I sit with Brother Martin Gonzales, over sixty years a monk and reflecting on the nearness of life’s end. We are at Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey on a summer day when the perfume of magnolias stretches across the way and birds sing, as he reiterates words he likes to share: “I don’t care what anyone says, but the spirit world is the real world. Just think about your life. I mean, at one point you weren’t. Just think... Read more
“One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.” -John Steinbeck If Steinbeck’s quote is true, we Oregonians have laser-clear pathways to pain. And sometimes I do—even for fleeting moments. Clarity, the edge and shadow of pain, always felt as longing. This week, in another Oregon downpour, I was reminded of John O’Donohue’s notions around the experience. The late Irish poet wrote beautifully of longing as that which “quickens your soul with wonder” and as “divine urgency.” In... Read more
{Chapel at Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey, Lafayette, Oregon} His younger voice fills the chapel, easy to make out among the voices of older monks. It is Christmastide and dark outside, with stormy wind battering the stand of bamboo outside the southside windows; but a massive tree covered in lights brightens the otherwise dimly lit space, creating a sort of magic. My heart is ebullient. I’m sure I’m not the only one to celebrate the return of relative youthfulness... Read more
Sometimes the lectionary readings for a Sunday coalesce around a theme, and this week it is the theme of ‘calling’ (Isa 49:1-7; Ps 40:1-12; Jn 1:29-42). As I’ve thought about calling or vocation this week, I’m struck by how it can be straightforward for some, and for others not. My close friend Martin Gonzales was in his 20s, home a few years from WWII and flailing when he visited a priest during a crisis. The priest looked him in the... Read more
{Excerpt from Jesus Loves Women: A Memoir of Body and Spirit, DreamSeeker Books, 2011} That spring I read Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, then his book on contemplative prayer. The stirring I feel during lauds at the abbey piques my interest in contemplation and the monastic life, and Merton helps explain them. But Merton’s way of looking at prayer and the spiritual life are relevant to a non-monastic life as well. They hold my interest. Merton’s emphasis seems to... Read more
You could say I am fond of animals; I have loved many as pets and close companions. But never have I loved an animal with the ferocious, guarding affection I have for Sybil Luddington—a cat of thirteen years, soft and gray as a plume of smoke. When my daughter Madison brought Sybil home from the rescue shelter in 2014, I thought she had picked a real lemon. “Why did you choose this cat?!” I asked, hardened as I was to... Read more
I snatch some fabric from the scrap heap, holding it up to the improv quilt square taking shape—‘80s playlist crooning in the background, or old Lionel, the window cracked so I can hear crickets or frogs or mourning doves, depending on the season. As I quilt, I sing to my cat, who surely thinks this tidbit was written for her: “My love, just thinking about you baby blows my mind.” In pandemic, with group-singing silenced, this evening ritual gained... Read more
Part of what Advent is, and what Christmas is, is a time of telling stories—most importantly, the two stories of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and in Luke. Only these two gospels tell the birth story, and if we look at them side by side, we see they tell it quite differently. The two authors have different things to say in these stories. And what’s amazing about literature, including biblical literature, is that we read or hear something different every time... Read more
Today in my car, I played Kate Rusby’s ‘Hourglass,’ which I hadn’t heard in ages, and was transported to years in St. Andrews, Scotland at the close of the millennium. Those two years were seriously hard—not least of all because I was often ill. But the sad songs on that album ring gladness for me. A fiddle-pipe duet on ‘Annan Waters’ makes me shiver it’s so beautiful—even if the tune, like most English folk songs, is tragic, narrating the story... Read more
“Advent,” meaning the arrival or the coming is my favorite liturgical season. And yes, part of what’s coming is Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago. The rituals of this season build with anticipation and hope in a way both beautiful and centering—at an often frenetic time of year. Gradually, we light more and more candles, marking how Jesus came as a light into the world. We decorate with evergreen boughs and trees, symbolizing the triumph... Read more
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