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.