Category Archives: Family Spirituality

Nicodemus gets a bad rap. He’s criticized for coming to Jesus “by night.” But consider the references to him after today’s gospel. Courageously, he defends Jesus against his angry peers, asking whether their law judges a man who has not had a fair hearing (John 7:50-51). After the crucifixion, he helps embalm and bury Jesus’ body (19:39).

He is an honest seeker, who won’t settle for tried-and-true cliches. His colleagues quickly dismiss anyone with a different angle. Nicodemus, however, explores the new teaching carefully, which takes some time. He questions honestly, and Jesus doesn’t reject him. Instead, Jesus welcomes their discussion and reveals himself magnificently, as light penetrating darkness.

Jesus even seems to tease Nicodemus as a teacher who doesn’t “get it” (v. 10). Nicodemus must be overwhelmed: he doesn’t respond.

Or maybe he answers through his life. After an avalanche of ideas, he sifts through them and applies them to daily events. Apparently Jesus’ teaching withstands that reality check; Nicodemus becomes an admirable follower, “his works done in God.”

Do we act like him, or do we stagnate in unexamined prejudices and stale beliefs? Are we open to the insecurity of Spirit’s unsettling winds?  

Those who like their Jesus sweet and pious better skip today’s gospel. Those who want to explore his complex depths should read on.

The scene of driving the sellers and money-changers from the temple can’t be camouflaged by platitudes: it is violent and chaotic. What prompted Jesus to act so dramatically? We have a clue in the way “my Father’s house” is used throughout John’s gospel. “In my Father’s house are many rooms” we read in 14:2. That sounds spacious, but there is no room for greed, betrayal or sacrilege. The merchants have made the “Father’s house a marketplace,” desecrated what is most precious to God; thus, they must be expelled quickly and efficiently. 

In Jesus’ ensuing discussion with the Jews, their pride is attacked. Any of us who spent forty-six years on a project might react the same way.

As is often the case, they remain on a literal level, seeing the temple as a building. Jesus, however, sees it as an image of the self: beloved of God and incorruptible, transcending the most glorious edifice. As he protected sacred ground, so he fights to preserve God’s children from any who oppress, exploit, degrade or harm them. Do we respect each other or ourselves as much as he does?

As some this weekend read the story of Jesus’ transfiguration into radiant light, it’s a good time to think about our own transformations. As people move from child to teen to adult, some to spouse/partner, parent or grandparent, the really important and interesting transformations occur within. Gradually, we come to see ourselves and believe more in our identity as image of God. Ram Dass describes the transformation into a wise elder, “We move from role to soul.” The ego identities as teacher/caretaker/attorney/ doctor/chef/Democrat/Republican fade. Then we see as the mystic St. Catherine of Genoa did, “My me is God.”

Who I am in God, my true identity, is indestructible. All else passes away as I become “the very goodness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Of course humans still fail, but we get better at holding the paradoxes: we are both time-bound and eternal, empty and full, partial and complete, often wrong and radically OK.

Some balk when they hear of their own deep goodness. But Rutger Bregman in Humankind presents a compelling case that as Anne Frank said, “In spite of everything… people are truly good at heart.” For instance, he sees Lord of the Flies, a novel which details how boys abandoned on an island destroy each other more as a reflection of the author William Golding’s personal outlook than as reality. Golding was depressed, alcoholic, and unhappy. Yet his fiction was a hit, and gave many a harshly negative view of human nature.

But Bregman finds a real-life case: six boys marooned on an island for over a year, rescued by an Australian sea captain.  Their true story is heartening: they began and ended each day with song and prayer, tended a fire that never went out, collected rainwater in hollow tree trunks, planted a garden, set up sports, and resolved quarrels by giving participants time-outs. The squabblers would go to opposite ends of the island and cool down. They suffered storms, terrible thirst, and one boy’s broken leg, but emerged as friends, in fine physical shape.

One isolated incident? Hardly. Bregman cites long-range statistics that show life improving for humanity. Most infectious diseases eradicated, slavery abolished, people living in extreme poverty under 10%. In the Middle Ages, 12% of the European and Asian populations died violent deaths. But in the last 100 years, that figure has gone down to 1.3% world-wide. Of course we face ecological crisis, but Bergman believes, “there’s no need to be fatalistic about civil society.”

During the London Blitz and the retaliatory bombing of Germany, a strange serenity pervaded despite the grief and destruction. Public mental health actually improved in Britain and in Germany, “there was no evidence of breakdown of morale.” Military experts still haven’t caught on; Putin’s heartbreaking bombing of the Ukraine seems to have only strengthened the peoples’ resolve. And Israel’s wildly disproportionate killing of civilians (many children) in Gaza has made many people question the righteousness of its cause. See Nicholas Kristof’s Feb. 3 article in the New York Times: “What Can We Possibly Say to the Children of Gaza?”

Bregman doesn’t skirt the toughest examples, but presents angles on them we may not have seen before. My friends and family know that my personality type is idealistic; maybe I’m just reading what I want to find. But I keep returning to the astonishingly good news of the gospel: “Make your home in me as I make mine in you.” “Whoever receives one of these little ones receives me”—over and over, God’s identification with muddled, mistaken humanity. Sadly, the Christian message has been used to scold and shame, bludgeon and bully. Perhaps the bottom line is, can we believe awesome news?

This season for Christians, as for other traditions that take time to repent, marks a turning point. From what to what? Jesus didn’t know or use the word “sin,” which wasn’t part of the Hebrew construct. As John Philip Newell points out in Christ of the Celts, the doctrine of original sin, invented in the fourth century has tragically taught that “what is deepest in us is opposed to God rather than of God.” It disempowers because it says “we are essentially ugly rather than rooted in divine beauty, essentially selfish rather than made in the image of love.” It has done untold damage, especially indoctrinating children, denying their inherent dignity.

Not to deny the existence of woundedness, greed and self-interest. Jesus clearly understood the context of anything less than the fullness of what God wants us to become, our birthright. So he says, “Turn from all that drags you down.” Are we haunted by worries about the future or shame about the past? Are we still angry about something that happened years ago? Lent means springtime: it presents us with the opportunity to slough off like a snakeskin all that deadens. Instead, we turn to the God who made us, who redeemed us and who lives in us. As Julian of Norwich said, “between God and the soul, there is no between.”

Jesus said, “the Prince of this world has no hold on me,” so we belong to God, not to what threatens. If we over-identify with our emotions, achievements, fears, work or ideas, we risk being in bondage to one sector of our lives, out of balance as a whole person. Instead, Jesus invites us to belong completely to him, with all we are. The only door into the future is trust. God who has been faithful before can be trusted again. Can we step towards that source of vitality this Lent?

Some gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptations end with the phrase, “and angels waited on him.” After a dreadful ordeal, when Jesus is hungry and probably exhausted, the presence of the divine is still with him. It is possible that angels attend all our lonely desert places. Where we sense the least comfort, there it abounds. Perhaps it’s a relationship, health or job issue, looming decision. And how have light wings touched us during ordinary days? Through health care workers, nature’s shining beauty, kind friends, relatives who don’t tire of our cranky moods or repeated stories? Grace restores our natural, finest self.

With six weeks of Lent ahead, some may still be looking for a direction or focus. Joyce Rupp’s Jesus, Guide of my Life, (www.avemariapress.com, 800-282-1865) points out a “path that is a person.”

Disclaimer: Joyce has been a friend and mentor for over 25 years, and I still believe her Foreword to my first book, Hidden Women of the Gospels, accounts for most of its success. In her usual way, she compacts profound substance into short bits. After praying these Lenten meditations daily for over five weeks, I can attest that in a brief time, they provide prayer prompts and thoughtful material for the day.

One thing that has made Joyce’s work enormously popular is how quickly readers can identify with her. By the second day, I was saying, “she’s so like me—quick to judge, wanting to see immediate results of good deeds, easily blinded by ‘decoys’ on the Way.” She doesn’t write from lofty seclusion in a convent, but clearly gets what it’s like to live with the tensions and contradictions of a complex life, filled with work, relationships, stresses, joys and the quirky ways childhood hurts and roles resurface. Sometimes when we’re tired and life looks blurry, it’s a relief to have such a crystalline reminder of Jesus’ “wise insights and compassionate mentoring.”

They may seem small details of style, but as one sensitive to the way authors present content, I was grateful for Joyce’s innovative use of language: for example, anxieties “slurp up your precious daytime energy” (73) and forgiveness “lifts the lid off coffined love.” (83) Like the “99 Beautiful Names for God” in Islam, her prayers are addressed to names for God we might not have used before: Disrupter of Complacency, Source of Easing Burdens, Storehouse of Promises, Awakened One, Companion in the Dark, Beloved Foot-Washer. It’s worth the $13.95 price of the book for its unique spin on Jesus’ wild  inclusivity. In his day, that meant hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. The tired translation is often, “be nice to an unhoused person on the street.” But Joyce convincingly describes “conversation with a pony-tailed, leather-garbed, heavily bearded motorcyclist.” (86) Who woulda thought of that?

The trifecta: the book is a guide, Joyce is a guide and Jesus is a guide. We who benefit three ways can learn much from this author who has walked in sync with Jesus for many years, clearly has a deep, close relationship with him, and generously shares creative guidelines for the journey.

Given the economy of Mark’s gospel, a few verses can draw forth subtle meanings and many questions. Such is the case for this week’s gospel, when Jesus cures Peter’s mother-in-law. For centuries, Catholic hierarchs have insisted on a celibate clergy, neatly glossing over the fact that if first pope Peter had a mother-in-law, Peter had a wife.

And what of her story? Did she too long to follow the teacher? Did she resent his luring away her husband, only source of the family’s income? Did anyone consult her about the crowd gathered at her door, seeking healing? In the vast St. Peter’s basilica, is there a single statue to her?

And what about her mom? Some have called the line “then the fever left her and she waited on them” as the ultimate male fantasy. Of course a seriously ill woman, recently healed would leap to her feet and cook dinner for the disciples?! Unanswered questions, rumblings and undertones here.

No question about Jesus. Clear and decisive, he grasps the sick woman’s hand and soothes the fever as mothers have for centuries.

So where’s the center of gravity? I like to focus on the hand of Jesus, outstretched to heal, reaching beyond all the difficulties in the passage, and probably the tensions in the house of the fisherman. It prompts us to think of all the hands, literal and figurative, that have held us through crisis, loneliness, illness. No matter what our fevers—anxieties, money or health problems, relationship issues, concerns about climate change or war—God initiates the healing,  extends the soothing hand.

Bored by January? Chafing at the narrow confines of bad weather? Depressed by the news?  Crazy with cabin fever? Have I got an answer for you! The free film “Gratitude Revealed,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gN0pMCHte4

Many are already familiar with the work on gratitude pioneered by David Steindl-Rast, OSB. As a young Austrian during World War II, he was hidden from the Nazis by his mother, and his family wondered if they’d starve to death. He differentiates happiness from joy, which “doesn’t depend on what happens.” Those who aren’t familiar might try his website: grateful.org or book: Gratitude: the Heart of Prayer. Based on that solid foundation, the film soars into stunning photography around the world, fascinating interviews, and a breathtaking display of what Catholics once called “the Communion of Saints,” ordinary, sacred people in international settings, all sparks of the divine.

Just a sampling of these folks absorbed in doing what they love: chefs, a vineyard owner, a barber, salsa dancers and cliff dancers, surfers, farmers, a blind ice climber, the first woman champion of aeronautic acrobatics (that’s a plane doing wild, spinny gymnastics), a rancher on the Continental Divide, a weaver, a lady in Maine who fishes for lobsters and teaches children, a jazz musician in Waterproof, LA, film producers, a gospel choir, the co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, a hat-maker, firefighter, Olympic boxer, an Improv. Comedy class for women recently released from prison. Add in the diversity of children in many nations for sweetness and grace. One eloquent little girl explains how t.v. can’t top the “beautifuller things” she finds, exploring her island home.

Preacher Mosie Burks sparkles with vitality; Norman Lear, screenwriter and producer of over 100 sitcoms glows with quiet humor; author Jack Kornfield offers mystical insights; Pastor Michael Beckwith reminds us to be grateful for challenge, a “gift in work clothes.”  And what a wicked delight to see skimpy salsa costumes in the same film as the robes of a Benedictine monk!

Louie Schwartzberg, who made the film, explains that his parents were holocaust survivors, grateful for many things, especially for having children. He is adept at time-lapse photography of nature, so we see insects in intricate close-up, monarch butterflies taking flight, and flowers opening as gradually as the habit of gratitude develops. With so much beauty, the viewer can forgive a few cliches.

Tired of focusing on dysfunction and disorder?  (Sheesh—Pope Francis can’t even say hell is empty, as St. Catherine of Siena did in the fourteenth century, without provoking outrage.) Try “Gratitude Revealed.”  It’s will cost only 1 hour, 22 minutes of your time. It leads logically and with abundant examples to the theme that cultivating gratitude leads to increased trust in life. And couldn’t we all learn a little more trust? Or in spunkier terms:

“How I long to be in that number

When the saints go marching in…”

I’m not fervent about New Year’s resolutions, but this year, Henri Nouwen’s website on Jan. 1 set a new direction for 2024. The year is young, and we’ll see how long my resolve lasts, but I resonated with his words, “live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: ‘I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!’”

Pragmatic as usual, I began to try the practice daily. Surprisingly (or maybe because I was more attuned to them) the gifts abounded. One day it was a spectacular sunrise: pale blush along a mountain ridge, and at the same time, a lingering sliver of new moon. Another, it was seeing a marvelous film, “American Fiction,” that made my friend and me laugh aloud. Then, in the mail, thank you notes from my grandchildren for their Christmas gifts, colorfully illustrated. Or welcome news arrives, that the dear family members we’d said goodbye to at Christmas would return to visit President’s Day week. When plans change or events are cancelled, comes the unexpected gift which Ross Gay, author of The Book of More Delights describes, “as if the universe just dropped a luminous bouquet of time in your lap. Time which is scant and sinister…becomes spacious as the sky in Montana.”

Readers can add their own gifts to this sketch of an initial list: the first green tips of hyacinths and daffodils emerging in spring, a brilliant rainbow arching over children walking to school, the simple process of swimming, showering, and slipping into clean sheets, a conversation with good friends over lunch, the fragrance after rain, an intriguing book. Add in: a thoughtless remark that could’ve caused more harm, unsafe driving that could’ve resulted in a ticket or accident—and didn’t.

Some might ask if the gifts are always good. What about bad news? Over time, perhaps we learn to recognize clever camouflage. What at first might seem disaster turns out in the long run to be blessing. For genuine tragedy, I have no answer, nor desire to drape it in pious language.

On January 16, I was pleased to read Demetrius Dumm, OSB’s reflection in Give Us This Day, differentiating David from Saul. Each represents a choice in our lives. David is “in touch with God’s goodness, looking for the blessing… positive and imaginative in dealing with problems.” Saul is “ready for the worst, cautious to the point of paralysis, fearful…negative.” There’s probably a spectrum in between, but I hope the daily practice of seeking gifts will lean me more towards David.

for taking down the Christmas tree… We put them up and decorate them with such excitement, “Deck the Halls” and other favorite songs probably playing. The tree, fragrant with soft branches, quickly becomes the center of the room. To many homes, it probably brings the most beauty of the whole year. Anticipation is high; the full season stretches ahead. We envision family members and friends gathering here, hot meals and cocoas, enticing gifts piled beneath branches. The ornaments represent the whole arc of a life—from a childhood tiny red tea pot, to souvenirs of travel, to gifts from special people who chose creatively. For over a month the first thing I do every morning is light the tree and the last thing, turn off its bright glow. It’s so hard to take the tree down, I recently spent three days at a retreat center, praying through the transition.

Fortunately, the kind staff at the retreat house gives me a room with a full view of the ocean, so I can watch the play of light take many forms there. The first rays touch the white ridge of waves, then sun lays a blazing path to the horizon at noon, later pours its molten gold and at sunset tints the ocean a deepening fuchsia. Grace too can take many forms, through hellos and goodbyes, the first Sunday of Advent through Epiphany. Or maybe the start and end points aren’t so clear, more like one ocean with high and low tides.

We can navigate the fluctuations like surfers gracefully carving the waters. Firmly tethered to their boards, or in metaphor, the divine, they look past the immediate wave and watch the far horizon, reading the swells, or seeing the Big Picture. My prayer was to learn to ride the sometimes tumultuous waves of life with the same art and trust.

Returning home to the inevitable, removing the tree ornaments and wrapping them in tissue paper, the sweet narratives were wrapped in as well. This year, I showed my granddaughters the ornament their dad had made when he was five—45 years ago. He beamed, seeing a small gingerbread man his teacher had made him in fourth grade. “Mrs. Whitman!” He recognized her immediately, and remembered how she loved his stories. I suspect she planted some seed, so that now as he stands before a large audience, acknowledging an award for his work, he easily uses stories to lighten his talk.

Interesting, that I don’t recall taking down Christmas trees over many years, only that their beauty became a focal point of the whole season. This year, my granddaughter helps me dismantle, thus making the process less painful. Still, hard to ignore an aching void in the corner of the room, one that I hope will fill again next year in life’s unfolding mystery.

It’s not over yet. Sad to take down the Christmas decorations, but the feast of Epiphany still burns bright.

Long before Jesus preached inclusivity, Mary practiced it. Imagine being the mother of a newborn, exhausted from a trip to register for the census in Bethlehem. Then picture giving birth in a stable, which was probably not as cozy and clean as most Christmas cards depict. Mary is far away from her support system, so she can’t rely on her mother, sisters or friends for help. No casseroles, no baby blankets. 

Then, according to Luke, a crowd of shepherds arrives. They must be strangers, but there is no record of Mary feeling uncomfortable with these uninvited guests. Instead, she “treasures” the memories and is filled with gratitude. Matthew’s account of the magi doesn’t mention Mary’s response, but she must have wondered: how many more strangers would crowd into their temporary housing? These surprising visitors aren’t even Jewish–and bring the strangest gifts. 

Mary’s experience should give us fair warning. If we hang around with Jesus, we’d better keep our doors open. He brings along an odd assortment of friends. They may not bring frankincense or myrrh, but they arrive unexpectedly when there are only two pork chops for dinner. They come disguised as the children’s friends or the lonely neighbor who talks too long while the rolls burn. They phone at the worst possible times and they interrupt our most cherished plans. And in these, says Jesus, you’ll find me. This feast seems to celebrate James Joyce’s description of the Catholic church at its inclusive best: “here comes everybody!”