Pioneering...?

Pioneering in 2017...?

In a recent article on religious life sent to us by the Executive Team, the word “pioneer” is used several times. It brought back an image that was used after Vatican II to describe what was happening in the Church as a result of the Council. From being quite “settled” as a result of colonization, writers were calling us to become “pioneers,” a “Church in the World.” So we roused ourselves from our security and “got on the road.” We began to go to public universities. We started talking to folks in other faith traditions. Dominicans founded Network in Washington, D.C., and the term “political ministry” became part of our vocabulary. Women’s Dominican communities took this pioneering call very seriously. 

We are entering a new year. It is 2017. What might the term “pioneer” mean for us now, 52 years from the close of the council? In a time in our history when religious life as we have known it is not receiving candidates? Where are we to “go?” What is being asked of us as we continue “on the road?” What are today’s frontiers, those fringe areas of our culture calling to us?

Pioneering folks have to be ready to leave a familiar place to go to a new one. They gather what is precious to them and set out. They use whatever transportation is available. They pass through unknown territory. In the past they would now and then circle the wagons, build a fire, share food, and tell stories. They may not have known what their destination was, but they trusted they would know it when they got there. They were ready to “be” a new way in a new place, and it would be all right, because they had one another.

Being itinerant has always been part of being Dominican. We go out from our prayer to be truth-seekers and truth-tellers. Our personal prayer is fed by the fact that we gather, hear and share the bread of the Word. Then we go out to bring that good Word to wherever it is needed. Are today’s “frontiers” reaching out to people society would just as soon overlook? Those who are spiritually lost? Those whose lives have lost meaning? Those burdened with shame and guilt? Those belittled and voiceless? Those who don’t know who to believe? Those despairing over the election? We are committed to truth. What can we bring them? We are compelled to justice. How can we prevent it from being trampled?  It’s 2017. A new time, a new situation. Time once again for us to decide how to go pioneering.

January - Your Light has Come...

Pray, Ponder, Preach for January, 2017, Carla Mae Streeter, OP

                                                …your Light has Come…

Thomas Merton once wrote that people would be surprised if he told them they were walking around shining like the sun. I suspect they would be more than surprised – they would be incredulous. We don’t feel lightsome. We don’t see light streaming from us. It’s just not our experience. Yet feeling and seeing and our experience are often far from the facts.

The Christmas season is about light. Our light has come. The scriptures proclaim it, the songs sing it, and the decorations, indoors and out, celebrate it. So what is this light, and if it is already ours, why do we feel so heavy, so enveloped in darkness? The facts, please, just the facts.

The One who has entered our history is light. He said so. “I am the light of the world…” He has bonded with our very DNA, so wherever it is, he is. A transformed human in his resurrection, no physical boundaries can limit him. He holds all the cosmos in himself, and wears the Milky Way as a garment. So if these be the faith-facts, regardless of my feeling and my seeing, why this darkness?

Faith is a dark light. It is a veil. We see only darkly. Why? Because this Holy One has to protect us from himself. Seeing the light we carry would undo us. We would be good for nothing. We wouldn’t be able to pay our taxes, take out the garbage, or take the car for a tune-up. We would be so caught up in the beauty that nothing could pry us away. So God mutes it so we can be for others. God hides so we can tend to the things that need doing in this time-space life. So in the dark light of faith, we are tempted to forget. We are told we are to be “…wise as serpents and simple as doves.” So we practice whistling in the dark. We know that what you see is not what you get…even in our everyday life.

Yes, our light has come. And it is ours. For there he is, shining through the many cracks in our lives. In fact, it is in those weak moments, when the dark gets so thick, that we know he holds us. Despite the lack of feeling, the lack of seeing, those are the facts: your light has come.

Holy One

I don’t see you

I don’t feel you.

I feel alone and dark.

Yet there you are

Playing peek-a-boo and holding out those baby arms.

Then you are gone-and I cry out, feeling lost, poor as I am.

Teach me that I already have what I cannot see.

Promoter of Preaching for December

How we Do it...

The word contemplation can mean different things to different people. How do Dominicans understand it? As we continue to more intentionally reclaim this core of our spirituality in all our deliberations, it is good to revisit the distinctive take we Dominicans have on contemplation. Clarifying this would be an important step as we complete the celebration of our 800^th Anniversary.

The recently deceased Paul Philibert, OP, in his research has uncovered something rather interesting. The way Dominicans understand contemplation is revealed in Dominic’s Nine Ways of Prayer. For the perceptive eye, there is a flow in these ways of prayer. First, there is reverencing, shown in our customs of bows and prostrations. Then there is pleading, in the raised and outstretched arms, and finally there is the silent and absorbed meditative reading and study which ends up witnessing. The movement is a bit like breathing… reverencing, pleading, witnessing. The Dominican’s contemplation pushes the pray-er out onto the road, where we preach from the pulpit of our lives. We are transformed into a living, walking, talking, acting, word. This is a unique and very integrative approach to contemplation. It is a seamless garment. It never stops at any one stage, but is driven back, again and again, into the wholeness of the flow: active contemplation, contemplative action.

As we complete the joyful celebration of this anniversary year, we each take up once again the challenge it presents to us: to offer to the Church the gift of a formal vowed witness to active contemplation in the cause of justice. “Whom shall I send?” Send me.

Pray, Ponder, and Preach for December 2016

A Sign will be given you…a baby…

Carla Mae Streeter, OP, Promoter of Preaching

What?! A baby??? A baby is the long-awaited sign of God’s answer to millions of prayers for a redeemer…for thousands of years? Yes. And come to think of it, how ingenious. Not lightning from Mt. Saini, not a warrior on a white stallion, not even a powerful prophet thundering words of warning. A baby…a baby as a sign of God.

What newness might grasp us as we gaze at the crib? What might we see that we haven’t noticed before? If this baby is the visible sign of the invisible God, we need to take a long, loving look.

This child is the bridge, the restored link between the Divine and our humanness. This baby, wanting to play patty-cake on my cheeks until I scoop it up and cover it with kisses…is this the peek-a-boo God who knows just how to get a rise out of me? A rise out of its mother? An anonymous writer put it this way…

    
“The soul’s prayer of union is something like a baby in its mother’s arms. Eagerly it lets itself be gathered up into her outstretched arms, curling itself up to be cuddled at her breast. The mother clasps it, glues it, so to speak, to herself…kisses it. Her darling, won by caresses, concurs in this union. It clings to her, presses as hard as it can against her, against her face, as though it meant to bury, to hide itself in its mother, creating a union, a state to which mother and child each contribute. The little one does what it can, tries hard to join itself to its mother by its tiny efforts. The Lord does to the soul what the mother does to the child. The soul, captivated by the delights of these favors, not only assents, not only yields to the union God affords. With all its might, it acts in concert, striving to join itself and cling ever closer to the divine goodness.”

Yes, a baby. A sign has been given to us…

You knew.

You knew exactly how to get to me.

Pudgy hands playing patty-cake on my cheeks.

Your toothless giggle rising up as I peek from behind your smiling mother.

Yes. I get your message. Yes. I read your sign.

Healing, forgiveness, restoration, mercy…all in the love-bundle that is a baby.

Thanks to associate Jean Gfall for these reflections

December 4, 2016 – Second Sunday of Advent – IS 11:1-10 – ROM 15:4-9 – MT 3:1-12
MORE THAN WE CAN ASK OR IMAGINE

John’s message, as hell fire and brimstone as it was (even as he announced this new thing God was doing) set up a contrast to what would come beyond him. It set people to thinking. The election has set many of us to thinking, wondering what in the world is going on. But we trust that in God’s big picture, something is, even if it’s only to set more of us to thinking. That’s how God works, of course, in ways we wouldn’t think to ask or imagine. So it is. So it has always been….and, thank God, so it will always be. Don’t you think?

         

December 11 – Third Sunday of Advent – IS 35:1-6A, 10 – JAS 5:7-10 – MT 11:2-11
IT’S HARD TO BE “LEAST”

One of the hardest things for me to be – and to admit to being – is “least.” How about you? I really like to be listened to as though I have some authority because of my vast knowledge and expertise. I don’t know about you but I LOVE it when someone searches me out because they believe (and often then, so do I) that I know more about some topic than many others. Anyone that wants to compliment me is certainly welcome to do so because it makes me feel really good!

Then I read these words and find that it’s the PARCHED land that will bloom. It’s being patient and waiting to see what God will do that brings life rather than the instant gratification of knowing and being known. I guess I don’t have to like being least but clearly I’m going to have to get used to it because it’s at the bottom of the heap where we see God face to face. I don’t want to miss it!

December 18 – Fourth Sunday of Advent – IS 7:10-14 – ROM 1:1-7– MT 1:18-24
CALLED TO BE HOLY

We’ve heard Mary’s story of her willingness to bear a child that could have left her in shame. We’re told that Joseph said “it came to him in a dream” that he should still marry her and he did. Not an easy place for either of them. But, like you and me, they were called to be HOLY and they did their best. We talk about being holy or at least what it means to be holy, but what does that really mean? Most of the time we just say it, assuming we know what “holy” is. I wasn’t sure I did so I looked it up. It means morally and spiritually excellent. Hmmmm….. Mary and Joseph had their own challenges. We have a whole different set of challenges in this time and place. How will we find our way into being holy today, I wonder.

December 25 – The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas) – IS 62:11-12 – TI 3:4-7 – LK 2:15-20
WHAT MIRACLE NEXT?

So this day we celebrate the birth of a child, Jesus of Nazareth, that would change the world forever. I sincerely doubt that my birthday will ever be celebrated much beyond my family and friends, although some people’s are. Yet, I believe that on December 7, 1948, my parents believed they witnessed a miracle as I came to them safe and secure, unharmed by my journey into this world. We see miracles so often that we miss them, be it the birth of a child or the last breath of one who has brought us into this world and now leaves it for another. But the kindness and generous love of God is forever giving us one miracle after another. This day, in particular, reminds us to keep our eyes and our hearts wide open lest we miss even one small one.

Blessings on this day when we celebrate
the God of Endless Miracles.

Carla Mae Streeter

The Elections...

                                                                        A Prudent Vote…

Amid the noise and insults, the lies and accusations, what’s a responsible Dominican to do as this election draws near? It is tempting indeed to simply say, “I’m just not going to vote.” Yet we all know this is an abdication of one of our most treasured rights and responsibilities as citizens. Dominicans preach first from the pulpit of their lives, so our lives must speak from the voting booth too.

The updated 2016 Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship from the American bishops can be of help to us. (USCCB website) The bishops call us to use prudence as we go to the poles. Simply speaking, prudence is Love’s fairness. It asks that we consider all that is at stake in an issue, leaving nothing out, or looking at only one part of an issue. Then we recall our Catholic values. Finally, we choose the person or policy that gets closest to realizing those values best, or more of them.

Even more helpful and practical, the bishops put before us four Social Justice principles that guide us in doing this prudent evaluation. With these principles in view, prudence has its work cut out for it. Using our intelligent laser beam, we examines the candidates and issues in light of all of these principles, and then makes our choices. The candidate or the issue may not be perfect on all the values we as Catholics, as Dominicans, hold dear, but the principles offer criteria to evaluate who best might get us close to them.

What are the four principles we can use as we make our choices? First, the bishops remind us of the dignity of human life at all its stages. How inclusive about this is the candidate? Second, we seek the common good of all, not just some of us by class, wealth, or position. Who does the candidate leave out in this “common good?” Who is invisible in his or her point of view? Third, subsidiarity. Simply put, whose voice is not being heard from the bottom of the ladder? Are we hearing only from those who speak from power? Finally, solidarity. We need to stand with each other, the very poorest with the richest. Who is being left out in the vision of the candidate? Who is being drawn in? Who is this candidate for? Which candidate wants to unite us?

In the final assessment, no candidate will shine on all these principles. But we will know, with a little thought and prayer, who comes the closest on all of them, not just settling for one of them. Using our prudence, and the study that is part of our Dominican charism, then we vote.

Thanksgiving...

More Than a Day….

Carla Mae Streeter, OP

‘Tis the month of Thanksgiving. It’s also the time of harvest, not only from the fields but in the community we call church. We gather the harvest of the fields, and we are approaching the end of Ordinary Time. This long series of weeks in the church’s celebration of time is the time of greening, the time of growth from the Paschal Mystery. The Easter glow is like Sonshine, cultivating the fruits of the Spirit in our souls.

But thanksgiving for all the richness of field and human flourishing is not just for a day. It can be a way…of life. Scripture says it best: “In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” (1Thess. 5:18) Now I don’t know about you, but a typical response to this is, “You’ve got to be kidding! Give thanks for a cancer diagnosis, for someone rear-ending me?” Yes. Scripture doesn’t mince words: “In all circumstances…”

So for the past three years I’ve been trying this “in all circumstances…” thing. The results amaze me. I keep a little notebook at my bedside, and the last thing I do before falling off to sleep is enter the date, and jot down little phrases for all I’m thankful for from that day. I go off to sleep full of gratitude. I also catch myself better during the day, and in tough spots I find myself surprisingly calm. You can’t get too fussed up if you are trying to say “Thank you.” Most of all, I find myself growing in a sense of proportion. I can be very good at making mountains out of mole hills. So, if this is the will of God for me, then I can at least take it seriously. I think it’s producing good fruit. So for me, this year I won’t just be celebrating Thanksgiving Day, but a Thanksgiving way…while I enjoy my pumpkin pie.

Most generous God,

You surround me with gifts from your overflowing heart.

I often take them for granted.

I’m given a special day this month to thank you in a special way.

But maybe I can do better than that.

You call me to come to that banquet

Where you give me your very self to grow my own risen life.

Thank you for taking me so seriously.

Help me to take you seriously in every event that happens in my life.

You have counted every hair on my head.

Fill my heart with trustful gratitude.

This year transform my Thanksgiving Day into a

Thanksgiving Way.

Amen.