of the two newest generations: Millennials (b. 1980-2000)and Generation X (b. 1965-181)and applied it to our Congregational profile to learn how to understand and support my younger sisters better. And I am creating a searchable online database to organize all of our sisters' preaching and make it available for future use. I feel very happy to be able to work on these two Congregational projects and bring them to completion!

Jubilee

This weekend we are celebrating our Sister Jubilarians and their many years of faithfully living the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. There is a record turn out of people to celebrate with us this year filling our Motherhouse chapel to the rafters from Evening Prayer II last evening to Morning Prayer today. The Eucharist will be at 2:00 pm this afternoon in St. Joseph's Church. We are hoping that everyone will fit! We have been practicing the harmony parts. I'm singing Alto, which I haven't done for some time but my voice seems comfortable there. The Descant group had the most stringent work out! I'm very glad not to have to hit some of those notes and sustain them. More power to them! May God bless them with good lungs and rich tongues. We have quite a powerful repertoire lined up. Our new choral director has a great sense of humor but notices every little too sharp note and too stretched e. I love singing with my sisters. It is one of the parts of our life that unites us as a family if we don't get too concerned about perfectionism and our own self pride. A song sung well is joy indeed! May it be so today.

Jubilee 2010

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Website and Facebook

I've been building websites, updating profiles, trouble-shooting issues with domain conflicts and making improvements to some of the sites that have been entrusted to me. Facebook seems to be building to a crescendo but I'm not sure where its all leading. It does seem to be a good way to get the people who might be interested in certain sites and causes together though. I've been adding about 100 friends a day to our congregational site and am trying to do the same for listening journal, substantially catholic and the mariological society. Managing several Catholic and Christian blogs, twitter, facebook pages and websites is just a part-time work for me and most gratis. Every now and then I just take a day to update everything. Today was the day for that. Has anyone else noticed that there is a lot of cyber junk out there. One day we will have to have a whole new field of cyber sanitizers to go out and retrieve all the junk in cyberspace and clear the way. Whenever you Google something you run into old sites that are no longer maintained or bogus sites that look something like the one you really want. Some of our sites have look alikes that are not at all the right site to go to. I wonder what can be done about that!

St. Mary's Graduation

On Saturday I attended the graduation of some of my "spiritual companions" from St. Mary's college. There were graduates who have volunteered with us in our schools and some who keep in touch through spiritual direction, young adult retreats and discernment days here at the Motherhouse. The keynote address spoke of making the journey from being a daughter of migrant farm worker in the fields in California to being a successful lobbiest for labor rights in the tradition of Cesar Chavez. Some found her message to be too political...it was definitely leftward leaning....but she spoke her truth with conviction and resolution. She is an alumna of the college and a member of one of the first co-ed graduating classes. We should all strive to be beyond politics by being magnanimous enough to find inspiration and wisdom in the words of anyone speaking their truth with love and conviction...even if their views come from a part of the the political spectrum different from our own. While I understand why Republicans in the audience might have been offended by her clearly Democratic message, I think there was no cause to take offense. Both her personal story and her position statements are authentic truths that need telling. I am an independent voter who tries to listen with an open heart to messages conveyed by all parties in an election year. Unfortunately, most political speakers ring hollow or are weighed down by self-serving concerns. Some are downright bitter and spiteful. It was good to hear a speech that was free of that kind of political jockeying. It was passionate and heartfelt and grounded in the speaker's own lived experience...an experience which is very different from my own. I hope her words motivated the students present to have the courage to speak out that same way themselves one day even though some might not "have ears to hear it."

Mariological Society of America

At our annual meeting we heard presentations from doctoral candidates and theologians on the theme of Mary in Scripture since Vatican II. I had the pleasure of introducing Dr. Robert Fastiggi who presented a paper on the use of the "sensus plenior" in the Mariology of Pope John Paul II. Sensus Plenior is a term made popular by the late Raymond Brown. It means the fuller sense, or the sense intended by God. In this usage it is a deep understanding that goes beyond the intellect to a true knowing with the heart, mind, body and soul. The society gives collegial critique of the papers and publishes some of them in a peer reviewed journal, Marian Studies. We were impressed with the scholarship of this year's presentations by doctoral candidates and theologians. It was a great delight to see 40 or more diocesan seminarians studying for the priesthood. What a sign of promise for our Church. After the meeting we went on a pilgrimage to the Montfort Missionaries shrine to Our Lady of the Island overlooking the Long Island Sound. Pictures from the event are in the smilebox below. To find out more go to mariologicalsociety.com

Marilogical Society of America 2010

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The Merry Merry Month of May

The weekends in May are always full of end of the year celebrations at our schools and at our Motherhouse. This weekend I attended a fund raiser for inner city schools at Golden Gates Fields and a sister who entered the convent with me, Sister Elizabeth Lee of South Korea graduated from Holy Names University. It is such an inspiration to an arena of excited new Baccalaureates full of energetic hope and proud conviction that they will make a difference and change the world. My prayers this month are filled with exhortations that God will look kindly on those who are just starting out in new careers, trying to build life experiences in places they have only read and dreamed about. The more somber economic picture makes this exciting time so much more of a challenge. I am mindful too of the scors of people with years of experience who are trying to start over later in life. Surely, God's hand is at work in this making all things new. I feel passionate confidence in the Love and Truth that sets us free even when the way is most unclear to us. As the May flowers burst forth from their tender enclosures, may God bring to fruition the bright dreams of all who hope for a better world and brighter future.

Photos from our Fundraiser for Inner City Schools at Golden Gate Fields

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Albert Einstein

My quote of the day from Albert Einstein says, "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." This new technology is teaching me to experiment and be more open with our communication. Yes, it can all go awry very quickly...but I see that it has the potential to build human harmony and accord very quickly as well. As long as I can keep a positive outlook and let myself make little mistakes and learn from them, then I can really enjoy the new openness and connectivity it offers. I want to share this new learning with you, and invite your comments and questions, but I'm a little afraid of what might happen. My guiding rules are to keep it honest...no phonies allowed! and upbeat... no rampant negativity! and interesting ... try to say something you wouldn't mind listening to yourself. I started out on a couple of other blogs that were going to be generic. But it was hard for me to summon up much interest in being generic, so I've decided to just be myself. The point of this blog is share with you a day in the life of a Dominican Sister. I started out with a post about my favorite day this year. I'll keep you posted on interesting things that happen to me as the year goes on. So you can learn what life is like for me, just one of over 25,600 women who are members of the worldwide Order of Preachers.

Blessing of the Lambs

In 2010 I went on a pilgrimage "Walking in the Footsteps of the Early Christians" as a Spiritual Companion to students from St. Mary's College of California. On the feast of St. Agnes we visited the Church of Sant' Agnese. Two white lambs were brought into the Church in a large basket decorated with red roses. They were blessed before the assembly and taken back to be taken care of by the Sisters there. These lambs will later be shorn to make the pallium, a white stole given to the Bishops installed in the coming year. I love the story of St. Agnes and the devotion the Roman people have to her. It is a story of innocence and courage in the face of injustice. Lambs are such a perfect symbol for that!