Category: Community

Don’t Read This!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Seasons, spirituality5 Comments

December 31, 2026
Happy New Year’s Eve

You know what? Don’t read this! It’s only all advice, and who needs advice anyway!

Oh, OK. You’re going to read it anyway? Thanks! Here goes:

Have you ever driven on a long road with no visible signposts? Maybe in a driving rain or snowstorm? Maybe on a moonless night? Your passengers constantly ask, “Are we there yet?” You keep saying, “Almost”, as you think, “Please Lord, I hope so!”

Well, life is a long road, and sometimes there are no directions on how to navigate it. The celebration of the New Year can be our human attempt to mark the road with milestones that help us keep going.

No matter where the journey takes me in 2026, I have come to trust the following road markers:

Mile Marker One: YOU WILL CHANGE.

We know this so well! We want the change to be an improvement, not a downgrade. That’s why we make New Year’s resolutions. Here’s a New Year’s resolution worth trying:
Never resist a generous impulse. I remake this particular resolution every year. To the degree that I keep it, it improves everything about my life. I recommend it highly.

Mile Marker Two: YOU WILL STAY THE SAME

In other words, you will survive. Those basic gifts of guts, determination and resilience, which have brought you through challenges you never imagined, will continue to do so. You will make it — no matter how sad, sick, tired or overwhelmed you feel. There is always a new day and a new year. So believe in yourself, have faith, and move with courage through your pain or doubt — because you are a unique and unrepeatable expression of God that nothing can destroy.

Mile Marker Three: YOUR WORLD WILL CHANGE

The New Year reminds us of how passing life is. Take a look in the mirror!
Jobs change. Kids grow up and leave home. Friendships fade. Investments fluctuate. Buildings fall. And people die. So love and cherish all that the present moment offers you: yourself, your family, your friends, your work. Use your resources wisely and generously — the return never diminishes. Build places of love and mutuality — they do not fall. Love unselfishly — death cannot break such bonds.

Mile Marker Four: YOUR WORLD WILL STAY THE SAME

You know it will! The same aches and pains; the same unappreciative boss or uninvested coworker; the same demanding kids, spouse, or in-laws; the same rattle-trap car, horrendous traffic, unbearably excessive weather, and scarcity of downtime. But since so many things really won’t change, why don’t you change?
Here’s how. Live gratefully. That aching body is still alive! You have family and friends when many are alone or abandoned. A dear old friend put it this way when asked how he was: “I woke up on this side of the grass!”
You get the drift! Appreciate. Be positive. Give good energy and ask for it in return. It can turn a resistant world into putty in your hands!

Mile Marker Five: GOD NEVER CHANGES

God’s love for each one of us is complete, unconditional, and constant — and as the Hebrew Scriptures (Lamentations) tell us, it is renewed each morning, not just each year! God thinks you’re the greatest thing that ever happened because God knows your potential: you are made in God’s own image — creative, beautiful, generous, holy and powerful for good. When you look in the mirror all year– every morning, remember that! When you look at every other human being, remember that!
It is a New Year. May you be renewed, blessed and happy.

Thought: St. Augustine’s Ever New and Changeless God

Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade

Grace

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Faith, Prayer, spirituality, Thanksgiving3 Comments

November 26, 2025

What is “grace”? I think it can be many things:

Saquon Barkley weaving through the opposing defense like an electric needle
Alysa Liu, her silver skates writing poetry
in the icy air.
Andrea Bocelli, embracing a world he cannot see
with the vision of song

Yard by yard, spin by spin, note by note, these graceful artists work their lovely craft.

This Thanksgiving Day, many families will begin their sumptuous meal with Grace, that humble awareness that all we are and have belongs to God. At some tables, the youngest will be appointed to say the blessing, encouraging them to recognize God’s gifts. Whoever offers the prayer, let the moment be a reminder for us of what true grace is.

Grace is an attitude of the heart that lives life gratefully. It is that constant, though sometimes silent, acknowledgement that I did not create myself, nor any of the gifts that bless my life. With kindness and respect, we see all life as gift, a reflection of Divine Generosity.

In a harsh world, where Life and Earth are often dismissed with irreverence and violence, Thanksgiving offers us the grace to reach deepened awareness and compassionate action.

Meister Eckhart, 14th-century mystic and theologian, said, “If the only prayer we say in our entire lives is ‘Thank You’ it is enough.” And it is enough. When we realize that gratitude is the only appropriate response to the awesome gift of life, that realization is enough to make us holy, happy, and wise. It is enough to let us live with true joy.

Thanksgiving Day, our all-American feast, is a time to gather family, friends, memories, and hopes, celebrating the community that embraces us. Even if the past year has brought a measure of loss or struggle, still we have been blessed with one another’s courage and support.

In a way, we become like the luminaries mentioned earlier. Through grace, we find the opening in the defensive walls around us. Through grace, we keep our footing in icy circumstances. Through grace, our lives create their own melody.

Don’t let the cascade of football games or preparations for Black Friday shopping obscure our appreciation for this holy time. Grace is the light of God’s life within us, and no darkness can ever extinguish it. Revere it on this beautiful holiday.

Tomorrow, as we give thanks for God’s gifts, let your gratitude be evident. It may take the form of a long-overdue reconciliation, or a private “thank you” for overlooked work. It may be a little extra help in the kitchen, or an offer to head the clean-up crew. It may even be volunteering to say the Grace with humility and hope. It may be a walk after dinner with someone who needs your light. Whatever form your thanks takes, may it fill your heart – and the hearts of your family and friends – with renewed strength and love.

And thank you all sincerely for your kindness and encouragement in supporting me and this Lavish Mercy. Know that you are in my Thanksgiving prayers. ❤️ Renee

Music: The Thanksgiving Song – Ben Rector

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-23

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Our Saints

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Discipleship, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality9 Comments

November 1, 2025

Often, we see someone more clearly in death than we do in life.

One Sunday, nearly 25 years ago, our religious community gathered to commemorate the precious life of our Sister Germaine Donohue. Germaine, who was more familiarly called Mercedes (Mercy), was one of our missionaries in Peru. She was vivacious, compassionate, holy, and too young to die. While ministering in our remote mountain home village of Pacaipampa, Peru, this marathon runner who loved to dance suffered an unexpected heart attack. By the time the neighboring villagers brought her down the eight-hour descent to Lima, she lived only a few more hours. It was All Saints Day.

At her funeral liturgy, the legacy of love she had quietly planted throughout her life blossomed like a field of vibrant wildflowers. Listening to stories that spanned the 40 years of her religious life, it was easy to see how consistently she chose to be with others in simplicity, honesty, and joy. It became clear that everything in her life had led her to a remote mountain village among the poor, who perfectly mirrored her deepest values. They were her heart’s companions.

Just like producing a prize-winning garden, bringing one’s life to such a degree of simplicity and beauty is no easy task. As human beings, we are constantly battling the weeds of self-interest and the complexity it breeds. But when, like Germaine, we choose to learn from those who are poor, we can grow in our capacity to trust a Power greater than ourselves to sustain our lives. We thus become freer to celebrate the beauty of others and of life around us.

For their first ten years in Pacaipampa, our Mercy community had been laboring — without success – to bloom roses in their tiny garden. When the sisters returned from Lima with Sister Germaine’s body to bury her among her beloved poor, they were greeted with the miracle of the first Pacaipampa rose. It blossomed there, a new life among the simple “pueblos jóvenes”. Perhaps they named that rose “Mercedes”.

I share the story of Sister Germaine’s passing because I hope it will offer you the gift it gave to me. The slow, daily, and sometimes frustrating work of building our lives around truly important values will — in the long run — transform and bless us. In everyday decisions, it is difficult to get enough perspective always to realize that. But when our lives are gathered someday in the story-telling of our children, our friends, and our communities, may we be fortunate enough to have left a legacy of beauty — our own miracle “rose”.

Music: El Condor Pasa

This song, popularized by Simon and Garfunkel, is actually drawn from a Peruvian folk song.

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Proverbs 31 (Adaptation)

Who can find a merciful woman?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her community has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
She brings them good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her neighbors
and portions for the very poor.
She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her work is fruitful,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her beloved community
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her neighbors arise and call her blessed;
her family also praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman of mercy is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the heavenly gate.

October Blue

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, friendship, spirituality3 Comments

October 14, 2025

That long-ago October was particularly brilliant. It was one of those rare seasons where each morning was filled with sunshine and promise. It was a month that measured up to the poet, Helen Hunt Jackson’s, description:

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather.

I remember that October so well because one of my friends was dying, stricken suddenly and irrevocably by a severe pneumonia. Only two of us could visit at a time, so I, along with her many other friends, would gather at times on the bench outside the hospital where she struggled to survive. We would watch that bright blue sky and turn over and over in our minds those questions that have no answers. Why so young, why now, why her?

Starling Murmuration – Joe Hisaishi

Flocks of starlings were in their seasonal dance, bold against that brilliant blue sky. Maybe you have noticed a few already this month, swerving through the air in their perfectly balanced helix, like smoke at the wind’s disposal. I remember watching them during that distant October, wondering if we had told Gail often enough how precious she was. She was a small, humble, and joyous person – very quiet and unassuming. I wondered if people fully understood the powerhouse of generosity and goodness underneath that humility.

Gail De Macedo, RSM
August 11, 1937 – October 14, 1995

I found the answer at her funeral. Hundreds of people jammed the lanes to our Motherhouse and filled the chapel with their song to celebrate her life. She had quietly made her mark – and what a mark it was! Now, years later, the sharp edge of her loss has dulled somewhat, but her bold, quiet, courageous legacy has only deepened. In times when I need the gifts of humility, patience, generosity, and kindness, I pray to her. She always helps me.

Over this weekend, we should begin to see that “bright blue weather”. Watch for the graceful starlings, pirouetting their way to a winter refuge. Above all, as you wonder at Creation, reflect on love and kindness. Honor these virtues where you find them in yourself and your neighbors. They endure beyond all seasons.

Music: No More Goodbyes – Tom Dermody

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Revelation 21:1-4

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A New Box of Crayons

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Faith, healing, joy, justice, spirituality4 Comments

September 7, 2025

You were a kid once, right? Well when I was a kid, one of the things I really loved about September was getting a new box of crayons. It was a chance to start fresh. It was an opportunity once more to make my contribution to the design of the world with renewed sharpness and depth. It was a beginning participation in the infinite cycle of experience and revitalization we call “Life”.

Our ability with crayons, like our ability with life, develops in stages. As toddlers, our first box of crayons may have been a small three-pack of the primary colors, thick enough for little fingers to grasp, bright enough to make a mark, and (if Mom was lucky) maybe washable! Like life, each year our box of crayons grew bigger with both vibrant and subtle colors, usually indelible, a lot like life itself.

We learned not only that things are rarely black and white. They are not often really red, blue or yellow. We learned that a wild red rose begins as a shy pink bud, just like some people do. We learned that a true blue friendship doesn’t just happen but has to be proven through many green seasons. We learned that what appears to be a yellow streak may really hide the aqua depths of a courageous peacemaker. Each of our experiences brings us a greater capacity and depth to express the power of our spirit as they add the nuances of color to our understanding of life.

On September 11, 2001, our nation and our world added a bruising violet to our box of crayons. As time passes, we are learning to use that painful color to deepen our capacity for courage, compassion, hope, and resolve. Sometimes we and our leaders do this well; sometimes poorly. Our civic and moral duty is to pursue universal peace and justice for all peoples; to contribute to the well-being of Earth and all who share her riches.

As we continue to color our world with meaning, God, Who holds our hand, renews us in grace. In that grace, we are invited to begin afresh. We have a new chance every day to make our lives and our world better — just as we did in our early Septembers with that new box of crayons.

Let’s pray for and encourage one another — especially as September 11th approaches. Let’s pray for those who were most profoundly wounded by the deep purple shadow that fell over all of us that day. Let’s pray for leaders who have the magnitude of heart and spirit to create a compassionate and just world. And let’s reach out in sincerity to one another every day, like we did as children– sharing the colors of hope, faith, and love.

Music: Colors – Black Puma

This song and video present a moving contradiction. The music is upbeat, suggesting happiness. But in the video, a family struggles with losing their home and living unhoused.
The video invites us to think about the counterbalance between struggle and joy, between justice and reality. Lyrics at end of page.

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Genesis 9:13

Click for Scripture

[Verse 1: Eric Burton]
I woke up to the morning sky first
Baby blue, just like we rehearsed
When I get up off this ground, I shake leaves back down
To the brown, brown, brown, brown ’til I’m clean
Then I walked where I’d be shaded by the trees
By a meadow of green
For about a mile
I’m headed to town, town, town in style

[Chorus: Eric Burton with The Soul Supporters]
With all my favorite colors, yes, sir
All my favorite colors, right on
My sisters and my brothers see ’em like no other
All my favorite colors

[Post-Chorus: Eric Burton with The Soul Supporters]
It’s a good day to be, a good day for me
A good day to see my favorite colors, colors
My sisters and my brothers, they see ’em like no other
All my favorite colors

[Verse 2: Eric Burton]
Now take me to the other side
Little bitty blues birds fly
In gray clouds, or white walls, or blue skies
We gon’ fly, feel alright
And we gon’, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, yeah
They sound like ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh, yeah
And the least I can say, I anticipate
A homecome parade as we renegade in the morning, right on

Photo by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto on Pexels.com

A Crane in the Desert

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, Creation, dying, healing, peace, spirituality1 Comment

August 6, 2025

Today is the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Dona Nobis Pacem – Yo-Yo Ma and Illia Bondarenko

On a hot August 6th over 40 years ago, I sat quietly in the Nevada desert just outside Las Vegas. Most maps call the place the Nevada Test Site. Established as the Atomic Energy Commission’s on-continent proving ground, the Nevada Test Site has seen multiple decades of nuclear weapons testing.

But to the native peoples, the land is known as Newe Sogobia (Earth Mother), or the Western Shoshone homelands.

I had come to the place with over 200 other peace activists to pray for the end of nuclear wars, bombings and weapons proliferation. As part of our prayer, each one of us found a private spot in that massive desert where we could sit alone to meditate. I rested by a low bush to capture its small shady triangle in the dry, threatening heat even of that early morning.

At first, to the unappreciative eye, the desert seems a monochromatic place. The earth, the few stones, the sparse vegetation all appear to wear a beige garment of anonymity – almost as if they are saying, “Don’t see me. Don’t change me by noticing me.” But after many minutes of peeling away the multiple blindfolds we all carry, I became aware of muted majesty breaking from that desert like tender life from an egg.

A tiny hummingbird, the color of slate and sand, hovered inches from my hand. It drew my eyes to another small white object hidden under the lowest branches of the bush. It was a perfectly executed origami crane, no bigger than my thumb. I learned later of the Japanese activists who had preceded us into the desert, and whose custom it was to leave behind these beautiful “peace cranes” as mute reminders of the horrors of Hiroshima and of the hope for universal peace.

Later that evening, thinking about the cranes, I found myself straddling a confusing range of emotions. In the late 40’s and 50’s, I had grown up in a household that despised Japan. On my mother’s birthday in 1945, her 19 year old brother had been killed at Iwo Jima. It was a scar my mother bore the rest of her life.

But as with many scars we have earned or inherited in life, the years had taught me that there is an inner grace to every pain. Holding one of the delicate cranes, I thought about the innumerable Japanese lives – mostly innocent civilians – that had been lost or disfigured on August 6, 1945. I thought about the fact that life is never served by war – whether that war is global, local or personal. War serves only death.

The quest for peace is a complicated and endless pursuit. I ask myself – and each of you – to renew that quest today by harboring peace in our own lives. Refuse to solve conflicts by aggression. Look beyond the battle to the person. Be an agent of mutuality not of domination. Resist the normalization and glorification of violence and war, and defend their victims.

Eighty years after Hiroshima, we still see abominable inhumanity exploding in Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, Sudan, and the immigrant communities of the Americas. We cannot be silent in the face of what we see. We are called to witness for peace and justice by our words, our attitudes, our votes, and our advocacy.

God knows our world – our streets – need this from us. If we unfold the wings of our own hearts, perhaps the crane of peace can be freed to change the world.

Music: Peace Train – Cat Stevens

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: John 14:23-27

Scripture

The 5th of July

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, friendship, justice, spirituality8 Comments

July 5, 2025

Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com
1812 Overture in E-Flat Major, Op.49: I. Largo – Allegro giusto

After all the speeches, sparklers, and spectaculars, the “Next Day” dawns. I wonder what it was like for Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams on the fifth of July in 1776. Did they wake up thinking, “Declaration of Independence – signed. Now, make it happen!”?

When you get right down to it, most of our days are 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8ths of July. They are the days after graduation when we need to get a job. They are the days after the honeymoon when somebody needs to cook dinner and take out the trash. They are the days after the promotion when the first deadline looms and a bunch of faces are looking to you for the plan. They are the days that follow any major life decision, when we must take stock and determine who we are now – in this new dimension.

If the 4th of July is Independence Day, the 5th is Dependability Day, a day to celebrate the people we can always count on. They are there for the parades but they are there for the clean up afterward. They light the spark for the fireworks, but they have a hose nearby just in case. They put their “John Hancock” on the brave new dream and they show up the next morning to design its daunting execution.

The 5th of July is a day to celebrate our own sense of responsibility or “Dependability” – to realize that most of us really do try to be good spouses, parents, employees, neighbors, sons, daughters and friends – that we do keep making the effort every day to be someone for others and not just for ourselves. It is a day to look around at the people in our lives and be grateful that most of them are trying to do the same thing.

Like the founding patriots, we all need to wake up the next day, consider the “dependabilities” in our lives, and put our shoulders to the task of making a better world. Each of our lives is its own small country where the future really depends on how we show up on our “5th of Julys”. The fact that you get up every day and engage that challenge is cause for its own celebration. So if you have a little sparkler left in your back yard, light it for yourself tonight – and for your spouse, your community, your friends, your boss, your kids, your co-workers – who all showed up today to do the best they could on the 5th of July.

Thanks for that and Happy Fifth!

Music: We Need Each Other – PROSKUNED

For Your Reflection:

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Romans 12:3-21

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Pimple Balls

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Faith, friendship, inclusivity, joy, peace, spirituality9 Comments

June 8, 2025

David Lanz – Return to the Heart

The neighborhoods of my youth were safe playgrounds. On a summer morning, a score of sparkling kids would tumble out onto the bricks like polished marbles rolling to their sparsely equipped games. Occasionally, some kid would have a new pimple ball, prompting an hours-long boxball game, guttered corners serving as bases.

When, over the weeks, that ball grew smooth and airless, we cut it in half, grabbed a doctored broomstick, and hit the halfball up over the electric wires fringing our city street. Top one wire, a single; top two, a double. Lose it on the roof and you had to find a four-inch length of hose to replace it. This until the next kid lost a tooth, got a dime from the tooth fairy, and contributed a new ball.

On those afternoons, the surrounding porches and stoops were dotted with grandparents in folding chairs, escaping the swelter of the unairconditioned houses. They served to arbitrate any particularly sticky play, precursors of instant replay. Behind the houses, our mothers held council together over their billowing clotheslines.

By the time our dads came home, carrying their empty black lunch pails, we shiny kids were dusty with city soot. The beach-chaired elders had solved all the problems of world affairs and our moms had rendered the house ready for the daily family dinner liturgy.

These were such simple times, so simple that they may seem even naïve in today’s complex society. But their symbols assure me that, though things change, they remain the same. The shared play, the community of conversation, the neighborly support group, the evening gathering to home – these were the holy anchors that fed our spirits and honed our souls.

The outline of these sacramentals may look different today, but their substance must remain if we are ever to be happy people – people who live in the world as playmates, neighbors, friends, and family. That, dear friends, is what we were created to be.

Music: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

For Your Reflection:

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: Mark 12:28-29

Click for Scripture

Happy?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, joy, spirituality3 Comments

June 1, 2025

There was a quote floating around the internet some time ago. It was a loose translation from the classic poem “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. The quote, popularized through the film “Unfaithful”, goes like this:

“Be happy for this moment.
This moment is your life.”

There are so many ways to interpret this quote! We might see it as a cheap excuse to ignore the responsibilities of life and live in a fantasyland (along the lines of that famous song, “Don’t Worry. Be Happy”). We might see the quote as a failure to acknowledge the suffering and difficulty life sometimes brings us. Or we may see it as an invitation to let nothing in life destroy our joy.

How we interpret this saying has a lot to do with our personal definition of the word “happy.” If we think of happiness as freedom from any sorrow, burden, or difficulty, then the quote is unattainable. But if we view happiness as a deep, abiding peace and self-confidence, steadfast in the face of challenge, then the quote can open up a rich world of application.

With this deeper view of what it means to be happy, the quote invites us to live in our “now”. This particular moment is all that we really have. We can no longer influence the past, and the future is beyond our grasp. This moment is where we have the power to create possibility. In the action of this moment, we shape our world. Most of us won’t ever make the newspaper headlines or history books. Simple things – the things we need to pay attention to in our everyday lives – will make our mark on the world.

Each day, there seem to be so many realities asking for our attention. Certainly our families, our work, our communities are all seeking our focus. But other inanimate things call us as well: that undiagnosed knock in our car engine, the leak in the basement, the bad weather forecast, the unpaid bills on the kitchen table. All of these call on our attention, and can block us from living in the moment fully and joyously. But with discipline, it is possible.

We’ve all been around people who live in the deep moment. They pay exquisite attention to us, and to the life we share with all Creation. They seem able to peel away what is unimportant and to re-focus us on the essentials. They don’t do a lot of talking, but they do a lot of quality listening. When they speak, their words plant themselves inside us and create a sheltering shade for our decisions.

How do these “deep moment” people do that? The secret may lie in a few simple intentional choices:
• know to whom your life belongs and trust that Creator to sustain you no matter what happens.
• build some time – no matter how brief – into each day to acknowledge and connect to that Abiding Presence in your life.
• continually choose to see every person and every encounter as an opportunity for grace and possibility.

Living in such a way is simple but it is not easy. It requires the commitment of a spiritual athlete whose goal is to fully engage life. But look at it this way. Wouldn’t it be sad to come to the end of this one precious life and to realize that we had missed the whole point!

Music: Jesu, Joy of Our Desiring – J. S. Bach (New Age version by Lanfranco Perini)

For Your Reflection:

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 
  • What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?

Suggested Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-9

Click for Scripture

Memorial Day

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, spirituality3 Comments

May 26, 2025

Adagio – Samuel Barber

After my mother died, it was my sad honor to sift through our home in preparation for its sale. The long years of our family’s story had accumulated in closets, cabinets, and a few storage boxes. So many half-forgotten treasures lay hidden in the corners and niches of our now-empty home.

Among these ordinary reliquaries was one unique spot, reserved for the most precious markers on our ancestral line. It was a 19th century “games table” whose leaf folded and whose top swiveled to reveal a hidden compartment. Inside this table, in a shallow space spiced with the essence of history, lay our family’s sad and joyful relics.

Each was a treasure, but as Memorial Day dawns, I remember one in particular. The telegram had been tear-stained and folded into a three-inch square, almost as if to hold the words inside and prevent them from wounding again. Its message, like so many messages down through the ages, fell like a guillotine on the heart of another “Gold Star Mother”: “We deeply regret to inform you that your son James…”

None of our currently living family ever met Uncle Jim. But his memory lives with us. The dreaded telegram resides with me. His Purple Heart and other medals are with my brother. A cousin treasures a picture of Jim’s memorial at the USS Arizona. The story of his death on the shores of Iwo Jima saddens us. Although we never knew his presence, we have espoused his legend as part of our legacy.

But beyond his legend, we need to embrace his truth: he must have been a frightened hero, as are most heroes. He was a 19-year-old boy who loved his country and was brave enough to stand for its ideal of freedom. But he was nonetheless conscripted to an untimely death because more powerful men succumbed to the moral failures of aggression, greed, rampant nationalism, and war.

Each Memorial Day offers us the challenge to balance two eternally contradictory realities: the awesome self-sacrifice of our brave warriors against the moral imperative to disavow war as a means to peace.

Sadly, every family has its fallen and broken heroes. Their relics may rest on our mantle pieces or hide folded in our cedar-scented wardrobes. They may be creased and softened with age or as painfully fresh as the rip of yesterday’s mail.

On Memorial Day, let us remember and honor these heroes for their courage, generosity, and hope. Let us treasure their willingness to stand in harm’s way for us and for their belief that war could be won.

But let us recognize in their loss that wars are never won. War’s collateral loss — fractured bodies, stunted dreams, orphaned children, victimized women, hopeless elders, and a ravaged earth — is a price too great to pay. These expenses of war break the heart of God and God’s people. War, despite its profound costs, is a cheap answer to the failed pursuit of peace.

Let us commit ourselves and commission our leaders to do the daunting work of building true peace through honest politics, globally sensitive financial policies, mutual nation-building, and respect for human life. The sacrifice of our heroes demands it of us. The unfolded memory of Uncle Jim demands it of me.

For Your Reflection

  • What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
  • Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ? 

Suggested Scripture – Isaiah 2:1-5

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