Holding the World in Prayer

Recently a friend said to me that it saddens her now that she can no longer hold the whole world in her heart!  That was a startling statement for me!  But, as I thought about it, I couldn’t help but think that it should  sadden us as Christians to read that our brothers and sisters are daily displaced from their ancestral Christian homelands because they have been given the  ultimatum to convert to Islam, leave or be killed!   

Today, suffering has reached unimaginable dimensions in Iraq and Syria where a campaign of religious cleansing has been carried out by the Islamic State group. How can we be blind to that? Is there still room in our lives to be deeply saddened?

In his 2013 book, The Global War on Christians,  John L. Allen explains that “Christianity is stereotypically associated with the West, often as an oppressor. However, today’s demographic and social reality tells a strikingly different story. Not only do 2/3 of the world’s 2.3 billion Christians currently live outside the West, but they also tend to be poor and often belong to ethnic, linguistic and cultural minorities.  As a result, they have become increasingly convenient targets of violence.”

How can we be deaf to that cry of the poor?  Is there still room in our lives to be deeply saddened?

Pope Francis, on April 6, 2015, asked for prayers for those who are “persecuted, exiled, killed, decapitated for the sole reason that they are Christian.”  He added, “They are our martyrs of today, and they are so many, we could say that they are more numerous than in the early centuries.”

How can we not pray for our martyred brothers and sisters?
 
O God, just as the blood of the early Christian martyrs became the seed of faith for other Christians, may the blood of our Middle Eastern Christian brothers and sisters stir up within us a deeper faith and trust in You and greater love for one another-- whoever and wherever we may live—and  especially for those on the margins of our global family. Amen.

Our prayers are needed nearer to home as well, for open hearts to welcome the many Muslim people who have immigrated to the USA, including the St. Cloud area, whose desire is to live in harmony with neighbors of all faiths and to work to make our society a better place. They need our prayers because they, too, have experienced prejudice and acts of violence against their community. This past Sunday, several of our Sisters attended an “Interfaith Picnic” at Lake George in St. Cloud. Shared experiences like this mean that, if disagreements arise, relationships already in existence which help us to talk, rather than fight or persecute. Those who took part expressed a desire to continue sharing – a way to make our prayer action and not just words.

Renée Domeier, OSB

Companying and Abundant Fruit

Apple saplings Common Ground Garden 2012

As we companion family and friends and hear their troubled times, it sometimes occurs to us that silent presence is the only word of choice. While we are listening we remember times we walked similar paths and didn’t want anyone to take our pain away until we were ready.

 The commentary by Patricia Sánchez for the 11^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (June 13, 2015) provided a clear image for wounding events and the results they can produce.

I am reminded of a sermon once given by the Rev. Henry Emerson Fosdick at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He related the experience of a friend who visited an apple orchard in Maine. There, he saw apple trees so laden with fruit that their branches had to be propped up to keep them off the ground. When asked about it, the orchard owner told his visitor to look at the trunks of the trees near the bottom. When he did, he saw that the trees had been wounded with a deep gash. “That is something we have learned about apple trees,” said the owner. “When the tree tends to run to wood and leaves and not to fruit, we wound it, gash it, and, almost always, no one knows why, this is the result: It turns its energies to fruit.”

It makes one wonder if silent companioning may be the gradual anointing that allows wounds to transform into the fruit of renewed energy. The gentleness of tender energy can become the nourishing fruit that bonds us to one another as we walk together day by day.

Mary Rachel Kuebelbeck, OSB

Transcending the Boundaries of Our Human Perspectives

Lately I have been interning in a hospital as a chaplain.  A couple days a week I have had the joy of meeting up with Tucker, the Golden Doodle Dog and working on the floor with him.  Why would the hospital with its highly sterile conditions allow dogs on floors?  Maybe it’s because science is finally confirming what people have known intuitively for years therapy dogs help heal people physically, emotionally and socially, and spiritually.

Most of us never think about how animals have the capacity to lead us spiritually in a variety of ways. They can teach us about death,  participate in our social and moral development, enhance our physical and psychological well-being and heighten our capacity to love and to experience joy.

Animals, however, offer us a unique opportunity to transcend the boundaries of our human perspectives, they allow us to stretch our consciousness toward understanding what it is like to be different. This stretching enables us to grow beyond our narrow viewpoint. It allows us, I believe, to gain a spiritual advantage.

How can we possibly appreciate and move toward spiritual wholeness if we cannot see beyond our own species? How can we come to know God, or grasp the interconnectedness of all life, if we limit ourselves to knowing only our own kind? The goal of compassion is not to care because someone is like us but to care because they are themselves.

Any spiritual discipline, in any tradition, invites us to open our hearts and minds. This invitation represents an ongoing exercise; the desire and attempt to open to others in our midst are the essence of the spiritual process.   

Trish Dick, OSB

We don't have a photo of Tucker but here's what seems an appropriate substitute - a picture of Sister Trish forming a bond with a dog on one of the dogsledding retreats she regularly leads!