Category: Seasons

Spring Equinox

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Forgiveness, Love, Mercy, Seasons, spirituality4 Comments

The Great Forgiveness

Ah, Equinox!  Today our Earth will put away her winter jewels – her cold snow pearls and glistening ice diamonds stored until distant December.  With them, she lays aside her cool reserve, the stark elegance of silhouetted trees against a white landscape.  She says, “I have finished my silent retreat”.

Instead, Lady Earth unveils her costume jewelry – that improbable mix of pinks, purples, greens and yellows. Even though this morning in Philadelphia, she wraps them in a shimmering chill, we know it hides a riotous, tumbling April.

Every year we wonder if those bare trees and barren hillsides will ever green again. But they do!  Spring is the act of “Great Forgiveness”.  It is the time when Nature mirrors the Infinite Mercy of her Creator and says, “Fear not, Sweet Earth.  I am deeper than your cold.  My resilience has redeemed us both for another chance at life”.

We human beings, too, are capable of such resilience.  I remember my mother’s infinite patience with an annoying neighbor whose seemingly innocent conversation harbored veiled references to her economic superiority.  Little wintry comments like, “It’s a shame you didn’t choose a Hoover.  It would make your life so much easier!”  Even as a child, I was nettled almost beyond tolerance by her chilly comparisons.

But my mother, who was no push-over and who did not suffer fools gladly, was patient and faithful.  She would tell me that Mary never had the love of family and friends that we enjoyed.  She helped me understand that sometimes people can’t help showing the December within their hearts if they have never been kindled by another’s kindness.  My mother wanted me to live from the “Great Forgiveness” that can warm any cold, indifference, or careless judgment.

At one point when I was still very young, my mother became quite ill and after a long hospitalization, returned home for an extended recuperation.  During that time, Mary came every day to cook for our large, working family.  Weekly, she cleaned our house with the same decrepit vacuum she had earlier criticized.  Without a word, Mary challenged me to learn another lesson about the nature of fidelity and true friendship and the opportunity to give it voice without words.

Years later, I read a quote that captured these lessons: “Always be kind.  We never know the battles someone else may be fighting.”  These are lessons I remember with gratitude today in this equinox of another “Great Forgiveness”. It is a largesse we can imitate if we simply remember the mercies we have received from the hand of our forgiving God.

Blessings to you all and a joyous Spring!

Winter Solstice

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Prayer, Seasons, spirituality6 Comments

On Thursday, December 21, 2023, at 10:27 PM (EST),
the northern hemisphere will experience the Winter Solstice,
that moment in time of ultimate darkness.
I send a prayer of blessing to you all in that sacred moment.

Music: To counterpoint your quiet, here’s a high-spirited welcome to the Solstice from Jethro Tull.

Now is the solstice of the year
Winter is the glad song that you hear
Seven maids move in seven time
Have the lads up ready in a line
Ring out these bells
Ring out, ring solstice bells
Ring solstice bells

Join together ‘neath the mistletoe,
By the holy oak whereon it grows
Seven druids dance in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming
Ring out these bells
Ring out, ring solstice bells
Ring solstice bells

Ring out, ring out the solstice bells
Ring out, ring out the solstice bells
Praise be to the distant sister sun,
Joyful as the silver planets run
Seven maids move in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming
Ring out these bells
Ring out, ring solstice bells
Ring solstice bells
Ring on, ring out
Ring on, ring out
Ring on, ring out
Ring on, ring out

Summer Solstice

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Seasons, spirituality1 Comment

On Friday, December 22, 2023, at 2:27 PM (Eastern Australia Time),
the southern hemisphere will experience the Summer Solstice,
that moment in time of ultimate light. 
With this short reflection,
I send a prayer of blessing to you all in that sacred moment.

(Photo by Norexy_art on Pixabay)

Ah, the perfect summer night… the kind you remember from when you were a kid:

  • cool enough to run for hours without being laden with sweat and exhaustion…
  • the long summer light lingering until almost 9:00 P.M.…
  • the jingle of the ice cream truck tantalizing in the distance….
     
    If only such nights could last forever. But like childhood, such a summer night simply does not last.
     
    The challenge is this: can we retain its spirit in the heat or chill of the days that follow. In the long summer of our adult responsibilities and choices, can we call up the heart of a child?
     
    I remember one June Saturday many years ago. I sat by my open window across the street from Mercy Hospital. 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 noise, the laughter of children threaded itself 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 good many tender summer nights left in 2023. Turn the TV off and go out to your patio or your front step. Play with your children. Listen for the ice cream man. Sit on the porch with someone you love 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 kangaroo … 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: Song for Summer Solstice – Libby Roderick

Daylight comes and nighttime goes, nighttime falls, day flies
Round and round the cycle goes, we live and then we die and then we live and then we die.
The seasons of my life go round, the sunshine and the rain
The fallow and the fruitful days, the joy and then the pain and then the joy and then the pain.
As light below, so light above, so light in all we see

The light is in the act of love, the light that sets us free, yes, it’s the light that sets free.
Daylight comes…

Welcome, November!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Poetry, Prayer, Seasons, spirituality1 Comment

I love this beautiful poem, The Shepherd’s Calendar by John Clare. Placing myself in its lovely artistic images, I have a grateful and deep appreciation of Earth and of her changing seasons. I like to pray with the poem in the spirit of Laudato Si, praising God for the beauty of Creation.

It’s a bit long, so you might just want to come back to it several times throughout the month, taking just one small stanza that seems to fit you day or mood.

Click the little white arrow in the bar below for accompanying music as you pray. You can re-click any number of times you wish.
To see each of the ten slides at your own pace, click the very small arrowhead > to the right of the slide.

November blessings to all of you, dear readers.

Welcome, October!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Seasons, spirituality3 Comments

For my friends in the Northern Hemisphere:

Music:

For my friends in the midst of Australian Spring:

Spring in Australia: S.D. Tiwari

In the months of September and October,
glimpse freshness and exquisiteness allover.
Their winter ends, God of the nature sends,
the queen of seasons to the Australian land.

Cuckoo and magpie sing, songs of spring.
Butterflies bring amazing colours on wings.
Purple carpets spread on the road side,
Under showering petals, walkers feel pride.

Temperature of land is pleasant and mild.
Bloomed in jungles, millions of flowers wild.
Trail of purple Jakaranda under the blue sky.
In the gardens stunning, vivid colours sigh.

When Europe is heading to the autumn fall.
Aussies prepare them to welcome the rainfall.
At winter’s door, Europe celebrates Halloween,
Aussies taste in spring, their pie of pumpkin.

The days are spectacular, bright and pleasant.
Queen of seasons makes jovial the peasants.
Kangaroos hop happy, birds and bees are proud.
During the spring, vineyards are full of crowd.

Athanasius in Spring

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Eastertide, Poetry, Seasons, spiritualityLeave a comment

Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
May 2, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/050223.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we celebrate the feast of St. Athanasius, and since our readings repeat themes we have prayed with for a few days, I thought we might focus our prayer today on Athanasius.

Living in 4th century Egypt, Athanasius was a Church Father – one of the ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. (For insight into the often uncelebrated Church Mothers, see this excellent article: https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/simply-spirit/honor-mothers-early-christianity-during-womens-history-month )

During his lifetime, the Church struggled with the heresy of Arianism which questioned whether Jesus was really God. Athanasius was named a Doctor of the Church for his steadfast defense of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Some of Athanasius’s writings are suggestive of the theology of our great modern theologians, and so necessary for our spirituality today.

The Self-revealing of the Word
is in every dimension –
above, in creation;
below, in the Incarnation;
in the depth, in Hades;
in the breadth, throughout the world.
All things have been filled
with the knowledge of God.

St. Athanasius

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the revered Jesuit theologian of the early 20th century, writes in a tone suggestive of Athanasius:

If we live at a distance from God, the universe remains neutral or hostile to us. But if believe in God, immediately all around us the elements, even the irksome, organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.

Pierre de Chardin, SJ in Christianity and Evolution

More recently, beloved Pope Francis teaches with the same sacred appreciation of the “mystical” depths of Creation:

The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things.

Pope Francis in Laudato Sí, 84)

As we pray in these early days of May, still drenched in the glory of Easter, may we hear God speaking to us in the infinitely new and ever-evolving power and beauty of all Creation.

The occurrence of chance in the world in its own finite way reflects the infinite creativity of the living God, endless source of fresh possibilities. The indwelling Creator Spirit grounds not only life’s regularities but also the novel occurrences that open up the status quo, igniting what is unexpected, interruptive, genuinely uncontrolled, and unimaginably possible. As boundless love at work in the universe, the Spirit embraces the chanciness of random mutations, being the source not only of order but also of the unexpected breaks in order that ensure freshness. Divine creativity is much more closely allied to the outbreak of novelty than our older order-oriented theology ever imagined

Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ – Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University in her book, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love

Poetry: Spring – Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Music: Spring from The Four Seasons – Antonio Vivaldi

The Last Day of April

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Hope, Love, Seasons, spirituality4 Comments

April 30, 2023

On this last day of the month, let me start with a caveat:  I love April.  It is the month of my birth and the birth of several people I love.  April often gives us our first glimpse of spring and our first sounds of Alleluia. 

But April is also full of contradictions: teasing sun and drenching rain; “shorts” weather one day, mufflers the next; a large measure of Easters, but a heavy dose of Good Fridays.

In other words, April – like its cousin October – is most perfectly reflective of our rollercoaster lives. And that reflection mirrors, not exactly a sadness, but a certain purple wistfulness inherent in all of life. Catherine McAuley described it this way: 

This mingling is something we balance within ourselves every day of our lives, but maybe especially in April, as the great poet T.S. Eliot notes:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

So what do we do with April’s “cruelty” which might be defined as that tinge of melancholy lurking even in the greatest joy? 

Rather than push it down or turn away from it (which I think most of us try to), there is a gift in prayerfully breaking open that languor, like an egg shell holding life’s fragile and surprising transformation. 

For example, we might place before God in prayer these “cruelties” which carry both joys and sorrows:

  • Change which, in any form, requires a shifting from the comforts that have secured us
  • Loss that comes in the shape of missed opportunities, lapsed friendships, harbored unforgiveness, wrong choices and a hundred other “wish I could do over”s
  • Aging which, though a blessing when considering the alternative, brings a slow reckoning with our vulnerabilities
  • Bereavement, that terrible forest of loving memories and winding sadness where we feel lost as we long for healing

The poet Phillis Levin captures the power of such reflection in her beautiful poem. It’s a sad poem, but articulating it gave the poet an emotional release that carried healing :

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.
I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms
when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti
It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.
I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell
except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.
What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart
where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.

As we move into the bright light of May then summer, it’s important not to neglect that shadowed strain running through and binding all human experience. When we, like Catherine McAuley, find it rising to the surface of our lives, we too must reflectively pray it into God’s heart so that we can find its healing power and peace.

Music: The Last Day of April – Ann Sweeten

Autumn Equinox

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, Love, Poetry, Seasons, spirituality1 Comment

Wednesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

September 22, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we mark the Autumn Equinox, we pray with a verse from our Responsorial Psalm:

Bless the Lord, all you chosen ones,
and may all of you praise God’s majesty.
Celebrate days of gladness, 
give God praise.

Tobit 13: 7-8
"EQUINOX"
- the beautiful heft of the word!
Four malleable vowels and
two steely consonants,
softened slightly by a third.
On the fulcrum of a middle "i",
"equ" pushes for balance
against the pressure of "nox",
whose mass bears 
winter's weighted threat.

However we may read the word “equinox”, it spells “change“. Trees put away their lithesome summer greens, like sleeveless tops folded on September’s shelf. Slowly, they wrap themselves within autumn’s deep gold and umber sweaters, trimmed in warm magenta.

We too return to the enterprise of warmth, of fueling fires, of lighting lamps. What nature gave, and we heedlessly received in bright July, is spent. Some chilled memory of solstice motivates us to prepare.

Our hearts too, in synch or out with seasons, cycle through such changes. This inner rhythm of need and abundance is the music through which the Holy Spirit shapes our understanding of God. As in all graceful dances, there must be a yielding. There must be abandon to the mystery into which each passing step dissolves.

God hums the infinite song in our souls, if we will listen. It is deeper than any single note of joy or sorrow. It is the fluid under-beat of Love which recreates and sustains us in every shifting moment of our lives. We belong to it as the waves belong to the Sea, as the leaves belong to the Seasons.

In Philadelphia, it is a glorious day – a perfect vestibule to a season of amazing beauty.  Nature prepares to shed the showy accretions of summer in a multi-colored ritual of leave-taking. It is time to return to the essentials – back to the branch, back to the buried root, back to the bare, sturdy reality that will anchor us in the coming winter.

On each of the coming days, some new layer of green will ignite in a blaze of scarlet or gold then turn out its light for a long winter’s sleep. Nature knows when things are finished.  It knows when it has had enough.  It knows its need for a season of emptying, for a clearing of the clutter, for the deep hibernation of its spirit.

But we humans often ignore the need for an “autumning” of our spirits.  We try to live every moment in the high energy of summer – producing, moving, anticipating, and stuffing our lives with abundance.  

But simplicity, solitude and clarity are necessary for our spirit to renew itself.  Autumn is the perfect time to prayerfully examine the harvest of our lives – reaping the essentials and sifting out the superfluous. In the quiet shade of a crimson maple tree, we may discover what we truly love, deeply believe and really need to be fully happy.

Take time on these crystal days to ask yourself what is really essential in your life.  Nurture those things with attention and care.  Don’t take them for granted.  After the flare of the summer has passed, these are the things that will sustain you: a strong faith, a faithful love and a loving compassion. Tend them in this season of harvest.

Music: Autumn from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi

Happy Thanksgiving 2020

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Mercy, Prayer, Psalms, Seasons, Thanksgiving4 Comments

November 26, 2020

Today’s Readings

A blessed and heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Today’s special readings for the feast are so rich and beautiful. They evoke and confirm in us a deep sense of thanksgiving as we read and pray with them today.

Let their beauty and instruction enrich your prayer as you slowly read these scriptures. You may want to speak the phrases aloud slowly, letting their wisdom flow gently over your spirit.

May you, your families, your communities
and all our precious world
be blessed in any way our spirits deeply need.
Let us give thanks
for the Lavish Mercy of God!

Thanksgiving Prayer: by Renee Yann,RSM

© ReneeYann

Music: I Will Praise Your Name (The Hand of the Lord Feeds Us)- Scott Soper

Psalm 8: Hymn of the Universe

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Creation, Faith, ordinary time, Prayer, Psalms, Seasons, spirituality2 Comments

Memorial of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr

October 17, 2020

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 8.

O LORD, our LORD,
how glorious is your Name over all the earth!
You have exalted your majesty above the heavens.
Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings
you have fashioned praise ….

Psalm 8:2-3

Just yesterday, I got an email from the amazingly organized Sister who manages our grounds. She wanted to alert us that there would be a small “star-gazing” event this weekend, sponsored by our school, in case we might wonder about unusual nighttime visitors.

The note took me back to my own star-gazing days, residues of which percolate from time to time, especially during meteor showers. These days I do most of my “gazing” out our kitchen window, but when I studied for my certification in Earth Sciences, I had several opportunities for “instructed” star-gazing with excellent West Chester University astronomers. In a subsequent reflection, I described one such experience like this:

There are a few places where nature offers an experience of darkness so absolute it can be terrifying.  Assateague Island lies along the barrier coast of Virginia.  On a winter night, darkness there feels complete, enveloping.  As evening lengthens, night pulls its velvet canopy from the black ocean, covering the beach in silence. The whisper of rustling sea oats along invisible dunes is the only link to a land left behind.  But slowly, like sparks rolling through dry tinder, stars burn one by one through heaven’s blanket.  By midnight, their incomparable brilliance convinces the soul that it has never been and can never be alone.

Three thousand years ago, our psalmist felt the same way:

When I behold your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars which you set in place—
What are we  that you should be mindful of us,
we human beings that you should care for us?

Psalm 8:4-5

Charles Spurgeon, revered Baptist preacher, calls this psalm “the song of the Astronomer“, as gazing at the heavens inspires the psalmist to meditate on God’s creation and humanity’s place in it.

You have made us little less than the angels,
and crowned us with glory and honor.
You have given us rule over the works of your hands,
putting all things under our feet.

Psalm 8:6-7

Pope John Paul II said this:

 …. for those who have attentive ears and open eyes, creation is like a first revelation that has its own eloquent language: it is almost another sacred book whose letters are represented by the multitude of created things present in the universe. St. John Chrysostom says: “The silence of the heavens is a voice that resounds louder than a trumpet blast: this voice cries out to our eyes and not to our ears, the greatness of Him who made them.

General Audience – January 30, 2002

And our dear Pope Francis reiterates this thought so beautifully in his epic encyclical:

At the end, we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God, and be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe, which with us, will share in unending plenitude.

Laudato Si’

Let’s rest in all this beauty as we pray today with Psalm 8

Music: Beautiful Universe – Tim Janis