Category: Faith

Hold Hands

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, Love, Poetry, Prayer, spiritualityLeave a comment

September 14, 2025,

Think about this short poem:

Hold hands with your life.
Look it in the eyes.
There, in the stillness,
God is revealing the miracle
of knowing who you are.

But life can be hectic, can’t it? You might not have time to just “hold hands”, right?

Don’t you sometimes feel like Indiana Jones, running ahead of that huge boulder, trying to keep all your responsibilities from overwhelming you?  Or maybe you feel as if your life has run so far ahead of you that you’re racing to catch up to it, watching it turn into a dot on the far horizon.

Life wasn’t intended to be like either of these images.  Our lives are meant to be savored and lived in a deep awareness of our “present”. NOW is the only time we have.  The people we are with, the challenges and joys we experience in this moment – this is our life.  So many of us, running from the boulder or chasing the dot, let the beauty of our lives evade us.

When I see people holding hands, I am reminded to be still and to appreciate my life in the present.  It’s beautiful to see a couple walking hand in hand, breaking a new pattern in the fresh snow. They might be young, just beginning an unimaginable journey.   Or they might be elderly, having walked beside each other through miles of love and sacrifice, joy and sorrow.

I love to see a parent holding hands with their child.  The child may be small, reaching up for security, protection and comfort.  Or the parent may be old, reaching over for the same things.  What a blessing to be beside someone whose touch can sustain your life!

Prayer is a kind of holding hands – God reaching for us, and we for God. I tried to capture the experience in a poem I wrote many years ago:

Poem:  A Long Faith – Renee Yann, RSM

This is the way of love, perhaps
near the late summer,
when the fruit is full
and the air is still and warm,
when the passion of lovers
no longer rests against
the easy trigger
of adolescent spring,
but lumbers in the drowsy silence
where the bees hum—
where it is enough
to reach across the grass
and touch each other’s hand.

So hold hands with someone you love today, human or divine.  Slow each other down to a deep appreciation of the gift of life in this present moment. 

Music: Holding Hands – Creative Commons Instrumental Music

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 139:1-10

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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

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[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

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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The Day After Labor Day

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Eternal Life, Faith, joy, Scripture, Seasons, spiritualityLeave a comment

September 2, 2025


On the day after Labor Day, our spirits change clothes. Maybe it’s because we all went to school for so long, but today we feel ready for challenging routine, daily discipline, studied preparation, and a chance to start fresh at the most important possibilities of our lives

This “psychological change of season” is an ancient and enduring reality. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes, who lived 2500 years ago, tells us, “To everything there is a season…”.
Think of your inner seasons that change despite the calendar.

Winter and spring may indeed come to us in the same day, with a birth announcement in the mail and a death notice in the newspaper. Summer and autumn coexist with a Saturday afternoon pick-up basketball game and a strained muscle that reminds us of our age.

The great challenge of our lives is to live all our seasons with faith. They are a reflection of God’s own Nature which is ever ancient, ever new.

So these days, as the kids (and some of us!) start back to school, and the air cools ever so slightly, it might be a good time to ask God the questions that will help us “season” in grace:

  • What is it You are teaching me in this season of my life?
  • How can I reflect Your love by the way I live my winters and springs, my summers and autumns?

Music: Turn, Turn, Turn – Pete Seeger

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: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

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Fresh Ground Pepper

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, Hope, joy, Mercy, Seasons, spiritualityLeave a comment

September 1, 2025

September has barely poked its nose through the door, but already we see signs of Autumn. A slight gold shimmers on the trees. Geese gather in noisy expectation. Early morning sheds its night veil in slower layers of magenta and blue. There have even been a few sweet nights when we can open the windows wide and sleep in the suggestively crisp air. All the signs are there — it is a new season – “The Season of Freshness”.

“Fresh” is a powerful word. Who can resist the crisply-aproned waiter suggesting, “Fresh ground pepper?” Who can ignore the aroma of fresh baked bread? Some of us even remember with appreciation the scent of linens fresh from our mother’s clothesline.

Let this beautiful season remind us that each day the Creator shakes out a fresh beginning for every one of us. With every radiant morning, the slate is clear with mercy. The opportunity to re-create the world awaits us. Our lives, our work, our relationships are the fresh bread of God’s hope for us. Within them, we are invited to reveal the powerful grace which runs just under the visibility of the ordinary. It whispers to us, “You are Beloved, and I want your life to be a fountain of joy.”

September is for fresh beginnings: a sparkling season, an unmarked semester, a turning of the garden, a clean page. It is nature’s way of saying forgiveness is possible, life is resilient, hope is eternal. Imagine September as the white-aproned waiter inviting you to freshness. At the Creator’s table, the tablecloth is clean and the sacred menu is forgiveness, hope, mercy and renewed beginnings. Don’t miss this opportunity to assess what needs refreshment in your life. Feast on September’s graces! They can be life-changing!

Music: September Song – Alexis Ffrench

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 92

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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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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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Summer Nights

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Eternal Life, Faith, healing, Hope, joy, spirituality2 Comments

June 15, 2025

Summer Nights – Tom Barabas

A perfect summer night is a treasure, isn’t it? … the kind you remember from when you were a kid:
• cool enough to play for hours without sweat and exhaustion…
• the long light lingering until almost nine o’clock…
• the jingle of the ice cream truck tantalizing in the distance….

It would have been fine with me if those nights had lasted forever. But like childhood, such summer nights do not last.

The challenge is this: can we retain the spirit of those nights in the heat or chill that follows In the long seasons of our adult responsibilities and choices, can we invoke our free and joyful inner child?

I remember one June Saturday a few years ago. I sat concentrating by my open window as a warm breeze drifted in. The street outside bustled with the sounds of the busy inner city. Inside, my mind bustled with all the work I had to accomplish in the short weekend.

Suddenly, like gentle bells amid the noise, children’s laughter threaded into my seriousness. Their roller skates softly clacked across the hard concrete of my sidewalk and my awareness. I thought to myself, “When was the last time you experienced pure, childlike joy and freedom? — AND what are you going to do about it?”

There are a few tender summer nights left in 2025. Turn the TV off and go out to your patio or front step. Play with your children. Listen for the ice cream truck. Sit on the porch with someone you enjoy and just talk. Or sit alone in the grateful stillness with our Creator Whose best gift to us is joyful freedom – Whose own playful heart created the zebra, the giraffe, the flamingo, the Blue-footed Booby … and, yes, even us 🙂

We know all too well that we were created to work. Let’s remind ourselves that we were also created to play with the simplicity and sincerity of our remembered childhood.

Music: Like a Child

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 131

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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

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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

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