Category Archives: Family Spirituality

What intrigues about this story is that the five women martyred in Liberia in 1992 had a chance to escape. They left the violent civil war in 1990, returned to safety in Illinois, but made the decision to re-enter the craziness of maniacal military leader Charles Taylor, armed rogue bands, fire ants, and child soldiers.

Why? The sisters who knew them respond: they had work to do: teaching poor, illiterate women, staffing medical clinics, counseling high school students with PTSD who’d been forced to kill in the war. Over and over, a theme recurs: their love for the Liberian people, their desire to share their lot. Brief biographies:

Sister Barbara Mutra was a nurse specializing in prenatal and infant care. In a previous assignment, she reduced infant mortality from 80% to 20%, from two deaths a week to two a year. By 1990, 40,000 civilians in Monrovia, the capital city had died of starvation. Barbara would commandeer vehicles to bring Catholic Relief Services food and medicine to hungry children, bribing the guards at checkpoints with spearmint gum.

Sister Agnes Mueller taught Liberian women to read. Before she came, one said, “I didn’t think I had a brain and could learn.” Agnes was grateful for “learnings in pain, vulnerability and suffering,” which she might not have experienced in another culture.

Sister Joel Kolmer was especially fearless about returning to Liberia, saying, “it’s impossible for fear and love to occupy the same place in one’s heart.” An elementary school teacher, she waved her red and white baseball cap embroidered “Slick Chick” during a terrifying interrogation by a rebel soldier.

Sister Kathleen McGuire prompted her motherhouse in Illinois to break the law and become the only Catholic organization in the area to offer sanctuary to Cuban and Central American refugees in 1985. A PhD in education, Kathleen wrote, “My work…is to breathe a little life into those I know, help them to come to be a little more fully, a little more freely who they are. And knowing, then, their own grace and beauty, be able to guess at the beauty and graciousness of their Father.”

Sister Shirley Kolmer, a PhD in Math, first went to the University of Liberia on a Fulbright. Her argument for returning: Terrible conditions were exactly why they should go back. She began the counseling program at their high school for boys pressed into war, both perpetrators and victims.

William Twaddell, US ambassador to Liberia, wrote in a telegram confirming the deaths that the sisters were “acting in the most noble tradition of their order and their faith. The safety and welfare of the wounded and defenseless motivated them and were their only concerns in the midst of war.” And aren’t we the lucky ones, to have their bright lights shining on our paths?

Excerpted from When the Saints Came Marching In by Kathy Coffey, Liturgical Press, http://www.litpress.org

I must admit to avoiding detective series—until two friends recommended “Unforgotten,” streaming on PBS. What a delightful discovery there–police who are gentle, compassionate and humane. And it’s stimulating to follow twisted plots and random clues that seem to lead to dead ends, but eventually result in closure.

I know. It’s fiction. And it’s British, so even an interrogation can seem mildly conversational, and even a psychopath can ask for a cuppa as he’s being accused. Remarkably the star detective is as fair and decent to suspects as she is to victims. She and her partner accomplish brilliant work never once using guns, flashing lights or sirens, only the power of their wits.

The pattern of the episodes is: accidentally finding a body buried for 30-40 years, prompting a revisit to the cold case. Then we see three or four people with their families and careers, leading ordinary and sometimes exemplary lives in different parts of Britain. (The scenery an added bonus.) The viewer wonders what could possibly connect these disparate threads, but they come together as all the people become suspects. Sometimes the scrutiny unveils other unfortunate things they’ve done, but not murder. Sometimes, it pinpoints the murderer. But clever writing keeps us guessing, trying to piece together the little we know, admiring the detectives who finally pull it all together.

Nicola Walker, who plays detective Cassie Stuart, and Sanjeev Bhaskar, her partner Sunil Khan head a team exploring tedious mountains of information as well as discovering sudden brilliant connections. In the case of a missing girl, Cassie cautions them, “Tread very gently.” Although she doesn’t pontificate about her work, occasional comments unveil her motivation. In this case, she explains “somewhere parents are suffering unimaginable pain.” She becomes so close to the mother and sister of the girl that she takes up a collection to bring home the remains in a lovely coffin, and tenderly brings flowers to the burial site.

I was especially touched by an episode where the team gradually discovers that three people abused as children killed their abusers many years ago. In the meantime, they have become a nurse, a high school teacher and an attorney trying to adopt a girl he and his partner clearly love. Cassie asks Sunil what purpose it would serve to send them to prison when they’ve been suffering all their lives. The story powerfully depicts the life-long traumatic effects of child abuse, especially when the victims reveal it to their families. In all the cases, the crime has been a secret kept from even the most supportive and sympathetic spouses. The two detectives make a wise decision to not pursue charges.

On the other hand, when two suspects in a particularly grisly murder and dismemberment are fellow police officers, the detectives agree, “Let’s do it by the book.” It’s a refreshing departure from the police corruption that’s surfaced in the US recently.

Although Nicola Walker doesn’t play a role in the most recent series, there’s a stunning contrast between her vulnerable humanity and the lack of feeling in one murderer she pursues. Normally, she’s calm and professional. But as he reveals, almost proudly, the number of young women he’s raped and murdered, and displays the places he buries them, she falters. Her partner subtly takes over the questioning, as Cassie surreptitiously wipes away tears. Exhausted, she makes a mistake in that investigation, forgetting a confidential folder at a coffee shop where’s she’s been working. A seemingly small error can have huge consequences, which lead to the odd reassurance of a “tough cop” weeping in the ladies’ room. The job also takes its toll on her personal life, as she struggles to cope with a dad falling into dementia, prod a son who can’t seem to get a job, and find time for an understanding boyfriend.

While there is nothing about the series that’s explicitly religious, humans have loved stories since Eve first hooked her kids with “Once upon a time…” And we love to cheer for the imaginative, plucky, persistent good.

Leticia Padilla was initially inspired by Laudato Si’ in 2015, so it seems appropriate to see how she put it into action as Pope Francis publishes a new document on the environment October 4. It’s fitting he chose the feast of St. Francis for this publication, as St. Francis saw all creation as a sanctuary. This week continues 3 more of her “5 R’s” begun last week.

Reuse

“In my house, we repair everything. The three kids (now young adults) have been raised since kindergarten on a steady diet of dinner table discussions about sustainability. They know how to sew, mend and fix what’s broken,” Leticia says. “Life is so much easier when you just quit buying.” Her daughter majored in environmental studies, and now works at the Ecology Center in Berkeley CA.

Rot

The answer to Leticia’s question seems obvious: “Food waste rotting in landfills releases methane gas into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. Why not let it feed our gardens and nurture us?” Her daughter designed and with her dad built a master composter for their home, and Leticia introduced the practice to their parish campus. As a high school Home Economics teacher, she taught students to shop wisely for food, to minimize food waste and to repair their clothes. She taught All Saints elementary school students to separate food waste and compost in the school garden. “The garden is my happy place,” she smiles, and when the Padillas grow too much food for their own family, off it goes to the food bank or All Saints parish.

But she also notes the importance of an infrastructure to support her practices. In California, Senate Bill 1383, passed in 2016, set a goal of diverting 75% of organic waste (about 27 million tons) away from landfills by 2025. Nonprofits like Second Harvest also collect unused food from grocery stores and restaurants, channeling it to hungry people.

Recycle

“I’m done living with blinders on,” Leticia says. “We can’t recycle ourselves out of this mess.” Cardboard and paper can be recycled, but not plastic which disintegrates into tiny particles (microplastics) that killed twenty elephants who ingested it at a landfill in Sri Lanka. Preparing infant formula in a plastic bottle degrades the bottle, so babies drink a kind of plastic soup. And the research isn’t yet in on how microplastics which contain suspected carcinogens might affect our diets and health.

As long as companies continue to churn out single-use plastics, we’ll poison the environment for the sake of dubious convenience. As Matt Simon explains in his book, A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, “we’re trying to drain the tub without turning off the tap. And it wasn’t so long ago that humans got along fine without plastic.” The Padilla family, in fact, went waste-free for three years—due to their habits, no trash service needed.

If all life and all God’s creation are sacred, so too are even our smallest efforts to care for them. Surely God who created fog-feathering redwoods, vast oceans and glistening mountains can’t idly watch beloved humans foul their home, destroy their health and ruin their planet. Ever the courteous parent, God sends scientific researchers, conscientious citizens, and Leticia Padillas. 

Annual global production of plastic? Over 800 billion pounds

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch? 600 thousand sq. miles between CA and Hawaii, roughly 1.8 trillion plastic shards

Greatest polluters? North Americans produce 500 lbs. of plastic waste a year, twice as much as the average European, 16 times as much as the average Indian

National Sword? the 2017 policy whereby China refused imports of “foreign garbage,” leaving the west with plastic they couldn’t get rid of  

Largest producers of plastic? The fossil fuel industry. “Exxon Mobil, the world’s fourth largest oil company is also the largest producer of virgin polymers.”

“A Trillion Little Pieces,” by Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 7/3/23, 24-27.

If the reader feels like I do–drowning in plastic crap that leaches nasty chemicals into our food and ocean–take heart. One woman stands stalwart against the tide. Leticia Padilla, bilingual mother of three young adults and barely five feet tall, could be the patron saint of sustainability. If we all did even half of what she does, there might be hope for humans!

She was initially inspired by Laudato Si’ when she read it in 2015, so it seems appropriate, as we anticipate Pope Francis’ new document on the environment October 4, to see how one family could adjust its lifestyle to reduce their use of single-use plastics. I ask Leticia for the “dummy’s guide,” 5 things any moron could do to reduce plastic pollution. She suggests the Five R’s:

Refuse. The E.P.A recommends we avoid single-use plastic altogether, since the chances of a bottle or bag winding up in landfill or the ocean are high. Before buying anything, Leticia and her family ask questions that might have come from the early Christian abbesses and monks, “Do I really need this? And what do I do with it when I get it home?” She thinks we must speak directly to the producers of items we are purchasing and demand they change. (Why, for instance, must Costco wrap my small jar of face cream in an impenetrable layer of plastic and a huge chunk of cardboard?)

For essentials like groceries, she provides her own containers, buys bulk foods, and saves a fortune. Much of what we pay for is a container we don’t need; the spices in a $5 jar might be worth only 60 cents. She consistently gets off the mailing lists for catalogues and junk mail; even though paper is recyclable, that still takes an industrial process.

Reduce. Leticia once went a year and a half without buying any personal items (clothes, make-up, accessories, household items). Her husband runs the only green pallet company in California, recycling wood with an electric grinder, making wood chips for ground cover. Unfortunately, there is no meaningful way to recycle plastic; the only way to reduce it is to cut off the sources. Predictably, oil/plastic producing companies lobby intensely against alternatives. But in a bright banner of hope, Leticia is a “gleaner.” At first that sounds like a Biblical term (wasn’t that how Ruth met Boaz?). In California it means ringing doorbells and asking owners for the fruit rotting on their trees: oranges, pears and plums that can go to the food bank. She belongs to the Forestr organization https://www.forestr.org/ that has gleaned over 73,534 lbs. of food. One owner of a huge, 27-year old citrus tree expressed her thanks to the gleaning team, doing a job that would be impossible for an individual. Forestr also starts urban farms, collects litter and develops pocket parks.

Three more “R’s” to be continued next week…

Some of us pounce on the punch line. An inept gardener, I’m thrilled when a plant blooms in spite of me. There in my raggedy, bug-bitten patch, a scarlet spike, a creamy-crimson rose! I s’pose I could worry about being the choked or withered seed, but fretting about anxiety seems redundant.  

Even seasoned farmers must leave a lot to chance—they can’t control the weather, weeds, or various calamities that could befall something as small and unprotected as a seed. The crop, like our lives, must rely heavily on grace.

The stretch from metaphor to experience shouldn’t be too long. Against the wildly improbable odds, the Word sometimes blossoms in us. In every setting—filling stations, hospitals, prisons, bars, retirement centers, offices, stores—kindness flowers. Teachers, addiction counsellors, social workers, parents, therapists, spiritual directors all focus on peoples’ innate goodness and try to reflect it back. 

So maybe today’s parable, brought to us by Luke, is about the slow, mysterious working of unearned grace. Even through our cracks and weeds and fissures, a green shoot can sometimes sprout. “God, who gives life to all things” (1 Tim 6:13) compensates for flaws.

Jesus, ever the storyteller, knew how to make a dramatic point. Once mistaken for a gardener, (Jn. 20:15) he also told the parable of wheat and weeds growing up together in a non-dualistic field (Mt. 13:24-43). Facing opposition and betrayal, Jesus modeled how to learn from the thirsty deserts and dark crevices of negative experience.

And he might reach into our rockiest chasms to retrieve the frail and fragile tendril.

Kathy Coffey, “Grace in the Garden,” from the September 2023 issue of Give Us This Day http://www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN) 888-259-8470

After I watched a few episodes of “Astrid,” a French detective series streaming on PBS, I asked the nun-friend who’d recommended it, “Will it always be this dark?” She replied cheerily, “every episode starts with a murder.”

Usually murder mysteries aren’t my style, but this one has intriguing elements beyond the gory details. What I like best is the developing friendship between Police Commander Raphaelle Coste and Astrid, who is on the spectrum. Coste quickly realizes that Astrid thinks differently and sees things that “neurotypicals” miss. Wisely, she brings her to crime scenes where neither woman flinches at the bloody corpse. Astrid then works as an archivist in the police records department to uncover relevant cases; she has a photographic memory of files, and arranges evidence visually in a private room. There, she demonstrates an intelligence that breaks the mold, reaching her conclusions in solitude. A childhood fascination with puzzles surfaces when she treats each crime as a matter of fitting clues together precisely.

Gradually, Raphaelle invites Astrid to tea, then dinner. They exchange symbolic gifts, and become friendlier without some of the usual social cues. (Astrid hates being touched; it’s a real breakthrough when she gradually learns to touch Raphaelle’s hand as she lies in the hospital after a gunshot wound, and finally lets Raphaelle hug her, towards the end of the first series. Surprisingly, she smiles with joy.)

Astrid’s habits of punctuality and pristine order serve her well. In a complicated and perhaps implausible ploy, on the verge of being kidnapped, she arranges files in her workroom startlingly out of place, which Raph notices she’d never do. They send a signal as Bach once did, translating musical notes to letters and spelling out Astrid’s kidnapper’s name.

Like refugees in another country, Astrid’s social skills group–people on the spectrum–meet regularly to discuss how to function in the neurotypical world, how to read cues in another language. They may not understand jokes or social signals, but several are geniuses at computers, their skills helping the police unravel some baffling murders. Without spoiling the end of the second series, they come through like champions for wrongfully imprisoned Astrid and Raphaelle, brilliantly helping to solve a crime.

My nun-friend was sad when the second series ended; so was I, mightily impressed by the deep humanity of the show. But hope springs: a third series has been completed in France and awaits translation for export to the US. On the horizon: a brightness for the long winter nights?

At first, it sounds depressing. A squatters’ village of 5000 women and children, 50 miles from Guatemala City, without electricity, clean water or sewage treatment, with violence endemic. As some mothers in the US buy Barbie notebooks and backpacks, choose cute clothing for Back-to-School, mothers here rotate days when each child can eat, spreading out the meagre food.

But stay tuned: el salitre means “salt,” which has a rich resonance in Christian scripture. (See Matthew 5:13-16.) It’s the juice, the spark, the seasoning when everything seems tasteless. Now the women of the settlement are working to transform their community for generations to come, providing food, child care and meaningful work. In partnership with North American women, they are learning vital sewing and embroidery skills, earning enough to provide not only material support, but to give them hope and confidence in their own creativity and entrepreneurship.

Hear the story in their own words.

• Judith, the sole provider for her family: “I worked first as a maid and then as a factory worker and had difficulty feeding my children. With this work I am able to feed my children, keep them in school, and have returned to school myself.”
• Lety: “I never attended school and have learned to read and write on my own since joining the cooperative, where I [also] learned to sew and embroider. With my work from the Center we are able to feed our children and keep the oldest two in school. If I successfully continue this work, the two smaller boys will be able to start school when they are old enough.” [Her photo in the annual report shows her holding smartly decorated tennis shoes and beaming.]
• Betsy Wack, board president: “in 2016, five of us asked five women living in intractable poverty, ‘How can we help?’ By 2022, we’d completed a new building, surrounded by a security fence, where ten women work and an educational center cares for 25 children. By now, the children no longer look malnourished, the women have bank accounts, health insurance and retirement benefits. They are poised to welcome new colleagues whom they’ll train on electric sewing machines.”

The products are marketed in Antiguan stores and on their website: www.elsalitrecenter.com. Vivid colors, sustainable natural fibers, and intricate hand embroidery make their clothing, purses and shoes immediately stand out from what we normally buy off the rack.  Besides, that purse has a story! How many people can boast that their shirt, pants or shoes are keeping children from starvation? Or that they’ve joined the noble effort to “transform lives, one stitch at a time”?

Full disclosure: Betsy Wack has been a dear friend since high school, and for several years, I’ve deeply admired this, her generous, dangerous, crazy, wise adventure.

Grandparents Day is September 10 & the perfect gift is Kathy Coffey’s latest book, A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting, is available from Orbis Press, 800-258-5838

A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting

Her service seems as simple as the pure blue and white lines of her clothing. Mother Teresa cared for the poor, dying and homeless in the slums of Calcutta. To those who face daily the quagmire of business decisions, tangled relationships and complex scheduling, her work by contrast seems a clear, uncomplicated gospel following.

Yet few of us abandon our routines, don saris and join her movement. Perhaps we want to believe that something of Teresa’s spirit can invigorate our lives; some of her clarity can penetrate our shadows; some of her compassion can move through us to those we touch each day. Our contacts may not be as abandoned and diseased as those Teresa cared for, but they have the same needs for attention and affection.

Teresa apparently had the same luminosity that attracted people to Jesus. Everyone wanted to be near her in life, and after death she exerts the same attraction. Her biographer Malcolm Muggeridge believed that for people who have trouble grasping “Christ’s great propositions of love… someone like Mother Teresa is a godsend. She is this love in person.”

No one was less sentimental or more “earthy.” She would engage in lively discussion with beggars about their “take of the day,” eager to hear how it went. One of her favorite words was “beautiful”—in the squalor of Calcutta slums! Indeed, she believed her vocation was to be beautiful. She gloried in life-surviving-against-all odds, exulting when a tiny baby survived: “There’s life in her!”

Like ourselves, she often felt exhausted, alone and miserable.With the publication of her diaries after her death in 1997, we’ve learned she often felt abandoned by God, lost in the “dark night of the soul.” So to one like us we say, “Happy Feast, St. Teresa of Calcutta!”

Grandparents Day is September 10 & the perfect gift is Kathy Coffey’s latest book, A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting, is available from Orbis Press, 800-258-5838 https://orbisbooks.com/products/9781608339891Get

The statistics show overwhelmingly that the American people want gun safety legislation. A Fox News poll (April, ’23) shows their support:

87 percent – Background Checks for Guns

81 percent – Enforce Existing Gun Laws

81 percent – Legal Age 21 to Buy All Guns

Given the inertia of the US Congress, or their indebtedness to the gun lobby which funds their campaigns, we can either despair, or say “enough!” and take action.

One active, faith-based movement that seems promising is Guns to Gardens (www.gunstogardens.org). A national organization, they use the buyback model to collect unwanted guns, disable them and use their parts for garden tools, art, or jewelry. Some of the most touching events have honored innocent victims shot to death. On April 15, 2023, 57 firearms were dismantled at Most Precious Blood church in Denver, CO in honor of Audra Dominguez.

Age 25, an A-student, Audra was attending a birthday party where a loaded and unsecured weapon brought out from the garage shot her in the head. Her family volunteered at the event, and posted pictures of her there. A similar event in Feb. ’23 at Columbine United Church in Littleton, CO collected 44 guns to honor Jayden Hoyle, age 13, killed in a car by random gunfire.

Volunteers (40 at each site) make the events run smoothly. People drive into the parking lot with the unloaded gun in their car. They remain anonymous, and receive a gift card, ranging in value from $50 for a shot gun, to $100 for a hand gun or semi-automatic to $200 for an assault rifle. Trained volunteers use a metal chop saw to dismantle guns; leftover metal parts are transformed into something life-giving. Best of all: the weapons aren’t returned to the gun marketplace.

With 400 million guns in American homes (that’s more than one per person), this effort may seem to make a small dent in the problem. In 2021, US citizens bought over 20 million firearms, for a total (including the cost of ammunition) of twenty-eight billion dollars. With that much money at stake, no wonder legislators court the wealth of gun manufacturers! But Christians know the power of an alternative: a baby born far from the seat of power who changed the world, the symbolism of a tiny mustard seed growing into a huge bush where the birds of the air take refuge, or the small measure of leaven lifting the whole lump of dough.

Ironically, we’re familiar with the example set by other countries: many like Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom have enacted strict legislation resulting in almost no gun-related deaths there now. In contrast, 43,000 Americans die every year from gun violence. Approximately 60% of these deaths are from suicide, followed by homicide, family violence and accidents. Having a gun in the home increases the likelihood of such events dramatically.

Understandably, some people want to get the guns OUT of their homes for multiple reasons—children now present, owner no longer hunting, gun returned by the police after a suicide or accident. That’s where Guns to Gardens comes in. Their safe surrender events were scheduled during June ’23 for cities in OH, CO, WI, CT, CA, NY, and MA.

Why not add your city to the list? Many churches, mosques and synagogues have a parking lot, and could find 40 volunteers to sponsor a buyback event. Or make a donation: received by Gun by Gun, a 501c3, they’re tax deductible. What a fine, practical enactment of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Grandparents Day is September 10 & the perfect gift is Kathy Coffey’s latest book, A Generous Lap: A Spirituality of Grandparenting, is available from Orbis Press, 800-258-5838 https://orbisbooks.com/products/9781608339891

(Some Christian denominations hear this reading this weekend: Matthew 15:21-28)

I yelled to attract his attention in that crowd, competing with noises of braying animals and bellowing vendors. But he said nothing. My last chance vanished.

Sunk in exhausted depression, I couldn’t consider what must’ve raced through his mind: that precarious history of Israel, a tiny band of nomads meandering through a postage-stamp-sized country, their improbable survival, outgunned and surrounded by superior forces, their clinging to identity, his mission to those dear and familiar, whose scriptures he revered, whose psalms he sang and whose customs he observed. Could he brush aside all that for me? No wonder he was silent.  

When he insisted on his mission to the “lost sheep of Israel,” it called for a response more powerful than shouting. Abandoning any shred of status I had left, I knelt before him, right there on the rutted path, rocks digging into my knees. I had nowhere else to turn and my daughter’s image haunted me: the spastic jerks, the face etched with pain. I’d do whatever it took to heal her.

Totally defenseless, I cringed at his racial epithet, the worst insult ever: comparing me to dogs? Well, so be it; at times they’re treated better than women. But from long fatigue, I dragged one last spark of spunk. If it’s all you’ve got, give me the crumbs.

His response startled: it was the first time anyone had ever called me great. Chattel of my father, then my husband, this was probably the first time I’d ever raised my voice. And he commended me for sass? I was so bewildered, I almost missed the next sentence; “Let it be done as you wish.”

Did that mean her healing? He had intuited my heart’s deep desire; that had to be his meaning. In that moment, expanded when I saw her cured, I knew we must always stand in hope. It felt like I sat enthroned at a big table, chewing the whole, fat loaf. Or, to put it poetically:

You might ask why I spoke of crumbs.

My days a trail of them, prayer beads

of desperation as I scan the dirt floor.

I’ve harvested scraps, pitifully grateful for

kernels others ignore. Hunger can numb

a woman, make her mean. Bossiness

hardens her bread.  What broke me,

finally, was seeing the grim cycle repeat in

my daughter’s haggard eyes. Not her,

too! Awkward and stiff, I bend.

I never dreamt how crumbs would serve me well,

small pivots to humor, juicy dollops after grinding need.

I who scavenged from garbage, served a heaping plate!

With a lopsided grin, he awakens her.

Her eyes fill with merriment; she holds health

like a bouquet. Even in hunger, we break abundant

bread, chewing morsels with the relish of gourmets.

Excerpt from More Hidden Women of the Gospels, Orbis Press, 800-258-5838, OrbisBooks.com.