Kathy Coffey

“rich in what matters to God.” Luke 12:21

And what is that richness? Surely not the revolting wealth of billionaires that starves the hungry and jeopardizes medical care to 11 million people. Yet these moral midgets are currently at the top of the heap in U.S. society.

Another, more satisfying answer emerged at an exhibit of African-American quilts, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California, displayed at the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. (https://bampfa.org/program/routed-west) According to their website, during the Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), millions of African-Americans traveled to California to escape the South’s oppressive racism and find better jobs. “They carried quilts as functional objects and physical reminders of the homes they left behind. The quilts in this exhibitionexplore the medium’s unique capacity for connecting kin across time and distance, holding memory and ancestral knowledge, and opening up space for beauty and artistic ingenuity.”

A caveat: it might seem glib for a white person in the 21^st century to easily idealize the horrors of slavery these quilters endured or the Jim Crow they fled. But there the quilts hang—dazzling in color and craft, a silent tribute to their resilient makers. In a New York Times article, (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/arts/design/quilters-berkeley-museum.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU8.ohNK.24EK-m_SsELM&smid=url-share) three generations of quilters speak for themselves.

Laverne Brackens (age 98) made “britches quilts” from jeans discarded by her children, with pockets, patches and faded, worn knee spots. For her daughter Sherry Byrd, quilting offered comfort when she needed it most. In Fairfield, Texas, she grew up watching her grandmother and great-grandmother at work and was often drafted to add ties to their quilts, using strings to secure the layers together. She didn’t begin making her own pieces until she was 33 and gave birth to her sixth child, Micah, who was stillborn.

“I had to find some way to work out the grief,” Byrd said. “I had five other children, and I couldn’t sit there crying all the time. I had to balance taking care of them and grieving over the baby that didn’t come home from the hospital.”

Her daughter, Bara Byrd-Stewart said, “you disappear into your own world when you’re quilting. It’s beautiful. Nobody can tell you what to do.” How she must’ve echoed enslaved ancestors whose days were dull and full of drudgery, but found hope and transcendence in their fabric creations. No one could’ve told them how to transform flour, tobacco and whiskey sacks into dazzling mosaics—they made it up as they went. No matter what the medium—woodworking, cake decorating, singing, sculpting, composing, film making, gardening, dancing—one who becomes deeply absorbed in creativity can lose track of time. Even the quilt stains are eloquent—coffee? Mud? Blood? What unknown stories splotch a creamy square.

Quilting was a communal task, so friends are stitched into the seams, bonds are sewn securely there. What conversations and songs must’ve flowed over the frames, what whispers and stories later tucked under the covers and into the beds. Did the makers wrap their quilts around people they loved who were sick or dying? What a final blessing, to be warmed and held by Molly’s or Addy’s comfort and skill.

There are many kinds of stained glass, not all found at Chartres.

———

Enjoy 5 days at the Marillac Center, Leavenworth, KS with Kathy Coffey leading

The Genius of Jesus, The World of Women

October 13 at 4pm (arrive in afternoon)– October 18 after lunch

For more information or to register,

visit https://www.scls.org/prayer-spirituality/marillac-center/

or contact  retreats@scls.org   913-758-6552 OR  kcullen@scls.org  913-758-9714

(John 11:1-45)

Brilliant, outspoken, direct, Martha after her brother’s death gave Jesus exactly the affirmation he needed to proceed to Jerusalem and his passion. But let her 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: ‘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

Let’s hope that on the Feast of Mary Magdalene July 22, we all do our part to correct the misperception of her as prostitute. That error, a conflation of three Biblical texts, was given authority by Pope Gregory the Great in the seventh century, and not corrected for 1400 years, until revisions to the Roman calendar of 1969.

Luke’s gospel names her as one of several financially independent women who supported Jesus’ ministry. But her role is more important than financier. Dan Brown’s best-selling Da Vinci Code gave her a romantic role, but again, her centrality in the early Christian community was more than simply a private relationship.

All four Gospels agree she was one of the first witnesses to the resurrection. When Jesus calls her name in the garden, it is a pivotal point of human history. Her name is the hinge to a new order. She was the first to realize that God could vanquish even death, and to tell the other disciples. She convinced them and skeptics throughout history that “love is stronger than death.” To silence her voice and discount her primary role does her a great disservice. She calls us instead to the vision of a world free of sexism, suffering, exploitation and death. Arguments over authority simply distract from that larger hope.

Biographical details are sparse for this Patron Saint of the Environment: daughter of a Mohawk chief and a Christian, Algonquin mother, Kateri was orphaned when her family was wiped out by the smallpox epidemic of 1660, which left her pock-marked and half blind. Adopted by her uncle, she asked for baptism at age 20, and celebrated it in a chapel festively decorated with feathers, ribbons, flowers, and beads.

The Mohawks, however, could not accept her conversion and ridiculed her. Eventually she made a long journey on foot to the Sault mission south of Montreal in Canada, where she could live among other Native American Christians. Early French biographers describe her as solid and joyful. She nursed the sick and dying with remarkable cheer, considering that her own health was precarious. Her joy was so contagious that children were drawn to her for storytelling. She showed a key hallmark of holiness: people wanted to be around her. At her burial there was no mourning, only public rejoicing.

Beyond the brief biography, Kateri stands as a larger symbol for the reverence and repair our environment desperately needs. Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth underscores the significance of Native Americans to a country that seems aggressively bent on destroying the earth, greedily exploiting its natural resources. The environmental damage goes back to the first European settlers who saw themselves as “lordly rulers of the continent,” (p. 189) who could dominate it at will. Instead of meeting the indigenous cultures with curiosity and delight, wondering what native people could teach, these pioneers called them “savages” needing redemption. Berry terms this “our compulsive savior instincts. We take up the burden of saving others even when in fact we destroy them.” (p. 182)

In the five centuries since the European invasion of the continent, the native tribes suffered physically but won “a moral victory of unique dimensions.” (p. 183) Their spiritual tradition, which might be called a nature mysticism, is exactly what we need now to revitalize our attitudes about our land, seas, forests, and rivers if they are to survive horrific pollution. When clean air and wilderness are dangerously threatened, the Native American approach which regards them as sacred might save the planet. (For more on that topic, see Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer.) In contrast to the lordly rulers of the continent, who could do as they pleased with its resources, Kateri and her people teach “the art of communion with the earth.” In an ironic reversal, “we need their mythic capacity for relation to this continent more than they need our capacity for mechanistic exploitation.” (p. 190)

Kateri and her people understood how human life is physically and spiritually interwoven with the water, sun and soil that sustain us. They appreciated how the splendor of land and sea inspires our sense of the divine. In desperate, last-ditch circumstances now, we need Kateri’s sensitivity to the needs of rivers, waters and valleys, knowing that to extinguish a species is to silence a divine voice, to degrade our habitat is to degrade ourselves.

Today’s reading from Isaiah 66:10-14 imagines God saying, “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad because of her, all you who love her; exult, exult with her…When you see this, your heart shall rejoice.” Why is the note of joy often sadly missing from some religious celebrations? It permeates the Hebrew scriptures and New Testament, yet “churchy” folks often seem grim. Thomas Merton describes them in Disputed Questions: “the painful coldness and incapacity for love that are sometimes found in groups of men or women most earnestly ‘striving for perfection.’” That phrase may seem dated, but this sounds burningly fresh: “the failures of those who are so sincere, so zealous, and yet frighten people away from Christ by the frozen rigidity and artificiality of their lives.” (p. 124)

Merton goes on to explain that Christ’s call wasn’t meant to be another difficult duty to satisfy the demands of God, but to enter Life, and by loving “be transformed from brightness to brightness.”  As we allow ourselves to be loved, in our limitations and messiness, we “stop being a hair-splitting pharisee,” and become a new reality.

I often find parallels to scripture in literature, this time in re-reading a favorite classic, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. She recounts the story of Bishop Lamy, with the pseudonym Jean Latour, who as a young man left his home in the beautiful Auvergne region of France to become a missionary in New Mexico. Travel was arduous, living conditions rough, and he often missed his cultured French home. But one achievement of his years on the frontier was building the beautiful cathedral of Santa Fe, dedicated in 1887. As he’s dying, he looks back on his rich, full life. He’d had the chance to retire in France, but opted instead to die in New Mexico. Why? A deep breath of the morning air that restored youth: “the light, dry wind… with the fragrance of hot sun and sage brush and sweet clover … that made one’s body feel light and one’s heart cry, ‘today, today’ like a child’s… (p. 443).  Something soft and wild and free… lightened the heart… and released the spirit into the wind, into the blue and gold into the morning, into the morning!” Or as Merton would say: The mystery of Christ shines forth in our loves, and “we breathe the sweet air of Christ, the breath of Christ.” (p. 126)

Writers often work a year out, so the last blog published about Pentecost was written before I attended a celebration of the feast so lively it has stayed with me for weeks, continuing to resonate.

Imagine St. Therese Parish in Seattle, WA at 9 am June 8. The altar cloth suggests flames of crimson and gold. Above the altar, fabric in the same colors blows in the breeze.  Vestments are a bold scarlet, and most participants wear red or orange. The choir is spirited, their music vibrant and pulsing. But what really strikes me is the homily by Father Phil Boroughs, SJ.

He recalls saying Mass for a group in the crypt of St. Peter’s. They arrived at 6 am, before the basilica opens, and were escorted to their spot by the Swiss guard. As they walked the circle around Peter’s tomb, they saw other groups from around the world, celebrating in many languages.  That scene in Rome echoed one in Jerusalem centuries before when visitors from many lands voiced their astonishment:

“Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?

We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites,
inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,…

yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues
of the mighty acts of God” (Acts 2:7-12).

It struck then: the universality of the Catholic church is the antidote to the ridiculous effort of the US administration to quash diversity. In some misguided, racist attempt to create a whites-only world, they have ordered international students to go home. At Harvard, for example, 6,700 students from around the world bring a rich blend of different cultures and experiences that benefit all the students. Who knows: might one of those students from abroad return home and eventually become a Prime Minister with friendly ties to the US? Might one, exposed to cutting edge science, come closer to researching a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s?

As some readers may remember, I haven’t always been a fan of the patriarchal hierarchy suggested by the massive, heavy architecture of the Vatican. I searched in vain for some trace there of the poor carpenter who began it all. But from another angle: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues” (Acts 2:4). Humans can evolve beyond tribalism, beyond suspicion or hatred of anyone different. The insecure and anxious fear the ”other.” But many, despite differences, unite in common cause, with the same hopes, ideals, values and leader. The languages and cultures gathered in St. Peter’s reflect the vast diversity of God’s creation: 400 kinds of mangos, 11,000 species of birds, between 5.5. and 30 million insect species, 4000 kinds of potatoes. If God so loves variety, why don’t we?

It’s raining lightly on a grey June 14 in Washington DC as the grim parade rolls past the scowling birthday boy. Such a display of military might, power and dominance reeks of insecurity. It’s sad when someone must order over 6,000 soldiers to celebrate his birthday. What’s tragic is the bill for this extravaganza: by some estimates, over $45 million when $1 a day which can keep a child from starving in Sudan has been de-funded. The brash arrogance of it all cried out for a recitation of Psalm 75, used that day for morning prayer around the world:

“To the boastful I say, ’Do not boast’;

To the wicked, ‘Do not flaunt your strength,…

Do not speak with insolent pride.’”

Contrast that scene to parades all over the U.S., in small towns and large, where five million gather to protest “No Kings.” (Asked about it, the president replied, “We’re not a king,” inadvertently using the royal “we.”) Spirits are high; drums, speeches and chants uplift the crowd, and the home-made signs, with varying degrees of wit and artistry, convey the same message in many modes. A few favorites: “It must be bad when the introverts are here.” “We can afford tank parades but not Medicaid?” “Defrost ICE,” and “Remind me: which felonies lead to deportation and which to the presidency?” A mom with a toddler in a stroller and a baby in a Snugli on her chest carries a heartbreaking sign: “The Children Deserve Better.”

The tone of the latter parade was overwhelmingly human, quirky, compassionate. No one marched in step; no one stayed in straight lines. There was good reason for anger that week, especially in California, with the unlawful calling of the National Guard and Marines to pour kerosene onto the flames of unrest in Los Angeles and the ham-handed treatment of Senator Alex Padilla, thrown to the floor and hand-cuffed when he tried to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question at a press conference. But almost all reports were of peaceful, nonviolent demonstration.

The whole experience left me feeling bolstered and affirmed that, “I’m not alone and I’m not crazy.” Further adding to this was an editorial by Pedro Rios about masked and militarized ICE agents arresting workers at an Italian restaurant in San Diego. In the midst of Neopolitan pizza, people walking their dogs and children playing: helmets, rifles and flashbang grenades? To their credit, the neighbors and restaurant patrons told the agents in “colorful language that they weren’t welcome.” As one observer said, “unmarked cars took away people who have been part of the fabric of this neighborhood for years.”   (“How ICE raid affects California neighborhood” East Bay Times, June 15, 2025,) 9

The sheer cruelty of this government-sanctioned, racist violence reminded me of what Thomas Merton wrote in Disputed Questions, first published in 1953:

“So when as in our time, the whole world seems to have become one immense and idiotic fiction, and when the virus of mendacity creeps into every vein and organ of the social body, it would be abnormal and immoral if there were no reaction. It is even healthy that this reaction should sometime take the form of outspoken protest.” p. 194

Of course there is historical precedent for flaunting military power: the Roman Empire displayed its legions, armor and swords with imperial majesty, ruling by force and terror.  Especially at Passover in Jerusalem, their march reminded the Jews they’d obliterate the oppressed people who tried any resistance. But at the same time, another small parade occurred: a ragtag group followed a man looking absurd on a donkey. As Deb Thomas points out in Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories, “Jesus comes defenseless and weaponless into his kingship.”

 Furthermore, he has the audacity to love the sociopath who so unfortunately governs the U.S. Which parade might he join? Or perhaps his stands alone and unique, a subversive and mysterious invitation.

“And I was beside [God] as a craftsman, and I was [God’s] delight day by day, playing on the surface of [God’s] earth…”

On a particularly gorgeous stretch of God’s earth called Yosemite, John Muir played with delight. His quotes about nature fill many books, but just one is illustrative: “No pain here, no dull empty hours, no fear of past… or future. These blessed mountains are so filled with God’s beauty, no petty personal hope or experience has room to be.” Swinging high in a tree to fully experience a storm, building a cabin at the foot of a waterfall, hiking for miles—Muir burrowed deep into his experience of wilderness and thrived. He warned others about the threat of industrialization, valuing “nature’s peace which will flow into you as sunshine into trees.”

So I was somewhat puzzled by the time in his life biographers call the “domestic chapter,” when Muir, who married at age 42, settled with his wife and two daughters into a farmhouse in Martinez, California. An “Italianate Victorian home” with 17 rooms including a “formal parlor” seems an odd setting for a mountain man.  Furthermore, this impressive mansion had indoor plumbing, gas lighting, and a phone installed as early as 1885. All the modern conveniences for a man who survived for many years on hard crusts of bread?

Then I visited the home, now maintained by the National Park Service.  It was heartening to see the huge fireplace for roaring logs Muir installed after the 1906 earthquake, the balcony where he’d sometimes pitch a tent, probably still longing to sleep beneath the stars, and the bell in the cupola, used to call the family home from work in the surrounding orchards or hikes on Mt. Wanda, named for the oldest daughter. (She said “Father was the biggest, jolliest child” on these adventures.) The ranch of over 2,600 acres in the Alhambra Valley must’ve been especially beautiful when the fruit trees were in bloom.

But for me the best was the “scribble den,” Muir’s office cluttered with piles of notes and pictures on the floor, lovely art of mountains on the walls, a microscope and pine cones on the desk beneath the big window with a lovely view. What touched me most was the tiny typewriter on which Muir wrote most of his books and articles. “This is where it all began,” I thought. The environmental movement, the massive efforts to preserve wilderness, the start of the national parks and Sierra Club—origins right here. Visitors should remove their shoes to stand on holy ground.

It turned out that the orchards begun by Muir’s father-in-law were lucrative enough to finance Muir’s writing and travel for the last 24 years of his life. He didn’t write with ease; in fact, he compared the process to the grinding of a glacier. But he loved his daughters, taught them about nature, and wrote them stories about the wilderness adventures of his dog-companion, Stickeen. He also took breaks from domesticity—his wife encouraged his trips to Alaska, Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. In the long arc of his life, the last chapter must’ve been a happy one.

Touching too, to see recipes hand-written by his daughters, for oatmeal cookies, coffee cake and cornbread. For 17 years, the family had a Chinese cook, the near-starvation of Muir’s earlier years finally assuaged. Muir never owned the land; it was passed on to his wife and daughters. Seems fitting for a man who objected to building a chapel in Yosemite; he maintained it was the cathedral.

Twists and turns in any life, but satisfying to see them so splendidly resolved in another person’s.

Ka-BOOM! Sha-ZAM! Roofs raised, doors rattled, windows bulging, peace disrupted. Fun to write a cartoon version of Pentecost? Maybe not far from the original: the Spirit of Pentecost is sudden, wild, driving, fiery red, not soft pastels nor earth tones. Its music throbs, an insistent, direct pulse, no polite beating-around-the-bush: “Come Lord Jesus, send us your Spirit.” Now, when we need it, not “whenever it’s convenient” or “if You get around to it…”

This feast disrupts our glib assumptions, nudges beyond our complacencies, bursts through the locked doors of our self-imposed limits and defenses built since childhood. It bends what we once thought rigid, the boundaries of time and space. Jesus, who slips through the barriers fear erects, died several days ago. The astounded crowd outside (interesting, that none were the “in” group of disciples) hears in the speech bubbles their own first languages. No matter how many we learn later, the first is dearest, words of soothing lullabies, nursery rhymes, prayer. So, in chaos, the Spirit leads us home, to the first love, God’s, and the deep anchor, rest in our Creator. Even if we currently live in a place of pain, constraint, anger or frustration, it’s not our permanent residence.

Pentecost calls us to More—not as superheroes, but even better: as beloved children, each essential to one body, each with Spirit’s unique gift. Myriad languages, not all verbal, praise God. The Spirit understands if we speak in sports, dance, gardens, hospitality, humor, liturgy, art or healing. No swashbuckling achievements here: all is gift.  

Kathy Coffey, “A Daring Transformation,” from the May, 2025 issue of Give Us This Day giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2025), Used with permission.

Sometimes women’s conversations can strike a spark. Or in this case, a conflagration. As scripture scholar Elizabeth Johnson points out, this meeting and outpouring occurs in Elizabeth’s home, traditional female domestic space. Zechariah, the only man around, is mute. “Such quieting of the male voice is highly unusual in scripture.” And in the hush, two pregnant prophets call out a message that will echo for generations.

Both Mary and Elizabeth lived under Roman oppression, but they knew that no matter how corrupt or cruel the state was, the last word is always God’s. God’s cherishing energy endures in a long line from their great-grandmothers to their great-great-grandchildren, us. God had been faithful to their people, who didn’t always deserve it, and God’s nature hadn’t changed. The brutality of the Roman Empire had conquered the known world, but their power would fade. Their soldiers would kill Mary’s son, but he would rise, offering hope and proof that violent bullies didn’t have the final say.

Human hope clings to our plans, but divine hope means immersion in God’s plan. Mary didn’t have a script in advance; didn’t know how her story would end. She simply did what we all must—walk one step at a time into mystery, trustfully.  

It would be natural for the women to complain—both are most inconveniently expecting—instead, they praise. In contrast to her husband’s confused questioning, Elizabeth, clearly attuned to her own blessing, can recognize the grace in Mary. Mary responds with a song of joy and social upheaval. The God of the Impossible will feed the starving, overturn the powerful, and remember the promise of mercy. Both women rejoice in this crazy kettle of fish—as should we.

Just as there are annunciations in every life, so too visitations: making a new friend, appreciating the long arc in the life of a friend from high school; discovering a new author or finding new insights on one we’ve always liked; meeting kindness in its many modes; savoring the fresh start of spring; welcoming a vista or activity never before experienced. The God of surprises hasn’t changed, and continues to flood us with the joy of the unexpected.