Category: friendship

Valentine’s Lesson

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn friendship, inclusivity, justice, Love, spirituality, Virtue5 Comments

February 14, 2026
St. Valentine’s Day

Benignity, a Fruit of the Holy Spirit, is defined as
compassionate and thoughtful action toward others.

Sister Gertrude was my beautiful 3rd-grade teacher. She was kindness itself in human form, the personification of “Benignity”.

About two weeks before Valentine’s Day, Sister said we could give one another “friendship cards” by posting them to the decorated box she had set in the classroom corner. On February 14th, the box would be opened and we would learn who our best friends were, and even if we might have some secret admirers! I was really excited because I was in love with Johnny Meyers, but I didn’t think he knew I was even alive. I thought this might help me find out!

It sounds like a delightful idea, doesn’t it, until you think about the couple of kids who don’t have any friends, or the ones whose families can’t afford the cost of cards.

I didn’t think about any of those things when I was eight years old, but I do remember one curious thing. On Valentine’s Day, every child in our classroom received several cards, even Henry Walsh whom we all shunned because he was mean and selfish. Besides, he wore his hair little bit like the monster kid from “The Blob”!

Then I realized that Sister’s conversation with me a week earlier might not have been an isolated incident. Maybe she had taken aside other kids besides me and given them three or four cards. Maybe she had encouraged them too to send a card to someone it was hard to like, or to someone who might not have friends. She had told me that we don’t always know what makes a person unlikable, but that usually it wasn’t their fault. Maybe a surprise card could help them out a little bit.

So, I sent a card to a few kids I didn’t like that much. And I learned the lesson Sister was trying to teach. It was the kind of lesson that kept on teaching for the next seventy years … and still going, each year with deeper understanding.

Yeah, and here’s the funny part that I have never fully unpacked. Henry Walsh, class mini-monster, sent ME a card! Apparently, he thought I didn’t have any friends, or maybe he wasn’t too thrilled with my hairdo either!

By the way, Johnny Meyers did send a card, and I don’t think it was one Sister gave him because it came with a friendship ring out of a Cracker Jack box. We all know what that means! Even I knew, and I was only in 3rd grade!

Nevertheless, I didn’t marry Johnny despite that Valentine’s Day proposal, but I learned a life-long lesson about love from Sister Gertrude.

Music: Try a Little Kindness – Glen Campbell’s song sung by Collin Raye

Suggested Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Click for Scripture

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?

Fun=Joy in Action

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, friendship, inclusivity, joy, Love, spirituality2 Comments

February 7, 2026

Today’s news is full of impending competition – (even outside Washington 😂). Who will prevail, be the best, break the record, win the trophy?

But the opening of the Olympic Games and the start of Super Bowl weekend have me thinking about other kinds of games – the ones we play for fun, not to gain advantage.

Photo by Jim De Ramos on Pexels.com


Long ago, an older friend complained to me, “I have forgotten how to have fun!” The declaration startled me and left me speechless. If there was a formula, “young me” didn’t have it. However, over the decades of my own aging, I have pondered that remark, often examining my own life for signs of “fun diminishment”.

Those signs do seem to increase as responsibility grows or as energy wanes. What came naturally to us as children requires a little attention as we mature. As kids, we simply ran outside into the sunshine or rain, found somebody or something that absolutely entranced us, and magic happened.

I remember sitting on the front step with my friend Harry. We were both nine years old. I had just gotten a plastic camera in the mail with a quarter and a coupon from a cereal box. For an hour or so, we took pictures of pigeons perched on the telephone wires and garbage cans. We imagined ourselves expert artists creating a legacy for generations. It was easy then to forget that we were serious fourth-graders with unfinished homework, impending report cards, and a few chores before bedtime. It was also easy to forget that there was no film in the camera!

Later in life, that kind of beneficial forgetting is not so easy. We must unleash ourselves from a chain of “to dos” and “be carefuls”. We know better now. We don’t go out in the sun without screening, nor into the rain without an umbrella. We mostly try to avoid pigeons and garbage cans. Our potential “playgrounds” become much more constrained, sometimes inhibited by a false requirement of excessive money, planning, or chemical relaxation.

Examining my fun levels today, I realize how blessed I am.

My nieces, nephews, and grands live hundreds of miles away from me. Yet they provide me with invaluable links to pure fun. Every morning, a few of us play Wordl, Connections, or Crossplay together. I know they may be checking to see if I’m still alive, but the main purpose is fun – and the precious assurance of mutual care.

The younger kids delight me with photos of themselves doing modern imitations of Harry and me with the pigeons.
In our convent community rooms, I may find a game of pinochle, Hand and Foot, chess, bingo, or gin rummy. Even more precious, there always awaits a conversation with memories of good times, funny stories, and the generous abandon of enjoying one another.

So, if I came up with a fun formula today, it would include these essentials:

  • Fun is any “playground” where we find and give joy.
  • To have real fun, we don’t focus on the score.
  • We need time to have fun, just like we need time to eat, sleep, work, and pray.
  • We need to know what fun is – that it makes us laugh, appreciate the other, relax, and surrender self-importance
  • Fun is essentially spontaneous, but we can expose ourselves to its influence by not taking ourselves too seriously.
  • Fun always requires getting “outside” – even if it means only from our self-centeredness.
  • We can have fun alone with a game or movie, but it helps to have someone to have fun with, (and as Pope Leo said, someone not created by AI.)

Music: We All Stand Together – Paul McCartney

Let yourself be delighted by the thought of FUN!

Suggested Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:9-13

Click for Scripture

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?

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

Click for Scripture

Healing

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, dying, Faith, friendship, Mercy, Psalms, Seasons, spirituality6 Comments

October 2, 2025

Artwork by Judy Ward, RSM

Today, for your reflection, a poem I wrote decades go. I offer it today in memory of Judy Ward, RSM who passed away on September 27, 2025. Her life will be celebrated on October 2nd in a Mass of Christian Burial in the chapel at Mt. St. Mary, where Judy attended school, became a Sister of Mercy, and taught for many years.

Judy, a gifted artist, did so much to encourage me and to illustrate and promulgate my work. I will miss her generous kindness and her friendship.

October is a time when nature changes clothes.
Leaves, like miniature volcanoes, flare up and die, ashes at the foot of a silent, seemingly immortal tree.
Geese, having dawdled all summer in veiled expectation, suddenly leap into the clouds and disappear.
These solemn miracles may incline us to consider our own impermanence and the gossamer phenomenon we call life.

Healing

Music: A Playlist of Autumn 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 104

Click for 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

Click for Scripture

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

Glimpses of Glory

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, friendship, Mercy, spirituality1 Comment

May 18, 2025

Spiegel Im spiegel (Mirron in the Mirror)

Like many of our immigrant ancestors, my early family was rather poor. They and their neighbors labored to put food on the table and to keep the house warm. I remember one neighbor in particular from my very early childhood. Widowed young and unskilled, she struggled to raise three children in a two-room house. My mother saw her devastation. Financially strapped herself, Mom would “hire” Rae about four times a year to help her house clean – – this rather than embarrass her with a direct handout.

Rae quietly and gratefully acknowledged my mother’s secret strategy. We would be rewarded with a pot of Rae’s famous “Pepper Pot Soup”. This was a poor person’s soup, made from scraps the butcher might otherwise discard. But, through her generous mutuality, Rae transformed it into a gourmet meal. She grew the spices for cooking in a little plot behind her house. I savored their scent which has never been quite repeated in my life.

I haven’t tasted Rae’s soup in nearly seventy years, but I can still savor the divine dimension of my mother’s generosity and of Rae’s gratitude. These women left me a glimpse of glory – an insight into how God sees, loves, and responds – both to our unspoken needs and our deliberate generosities.

  • 1 pound honeycomb beef tripe
  • 5 slices bacon, diced
  • 3 medium leeks, chopped
  • 2 medium green bell peppers, diced
  • 1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
  • ½ cup chopped onion
  • ½ cup chopped celery
  • 2 quarts beef stock
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • ½ teaspoon dried marjoram
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves (Optional)
  • ¼ teaspoon dried thyme
  • ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • 2 large carrots, diced
  • 1 large potato, peeled and diced
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Music: A Little a This and That – Pete Seeger (Lyrics below)

My grandma, she can make a soup,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
She can feed the whole sloop group,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
Stone soup! You know the story.
Stone soup! Who needs the glory?
But with grandma cooking, no need to worry.
Just a little a’ this ‘n’ that.

Grandma likes to make a garden grow,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
But she likes to have the ground just so,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
Not too loose and not too firm.
In the spring, the ground’s all got to be turned.
In the fall, lots of compost, to feed the worms,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.

Grandma knows we can build a future,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
And a few arguments never ever hurt ya,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
True, this world’s in a helluva fix,
And some say oil and water don’t mix.
But they don’t know a salad-maker’s tricks,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.

The world to come may be like a song,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
To make ev’rybody want to sing along,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.
A little dissonance ain’t no sin,
A little skylarking to give us all a grin.
Who knows but God’s got a plan for the people to win,
With a little a’ this ‘n’ that.

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 Kings 17:8-16

Click for Scripture

Languages

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, friendship, inclusivity, Love, spirituality, Truth2 Comments

March 26, 2025

A Sister of Mercy, visiting from Honduras, was scheduled to dine out with my friend. One spoke only Spanish; the other only English. Thus, the dinner party was widened to include another American friend who had spent many years in Peru and spoke both languages. 

Language can both bind and divide us. So often, people speak to each other in the same language but share no true level of understanding. I think of the venomous rhetoric that has poisoned our political culture and am saddened to see the beautiful gift of language used in such hateful ways.

But at other times, even without a shared spoken language, we can communicate with clarity and respect.

I remember a chance meeting a friend and I – two unilingual North Americans– had with one of our Peruvian sisters. We connected at an airport, each preparing to return to our widely-distant homes. She spoke very little English, and I– only the stilted, useless phrases of a high school curriculum. Still, with a few gaps and miscommunications, we enjoyed lunch in one other’s company. By combining signs, gestures, guesses, and silence, we grew comfortable in each other’s hospitality and care. 

There are so many languages beyond the spoken word. The language of kindness, respect, compassion, mutuality– these are the elements of the multilingual world we all should yearn to master. No one is so distant from us that they do not understand a smile, an extended hand, or the offer to share a meal.  And in that offer, we may just learn that we are “multi-lingual” after all. 

Poetry: Silent Language – Thomas Burbidge (1860-1892)

Speak it no more—no more with words profane
What only for the language of the eye
Is fit—what only can be told thereby!
The heart has tones which words cannot contain,
And feelings which to speak is to restrain.
Like scent with scent commixed invisibly,
Or rays of neighbour planets in the sky
Inter-confused; or, as in some deep strain
Of music, heavenly passion is combined
With thought, and tone with tone in harmony,
Thus be the meeting of our hearts, dear love!
The pure communion of mind with mind,
Above poor symbols of this earth,—above
All that can baulk or cramp,—can change or die.

Music: Love in Any Language – Sandy Patty

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: Ephesians 4:1-7

Click for Scripture

Stranger

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Creation, Eternal Life, Faith, friendship, inclusivity, justice, spirituality1 Comment

Saturday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
November 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111624.cfm

Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers and sisters,
especially for strangers;
they have testified to your love before the Church.
Please help them in a way worthy of God to continue their journey.
For they have set out for the sake of the Name
and are accepting nothing from the pagans.
Therefore, we ought to support such persons,
so that we may be co-workers in the truth.
3 John 5:8

Most of us have felt like strangers at some point in our lives. It’s not a nice feeling. You might have attended an event without a date or companion. You might have been the only woman in a group of men, or vice versa. You might have been the only Black person at a White funeral or the other way around. Didn’t we hope to find someone to connect to, someone who would offer us an open door?

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As we think about Paul’s teaching, and our own experiences, let’s prayerfully consider our attitudes and actions regarding immigrants and refugees. Persons displaced by climate, politics, poverty, lawlessness, and a host of other causes deserve our help, as Paul describes. Let’s ask ourselves how we’re doing with that.

Poem: The Kindness of Strangers – Sally Van Dorn

Here I am with all my flaws
seeking form and shelter.

I blanche at the notion
of violence, but it’s coming

after us, closing in like a
superstition I can’t shake.

If I acquiesce to your harsh
future you must promise me

one thing. Where we go we will
find our youth again. Can you

see it there under the yellow linen
tablecloth? I’m depending on it.

Music: Wayfaring Stranger – published in 1858, author unknown

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling through this world below
There is no sickness, no toil, no danger
In that bright land to which I go
I'm going there to see my father
And all my loved ones who've gone on
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
I know dark clouds will gather 'round me
I know my way is hard and steep
But beauteous fields arise before me
Where God's redeemed, their vigils keep
I'm going there to see my mother
She said she'd meet me when I come
So I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home

Friendship

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Books, Discipleship, Eternal Life, Faith, friendship, Gospel, Jesus, Love, spirituality1 Comment

Thursday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
October 10, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101024.cfm

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Suppose one of you has a friend
to whom he goes at midnight and says,
‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey
and I have nothing to offer him,’
and he says in reply from within,
‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.’
I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.

“And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Luke 11:5-11

In our Gospel today, Jesus describes the meaning of friendship and invites his disciples to receive that gift from God.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask God to show us the profound beauty of Divine Friendship. We are grateful and humbled to be offered such a gift.

William Barry, SJ – one of my top ten spiritual writers – has written an inspiring book about friendship with God. Barry believes, as I do, that the concept of friendship best describes one’s deepening relationship with God.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=William+Barry&i=stripbooks&crid=3N6T8EPSQT76V&sprefix=william+barry%2Cstripbooks%2C93&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Excerpt from William Barry, SJ:

What does God want in creating us? My stand is that what God wants is friendship.
To forestall immediate objections, let me say that I do not mean that God is lonely and therefore needs our friendship. This is a romantic and quite unorthodox notion that makes God ultimately unbelievable. No, I maintain that God—out of the abundance of divine relational life, not any need for us—desires humans into existence for the sake of friendship.

Music: I’ve Found a Friend – J. G. Small (1866)

Although this hymn echoes some revival tones of the 19th century, I think is still a beautiful and unexpectedtribute to Divine Friendship.