On March 6, 1984, a man named Martin Niemoeller died. He had been a German U-boat commander in WWI. After that war, he became a Lutheran pastor and initially supported Hitler. But as the years moved toward WWII, Niemoeller became more and more critical of Hitler. Arrested several times, he finally spent seven years in various concentration camps beginning in 1938. He was liberated from Dachau in 1945.
Martin Niemoeller wrote the following words:
“They came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. They came for the Socialists and trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. They came for the Jews but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. Then they came for me, and there was no one to speak for me.”
As the world deals with interminable war, terrorism, racism, and cloaked fascism, we should remember that true justice and peace always include BOTH understanding and standing up.
Music: Show Me How to Stand for Justice – Martin Leckebusch
Penance and self-denial are not generally popular concepts. Yet all major religions include them as means of spiritual enrichment. Why do you think that is? Here’s my take on it.
Most of us live within the illusion of many boundaries. We are bound by space, time, circumstances, choices, and perceived abilities or inabilities, to name a few. Sometimes we get terribly caught in our boundaries. We are afraid to try something new; to shed a dangerous but comfortable habit; to break a debilitating, co-dependent relationship; to choose a life-giving but challenging road. Too often, we say “no” to our graced potential.
But God is beyond boundaries. God is limitless, everlasting, infinite possibility and hope. Fasting and self-denial are human attempts to prove to ourselves that we can break through what binds us to live in God’s infinite “YES!”.
Giving up candy, smoking, or mindless TV is a small way of doing that. But attending to our tendencies for gossip, meanness, negativity, and self-centeredness is a great alternative way. Whatever our religious tradition, Ash Wednesday can remind us that God made us for freedom, unconditional love, and unending life. May our choices reflect that.
Music: Take These Ashes – Sarah Hart
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?
With it being nearly March, and with the weather being as it has lately, perhaps this phrase has crossed your mind: “In like a lion; out like a lamb”. I’ve had a few teachers, bosses, and colleagues who could have been described by that phrase. Maybe it could even describe some of us at times!
Beside its meteorological purposes, the phrase captures a life lesson. Life and the passage of time will probably tame us if we allow it. Reflection and patience will probably make us gentler and wiser. And there are so many situations where it might be more prudent to begin with a well-planned bleat than with a roar.
Think about it.
Music: LION/LAMB – Joshua Leventhal
Ready your heart child, ready your heart child The Lionlamb is coming, the Lionlamb is coming yeah Soften your heart bride, soften your heart bride The Wedding Day is coming, the Wedding Day is coming And when we see Him we shall be made like Him And when we see Him we shall be made like Him And when we see Him we shall be made like Him oh-oh-oh Lift up your eyes child, Lift up your eyes child The Lionlamb is coming, the Lionlamb is coming yeah He’s gonna make it right child, He’s gonna make it right child His justice, oh it’s coming, His justice, oh it’s coming And when we see Him we shall be made like Him As we see the end of death and dying And when we see Him we shall be made like Him As we see the end of death and dying oh-oh-oh He’s gonna make it right, child He’s gonna make it right, child He’s gonna make it right, child He’s gonna make it right, child (He’ll make it right) He’s gonna make it right, child (The Lionlamb is coming) He’s gonna make it right, child (Oh-oh-oh-oh) The LionLamb is coming
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?
As we may think about love this Valentine’s Day, I offer one of my poems on a different aspect of love.
Rusalka, Op. 114: “Song to the Moon” · Antonín Dvořák
One bitter day in February I sat inside a sunlit room, made warm love to You in prayer, and she passed outside my window, the unhoused woman, dressed uncarefully against the wind, steadied on a cane, though she was young.
She seemed searching for a comfort, unavailable and undefined. The wound of that impossibility fell over her the way it falls on every tender thing that cries but is not gathered to a caring breast. Suddenly she was a single anguished seed of You, fallen into all created things.
Re-entering prayer, I wear the thought of her like old earth wears fresh rain. I’ve misconstrued You, Holy One, to whom I open my heart like a yearning field, Holy One, already ripe within her barest, leanest yearning.
Music: Teach Me to Love- Steve Green (Good song, but sorry for the non-inclusive language)
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?
Is it damp, drippy February where you are? Are you longing for spring? It just does something for you, doesn’t it? On that first really warm afternoon, all the long, cold hours of winter suddenly coalesce into a small memory and disappear like an ice cube at the equator.
That same moment of new life can occur after any “cold season” — even a cold season of the heart. It can occur after a season of anger, loss, doubt, fear, or distrust . It can occur with something so small as a word, a glance, a smile offered in encouragement, love or forgiveness.
Think of a time in your life, perhaps, when a relationship felt “frozen” in anger or doubt. Think of that moment when one of you said to the other, “ I’m sorry”, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”, “I love you no matter what.” In a small phrase, winter turned to spring and life was possible again!
Catherine McAuley understood the profound power of a small word, a glance, or a smile. In the 1800’s, she told the first Sisters of Mercy: “There are things the poor prize more highly than gold, tho’ they cost the donor nothing; among these are the kind word, the gentle, compassionate look, and the patient hearing of their sorrows.”
Each one of us finds ourselves poor in something at sometime in our lives. We may be poor in confidence, strength, courage, or determination. We may be at a point in our lives where we feel we cannot sustain one more worry or responsibility. We look to one another for the small “season-changing” word, glance, or smile.
To consistently be the kind of person who offers that season-changing gift takes concentration, inner clarity, and courage. It is not about being a “pollyanna”, sowing smiles without thought or substance. It means, instead, staying in touch with our interior life, keeping ourselves awake and responsive to our blessings, and sincerely connecting with those around us in reverence and hope for their lives. As we long for spring, may each of us see ourselves more clearly as the “life-giver” we can be. May we radiate that power for our own good and the good of all those whose lives we affect.
Music: The Moment Is Yours – Nicholas Gunn
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?
Click the white arrowhead to the left above for some relaxing music while you read. You may repeat click if you wish.
The frosty blue nights of February fill our evening and morning windows. We look through that deep sapphire richness to discover the diamond stars. We imagine worlds, possibilities, and miracles presently beyond us.
Since Thanksgiving, we have been celebrating a season of hope:
the hope of Hannukah, when we remember the lamp burning miraculously and the courage to renew faith
the hope of Christmas, when we remember a small, vulnerable life that changed the world with the phrase, “Love one another.”
The hope of a New Year, when we remember past gifts that nourish us for future trust
But what about those times when hope flickers?
As we gaze through our windows at the crystal winter skies, our TV may be broadcasting the news behind us, challenging our hopes with the contradictions of war, violence, and disaster. We may wonder where the great saviors and prophets are in our time. Our numbed spirits may perceive only darkness and no starlight.
If so, stay still in the darkness. Be quiet and wait. Let one face, one smile, one kindness, one hand outstretched to you rise in your memory like steady Polaris. The world’s transformation to grace always begins within a single, shining human heart. May your heart be that star for others. May others like you fill your own skies with unquenchable light.
Poetry: Hope – Lisel Mueller
It hovers in dark corners before the lights are turned on, it shakes sleep from its eyes and drops from mushroom gills, it explodes in the starry heads of dandelions turned sages, it sticks to the wings of green angels that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye of the many-eyed potato, it lives in each earthworm segment surviving cruelty, it is the motion that runs from the eyes to the tail of a dog, it is the mouth that inflates the lungs of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves, the argument that refutes death, the genius that invents the future, all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear not to betray one another; it is in this poem, trying to speak.
For Your Reflection
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
Click the white arrowhead to the left above for some relaxing music while you read. You may repeat click if you wish.
One January morning, I stood with my sisters in our community cemetery. As our religious community ages, it is a ritual we practice all too often, as we honor the legacies of women with whom we have spent most of our lives. But that Saturday was unique. Let me tell you why.
That day, we celebrated our first military funeral for one of our sisters. It was a solemn and thrilling sight. The cold February sky sparkled like blue crystal. Sun reflected off the time-polished tombstones, creating an honor guard of light. As we processed to the graveside beside her flag-draped casket, three sailors awaited us at attentive salute.
Sister Bernard Mary, a farm girl from Trenton NJ, became a Navy nurse in World War II. After her service to our country, she entered the Sisters of Mercy and served in our healthcare ministries for over fifty years. She cared for the sick and poor with unrivaled perfection and compassion. Her entire life was marked by a profound sense of duty – a duty suffused with love.
As she was laid to rest, the clear notes of “Taps” rang out to the heavens, inviting her compassionate soul to “go to sleep”. Like all the others gathered there, I drew so many lessons from her dedicated life. One is this: understand your duty and execute it with sincerity and love. If you do, no matter what life throws at you — be it economic, physical, or psychological downturn –your clear spirit will endure and will ring out like singular bugle notes in the crisp morning air.
Sister Bernard Mary lived for ninety-one long years. Still, I left her grave remembering these stirring words of the first Sister of Mercy, Catherine McAuley: “Do all you can for God’s people, for time is short.”
Music: Taps
For Your Reflection
What feelings or reactions do I have after reading this reflection?
Do my feelings or reactions remind me of any passage or event in scripture, especially in the life of Christ?
What actions might I take today because of my response to these readings?
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?
The red fox lay dead in the road a little east of the mall entrance. It was a beautiful animal come to an inglorious end.
When an animal is killed trying to cross a road, it demonstrates a lesson learned in college biology – “geographic isolation”. Geographic isolation occurs when human-made structures, such as roads or canals, artificially separate animals of the same family. Over the course of decades, the animals on one side of the road assume different characteristics from the same type of animals on the other side of the road. Eventually, they may begin to behave toward each other as if they were two different species. In other words, their isolation begins to fool them into thinking they are different – even enemies.
There are all kinds of geographies in the world – not just the traditional ones that delineate nations. And there are all kinds of isolations that we can build into our multiple internal and external maps.
That little red fox might cause us to consider the breadth of our landscapes, our mindscapes, our soulscapes. How restricted are we in our ability to travel to and be comfortable in all different kinds of worlds. As we look at the circle of our friends, experiences, ideas, multi-cultural exposure – is the circle expansive or very limited and controlled? Have we allowed ourselves to live in a compressed world with fake boundaries? At the end of our one precious life, will we be sorry for all the growth opportunities we missed because our “geography” was so protected and myopic?
History boasts a few borderless explorers who have led the rest of us out of our comfort zones and into the challenges of discovery. These leaders had a sense of a universal geography. They saw borders only as the farthest points to which we can stretch – imagination, love, hope and courage. Their standard approach to life’s newness was an inclusive hospitality. They had a constant attitude that questioned isolation and was suspect of territorialism. They were the believers who knew there was more beyond the horizon – beyond the limits of a flat world or a self-centered universe.
Martin Luther King was such a man. The artificial boundaries created by race and economic status were invisible to him. He challenged people who built their “privilege” on these unfounded borders. He opened the eyes and hearts of millions who had taken this moral “geographic isolation” for granted. He began the building of bridges that, if we complete them, will ultimately heal our world and our spirits.
Martin Luther King knew that we are all one people. He refused to allow the separations of prejudice and stereotyping to define the borders of his life. May his inspiration spur the rest of us to move outside our life-limiting ideas and step into a world of unity, mutuality, respect, and hope.
This year, we will celebrate MLK Day on January 20th. But today, as we mark his actual birthday, let’s take a sincere look at how much our prejudices control our choices. Let’s find someone or something that will help us continue to grow in openness and understanding.
Music: We Shall Overcome – Morehouse College
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?
Click the white arrowhead to the left above for some relaxing music while you read. You may repeat click if you wish.
Have you ever heard a troubled friend say, “I feel as if God has abandoned me!”? Here’s a little story about that.
One spring morning, two country kids were walking to school across their local railroad tracks. They had been drilled in the three essential steps before crossing:
STOP, LOOK and LISTEN!
On this particular morning, as they diligently executed these steps, they heard an unexpected, barely audible sound. Four tiny, orphaned ducklings had taken refuge in a gully under one of the nearby ties. The children, in their alert attentiveness, were able to hear the tiny peeps that would otherwise have been missed. They scooped up the ducks and carried them to safety. What an epiphany!
January places us in the season of Epiphany. The word means much more than just “discovery”. It means an unexpected revelation of divine grace within our ordinary circumstances – the Unexpected within the Ordinary.
When the Three Wise Men experienced the Epiphany, it was not just “dumb luck”. They had prepared for that moment throughout their entire lives, just never imagining where they would find it — hidden in a cold stable. Through study, prayer and living good lives, they had perfected the all-important practice: STOP, LOOK and LISTEN to your ordinary life, to what is happening just underneath the surface, underneath appearances, underneath the silence. Allow yourself to be surprised by God!
It is in the life underneath that God waits to be revealed to us every day. The revelation doesn’t come like a loud, anticipated train. It comes in the unexpected whisper we would have missed had we not stopped, looked, and listened to our lives. It comes in the otherwise unspoken need of a friend, in the finally recognized destructive practice or relationship we must change, in the belated act of forgiveness, in the long overdue and grateful acknowledgment of our life as the blessing that it is.
Before we go too far in this New Year, think about this practice. When we feel as if God or the Spirit is not part of our lives, we may not be looking in the right places. Each morning and evening, give yourself at least five quiet minutes to breathe. Put a “reflective stethoscope” to your day, and ask yourself “Where is God hidden in these moments?” If we really STOP, LOOK and LISTEN, eventually, the Epiphany will come!
Music: Listen, Listen, Listen – Robert Gass
Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song: I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
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?
Lavish Mercy 