Category: The Magazine

When I first went on retreat at my beloved Episcopal, Benedictine monastery, Holy Cross, in West Park, New York, to find out something about the place was a chore. I actually didn’t know anything about the Divine Office or monastic spirituality until I got there. Oh, they sent me a brochure. But it didn’t tell me much.

Today, Brother Google to the rescue! To find out about your retreat center or monastery, well, just google it. All of them will tell you about the rhythm in the house, the services provided, the schedule of each day. You need not fly blind, like I did, back in 1978.

  I began these writings on Easter Sunday 2020. At that time, there was much uncertainty and fear surrounding the Coronavirus and no one knew what to expect during a pandemic. It quickly became apparent that one of the truths of a worldwide pandemic is everyone will have a unique experience, their own personal story of the pandemic. The reflections that follow draw upon those experiences and seek to produce a picture of life, challenge and hope at the bedside as a hospital chaplain in a large hospital.          

Happy Thanksgiving, Across the world of social media and other avenues of advice and admonitions and things we are told to look at, the message,

Thanksgiving Prayer: The Grace Before the Meal   Join hands. There is Another only seen with the soul’s eyes, or felt within the heart. Give

It’s human nature to only just seem to think only of ourselves in times of lockdown and difficulties, We are all  worried and concerned for our safety, our provisions, our family, food, and shelter, Our focus falls only on ourselves. We should, however, take a moment take a look around. There are people around us who require financial assistance, who do not have enough food for the next week if the lockdown continues. There is much  loneliness and frustration in being unable to communicate with their loved ones by phone, Facebook, email, or WhatsApp, as many of us are able. 

Another man had a quote to offer from the gospel according to Bruce Springsteen: Badlands, you’ve got to live it every day. Let the broken heart stand as the price you’ve got to pay. Another guy followed with a piece of another verse from the same song: I believe in the love that you gave me. I believe in the faith that can save me. I believe in the hope that one day will raise me from these Badlands.

And now my prayer is, Oh God, please find me, follow my small patches of prayer like a trail of breadcrumbs through my day. At day’s end, even though thoughts and images fill our minds, we try to say a full prayer, Our Father, Glory Be to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, we say the prayers we learned as children. Even then, it takes determination, so often, to concentrate on one prayer without the distractions of the day, of the world, invading the tiny space we try to make for holy time.

As the grey skies became darker with the threat of rain, I heard the bells nearby.  It was Sunday, after all, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was curious about the source. I crossed the street to a park I saw to find the bells. They continued to toll.  I walked through the park, hoping with each step that the skies wouldn’t baptize me with the expected downpour.  I had left my umbrella in Perth a week ago.

Few of us can even imagine the pressures of being the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) who is not allowed to fail, the face of the Olympics, America’s standard bearer, and the always dependable foundation of the team’s success. But her renunciation of these burdens, however temporary, may be her greatest achievement insofar as it helps athletes—and society as a whole—engage with issues of mental health and personal well-being as never before, without stigma or shame. 

Some—perhaps even most—baptized Christians might find the sacrament’s irreversibility reassuring, a source of hope during the darkest hours of the night. Nothing they do, nothing done to them, will ever separate them from Christ, into whose death and resurrection they were baptized. Nor will anything separate them from Christ’s body—the Church universal—of which the baptized are individual members.