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Twentieth-Century Women Mystics: Weekly Summary

Sunday
People who know God well—mystics, hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. —Richard Rohr

Monday
Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life. —Caryll Houselander

Tuesday 
I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become; I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African-American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as gift to the church. —Thea Bowman

Wednesday 
True silence leads to the final prayer of the constant presence of God, to the heights of contemplation, when the soul, finally at peace, lives by the will of God whom she loves totally, utterly, and completely. —Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Thursday 
No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food. No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more. —Rachel and Rosemarie Freeney Harding

Friday 
Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. —Dorothy Day

Experiencing the Love of God

One of the main obstacles to experiencing intimacy with God is our very doubt that we can experience it. The following is a prayer written by Father Richard to center us in God’s love:

Lover of All

Lord, lover of life, lover of these lives,
Lord, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists . . .

In fact, it is your love that keeps it all alive . . .
May we live in this love.
May we never doubt this love.
May we know that we are love,
That we were created for love,
That we are a reflection of you,
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.

May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness

That we are because you are.

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

Reference:

Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Loveselected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 21–22.

Explore Further. . .

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

Love Is the Only Solution

Father Richard’s Franciscan tradition prioritizes putting love into concrete action while drawing on Divine Love as our Source:

Love won’t be real or tested unless we somehow live close to the disadvantaged, who frankly teach us that we know very little about love. To be honest, my male Franciscan seminary training didn’t teach me how to love. It taught me how to obey and conform, but not how to love. I’m still trying every day to learn how to love. As we endeavor to put love into action, we realize that on our own, we are unable to obey Jesus’ command, “Love one another as I have loved you.” To love as Jesus loves, we must be connected to the Source of Love.

Over decades of serving New York City’s poorest individuals, Dorothy Day (1897–1980) never lost sight of the gospel’s challenging invitation to love:

Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may at any moment become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself “What else is the world interested in?” What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other. We want with all our hearts to love, to be loved. . . . It is when we love the most intensely and most humanly that we can recognize how tepid is our love for others. The keenness and intensity of love brings with it suffering, of course, but joy too because it is a foretaste of heaven. . . . 

When you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us and loves us. And so we should see Christ in others, and nothing else, and love them. There can never be enough of it. There can never be enough thinking about it. St. John of the Cross said that where there was no love, put love and you would take out love. [1] The principle certainly works. [2] . . .

Love and ever more love is the only solution to every problem that comes up. If we love each other enough, we will bear with each other’s faults and burdens. If we love enough, we are going to light that fire in the hearts of others. And it is love that will burn out the sins and hatreds that sadden us. It is love that will make us want to do great things for each other. No sacrifice and no suffering will then seem too much. [3]

References:

[1] John of the Cross to María de la Encarnación, July 6, 1591, in The Collected Works of John of the Cross, trans, Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1979), 703.

[2] Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage (New York: Catholic Worker Books, 1948), 52.

[3] Dorothy Day, House of Hospitality (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2015), 267.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Loveselected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 182–183.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

I see the self-emptying love of Jesus on display daily in the news reports from Ukraine; the woman who remains in danger in a besieged city because her elderly mother is unable to walk down the stairs of their apartment building; the people who escape to the border only to return to Ukraine to help others. And also in Poland, where they welcome the refugees with opens arms, in spite of the personal strain. Or in the people from European countries who travel to the train stations holding signs saying how many they can accommodate in their home and taking them in. I ask myself: what am I willing to do? —Jo S.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

No Scarcity of Love

Rosemarie Freeney Harding (1930–2004) was a spiritual leader in the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s. Her Mennonite faith shaped her commitment to radical hospitality, healing, and transformation. She describes the interracial community she and her husband Vincent formed at Mennonite House in Atlanta:

One of my first tasks as a young organizer in the Southern Freedom Movement was developing an interracial social service project and community center called Mennonite House in Atlanta, Georgia, in the early 1960s. . . . In addition to our work of placing volunteers with various movement organizations, training young activists, and coordinating early efforts at interracial dialogue and reconciliation, Mennonite House became an important place of retreat for many who were struggling and sacrificing so much to transform the South and the nation. Sometimes movement people would call us from the bus station, and [my husband] Vincent would drive over and pick them up, and they’d stay for a few days or a few weeks, because they needed a place to get some rest. Because of my mother’s example, I understood very clearly how important it was to have spaces of refuge in the midst of struggle. Spaces of joy and laughter, good food and kind words. In fact, this kind of compassionate care is a transformative force in itself. As the Cape Breton novelist Alistair MacLeod [1936–2014] writes, “We are all better when we’re loved.” [1] . . .

Black people in Atlanta were intrigued with Mennonite House. This was something new—an interracial social service project tied to the freedom movement, where most of the volunteers were white and the directors were Black, and everybody lived together in the same house. In 1961, this was definitely new. Seeing my husband and me in the leadership roles made Black folks glad and proud. And it impressed them to know that our church (which most had never heard of) had sent us to represent the denomination. I didn’t realize the significance of all of this until later. I was just happy to be there. . . .

In the early 1960s, Mennonite House was one of the places, perhaps one of the few, where interracial conversation and community was being consciously created in the South.

Freeney Harding’s activism was inspired by her abiding and mystical experience of God’s love and justice. Rachel Harding recalls her mother’s vision:

There is no scarcity. There is no shortage. No lack of love,
of compassion, of joy in the world. There is enough.
There is more than enough.
Only fear and greed make us think otherwise.
No one need starve. There is enough land and enough food.
No one need die of thirst. There is enough water. No one
need live without mercy. There is no end to grace. And we
are all instruments of grace. The more we give it, the more
we share it, the more we use it, the more God makes. There
is no scarcity of love. There is plenty. And always more.
This is the universe my mother lived in. [2]


References:

[1] Paraphrase of Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 283.

[2] Rachel E. Harding, “Daughter’s Précis,” foreword to Remnants, by Rosemarie Freeney Harding, [ix].

Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 120, 127, 135–136.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

I see the self-emptying love of Jesus on display daily in the news reports from Ukraine; the woman who remains in danger in a besieged city because her elderly mother is unable to walk down the stairs of their apartment building; the people who escape to the border only to return to Ukraine to help others. And also in Poland, where they welcome the refugees with opens arms, in spite of the personal strain. Or in the people from European countries who travel to the train stations holding signs saying how many they can accommodate in their home and taking them in. I ask myself: what am I willing to do? —Jo S.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

Standing Still

Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896–1985) was a Russian baroness whose family emigrated to Canada to escape the collapse of Russia’s tsarist monarchy. Eventually, she gave up everything in her commitment to live “the gospel without compromise.” She served the poor and promoted interracial justice through her work at Friendship House in New York City. She then formed a contemplative community called Madonna House in Canada, where she helped bring the spirituality of the Eastern Church to Western Christianity. Like many mystics, Doherty experienced God’s presence and deep love in silence:

True silence is the speech of lovers. . . . True silence is a key to the immense and flaming heart of God. It is the beginning of a divine courtship that will end only in the immense, creative, fruitful, loving silence of final union with the Beloved.

Yes, such silence is holy, a prayer beyond all prayers. True silence leads to the final prayer of the constant presence of God, to the heights of contemplation, when the soul, finally at peace, lives by the will of [God] whom she loves totally, utterly, and completely.

This silence, then, will break forth in a charity that overflows in the service of the neighbor without counting the cost. It will witness to Christ anywhere, always. Availability will become delightsome and easy, for in each person the soul will see the face of her Love. Hospitality will be deep and real, for a silent heart is a loving heart, and a loving heart is a hospice to the world.

She truly was a contemplative in the world, understanding that silent prayer is an experiential gift for everyone who desires greater intimacy with God:

This silence is not the exclusive prerogative of monasteries or convents. This simple, prayerful silence can and should be everybody’s silence. It belongs to every Christian who loves God, to every Jew who has heard in his [or her] heart the echoes of God’s voice in [the] prophets, to everyone whose soul has risen in search of truth, in search of God. . . .

Deserts, silence, solitudes are not necessarily places but states of mind and heart. These deserts can be found in the midst of the city, and in the every day of our lives. We need only to look for them and realize our tremendous needs for them. . . .

But how, really, can one achieve such solitude? By standing still! Stand still, and allow the deadly restlessness of our tragic age to fall away. . . .  That restlessness was once considered the magic carpet to tomorrow, but now we see it for what it really is: a running away from oneself, a turning from the journey inward that all [people] must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls. 

Reference:

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer (Combermere, ON: Madonna House Publications, 1993, 2000), 5, 7.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

Once I met her, I found it impossible not to fall in love with Teresa [of Avila]. This 16th century woman was light years ahead of her times. She was a powerful woman in a world of men—a reformer, founder of convents, author and contemplative. She embodied contradiction, a petite woman who was larger than life, who possessed a zest for life and laughter that made her invincible in the face of adversity. Yet, what most impressed me about Teresa was her love of Jesus and her intimate relationship with him. I was blown away by the picture of Bernini’s sculpture, “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” Bernini depicted Teresa’s vision of an angel who pierced her heart with a golden spear, setting her on fire with a great love of God. How I wished to get so close to God, to become one with him like Teresa! —Sonia F.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

I Bring Myself

Sister Thea Bowman (1937–1990), a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, addressed the United States Catholic bishops in 1989. She sang several lines of the African-American spiritual “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / A long way from home” and embracing her Black, Catholic, female identity, she said:

What does it mean to be Black and Catholic? It means that I come to my church fully functioning. . . . I bring myself, my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become; I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African-American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility as a gift to the church.

I bring a spirituality that . . . is contemplative and biblical and holistic, bringing to religion a totality of minds and imagination, of memory, of feeling and passion and emotion and intensity, of faith that is embodied, incarnate praise, a spirituality . . . that  steps out in faith, that leans on the Lord, a spirituality that is communal, that tries to walk and talk and work and pray and play together. . . .

A spirituality that in the middle of your Mass or in the middle of your sermon just might have to shout out and say, “Amen, hallelujah, thank you Jesus.” A faith that attempts to be Spirit-filled. The old ladies say if you love the Lord your God with your whole heart, [with] your whole soul and your whole mind and all your strength, then you praise the Lord with your whole heart and soul and mind and strength and you don’t bring [God] any feeble service. . . .  

Today we’re called to walk together in a new way toward that land of promise and to celebrate who we are and whose we are. If we as church walk together, don’t let nobody separate you. That’s one thing Black folk can teach you. Don’t let folk divide you or put the lay folk over here and the clergy over here, [or] put the bishops in one room and the clergy in the other room, put the women over here and the men over here.

The church teaches us that the church is a family. It’s a family of families and the family got to stay together. We know that if we do stay together, if we walk and talk and work and play and stand together in Jesus’ name, we’ll be who we say we are, truly Catholic; and we shall overcome—overcome the poverty, overcome the loneliness, overcome the alienation, and build together a holy city, a new Jerusalem, a city set apart where they’ll know we are his because we love one another.

Reference: 

Adapted from Thea Bowman, “Address to U.S. Bishops” (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2021), conference presentation, June 17, 1989, YouTube video, 35:03.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

Once I met her, I found it impossible not to fall in love with Teresa [of Avila]. This 16th century woman was light years ahead of her times. She was a powerful woman in a world of men—a reformer, founder of convents, author and contemplative. She embodied contradiction, a petite woman who was larger than life, who possessed a zest for life and laughter that made her invincible in the face of adversity. Yet, what most impressed me about Teresa was her love of Jesus and her intimate relationship with him. I was blown away by the picture of Bernini’s sculpture, “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.” Bernini depicted Teresa’s vision of an angel who pierced her heart with a golden spear, setting her on fire with a great love of God. How I wished to get so close to God, to become one with him like Teresa! —Sonia F.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

Christ Is Everywhere

Father Richard begins his book The Universal Christ by quoting English mystic Caryll Houselander (1901–1954), who experienced Christ in the faces of people around her while riding the subway and walking through London. From that mystical experience, she knew:

Christ is everywhere; in [Christ] every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life. It is not the foolish sinner like myself, running about the world with reprobates and feeling magnanimous, who comes closest to them and brings them healing; it is the contemplative in her cell who has never set eyes on them, but in whom Christ fasts and prays for them—or it may be a charwoman in whom Christ makes Himself a servant again, or a [ruler] whose crown of gold hides a crown of thorns. Realization of our oneness in Christ is the only cure for human loneliness. For me, too, it is the only ultimate meaning of life, the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to every life. [1]

Father Richard continues:

The question for me—and for us—is: Who is this “Christ” that Caryll Houselander saw permeating and radiating from all her fellow passengers? Christ for her was clearly not only Jesus of Nazareth but something much more immense, even cosmic, in significance. I believe this vision, once encountered, has power to radically alter what we believe, how we see others and relate to them, our sense of how big God might be, and our understanding of what the Creator is doing in our world.

A cosmic notion of the Christ competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything (Acts 10:15, 34). In this understanding of Christianity’s message, the Creator’s love and presence are grounded in the created world, and any mental distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” falls apart.

When I know that the world around me is both the hiding place and the revelation place of God, I can no longer maintain a significant distance between the natural and the supernatural, between the holy and the profane. (A divine “voice” makes this exactly clear to a very resistant Peter in Acts 10.) Everything I see and know is indeed one “universe” that revolves around one coherent center. This Divine Presence seeks connection and communion, not separation or division—except for the sake of an even deeper future union. What a difference this makes in the way we walk through the world, in how we encounter every person in the course of a day! It is as though everything that seemed disappointing and “fallen,” all the major pushbacks against the flow of history, can now be seen as one whole movement, still enchanted and made use of by God’s love. All of it must somehow be usable and filled with potency, even the things that appear as betrayals or crucifixions.

References:

[1] Caryll Houselander, A Rocking-Horse Catholic (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 139–140.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2019, 2021), 3, 7, 15.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

I was walking up the street in our town. Ahead of me I saw a woman sitting on a bench, and another woman standing nearby holding a leash. A boxer (dog) had his front paws on the woman’s shoulders and was nuzzling her right ear. She was giggling. He looked towards me, jumped down, and peacefully walked towards me. I knew I was next in line for his loving embrace. God was in that moment, showing me that there is always enough love and time. —Irene C.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

God Is the Beloved

This week’s Daily Meditations feature writings of twentieth-century women mystics. Each one shares her experience of God as unconditional and unsurpassed love from her unique background. Father Richard Rohr believes this is true for all mystics:  

People who know God well—mystics, hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found as an abusive father or a tyrannical mother; God is always a lover greater than we dared hope for. How different from the “account manager” most people seem to worship. God is the lover who receives and forgives everything. 

When we go into the Presence, we find someone not against us, but someone who is definitely for us! Mystics recognize someone else is holding them. People who pray always say, “Someone is for me more than I am for myself.” Prayer is being loved at a deep, sweet level. I hope everyone has felt such intimacy alone with God. I promise it is available to all. Maybe a lot of us just need to be told that this is what we should expect and seek. We’re afraid to ask for it; we’re afraid to seek. It feels presumptuous. We can’t trust that such a love exists. But it does.

Father Richard has found great inspiration over the past several years in the writings of Jewish mystic Etty Hillesum (1914–1943). In her letters from the Westerbork transit camp, Hillesum describes the solace she finds in God’s continual presence:

You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised toward Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in You, oh God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life. I am not challenging You, oh God, my life is one great dialogue with You. I may never become the great artist I would really like to be, but I am already secure in You, God. Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God. And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogues with You. The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches. [1]

References:

[1] Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941–1943; and Letters from Westerbork, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 332.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, rev. ed.(New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2003), 131, 134, 135.

Explore Further. . .

Image credit: Carrie Grace Littauer, Untitled 11 (detail), 2022, photograph, Colorado, used with permission. Arthur Allen, Untitled 4 (detail), 2022, photograph, France, used with permission. Claudia Retter, Florence Morning (detail), photograph, used with permission.  Jenna Keiper & Leslye Colvin, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.

This week’s image appears in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. 

Image inspiration: She sees the leaves in the ice, gathers the small, unnoticed things, and cherishes her findings. We accept the mystic’s invitation to sit and ponder.

Story from Our Community:

I was walking up the street in our town. Ahead of me I saw a woman sitting on a bench, and another woman standing nearby holding a leash. A boxer (dog) had his front paws on the woman’s shoulders and was nuzzling her right ear. She was giggling. He looked towards me, jumped down, and peacefully walked towards me. I knew I was next in line for his loving embrace. God was in that moment, showing me that there is always enough love and time. —Irene C.

Share your own story with us.

Prayer for our community:

God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough,  because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.

Listen to the prayer.

 

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Our theme this year is Nothing Stands Alone. What could happen if we embraced the idea of God as relationship—with ourselves, each other, and the world? Meditations are emailed every day of the week, including the Weekly Summary on Saturday. Each week builds on previous topics, but you can join at any time.
In a world of fault lines and fractures, how do we expand our sense of self to include love, healing, and forgiveness—not just for ourselves or those like us, but for all? This monthly email features wisdom and stories from the emerging Christian contemplative movement. Join spiritual seekers from around the world and discover your place in the Great Story Line connecting us all in the One Great Life. Conspirare. Breathe with us.