Category: inclusivity

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?

The Call

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Courage, Faith, Gospel, inclusivity, justice, spirituality12 Comments

Martin Luther King Day
January 19, 2026

Photo by Chris on Pexels.com

On this blog, I strive never to cross a political line without a clear moral imperative. Today, on the memorial of a fearless prophet for justice, I would be remiss not to comment on our current national socio-political environment.

This administration’s governmental dysfunction can no longer be ignored, excused, or rationalized. It has moved beyond the realm of political differences and polite skirting of “politics” at the dinner table. We are now in the penultimately dangerous dynamic of evil masquerading as good while, in fact, fostering a virtual genocide of anyone who is not white, rich, male, Maga, and subservient to its agenda.

We no longer stand on the doorstep of veiled neo-Nazism, it is consuming us, and many feel helplessly dismayed in its torrent. Look at us! Masked stormtroopers in full military gear, plundering, gassing, murdering unarmed protestors, wreaking havoc on innocent refugees, and teargassing pacifist clergy and children. Weep for our country, seen for decades as the keeper of peace, now threatening and enacting invasion on former allies and weaker countries.

We have a morally rogue President with a spineless Congressional majority to enable him, and an indebted Supreme Court to endorse him. It has become all too evident that we can no longer expect wisdom or leadership from the majority in Congress. There are many heroes there who are fighting the good fight, but they are outnumbered by those who choose to be blind or complicit.

If you are still caught in political denial, please step back into the Gospel. What does our current environment require of us who want to live the Gospel call in our time? Not silence. Not indifference. Not stubborn opinion.

These times require witness, mercy, courage, and accompaniment of those suffering under this plague of evil. You may feel that you can do nothing, but that’s not the case.
You can:

  • Refuse to condone any argument that blames refugees, people of color, or moral activists for current unrest
  • Persistently write and call your members of Congress expressing your outrage and demand for justice
  • Participate to the degree you are able in peaceful protests demanding justice and human rights for all people
  • Vote! Vote! Vote! In 2024, 90 million Americans failed to vote! The vote of another 77 million either ignored the bare fascism of Project 2025, or bought into its extremist agenda. We can never let that happen again!

In the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King:

The church must be reminded that it is not the servant nor the master of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

And from Bishop Mark Seitz at the El Paso Courthouse:

I make an urgent plea today that the government and immigration enforcement pull back from the edge and respect the sanctity of every human life, the constitutional and civil rights guaranteed to all in this country, to cease actions that degrade the moral and public order, and take action to address the impunity and lack of accountability we are witnessing in the indiscriminate enforcement taking place every day.

My friends, let us pray for courage; let us act with justice; let us live in mercy. Let us take inspiration from a great prophet of our times, Rev. Martin Luther King.

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

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 

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

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

Click the white arrowhead to the left above for some relaxing music while you read. 
You may repeat click if you wish.

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

Click for Scripture

Thanksgiving

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Faith, Gospel, inclusivity, Jesus, Mercy, spirituality8 Comments

Thursday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time-Thanksgiving
November 28, 2024

Readings for Thanksgiving Day:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112824-thanksgiving.cfm

And now, bless the God of all,
    who has done wondrous things on earth;
Who fosters people’s growth from their mother’s womb,
    and fashions them according to his will!
May he grant you joy of heart
    and may peace abide among you;
May God’s goodness toward us endure
    to deliver us in our days.
Sirach 50:22-24

Poetry: Thanksgiving Presence – Renee Yann, RSM

Music: Now Thank We All Our God

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

Woe

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Faith, Gospel, inclusivity, Jesus, justice, Love, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
October 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101624.cfm

The Lord said:
“Woe to you Pharisees!
You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb,
but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God.
Luke 11:42

Jesus got fed up with those who lived a loveless law. The Pharisees were meticulous in their outward observation of the Law of Moses, but they failed its core test to love their neighbor as themselves as written in Leviticus.

Thought:

The only love of God that has any substance
is the love of God enacted as love of neighbor.

Walter Brueggemann

Music: Love God, Love Your Neighbor – Dale Sechrest