Category Archives: Family Spirituality

Where we might have expected glory and trumpets the first Sunday after Easter, instead we get typical, honest, human groping towards truth. A splendid reunion between Jesus and his friends? Not quite. But maybe something better: Jesus’ mercy, meeting them where they (and we) are stumbling, extending his hand in genuine understanding and compassion.

Despite the fact that it has been celebrated for centuries, the quality of mercy remains an abstraction. Today, Jesus gives mercy a human face and touch.

Before we criticize Thomas too much, we should ask what we might do in a similar situation. Would we also be skeptical if our friends told us that someone had returned from death? Wouldn’t we want to see for ourselves? Thomas may simply voice the questions most disciples harbor secretly.

The first disciples, caught in fear and confusion, are hardly the finest spokespersons for the gospel. But then, neither are we. We have the same mixture of doubt and certainty, anxiety and joy that they had.

Jesus responds to us as he did to Thomas—without harsh judgment. He understands our needs for concrete reassurance. After all, God created us with five senses to help us learn. And if Thomas—stubbornly insistent on tangible proof—can believe, maybe there’s hope for us all.

To us as to him, Jesus extends the same merciful invitation: “touch me and see.” Only by coming dangerously close to this wounded Lord will we know transformation of our wounds—and resurrection. Doubt isn’t evil: it’s the entryway to hope.

I’ve long believed that we come to understand the “capital R” Resurrection only through understanding “small r” resurrections—the stuff of daily life, like sun after a long stretch of rain, a restored relationship, an accident avoided, health after illness, energy after inertia, seeing a problem that seemed intractable in a positive light, starting a difficult venture late in life. A woman who suffered terrible migraines saw resurrection in the miraculous effects of the right medication, and a nurse described how a dehydrated child, when hydrated, comes alive: skin glowing, energy restored.

In that spirit, we search signs of resurrection this season that are fresh, maybe not expressed in religious language, but still filled with liveliness. One of the most hopeful I’ve found is an “On Being” podcast recorded March 23, 2023. In it, Janine Benyus discusses biomimicry, based on her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

“It’s a design discipline that takes the natural world as mentor and teacher, exploring the ways nature solves problems… relentlessly creating conditions conducive to life.” As Benyus says, “we are surrounded by geniuses.” “It’s an innovation practice where the people who make our world, the designers, engineers, architects and construction workers, when they go to solve a problem, say, “What in the natural world has already solved this problem?”

Take, for instance, abalone. “The mother of pearl on the inside of an abalone shell…is twice as tough as the high-tech ceramics in jet engines.” I won’t attempt to describe the chemistry that produces this material, but to sum up: what’s already in the seawater gets pulled in and coaxed into form, to self-assemble it. Designers learn from that how to create a glass that is extremely tough, layer-by-layer, transparent. The interesting thing about it is that no fossil fuels are burnt to create this glass.

So too people can learn about solar cells by looking at leaves. Material scientists study spiders and rhino horns, seeing how life makes things without kilns. They work in “a reverential state,” awed by the genius of the natural world, sounding like pragmatic, contemporary St. Francises. The compass statement for Benyus’ company, “muddy knees and epiphanies” came from a trip desalination engineers made to the Galápagos Islands. Benyus recalls,

“I walked by this guy named Paul, looking at a mangrove, a pretty buttoned-up engineer, and he was crying. Had tears streaming down his face. I stood next to him looking at the mangrove, and I could get that. It’s a pretty spectacular thing. And he said, ‘How is it that in my education, I’ve been doing this work for 30 years, 40 years, I’m a desalination expert. I filter salt from water, and this plant has its roots in saltwater and it’s solar powered and it’s desalinating. I’m crying because it’s beautiful and because no one ever told me.’”

Once, people made snowshoes by modeling the footprint of a snowshoe hare. Or they designed a chisel by looking at beavers’ teeth. Asking, “What would nature do here? What wouldn’t nature do here?” is a different spin: not learning about nature, but from nature. After 3.8 billion years, life knows how to live. God’s creation shines with marvels we’ve barely begun to explore.

I don’t understand it fully, but I’ve ordered Benyus’ book. And “attending to original vitality,” like St. Hildegard’s “viriditas” is a life-giving, resurrection theme. This vital research reaffirms that we’re made for the garden, not the tomb. God’s life penetrates ours, lighting the dark corners, bringing hope and spring beauty.

This only skims the surface. For more, see https://onbeing.org/programs/janine-benyus-biomimicry-an-operating-manual-for-earthlings

Anyone who lives long enough questions. Why do the wicked prosper? Why do the young die? Why does potential wither while evil thrives?

Why do high hopes sometimes smash against rocky reality? Recently, floods in California had a devastating impact on farmworkers. When the levee near Pajaro broke, they were awakened in the middle of the night and told to evacuate immediately.

Subsequent research showed that a more affluent county north of the dam had invested far more money in maintenance than the one south of it, which flooded. Meanwhile, those who picked strawberries as their primary income were afraid to go to shelters because they worried their immigration status might be questioned. In the week after, they wanted desperately to return to their homes, but the community had no potable water, sewage or electricity. If the crop was destroyed, as many feared, they’d lost their jobs and source of income. They must’ve asked, “why?”

The genius of today’s gospel is that Jesus doesn’t try to answer such unanswerable questions. He enters into them. He’d be right there with the farmworkers, bewildered, vulnerable and defenseless. After his arrest, he can’t act as he has before. He’s rendered passive—and from that stance, saves humanity.

Seeing his hopes unravel and his plans destroyed, Jesus plans a last meal. His concern in his final hours isn’t with imminent, brutal suffering but with a last, poignant gesture of friendship. He reaches out to them–and to us–with the nurture of bread, the spirit of wine and the praise of song. During his whole ordeal, there is no word of recrimination, though it would be understandable. He responds to crushing betrayal by pouring out love.

To the logical, it makes no sense. But to the believer, the powerless triumph. Those who seem defeated ultimately win. The questions aren’t answered, but One goes before us who lives through them, endures.

(John 11:1-45)

Today, she’d be the CEO of Google or Apple. Brilliant, outspoken, direct, she gave Jesus exactly the affirmation he needed to proceed to Jerusalem and his passion. But let Martha tell the story…

“I was at my worst then: exhausted, vulnerable, grieving for Lazarus, angry at Jesus. I was so outraged, I spewed pure venom when he arrived. Lazarus’s place at our table was empty, the brother I loved had vanished, and Jesus’ delay became the target for my fury.

People with better social skills might have welcomed him with, ‘Thanks for trying,’ or even, ‘Your friend is dead,’ but I dumped the guilt trip on him: ‘If you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.’

The accusation hurt; I could tell by the sadness in his eyes. Still it didn’t paralyze him; maybe he continued our conversation because he could trust I wouldn’t mask the truth. I would look him straight in the eye and speak without a shred of syrupy politeness.

Still, he hesitated. It was as if he needed something from me, some mysterious affirmation before he plunged ahead. The roles were reversed: just when I needed to lean on him in grief, he asked for my support!

Even if I’d lost Lazarus, I could still encourage Jesus. Maybe he had taught me how to give people exactly what they need. He had wept with Mary; he had discussed the afterlife with me; now it was my turn to answer the question he hated to ask. So few people understood him; all he wanted was one person to show some inkling.

And I did know who he was. In some quiet, sure place within, I was bedrock certain of his identity. So I said it aloud. Not to sound arrogant, but Jesus forged into that foul-smelling tomb as if propelled by my words. I ran after him, just in time to see Lazarus lurch forth. Three days before, weeping, I had covered my brother’s face with the same linen. Now, I unwound the burial cloths as if unwrapping a splendid gift.

I barely thanked Jesus or noticed him leave. But neighbors said he walked purposefully toward Jerusalem, driven as he had been to Lazarus’s grave. Did my words still echo in his ears? Had I ignited some fire within him? As I had a hundred times before, I asked myself, ‘Now what have I said?’”

Excerpted from Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Books, orbisbooks.com, 800-258-5838

I was so excited my son could see, I couldn’t understand how anyone would twist a miracle into placing blame. But the interrogating Pharisees didn’t have my memories: the blind child, moving on instinct, his hands waving before him, sometimes bumbling into doors or trees, the other children jeering, the times when the attempt to keep up became too much, and he collapsed in exhaustion.

But my boy’s wit served him well. He’d met a long series of bullies, so he knew how to stand up to the Sanhedrin. When they probed for information about his healer, he asked slyly, “Do you want to become his disciples too?” “He can speak for himself,” his father said. And he could—eloquent and bold, even through a grilling that would have intimidated trained orators.

Still, I wondered. The rabbis taught that my sin had caused his blindness. How had I made the light die in his eyes? How had I harmed one most precious to me?

But soon the sudden sparkle in my son’s gaze ended the guilt I carried within. My son’s vision restored my own. Like the scales slipping from his eyes, my burden vanished. Jesus freed me from placating the synagogue crowd when he said, “Neither he nor his parents sinned.” Were the rabbis wrong, or had I just moved to a different stage, a greater light and liberation?

Excerpted from Hidden Women of the Gospels by Kathy Coffey, Orbis Books, orbisbooks.com, 800-258-5838

She just wants to fill her bucket and get home before it gets any hotter. The encounter which changes her life comes in the ordinary drudgery—at the well, not the synagogue; in the office, not the church; in the kitchen, not the temple. Almost like finding enlightenment in the frozen food aisle.

But Jesus welcomes desire at the well, indeed, considers it even more important than his own drink. Both the woman and Jesus find so much joy in their conversation, they forget the concerns that brought them here in the first place. He never gets his drink; she abandons her jar. But their deep yearnings meet.

As John Main writes in Word Into Silence, “The consuming desire of Jesus [is] to flood [us] with His Spirit.” (p. 46) Or to give “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” She’s plucky enough to believe him. She responds to a promise, never seeing this miraculous water nor feeling it spill down her sleeves. Maybe she likes his style: to call, never coerce.

Curious how we might respond? Main, says, “numbed by the extravagance of … New Testament claims… we … tone them down in safe theological formulae.” (p. 44) The woman no longer skulks alone and anonymous to the well at noon, when no one else is there. She blazes into the village like a brass band, eager to speak her truth. Newly come to voice, she snags people, holds them in the hollow of her hand.

The Samaritan woman is a model to us all of how to befriend our longing and move towards trust. Her water jar, symbol of domestic duty, is left in the dust. She herself becomes the vessel for the best news anyone could hear.

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.

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?

Sometimes when I’m deep into a novel, streaming series or box of cookies, I think of it during the day, anticipating diving in that evening. Now I’m looking forward to Lent, reading more of Joyce Rupp’s Jesus, Companion in My Suffering. (Ave Maria Press, 2023, 800-282-1865)

Full disclaimer: I’ve admired Joyce’s work for over thirty years, benefited from her practical guidance when I entered the field of spirituality writing, and treasure our friendship. Those who first got to know her through early books like Praying our Goodbyes which looked honestly and touchingly at grief, won’t be disappointed in her latest. What Joyce can do in a small space is genius: brief Gospel passage, prayer and practice, all in under two short pages, one for each of the forty days.

She looks at how Jesus shared our sufferings, the ordinary worries, disappointments, failures, fear, rejection and  fatigue as well as the deep griefs like betrayal, violence and death. Over and over, “Jesus enters fully into our human condition,” experiencing and understanding it to the last drop. No matter what we bear, she reminds us, we don’t do it alone.

One of my favorite chapters is Martha in the kitchen, “getting more upset with each stirring of the pot.” How often do we want to welcome Jesus into our hearts, but fail to take the time for quiet reflection, instead accepting or creating more tasks that leave us feeling overwhelmed and angry? The suggested practice is wonderfully down to earth: consider my gripes, especially the self-inflicted ones.

How better to enter Lent than with Jesus as companion who understands us fully because he’s been here?

Ash Wednesday’s themes of atonement and new life emerging from ashes came together this year when I attended the Violins of Hope concert. The history of these instruments is unique and touching: they were played by Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust. Even in ghettos and camps, music rang out—and continues today.

The project was begun by Amnon Weinstein, a violin maker in Tel Aviv, where a  customer brought a violin for restoration. It had been played by an Auschwitz prisoner, as others were marched to their deaths. (The Nazis also arranged birthday, Sunday and holiday concerts for themselves, so being an orchestra member could preserve a person’s life.)

At first, Weinstein saw ashes within the violin, which reminded him of his 400 family members who had perished. But by 1996, he was ready: word got out, and people brought him 100 instruments. While most of the original owners and musicians were silenced, their voices live on through the restored instruments, or as Avshi Weinstein, Amnon’s grandson said, “now the violins can pray again.”

The poignancy of the event became immediate when Ben, sitting beside us, rolled up his sleeve and displayed a tattooed number on his wrist. That Nazi mark of inhumanity had become a badge of honor. Ben had survived eight death camps, including Auschwitz, and was singled out for recognition and applause.

At this event, violinists played 24 of the original instruments; other violins were touring around the world. Especially meaningful: many free educational assemblies at middle and high schools would reach tens of thousands of students.

The first music played was based on a prayer that stretches back more than 2000 years, expressing the deep human yearning for God. The program continued through the klezmer folk music tradition, Sephardic music from Spain, selections from “Shindler’s List, “and concluded with songs from “Fiddler on the Roof,” which had the audience clapping along. The vibrant conductor coaxed forth a stream of themes: tragedy, resilience, cruelty, resistance, and enduring life. By the time we reached “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “L’Chaim” many in the audience had grown misty-eyed. Life wasted, life silenced, life passing, life renewed and celebrated: what appropriate themes to start Lent.  

There are no accidents. I’d been wanting to write more about Jung’s view of mortality, when I saw a film that gives the ideas flesh and a face. At first, I hesitated to see “Living,” because the plot seemed hackneyed: buttoned-up, bowler-wearing bureaucrat, given terminal diagnosis, loses inhibitions and crams life into his few remaining months.

But this has a unique spin: the ability of novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote “The Remains of the Day” and actor Bill Nighy, who plays Mr. Williams. His life consists of routine: daily train into the city at precisely the same time, only nodding to his colleagues, pushing paper around in the Public Works Dept., return, sleep, repeat. Other critics have mentioned Williams’ British, stiff-upper-lip response to his doctor’s grim news: “Quite.”

He then spins through a somewhat predictable sequence of getting drunk, trying amusement parks, asking a young female colleague out to lunch. She is so dazzled by the prestigious Fortnum’s restaurant and a huge sundae with sprinkles, that he permits himself a small smile.

And then the film begins to clearly prove Jung’s belief, “Life is never so beautiful as when surrounded by death.” Williams, with the urge of the dying to set things right, takes on a cause proposed by three women, which has gotten lost in bureaucracy: building a small playground in a bombed-out London tenement (the action occurs shortly after World War II).

Jung believed we have a foot in each world: the temporal and the eternal. The film shows this in a lovely scene: after long persistence, Williams achieves the playground, and swings there during a light snowfall, singing his favorite Scottish ballad. A policeman later commented, “I didn’t interrupt because he looked so happy.” Death marks not an end but a transition; humans throughout history in a “consensus gentium” or “agreement of the people” have held that life continues in another key. Just as the birth canal is the passage into new life, so too the tomb.

Our mortality brings life tenderness, beauty and wounded glory. The purpose of death is to know life fully; we couldn’t appreciate the intensity of love without the possibility of loss, the preciousness of relationships without an expiration date.

It’s one thing to repeat Jung’s phrases, quite another to live them. That’s what Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams has done, and it’s important that his film is called “Living,” not “Dying.”