Success

Nothing to Show

December 5, 2018

Last Wednesday, my centering prayer group watched a short video featuring Father Joseph Boyle, the Abbott of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snow Mass, Colorado. Boyle died October 21 at the age of 77. He entered St. Benedict’s in 1959 and served under Fr. Thomas Keating, who was the monastery’s first Abbott.  Keating also died last October, on October 25. He was 95. In God’s strange timing, both these pillars of the Centering Prayer world departed the planet within days of each other.  Both of them played pivotal roles in bringing Centering Prayer to everyday people like me.  I am so grateful for them.

In the video we watched, Boyle shared a story about a meeting that he attended with Fr. Keating. It was an interfaith conference with leaders from both Eastern and Western religious traditions. During one of their group sessions, a participant asked Boyle and his group a question that went something like this:

“What do you have to show for your spiritual journey?”

Boyle said there was an awkward pause as his group tried to formulate intelligent responses. It was a question that caught them off-guard. Maybe they panicked a little, the way you do when a teacher puts you on the spot in a class discussion. After all, in an interfaith dialogue, you want to have reasonable, appropriate responses to questions; you don’t want your tradition to come up short.

Fr. Keating finally broke the silence. Boyle reports that he said, “I have nothing at all to show for it. If anything, I think I’ve gotten worse. All I have is total trust in the love and mercy of God.” Continue Reading…

Featured, Presence

Love from the Other Side

November 22, 2018

It was a terrible, smoky week here in Northern California. It was a week when the number of people missing and dead from the Camp Fire in Paradise grew. My daughter’s big cross country meet had to be postponed because of smoke. Also, my son’s Lego Robotics competition, the one that his team had been preparing for since August?  It was flat-out canceled, also because of smoke.

Also, this week, we passed the one year anniversary of my Mom’s death.

Dark days, I tell you.

Except somehow in these days, light broke through. I got gobsmacked by unexpected grace.

Saturday I was at my daughter’s rescheduled cross country meet, the one that sends the fastest runners off to the state meet in Clovis. I was thinking of my Mom. We were just about to the actual anniversary day of her death. I was hoping that my Mom’s spirit, her love, would somehow give my daughter a little extra speed. She had a chance of qualifying for the state meet, but she would have to run one of her best races ever. This would be challenging, since she had missed a few days of practice because of the smoky air and didn’t feel great.

Here’s the good news.

She did it! She nabbed the final qualifying individual spot. We will be heading down South soon to watch her race in the state meet, the final race of her high school cross country career.

After the race, I talked to my Mom a little. I told her thank you.

A few minutes later, just as we were leaving the race for home, I received an unexpected email from a friend.  He had been going through pictures, he said, and found some of my parents.

There on my phone, nearly a year after she passed away, was my Mama. And not just photo of her. It was one that I’d never seen before, of her in Guatemala. She is beaming with her arms around two children who are holding roosters. She looks so much like her self, the best version of herself, just the way I always remember her.

It was such a gift, to get that new picture of my Mom on a day when I was talking to her, on a day when my daughter had run a fabulous race, and just hours before the anniversary of my Mom’s death.

My friend didn’t know that it was almost a year to the day since she passed.

I think someone, somewhere did, though.  There are no coincidences. But there is love that stretches beyond time and space, and hugs that hold us when we need them most.  On this Thanksgiving, I give thanks for fast runs, and for qualifying for big meets, and for all of you who are reading this, and for the love that surrounds us, holds us, and stays with us always.