Tag: Moses

Seek an Unjealous Heart

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Discipleship, Faith, Holy Spirit, ordinary time, spiritualityLeave a comment

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 26, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our reading from the Book of Numbers reveals a very human moment between Joshua and Moses.

Moses Blesses Joshua – James Tissot

Moses is getting older. He realizes that the time is approaching for him to hand over the leadership of his people. God seems to realize that too.

The LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses.
Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses,
the LORD bestowed it on the seventy elders;
and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied.


Joshua, ever since his youth, has been aide to Moses. Moses is his hero – the one, who having spoken with God, led the People out of Egypt. Now Joshua sees other ordinary guys assuming some of Moses’s roles. Joshua feels his own security and comfort shifting beneath him – hints of a spiritual earthquake.

An outraged Joshua alerts Moses, begging him to stop these supposed imposters. But Moses assures Joshua with words no hero-worshipper ever wants to hear:


Are you jealous for my sake?
Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets!
Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!


What a powerful question Moses poses. It searches Joshua’s heart:

Are you jealous for my sake? 

Are you fearful, biased, closed-hearted,
and self-protective because you fear
that you and I will lose position and power?

Surely Moses senses Joshua emerging as the next leader of Israel — even though Joshua might not share that awareness yet. Moses wants him to see that it is the Spirit of God Who leads the People through any human means She wishes.

When we presume to control the Spirit, or think to invest Her power only in our own particular “heroes”, we close ourselves to the amazing, surprising power of God. This Divine Power cannot be controlled and, like wildflowers through concrete, will bloom where She chooses.

We see the fruits of such presumption all over our histories: the falsely assumed superiority of men over women, whiteness over color, wealth over labor, or any form of dominance over mutuality. These assumptions become concretized in our culture, hardening us to the movements of the Spirit.

If we have any hold on privilege in our lives, we might be inclined to profit by these assumptions. It is just such an inclination that Moses nips in Joshua in this powerful exchange between revered teacher and apprentice.

The story offers us much to consider in prayer.

Music: An oldie, but goodie. Always brings me a deep peace.  I hope it does the same for you, dear reader.
Come Holy Ghost – The Singing Nuns

Memorial of Saint John Vianney

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Poetry, Prayer, Psalms, Scripture, spiritualityLeave a comment

Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 106 which mirrors the story told in our first reading from Numbers.

It takes some doing to pray with these passages, at least for me. On the surface, they offer us spies and wars and a vengeful God whom Moses has to placate – images that don’t speak to my spiritual life.

But, as always with scripture, I ask if there is a meaning for me underneath that surface story? I found it in the word “breach”.

God is always trying to break through – to breach – the surface of our lives to teach us divine meaning. But we are often spiritually short-sighted like the spies who report back to Moses. We sometimes let our simplistic observations of life block us from its true depth and call.

But Moses, because of his unique relationship with God, has been cleared of those blockages. He opens up – breaches – the surface to help the people connect with God’s power.

Photo by Silvana Palacios on Pexels.com

What allows me to “breach” my limited understandings and to see all life as God, shining through experience? 

For me? Sweet silence. Faithful prayer. Reaching for the “dearest freshness” of an obedient heart and a resolute love.

Poetry: God’s Grandeur- Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Music: from Freshness Green Soothing Relaxation 

Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Poetry, Psalms, Scripture, spiritualityLeave a comment

Monday, August 2, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 81, and today’s verses sound a little harsh. The Lord seems a bit fed up with Israel’s hungers:

My people heard not my voice,
    and Israel obeyed me not;
So I gave them up to the hardness of their hearts;
    they walked according to their own counsels.

Psalm 81:12-13

Translated to 21st century jargon that verse might sound like this:

I love them and all, but come on!
    They don’t follow my advice;
so the heck with their stubbornness.
    Let them stew in their own juices!

Renee’s unofficial imaginings 🙂

But see, here’s the thing. God is never like that with us. God is, instead, everlastingly patient with us. God stays with us until we – hopefully – respond to Grace.

And don’t we sometimes really test God’s patience! Moses was great at it — pushing and pushing for God to make things easier for him. 

I cannot carry all this people by myself,
for they are too heavy for me.
If this is the way you will deal with me,
then please do me the favor of killing me at once,
so that I need no longer face this distress.

Numbers 11:14-15

Picture Moses standing in front of God, hands on hips yelling, “I’ve had it! Why not just kill me now?!?!”

The verse actually makes me chuckle because I also picture God, smothering a smile at Moses’s tantrum, and thinking, “Maybe some quail will settle this guy down for the long haul.”

Today’s psalm and reading from Numbers remind us that each of our lives is an unfolding journey in relationship with God. It is a journey that requires us to listen and respond over and over again. At each response we move ever deeper into the heart of God, letting go of those things which impede us from our destination.

If only my people would hear me,
    and Israel walk in my ways,
Quickly would I humble their enemies;
    against their foes I would turn my hand.

Psalm 81: 14-15

God is our help
and is ALWAYS present with us.
If we can listen to our deep lives,
we will know that
and our spirits will sing.

Poetry: Moses by Alan Kanfer

Whatever residue of pride adhere
To eyes, to bones, to hair will shed like sand
When we discover the The Name is near
And fire is Light, and we are asked to stand.
That night my hair was like a fell of sheep,
My bones like water, I was weak and dumb:
My perfume reeked like camp whores that we keep.
I stood, receiving “I am that I am.”
How small the distance is between the root
And flower: the Name is near as our consent,
As our denial. Coming up the hill on foot
Long after, knowing we must be content
With shadow of The Name, I shed my will
But not my love: the final miracle.

Music: Frangeti – George Winston

Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, friendship, Mercy, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms, spiritualityLeave a comment

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 103 whose verses this morning remind us of God’s munificence.

Munificent – it’s a wonderful word whose Latin roots literally mean gift-making, abundant generosity.

Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
    slow to anger and abounding in kindness.

Psalm 103:8

Praying this morning, I realize that I can’t even begin to number the gifts God has given me.

But like Moses in today’s first reading, I want to visit God in the sacred tent of prayer – learning, thanking and awakening to the Mercy in my life.

… and, like Moses, to invite God into every moment, to ask God to keep company with me on my journey:

Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship.
Then he said, “If I find favor with you, O LORD,
do come along in our company.

Poetry: Bearing the Light – Denise Levertov

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle
of unpruned pear-tree twigs;
each solitaire, placed, it appears,
with considered judgement,
bears the light beneath the rifted clouds —
the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.

Music: In the Garden – written by C. Austin Miles in 1912. Miles wrote nearly 400 hymns, this one the most famous.

And who doesn’t love Anne Murray’s mellow voice!

Psalm 106: Remember!

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn FaithLeave a comment

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent

March 18, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 106 which, together with our other readings, focuses on the image of Moses – both the original Moses and the “New Moses” who is Jesus Christ.

Both figures led their people from slavery to freedom. Both help their people be “re-membered” – their broken pieces gathered back and the Body “remembered” – made whole again.

In Psalm 106, the psalmist speaks for a repentant community which recognizes that, time and again, God has met their sinfulness with mercy. God has made them whole again after their fracturing infidelities.

Their grateful and confident prayer grows from this sacred remembering. It teaches them not to be like their forefathers who worshipped the golden calf in place of the one, true God:

They forgot the God who had saved them…

Psalm 106: 21

We, too, sometimes “forget” God’s central place in our lives. Some very frivolous “golden calves” take over our love and attention. Money, fame, power, image – they all can take the pedestal on occasion. 

And maybe the worst idol we can enthrone is ourselves – the all-consuming power of self-absorption that breaks us off from both God and the community.

Today with Psalm 106, we humbly pray to be “re-membered” – “Confitemini, Domino”

Give thanks to the LORD, who is good,
whose mercy endures forever.
    Who can recount the mighty deeds of the LORD,
    proclaim in full God’s praise?
Blessed those who do what is right,
whose deeds are always just.
    Remember me, LORD, as you favor your people;
    come to me with your saving help,
That I may see the prosperity of your chosen ones,
rejoice in the joy of your people,
and glory with your heritage.

Poetry: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY by Rachel Barenblat who writes a great blog called The Velveteen Rabbi

Already so many changes.
Our long column of refugees
snaking into the wilderness.
Through the sandal-sucking mud
where the waters had been.
Their men and horses consumed.
And then that Voice
speaking directly into us,
reverberating in our chests...!
But Moshe ascended by himself
into the sapphire sky
and he didn't come back.
Of course we asked Aharon 
to make something to remind us
we weren't as alone as we felt.

Music: Le Veau d’Or (The Golden Calf) by Faust from the opera Mephistopheles, Act II

Moses’s Psalm: Dark to Light

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Faith, Hope, ordinary time, Poetry, Psalms, suffering2 Comments

Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

August 7, 2020

Click here for today’s readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray once again with Deuteronomy 32, often referred to as the Psalm of Moses. And once again, our psalm links the heavy messages of our two main readings.

In our first reading from Nahum, the prophet describes Israel’s future restoration after the bloody destruction of Nineveh, chief city of the Assyrian conquerors.

In our Gospel, Jesus foretells his own Passion and Death, and the necessity that his disciples carry their own crosses.

The tenor of both readings is soberly captured in our psalm:

Learn then that I, I alone, am God,
and there is no god besides me.
It is I who bring both death and life,
I who inflict wounds and heal them.

Given the heavy, stormy morning here where I live, these readings are hitting me like a wet blanket! It’s hard to find the link to Light within them, but I believe there always is one – and I’ll suggest one subsequently. But first this.

Often in life, too, it’s hard to find the link to light. Harsh and insufferable realities can stubbornly darken our horizons.

Just this morning, I read about a podcast in which Michelle Obama had revealed a struggle with depression:

“These are not, they are not fulfilling times, spiritually,” Mrs Obama said. “I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression. Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting.”

To read the full article on Michelle Obama’s interview, click here.

Mrs. Obama is describing her “Nineveh”.  Mine is pretty similar. What’s yours?
And how do we hold faith, even in the middle of “Nineveh”?

These assuring verses from Nahum offer the flicker of Light and the promise of Salvation. They encourage us to stay strong, remain faithful. We must keep lifting our eyes to the future that God dreams for all people, discerning its rising like the sun in a morning mist.

See, upon the mountains there advances
the bearer of good news, 
announcing peace!
Celebrate your feasts, O My people,
fulfill your vows!
…. The LORD will restore the beloved vine,
its hope, courage and strength …

Poetry: The Good God and the Evil God – Kahlil Gibran

The Good God and the Evil God 
met on the mountain top.
The Good God said, 
“Good day to you, brother.”
The Evil God did not answer.

And the Good God said, 
“You are in a bad humour today.”
“Yes,” said the Evil God, 
“for of late I have been often mistaken for you, 
called by your name, and treated 
as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me.”
And the Good God said, 
“But I too have been mistaken for you 
and called by your name.”

The Evil God walked away 
cursing the stupidity of humankind.

Music: How Beautiful – Joe Wise

Psalm 90: Where the Bees Hum

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Faith, ordinary time, Poetry, Prayer, Psalms, spirituality4 Comments

Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

June 2,2020

Click here for readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 90. As we re-enter Ordinary Time, I was so happy to see this beautiful psalm as the first in our new reflective approach!

Psalm 90

Psalm 90 is the only psalm attributed to Moses. Reading it, one can imagine him in his older years, considering his long relationship with God. As the story of his graced life unfolds in prayer, Moses prays too for the community with whom his years have been intwined.

Some of his same sentiments may fill our hearts as we pray for our own communities in the troubled times:

Relent, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Fill us at daybreak with your mercy,
that all our days we may sing for joy.

Sister Beatrice Brennan, RSCJ wrote an article entitled, “Praying at 93”.  Sister reminded me of Moses when she wrote:

To live this long is an amazing grace. One of its unexpected joys is how alive one can feel spiritually as the slow dismantling of other human processes goes on.
The Bible speaks of “laughing in the latter day.” Prayer, for me, is like that at times. And always, a song of gratitude and joy.

I think Psalm 90 is that kind of prayer, one marinated in a long fidelity and trust. As Sister Beatrice goes on to say:

At a deeper, quieter level of consciousness runs an undefined awareness of God’s presence, similar, I think, to that union of old married couples who may rarely or never put love into words. It has become their life. So prayer becomes a steady underlying trust bearing me along.

Two poems that I hope will enrich your reflection:

IMG_3944

Now I Become Myself
Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before—”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!
~ May Sarton

 

IMG_3948

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

Music: Psalm 90 – Marty Goetz

Where Are We, Anyway?

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Conversion, Courage, Eternal Life, Faith, Gospel, Hope, Jesus, Lent, Mercy, suffering1 Comment

March 31, 2020

Click here for readings

Today, in Mercy, we end the month of March in a very different place from where we began it.  On March 1st, I didn’t expect to be in midst of the Corona Desert did you?

Neither did the Israelites in today’s first reading expect to be in their particular desert. They had left the oppressions of Egypt with no certainties, but nonetheless with expectations. Now, after decades wandering the desert, those expectations turned into some typical complaints:

Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert,
where there is no food or water?
We are disgusted with this wretched food!

They even go so far as to blame a coincidental snake infestation on God, demanding that Moses get God to fix it.

desert

What’s going on here with our wandering ancestors? I think that, in our current circumstances, it might be worthwhile to consider that question. Our Gospel reading points us toward an answer.

Jesus has invited his community to a journey too – a journey away from the oppressions of injustice, selfishness, and lovelessness; to a place where “law” is not used as an excuse for domination; to a new community where all Creation shares equally in the Bread of Life.

But the Pharisees don’t get it. They are lost in a desert of their own illusions, needs, and fears. They can’t see past the sandstorms of their own construction.

That’s why Jesus tells them:

I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come.

…. because you just can’t trust enough, let go enough to see that the journey is so much deeper than your present concerns. It is a journey of the soul from oppression to freedom, from selfishness to love, from blindness to light.

Jesus invites us too, even as we negotiate our desert journeys, to release our hearts to a world beyond appearances.

You belong to what is below,
I belong to what is above.
You belong to this world,
but I do not belong to this world.

Indeed, we must pay attention to the exigencies of our earthly journey, but today’s readings remind us that the true journey is infinitely deeper. That faith should inspire our hope, choices, and attitudes in what certainly seems like an awfully big desert.

Deserts can make us desperate, if we let them. Or they can shear us of everything that blocks our soul’s sight.

We may not see clearly beyond this momentary desert, but we are the children of an eternal and merciful God. May we trust our journey to that Immutable Loving Presence and allow ourselves to be made new.

Music: Everything is Holy Now – Peter Mayer

(Thanks to Sister Michele Gorman for sharing this beautiful song on Facebook)

Our Golden Calf

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Community, Conversion, dying, Faith, justice, repentance5 Comments

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent

March 26, 2020

Click here for today’s readings

calf

Today, in Mercy, God sends Moses down to straighten out his “depraved people” because, despite all God’s  goodness to them, they have preferred “the golden calf”.

In the deprivations of this pandemic time, when all of us are doing a lot of soul-searching, we are discovering quite a few golden calves still running around in our times.

One of them jumped out at me last night when I read this headline:

Texas’ lieutenant governor suggests grandparents
are willing to die for US economy

I woke up this morning still appalled by the statement.  But upon reflection, I realized that Mr. Patrick may have unwittingly done us a great service if we ruthlessly unpack his cavalier remarks.

How have we gotten to a world where such a statement can be uttered and even approved by some? How can we so blatantly ignore basic moral principles such as the sanctity of every life, and that the ends never justify the means? Well, let’s take a look at Moses’ “depraved” community. They seem to have reached a similar moral deprivation.

I think the key lies with the golden calf.  The idol is a symbol of the Israelite community’s economy, what they really deem most important, what they really worship when they think God isn’t looking. When they look upon its golden reflection, they see themselves mirrored back the way they want to be – rich, powerful, and dominant. Lt. Governor Patrick’s statement should make us consider how we have become hypnotized by the same idolatries.

Let’s face it.  We live in a culture that has normalized war, capital punishment, abortion, illegal detention, corporate hijacking of natural resources, unchecked pollution, and commercialization of deadly substances like tobacco. Why are we surprised that we’re ready to sacrifice the elderly to preserve the sheen on our “golden calf”?

We have created a world where we welcome information sources that tell us lies just so we can be falsely convinced and dangerously indifferent. It’s really hard to discern a moral path amidst today’s political complexities. So let’s just build that golden calf whose mesmerizing patina permits us to remain morally comatose!

I hope we allow this man’s callous commentary to continue to stab our consciences:

Somebody’s beloved can die
not only so that my beloved can live,
but can also have an undamaged economy.

What “economy”, for God’s sake? Does he mean the one where over 40 million Americans and nearly 800 million worldwide face daily hunger? Or where 80 million Americans have inadequate or no health insurance? Or does he mean the extractive economy which causes two-thirds of the world population to live on less than $10 per day?

I’m pretty sure he means instead the economy of the “ golden calf” where 

  • half of the world’s net wealth belongs to the top 1%
  • top 10% of adults hold 85%
  • while the bottom 90% eke out existence on  the remaining 15% of the world’s total wealth

I’m not willing to die to shore up that economy, are you? But I’m sure willing to fight to change it.

So, at least, thanks for inspiring me, Lt. Governor Patrick and God help you!

Music: If There’s a God in Heaven – Elton John – (a song that could reflect how the ancient Israelites struggled with their tortuous journey. (Lyrics below)

Torn from their families
Mothers go hungry
To feed their children
But children go hungry
There’s so many big men
They’re out making millions
When poverty’s profits
Just blame the children
If there’s a God in heaven
What’s he waiting for
If He can’t hear the children
Then he must see the war
But it seems to me
That he leads his lambs
To the slaughter house
And not the promised land
Dying for causes
They don’t understand
We’ve been taking their futures
Right out of their handsThey need the handouts
To hold back the tears
There’s so many crying
But so few that hear

If there’s a God in heaven

Well, what’s he waiting for

If there’s a God in heaven
What’s he waiting for

 

A Legacy of Faith

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Church, Community, Faith, Jesus, spirituality2 Comments

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent

March 18, 2020

Click here for readings

faith

Today, in Mercy, on this day between the feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph, it seems a very good day to thank God for our heritage of faith. Our readings today remind us how precious that heritage is.

Moses, after reiterating the history of God’s goodness to Israel, enjoins the People:

Take care and be earnestly on your guard
not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,
nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,
but teach them to your children and to your children’s children.

Jesus, too, acknowledges the importance of his religious heritage:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.

This day between St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s always takes me back to my grade school days – a time when my “faith family” gifted me with the seeds that now sustain my life.

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH
Beautiful St. Michael’s Church, 2nd and Jefferson, Philadelphia – built in 1846, now much as it look in the mid-1950s

I can still see our straight-from-Ireland pastor, old as the hills, standing in the pulpit to bless us with water from the Shrine at Knock. We school kids had waited all year for a chance to belt out the hymn “Great and Glorious Saint Patrick” to the accompaniment of a thundering organ. We held our breath at the final blessing, anxiously awaiting the word to go home. It was inevitably a school holiday but we were always innocently surprised to receive it!

Organ_and_Choir_Loft
St. Michael’s magnificent organ

Then, we gathered for 8 o’clock Mass again on the 19th to celebrate St. Joseph, patron of our beloved Sisters who taught us. If we had the means to give them feastday gifts, we were asked to give canned goods. That request never struck me as a kid, but as I grew up, I realized how dependent these Sisters were on those donations – how close to poverty they lived for the sake of transmitting the faith to us.

So I count these days of mid-March as Foundation of Faith Days. Perhaps today’s reading might incline you to think about your own faith story and who planted the early seeds in your heart. Let’s give these beloveds our grateful prayers of remembrance.

Music:  Faith of Our Fathers – another oldie that we loved to sing voce piena