“The photo above is of the “thinnest place” on my pilgrimage…the ruins at Clonmacnoise, Ireland. I was humbled to have had the opportunity to celebrate a midweek Eucharist there with our pilgrimage group. About midway through the celebration, it suddenly dawned on me that what I was doing, had been done roughly 1500 years before me.”
“Sometimes, in our not knowing, over time we come to learn that whatever transpired or evolved ended up better than we imagined or would have scripted…and the truth is, we wouldn’t have been able to handle it. We would very likely have gone off in another direction and missed the gift.”
“Even though Lent is drawing to a close, it may be weeks, months or years more before we fully can understand or appreciate our own new graftings, and the process of prayerful, reflective self-examination can lead us closer to God in this upcoming season of resurrection.”
“Ultimately, I have to wonder if what was really bugging Judas was not the cost, but the intimacy of death, and his own sense of fear and self-unease around what would play out in the days to come. We see soon enough how he manages his own avoidance of his own possible death, and how that doesn’t really work out for him in the end. The ease of which Mary can be both lavish and intimate scares him…and as we all do when we’re scared, we cover our own vulnerabilities first.”
“Perhaps the real teaching point from his life is that he discovered a way to move out of his shell into a new reality, through his faith. His faith inspired his poetry, and his poetry reflects the journey of a man who was continually seeking to understand Scripture and church teaching through the inner workings of his instinctual connection with the beauty of nature.”
“Louise de Marillac’s life story really wasn’t very different than our stories might be now. She put a dream aside, and by all accounts, lived a satisfying, challenging, and busy life. Yet when her husband died, mere chance re-awakened her to that old dream, and the Holy Spirit created new life out of what was once an old faded memory.”
“’Being perfect’ as it is used here, means more about trying to be more like God, than it means to engage the impossible task of being flawless.”
“So many times, we enter the mission field with the idea that we are somehow the bearers of bright and shiny–only to discover a world of dirty and messy, a world that seems impossible to fix.”
“Brigid challenges us to go beyond the measured, reasonable generosity that always takes into account that something might run out.”
“Yet, over and over again, the stories of the Bible put the bearers of the Word, time and time again, into the mouth of conflict.”