NEWBIES

These are four little newborn kittens, Born February 26, 2017. I was the midwife for Mama.

Thomas Merton says:

          In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself,"
          I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself
          since in any case. there is very little chance of my being
          anybody else.

From R.W. Emerson

To Grow

Rabbi Uri taught: “Man is like a tree. If you stand in front of a tree and watch it incessantly to see how it grows and to see how much it has grown, you will see nothing at all. But tend to it at all times, prune the runners, and keep the vermin from it, and—all in good time—it will come into its growth. It is the same with man: all that is necessary is for him to overcome his obstacles, and he will thrive and grow. But it is not right to examine him every hour to see how much has been added to his growth.”

Martin Buber
Source: Tales of Hasidim: Later Masters

See Christ Everywhere

A friend sent us a dollar yesterday, and with it the remark: “Enclosed is for bread, but not to make bums out of those who should be earning their own.”

I thought of that this morning when I passed a little group of four who always seem to be hanging around the place, out in front, in the coffee room, in the doorway. Always drunk, sometimes prostrate on the side walk, sometimes sitting on the curb, they give a picture of despair or hilarity, according to the mood they are in. And, to the minds of many of our friends, they epitomize the 600 or so who come here to eat everyday.

This morning as I came from Mass, I passed the little vegetable woman around the corner, washing her mustard greens in a huge barrel of cold water. Her hands were raw and cold. It was one of those grey mornings, wet and misty, and the pavement was slimy under foot. I commiserated with her over her hand, and she said: “What are you going to do? If you don't work, you don't eat.”

When I passed this same little knot of men in front of the house, whom I had passed on the way to church, I told them about the little Italian woman, and they hung their heads sheepishly and went away. I don't know what can be done – except to pray. Here are the most humiliated of men, the most despised, the evidence of their sins flagrant and ever present. And as to what brought them to this pass – war and poverty, disease and sorrow – who can tell? Why question? We must see Christ everywhere, even in the most degraded guise.

          Dorothy Day  The Catholic Worker (April 1943)

When Way Closes

by Parker Palmer

A while back, I saw that my 21year old granddaughter had posted a quote from one of my books on her Facebook page. I was honored, of course.

Because my granddaughter is a lot smarter than I am about a lot of things, I thought I ought to take a look at what I wrote in that book. Maybe there was something to it!
So here's a story about what I was struggling with in my late thirties when I lived and worked at Pendle Hill, the Quaker living-learning community near Philadelphia. I was trying and failing to find a new direction for my life, and feeling very discouraged about it, when I got some life-changing counsel from an older woman named Ruth. I'm older now than Ruth was then, but her counsel continues to guide me. If someone else finds it helpful, I'll be glad I passed her wisdom along...

"If I were to discover a new direction, I thought, it would be at Pendle Hill, a community rooted in prayer, study, and a vision of human possibility. But when I arrived and started sharing my vocational quandary, people responded with a traditional Quaker counsel that, despite all the good intentions, left me even more discouraged. 'Have faith,' they said, 'and way will open.'

'I have faith,' I thought to myself. 'What I don't have is time to wait for "way" to open. I'm approaching middle age at warp speed, and I have yet to find a vocational path that feels right. The only way that's opened so far is the wrong way.'

After a few months of deepening frustration, I took my troubles to an older Quaker woman well-known for her thoughtfulness and candor. 'Ruth,' I said, 'people keep telling me that "way will open." Well, I sit in the silence, I pray, I listen for my calling, but way is not opening. I've been trying to find my vocation for a long time, and I still don't have the foggiest idea of what I'm meant to do. Way may open for other people, but it's sure not opening for me.'

Ruth's reply was a model of Quaker plain-speaking: 'I'm a birthright Friend,' she said somberly, 'and in sixty-plus year of living, way has never opened in front of me.' She paused, and I started sinking into despair. Was this wise woman telling me that the Quaker concept of guidance was a hoax? Then she spoke again, this time with a grin: 'But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that's had the same guiding effect.'

I laughed with her, laughed loud and long, the kind of laughter that comes when a simple truth exposes your heart for the needlessly neurotic mess it has become. Ruth's honesty gave me a new way to look at my vocational journey, and my experience has long-since confirmed the lesson she taught me that day: there is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in what can and does — maybe more."                          

from Pearl Buck

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. The heart withers if it does not answer another heart. The mind shrinks away if it hears only the echoes of its own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. 
                  Pearl S. Buck

Several Different Perspectives on Life

It’s important to have as much fun as possible while we’re here. It balances out the times when the minefield of life explodes. 

Jimmy Buffett

It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
       J. K. Rowling

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. 

Mark Twain

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. 

Viktor E. Frankl

Everyone who works with love and with intelligence finds in the very sincerity of his love for nature and art a kind of armor against the opinions of other people. 

Vincent van Gogh

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. 

Viktor E. Frankl

An Important Thought

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” 
                        Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

Wisdom from Rumi

Today, like every other day,

we wake up empty and frightened.

Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Jalaluddin Rumi - Sufi mystic-13th century

The Holy Club’s 22 Questions

In 1729, while John Wesley was a student at Oxford, he started a club with his brother Charles. It was soon mockingly dubbed “The Holy Club” by some of his fellow collegians. The club members rigorously self-examined themselves every day by asking the following 22 questions:

1. Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?
2. Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?
3. Do I confidentially pass on to others what has been said to me in confidence?
4. Can I be trusted?
5. Am I a slave to dress, friends, work or habits?
6. Am I self-conscious, self-pitying, or self-justifying?
7. Did the Bible live in me today?
8. Do I give the Bible time to speak to me every day?
9. Am I enjoying prayer?
10. When did I last speak to someone else of my faith?
11. Do I pray about the money I spend?
12. Do I get to bed on time and get up on time?
13. Do I disobey God in anything?
14. Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?
15. Am I defeated in any part of my life?
16. Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy or distrustful?
17. How do I spend my spare time?
18. Am I proud?
19. Do I thank God that I am not as other people, especially as the Pharisees who despised the publican?
20. Is there anyone whom I fear, dislike, disown, criticize, hold a resentment toward or disregard? If so, what am I doing about it?
21. Do I grumble or complain constantly?
22. Is Christ real to me?

A Must Reminder From Me to Me

I have said this before and I will say it again, 
"Blessed are they who have made peace with themselves." 

from "You and Me of the 10,000 Wars" - Emily Saliers

"Try making one and one make one. Twist the shapes until everything comes undone. Watch the wizard behind the curtain, the larger than life and the power of seeming certain.

The evil ego and the vice of pride. Is there ever anything else that makes us take our different sides? I wanted everything to feed me. About as full as I got was of myself and the upper echelons of mediocrity."

- Indigo Girls - Amy Ray and Emily Salier

Advice from A Dying Man

Disarm Yourself -- Andrew Forstoefel