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Who Are We?

30/6/2020

A Reflection on the First Reading for July 5th, 2020:
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Zechariah
9.9-10

Thus says the Lord:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the warrior’s bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

We’re all wired a little differently.

In an outside-me-serious crisis, I’m calm. Oddly so. Things look like they’re going to fall apart — someone nearby is hurt, or a car I’m in is literally spinning out of control — and there’s this stillness inside me. It’s like everything slows down and I can puzzle through the possible ways to help shape a good outcome.

In an all-around-me-chaotic crisis, I’m exhilarated! The status quo is shaken — an unexpected hail storm at a campsite, or an eleventh hour change in a long planned event — and there’s this energy that rises up in me and I feel like I’m soaring as I help gather people together to solve the problem.

I seem to walk through life thinking there’s always a way through.
Until there isn’t.
I can’t help someone get better. An opportunity is lost. A relationship ends. I break something, or someone, or myself. My chariot is cut off from my war horse. My battle bow is broken.

In an inside-me-cavernous crisis there’s two ways to go. Rejoice in song or shout. I shout softly in the attic, or ferociously in the car. I sing everywhere else. Truthfully, there’s a third thing I do. I ignore it. Then the internal crisis intensifies until I eventually cave into shouting, or remember to sing. Remember Who I’m singing to. Remember where my help comes from.
I Lift My Eyes Up

Who are You? Who do You show Yourself to be?
King
triumphant
victorious
humble

What do You do?
come close
ride gently
cut our defences
defend us
command peace

What do You have?
a donkey
a double-edged sword
peace
dominion

Who are we? Who do You reveal us to be?
daughters

What do we do?
rejoice
shout
receive
rely
submit

What do we have?
a Father
a King
a Saviour
a common bond

We may be wired differently, but we are daughters of the same Father. There is no us and them. He speaks peace into existence in all of us, wherever we are on this blue marble, or whatever step we are on in our journey Home toward our Dad. His reach is from sea to sea. The effluent of His influence is like one River eventually flowing over all lands. There is one Source of life, and we all drink from it whether we know it or not.

Women are women, wherever I go. Even when communicating without a common language with women in another country, I have found this to be true. Even when meeting women from centuries ago through reading their writings, I have found this to be true. Wherever and whenever we exist, the Three-in-One expresses something feminine of Himself in us — in His own image, male and female, He created them (Genesis 1:27). We are all His daughters. The diversity is deep and beautiful, and it does not divide us. It shows us He made us.

Noreen Smith

4 Comments

Gathering at The Well

26/6/2020

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First Things First

26/6/2020

8 Comments

A Reflection on the Gospel for June 28th, 2020:
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew
10.37-42

Jesus said to his Apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you — that person will not lose their reward.”

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

Jesus is telling me here that if I want to walk with Him, then I must leave everything behind. He has to be first in my life. He gives me everything I need to show others who He is, but if I am preoccupied with people, places, and things, then I am hiding Him behind them, and they will never meet Him through me.

When my husband and I married, we gave ourselves wholly to the sacrament of marriage. After our wedding day we were reminiscing about the ceremony and although we hadn’t discussed this with each other, we discovered that we had both experienced something similar when we exchanged vows. We both described feeling as though everyone in the church just faded away, leaving the priest and the two of us encased in a bubble. We were experiencing God’s grace as we became the image of the Holy Trinity through the sacrament — a total, permanent, exclusive covenant. Every time I looked at my husband, I knew that I was looking at the image of God, chosen especially for me by God.

As our married life together unfolded, we soon found ourselves becoming consumed with activity. Work, kids, friends, family, sports, commitments at church, and various ministries kept us really busy. We stopped praying together — there simply was no time! There were so many people, places, and things to which we had to attend. With all of this piled up between me and God, I began going through the motions mechanically, and slowly began to lose my personal relationship with Him. I began to take the sacrament and my husband for granted, and soon enough, complacency slipped into the marriage. And where there is complacency, doubt can sneak in.

One evening a dear friend invited us to her home to pray with us. She told us how when she and her late husband were married, the priest placed a crucifix between their joined hands, instructing them to take every joy, fear, happiness, and problem to that cross, and then she placed that same crucifix between our joined hands. We were convicted in that moment to place Him firmly back in first place in our marriage and lives… to leave the old patterns behind and root out the seeds of doubt and complacency.

Today that crucifix hangs in our kitchen, which is the heart of our home, as a constant reminder that we are nothing without Him, that He always has to be first, above everything and everyone. It reminds me that when I serve my husband, our children, any guest, I am serving Him. It is a reminder of the power of His healing and saving love.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

Sandy Graves

8 Comments

Remember Your Death

25/6/2020

12 Comments

A Reflection on the Second Reading for June 28th, 2020:
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Romans
6.3-4, 8-11

Brothers and sisters: All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

I thought I wasn’t afraid of death. As an 18-year-old, I had experienced the sudden death of my dad, and I thought I had dealt with it — thought I had done really well, actually. I had confronted the mystery of death early in my life, made peace with it, and “moved on”. It was a reality I couldn’t control or explain, and I (quite understandably, really) pushed it down and pushed it away. It was just “the way it was”: an extremely unfortunate event. There was nothing I could do about it and so, I got on with things, proud of my self-sufficiency and resilience. So many of his birthdays, anniversaries of his death, and Father’s Days have gone by without me taking the time to ponder his dying, and what it has meant for me.

It hasn’t been until the last few years that I’ve realized what kind of an impact the death of my father has had on my life. He was the same age I am now, and my daughter is almost as old as I was when he died.

I’ve come to realize that fear of death is closely related to fear of love… because when we love deeply, death, at least for the living, hurts more than we can imagine. It is so interesting to me that this fear of death, and fear of love, work in direct opposition to our deep desire for connection and for relationships that matter. I can keep people at arms’ length and avoid difficult conversations because I’m afraid of rejection; afraid of the pain of disagreement; fearful of what seems insurmountable in relationships. But this only serves to separate me from the only thing that brings true fulfillment, which is love.

In the confrontation of my grief this Father’s Day, I realized that as much as it hurts to grieve, it feels so good to express my love for my dad freely, to let the tears flow, to really feel how much I love him and how devastated I am that he is no longer here on earth. My faith has allowed this grief because Jesus has shown me that it’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to acknowledge the pain and grief that life in this world brings. Not only that, but by His resurrection, He’s shown me that there is tremendous hope when death no longer has power over me — when death doesn’t make me afraid to love. He’s shown me that the bittersweetness of grief is better than the denial of life and love, even when it hurts — because that’s where healing happens.

We are meant to grieve, because it’s an indication of love. As Saint Paul relays to us: Jesus, in His life and walk toward the cross, faithful to Love, shows us in no uncertain terms that precisely because of Love, death is nothing to fear — it is where life in its fullness is waiting.

Lindsay Elford

12 Comments

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Who Are We?

A Reflection on the First Reading for July 5th, 2020:Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gathering at The Well

First Things First

A Reflection on the Gospel for June 28th, 2020:​Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Remember Your Death

A Reflection on the Second Reading for June 28th, 2020:Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Archives

A Reflection on the First Reading for July 5th, 2020:
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A Reflection on the Gospel for June 28th, 2020:
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

A Reflection on the Second Reading for June 28th, 2020:
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time