Category: Courage

Live Like a Weasel

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Creation, Faith, spiritualityLeave a comment

September 4, 2025

Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who writes soul-stirring narrative non-fiction. Her book, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, was almost a second Bible for me when I studied literature in college.

One wonderful section has become part of my own philosophy of life. In it, Annie describes an encounter with a weasel. She portrays the experience in intricate and inspiring detail, using it to present her own theories on the value of intense dedication, clarity of purpose, and “the dignity of living without bias or motive.” In other words, she talks about living life openly and purely, of honoring the world around you, and of striving for simplicity.

She recounts the story of a farmer who shot an eagle and found, affixed to its throat, the dried-out skull of a long-dead weasel. This weasel, even as it died, seized the hope of life and fought to hold on to it. The story always makes me consider the question, “What in my life is important enough for me to hold on to it even to the death?” In other words, what are my very deepest values? So often we say we value something but we fail to make the choices it requires. We “value” exercise, but we never take the time to do it. We “value” health, but we continue habits that are not healthy. We “value” life, but we drink and drive, fail to wear our seatbelts and speed.

But like Dillard’s weasel, if we really value something, we sink our teeth into the very heart of it and we don’t let go, no matter what. Those kinds of radical values define who we are in the world. People see through to our hearts. They know if we have sunk our teeth into honesty or insincerity, into compassion or self-interest, into the common good or self-promotion. No matter what we “say”, our true values always show.

Our families, communities, and friends depend on us to be a person with strong values. Every day we are challenged to put these values first in our decisions and our behaviors. It’s not always easy. Sometimes we must be like the weasel clinging to the throat of the eagle. Nevertheless, we are asked to have the same intensity and clarity about our choices as responsible members of the human family.

Test yourself. What choice would you make in the face of the “eagle’s talon”? When people look into your heart, what do they see shining there? With sincere focus and right intention, we can live with purity of heart. Annie Dillard puts it this way: “We could, you know. We can live any way we want. … The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.”

How blessed our lives are when we live in such perfect freedom!

If you would enjoy reading more about Annie’s weasel, here is a short essay she wrote on the subject:

https://www.dailygood.org/story/1490/living-like-weasels-annie-dillard/

Music: The Wind – Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam

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 Timothy 4:13-16

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Monkey Bars

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Faith, Prayer, Psalms, spirituality1 Comment

June 22, 2025

Verde – Guido and Maurizio De Angelis

When I was a little girl, I hated the monkey bars. I knew it was cool to be able to do them — but I wasn’t any good at it! I can remember jumping up to hang on to the first bar, and thinking, “O.K. — this is as far as I can go”! For me, it was really a challenge to loosen the grip on one of those secure, sweaty hands and reach out in both hope and anxiety for the next stabilizing bar.

I remember one particularly challenging day at the playground. It had rained heavily the night before, and the ground under the bars was a muddy mess. Big Jimmy, the neighborhood bully, had challenged me to a monkey bar duel. Within a flash of the challenge, he had powerfully swung his way from one end to the other. He stood egging me on from his place of success.

I tentatively climbed up and hung on the first bar. Painstakingly, I lurched my way to the second. My hands were slippery, nervous pools. As I stretched for the third bar, I felt my grip slipping. I tried to re-grab — but I couldn’t. I hung by the fingernails of one hand over a two-inch muddy pool. There seemed to be no hope!

Suddenly I felt two strong hands around my little waist. They lifted me so that I could regain my grasp and they supported me while I hand-over-handed my way to the end. My Uncle Joe, who had been passing by the playground, saw me struggling and had come to my assistance. Without words, he told Big Jimmy, who was three years my senior, that someday I would catch up to him. But until then, I needed a little help to negotiate some of my challenges.

We’re not little kids anymore, but we can still get unnerved by the demands of life and of the world at large. The once-lithe body that reached for the monkey bars may now struggle to get out of a chair. The “Uncle Joe” saviors may no longer magically appear to support us when we are uncertain. The “Big Jimmy” bullies may seem to have poisoned our political culture with violence and fear. Yes, sometimes growing up and growing old can be worrisome.

No matter how challenging or scary life’s passages, God accompanies and supports us. There is no circumstance so muddy that God will not carry us through. No matter how slippery our grip feels, God’s hands are at the center of our lives, holding us in unassailable grace. We can trust God infinitely more than even our “Uncle Joe”s.

Yes, life can sometimes feel like we are swinging from slippery monkey bars, but by trust and faith, we can invite God’s loving support to surprise and uplift us.

Music: You Raise Me Up – Josh Groban

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: Psalm 28

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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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Holy Saturday

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Cross, dying, Eternal Life, Faith, Jesus, spirituality6 Comments

April 19, 2025

Tears of the Earth- Michael Hoppè and Tim Whheater

The Buriers of Jesus

In this world, we know much of dying.
It is the inverse of our living.
It is what we do here,
alone, and with each other.

What we do not know
is death itself. We think we know,
but these are death’s imposters:
isolation, self-absorption, dark despair.

The only persons who,
living, may have fathomed death
were the buriers of Jesus
who carried him through space
immediately bereft of God.
All creation was a tomb,
and they within it, tombed.

Those buriers of Christ
watched God’s own Body blanch
to white, to blue,
distancing Itself to pallor
on the far horizon that is
all lost possibility.

They listened, paralyzed,
as Life sucked Breath
from the miracle of Christ,
in horror at the blasphemy
Rejected Gift had turned to.

Left with just the ivory casing
of a once warm God,
the buriers of Jesus
tendered it in perfumed cloths.

The rest of earth was dry,
unscented. Herbs and flowers
closed against the giving
of themselves to air that
held the final breath of Christ.
They dared not fracture
the least of his remains.

Even earth, unbreathing,
accepted Christ into her womb,
a mother turned within to mourn
her own Stillborn Redemption.

No other moment
anywhere in time
has known a death like that.
It was so infinite, so huge
it ripples now to every life,
a nameless anguish,
distancing itself to pallor
in the pining soul.

Music: In Paradisum – Michael Hoppé

In paradisum deducant te angeli;
in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres,
et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,
et cum Lazaro quondam paupere
æternam habeas requiem.

May the angels lead you into paradise;
may the martyrs receive you at your arrival and lead you to the holy city Jerusalem.
May choirs of angels receive you
and with Lazarus who once was poor,
may you have eternal rest.

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: Luke 23:50-54

Scripture

What’s in a Name?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, dying, inclusivity, justice, spirituality2 Comments

April 14, 2025

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot. He died the next day.  The violence toward him was directly related to his moral choice to free people from slavery.  

Lincoln died at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, a staunch supporter of slavery and of the cause of the South in the Civil War.  On the night of the assassination, Booth – who had injured himself in a fall from the box where he shot Lincoln – received medical treatment from Dr. Samuel Mudd.  

There has been a historical controversy as to whether or not Mudd was a co-conspirator or an innocent player in the assassination.  Nevertheless, he has become known in history for the role he played in the death of one of the greatest American presidents.  

Perhaps you have heard or used this expression toward someone who is an enemy or a loser, with the words derived from this doctor’s participation: “His name is mud.”  

All three of these men made choices and their choices have brought them a certain place in history.  Only Lincoln’s choice, which he paid for with his life, was made for the sake of freedom and justice for others. His name and memory will always be perpetually honored for that choice.

Poetry: O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman

“O Captain! My Captain!” is an extended metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Music: Funeral March, Op. 62 No. 3 – Felix Mendelssohn 

Horizons

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Courage, Creation, Faith, healing, Seasons, spirituality2 Comments

March 17, 2025

Forest Dreams – Tim Janis

Spring is on the horizon! The long winter watch is almost over. But before we shake off its dark velvet wraps for good, it might be well to think about what winter teaches us.

The stretch of time between November and April is all about waiting. Bulbs wait under the frozen earth. Bears hibernate in the cold mountains. Birds migrate, their old nests empty until the spring. All creation seems to enter a time of patience and unrealized expectation. But it is not a time of desolation. It is a time of hope for things yet unseen.

Human beings also experience “winter” – not simply the seasonal one – but “winters of the spirit”. We all go through times when our nests have been emptied; times when all the beautiful flowering aspects of our lives seem dormant; times when our vigor and strength seem to hide in the cave of depression or sadness.

These “winters” take many forms. We may find ourselves sick of a job we had always loved. We may find a long, committed relationship wavering. We may find the burdens of age or economics overwhelming us. We may be the unwilling bearers of responsibilities we had not bargained for.

But if we listen, under the deep silence of any winter, the wind rustles. It carries the hint of a new season. It carries the hope of the renewing cycle of our lives. In that silence, we may be able to hear our heartbeat more clearly. We may come to a clearer understanding of what is most important in our lives. In the stillness, we may be forced to know and understand ourselves more deeply.

Others may reach out to us in their “winters”. They may be ill, experiencing confusion, or overwhelmed by the demands of their lives. They are asking for reassurance that some form of spring is coming. They yearn to feel the warmth and hope of renewed life. Our compassion for their needs will grow if we can remember our own winters. Surely, there has been a time when someone lifted the ice and blew warm breath over our fears, grief, or isolation. Someone held hope out to us to grab hold.

I think of a powerful image from the works of St. Teresa of Avila. She imagines God as a warm healer leaning over our frozen world, setting free the beauty of our spirits. This is what she says:

And God is always there,
if you feel wounded.
God kneels over this earth
like a divine medic,
and God’s love
thaws the holy in us.

Teresa of Avila

When we are compassionate and offer one another hope and light, we free what is sacred and do a holy work. Every time you touch another person’s life, you have the chance to change winter into spring. You have a chance to be like God.

Music: I Will Carry You – Sean Clive

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: Song of Solomon 2:11-13

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Standing Up

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Faith, Gospel, justice, Mercy, spirituality4 Comments

March 6, 2024

On March 6, 1984, a man named Martin Niemoeller died. He had been a German U-boat commander in WWI. After that war, he became a Lutheran pastor and initially supported Hitler.  But as the years moved toward WWII, Niemoeller became more and more critical of Hitler. Arrested several times, he finally spent seven years in various concentration camps beginning in 1938.  He was liberated from Dachau in 1945.

Martin Niemoeller wrote the following words:

“They came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist
so I did not speak out.  
They came for the Socialists and trade unionists,
but I was neither, so I did not speak out.  
They came for the Jews but I was not a Jew,
so I did not speak out.  
Then they came for me,
and there was no one to speak for me.”

As the world deals with interminable war, terrorism, racism, and cloaked fascism, we should remember that true justice and peace always include BOTH understanding and standing up.

Music: Show Me How to Stand for Justice – Martin Leckebusch

February Stars

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Courage, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Hope, Seasons, spirituality2 Comments

February 2, 2024

Starry, Starry Night – Don McLean

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The frosty blue nights of February fill our evening and morning windows.  We look through that deep sapphire richness to discover the diamond stars.  We imagine worlds, possibilities, and miracles presently beyond us.

Since Thanksgiving, we have been celebrating a season of hope:

  • the hope of Hannukah, when we remember the lamp burning miraculously and the courage to renew faith
  • the hope of Christmas, when we remember a small, vulnerable life that changed the world with the phrase, “Love one another.”
  • The hope of a New Year, when we remember past gifts that nourish us for future trust

But what about those times when hope flickers?

As we gaze through our windows at the crystal winter skies, our TV may be broadcasting the news behind us, challenging our hopes with the contradictions of war, violence, and disaster.  We may wonder where the great saviors and prophets are in our time.  Our numbed spirits may perceive only darkness and no starlight.

If so, stay still in the darkness.  Be quiet and wait.  Let one face, one smile, one kindness, one hand outstretched to you rise in your memory like steady Polaris. The world’s transformation to grace always begins within a single, shining human heart.  May your heart be that star for others.  May others like you fill your own skies with unquenchable light.

Poetry: Hope – Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

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 Reading:

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Crystal Clear

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Service, spiritualityLeave a comment

January 26, 2025

White Cliffs of Dover – Walter Kent

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One January morning, I stood with my sisters in our community cemetery.  As our religious community ages, it is a ritual we practice all too often, as we honor the legacies of women with whom we have spent most of our lives.  But that Saturday was unique. Let me tell you why.

That day, we celebrated our first military funeral for one of our sisters. It was a solemn and thrilling sight. The cold February sky sparkled like blue crystal. Sun reflected off the time-polished tombstones, creating an honor guard of light.  As we processed to the graveside beside her flag-draped casket, three sailors awaited us at attentive salute.

Sister Bernard Mary, a farm girl from Trenton NJ, became a Navy nurse in World War II.  After her service to our country, she entered the Sisters of Mercy and served in our healthcare ministries for over fifty years. She cared for the sick and poor with unrivaled perfection and compassion.  Her entire life was marked by a profound sense of duty – a duty suffused with love.  

As she was laid to rest, the clear notes of “Taps” rang out to the heavens, inviting her compassionate soul to “go to sleep”.  Like all the others gathered there, I drew so many lessons from her dedicated life.  One is this:  understand your duty and execute it with sincerity and love.  If you do, no matter what life throws at you — be it economic, physical, or psychological downturn –your clear spirit will endure and will ring out like singular bugle notes in the crisp morning air.

Sister Bernard Mary lived for ninety-one long years. Still, I left her grave remembering these stirring words of the first Sister of Mercy, Catherine McAuley: “Do all you can for God’s people, for time is short.”

Music: Taps

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 22:1-4

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Hospitality – Our Human Anti-freeze

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, inclusivity, Seasons, spirituality1 Comment

January 19, 2025

January by Vladimir Sterzer

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How do the great trees die and come to life again?  It’s a question we can ponder every winter as the bare, black branches fill with ice.  Their stark emptiness seems to be a place from which there is no return.  But we know otherwise.  In the encroaching cold of every December, our experience whispers that there will be another April.  Still, in the frigid dark, it is sometimes hard to believe.

Like nature, each one of us has our seasons.  

  • Our lives contain the seasons of our youth and aging.  
  • Our daily experiences turn in both the ebb and tide of life.  
  • Each of us has blossomed with spring’s new life:  beginning a new job, relationship, adventure.  
  • Each of us has cultivated what we love over warm summers of dedication and growth – our faith, families, friends, ministries, andcareers.  
  • Each of us has reaped the autumn returns of our efforts, walking away from a red and golden field carrying a well-earned harvest – graduations, anniversaries, promotions, retirements. 
  • Certainly, each of us has known our own winters, when cold has threatened and dark has isolated – and yet, like the trees – we have survived.

As we move into the depths of “Winter 2025”, it seems an opportune time to review the lessons of the season – especially the chapters on deep roots, inner quiet, and a hidden spiritual warmth that defies freezing.  

In the winters of our lives, we are invited to learn what truly sustains us.  We are called to delve into the power of endurance, forgiveness, honesty, loyalty, and faithfulness.  These are the winter virtues that sustain life deep under the surface of any paralyzing storm.  These are the salts that keep life’s highways passable, allowing us to stay connected to all that keeps us vibrant.

On any given day of the year, we can experience “winter”.  Think of the times you have received (or given) the “cold shoulder”.  Remember the times your explanations have been given an icy reception?   Haven’t there been conversations where you were frozen out?  Can’t you still see the frosty stare you got from someone who thought you were beneath them?  We have all known some sub-zero responses when we were looking for a warm word.  We have all received some chilly greetings when we needed not to feel like a stranger. 

Hospitality is the perfect antidote to all these methods of freezing one another out.  It is the human anti-freeze that reminds us that we need one another’s warmth to survive the treacheries of life.  If there is someone you have exiled to the Arctic, think about reaching out in hospitality, forgiveness or honesty.  This winter, let go of the glacial grudges, silences, and harbored hurts that sometimes freeze our souls and kill our hope of returning to life.  Listen to the voice of the dark December night.  It tells us how to move toward spring.

Music: Winter Sonata – David Lanz

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: Colossians 3:12-17

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