Category Archives: This century (1937-2024)

Amy Carmichael — January 18

Asia, Europe, This century (1937-2024), ,

Amy Carmichael

Bible Connection

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.
He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.
Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.
The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants: and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate. — Psalm 34:18-22 (KJV)

All about Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) 

Amy Carmichael was a well-known missionary during the first half of the 20th century. Her 35 books are loved by thousands.

She was born into a well-to-do, Northern Ireland, Christian family. In her teen years, she was educated at a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school and, at age 13, while still in boarding school, she accepted Christ as Savior. When she was age 18, her father died, leaving the family in difficult financial circumstances, as he had given a large personal loan that was not repaid. The family moved to Belfast. There she became involved in visiting the slums, and saw the terrible conditions under which many women and girls worked in the factories. She began a ministry with these women. It was unpaid work based on faith in God alone, and the Lord met her needs in remarkable ways.

She became acquainted with the Keswick Movement, and it was there that she learned of a close, deeper walk with the Jesus. The founder of the movement, Robert Wilson, a widower, asked her to come and live in his home and be his secretary. She learned much from that employment. She remembered on one occasion at a Keswick meeting when D.L. Moody preached on the prodigal son. Afterwards, he was talking with Robert Wilson and stopped in mid sentence. He was struck with the moment when the father says to the older son “Son, thou art ever with me and all that I have is thine.” Moody said, “I never saw it before. Oh, the love of God. Oh, the love. God’s love.” Tears rained down his cheeks. Amy never forgot that spiritual truth—”All that I have is thine.” It reinforced her faith that God knew her needs before she asked and wanted to supply them by faith.

She received a “Macedonian call” in 1892 at the age of 24. The following year, she became the first missionary appointee of the Keswick’s missions committee. She went to Japan. But there and elsewhere her missionary efforts met with disappointment. She left Japan for Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), went back to England, and then India, where she caught dengue fever.

In India, she saw that the missionary community was very active but there were no changed lives. She detested the meetings with the other missionary ladies—drinking tea and gossiping, showing very little concern for the salvation of those about them. She felt very alone. In reflection, she wrote:

Onward Christian soldiers,
Sitting on the mats;
Nice and warm and cozy
Like little pussycats.
Onward Christian soldiers,
Oh, how brave are we,
Don’t we do our fighting
Very comfortably?

One day as she fell to her knees in despair, a verse she had learned long before floated into her memory: “He that trusteth in me shall never be desolate.” From there on she found that to be true throughout her long life of ministry in India.

She left Bangalore for South India and with the daughter of her host family and several Christian Indian women, began an itinerant ministry through the villages of Tamil Nadu. They were dubbed the “starry cluster,” because the Indians recognized their sincerity and the light shining from them. The members of the band had no salary but looked to God to supply their needs. Their attitude was, “How much can I do without that I may have more to give?” It was during this period of time that Amy took on the habit of wearing Indian dress, which she continued throughout her lifetime.

A life-changing experience took place in 1901. A little five-year-old girl, named Pearl Eyes by Amy, was brought to her by an Indian woman. Her mother had sold her to the temple, and there she was being prepared for temple prostitution. Twice she had run away only to be caught, carried back, beaten, and subjected to sexual service there. Little Pearl Eyes told her story as she sat on Amy’s lap playing with the rag doll she had given her. She described what was done to her in the temple, demonstrating with the doll.

Amy never forgot that day nor the child’s story. It was the beginning of her work to rescue children who had been dedicated to the temple gods. To do so, she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship. In 1918, they began to also rescue baby boys who were also dedicated to the temple gods and goddesses. Other areas of the work over the years were added such as a hospital, schools and publishing house. Amy was not understood by many of the missionaries in India. She was also greatly resented by the Hindu priests and was frequently taken to court on charges of being a kidnapper.

In 1931 Amy had a fall that left her an invalid for the remainder of her life, and she seldom left her bed. It was during this period of her life that she was most prolific in writing. Occasionally someone would wheel her in a wheelchair out onto a veranda where her children could gather to greet her and sing to her.

Amy was very self-effacing. She rarely allowed her photograph to be taken and never referred to herself by name or personal pronoun in her writings.

Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die,
Another’s life, another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity.

More

BBC2 video

Fan video bio focusing on prostitution

Goodreads quotes pages

Trafficked women, in particular, are exploited for their image, fueled by the increasing demand for nude images and other pornographic content on the web. Check this out this data trove: Webroot Cybersecurity estimates that 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography. A study found that data aggregated from 400 million web searches revealed that the most popular term related to sexual searches was “youth.” Additionally, one of the most-searched terms on Pornhub, a popular porn website, is “teen.” This term has remained in their top 10 searches for six years.

What do we do with this?

Amy Carmichael’s life reflects a conviction that we should give our “utmost” for God’s “highest.” Her convictions led her to do very unusual things, especially unusual for a woman in her time. She would want you to ponder whether you are receiving the sanctification from God that sets you apart for your best work on the Lord’s behalf. She would want her example to move you to consider how you should shine God’s light and be a conduit for God’s compassion. The whole world is your mission field, even if you end up in a wheelchair!

The exploitation of women is an age-old sin. MSHT (modern slavery and human trafficking) is a multi-billion-dollar “industry.” Become aware.

Clara McBride Hale — December 18

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. — Galatians 5:13-15

All about Clara McBride Hale (1905-1992)

Clara Hale had a mission of motherhood. Her life experiences helped make her extraordinarily empathetic to the pain and suffering of other mothers and children. Her compassion gave her an unusual capacity to love and to find solutions.

“Mother Hale” was born in North Carolina in 1905. After her father was killed, her mom moved the family to Philadelphia, PA. After she married , she had two children, and adopted a third. Her husband moved the family to New York City, but he lost his battle with cancer when Clara was 27.

Through the Great Depression, Hale raised and supported her children, working as a domestic by day and a janitor by night. In 1943, Hale opened a daycare in her home in order to spend time with her children as well as care for others. It grew from a short–term to a long–term care facility. She also took care of foster children.

When Clara Hale retired in 1968 she could not have foreseen that her most notable endeavor, the founding of Hale House, was yet to begin. Hale House started in 1969 when Clara Hale’s biological daughter, Lorraine, brought a mother and child who were addicted to drugs to Hale’s home. She could not refuse the desperate pair. Actually, she had no choice because the mother disappeared and left the baby behind while Hale made a phone call in another room. Hale took the tiny baby girl and nursed her through drug withdrawals. The young mother had other children, and when she returned to Hale’s residence, she brought the others and left them, too. Eventually she returned to take the children back. Hale sent the family off with her blessing and never charged a penny for her help. Within a few short weeks Mother Hale’s apartment was packed from wall to wall with 22 drug-addicted babies. Some of them were abandoned; some were orphaned. As Mother Hale told the tale to Irene Verag of Newsday, “Before I knew it every pregnant addict in Harlem knew about the crazy lady who would give her baby a home.”

Slowly the Hales (Clara, daughter Lorraine, and sons Nathan and Kenneth) allowed their lives to become virtually consumed by the effort to instill hope and to inject healing into the lives of addicted parents in Harlem. The dedicated family worked day and night to support their cause. Mother Hale kept the frailest of the infants in her own bedroom, cradling them and walking the floors all night when necessary to comfort each one through the painful experience of detoxification. The younger Hales took as many jobs as was necessary to bring in the funds to support the many, many children who came into their home. Hale said, “My daughter says she was almost sixteen before she realized all these other kids weren’t her real sisters and brothers. Everyone called me ‘Mommy.’”

She later got a home license as a “child care facility” in 1970, called the Hale House. A few years later Hale purchased a larger building. In 1975 she was able to attain a license for child-care. She raised the children as if they were her own and once they were healthy she would help to find families interested in adoption. “It wasn’t their fault they were born addicted. Love them. Help one another,” Hale explained to others, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune. She took it upon herself to make sure the families were a correct fit and even in some cases turned families down if she thought they could not provide a good enough home for the child. She eventually helped over 2,000 drug addicted babies and young children who were born addicted to drugs, children born with HIV, and children whose parents had died of AIDS. It was simple, she said; “Hold them, rock them, love them and tell them how great they are.”

After the grant that helped her buy Hale House expired her work became a victim of severe cutbacks of state and city funds. Public agencies with competing services repeatedly harassed the center.

Image result for mother hale house

Successfully supported by individuals, churches, and community groups, Hale House nonetheless became unique in its format and demonstrated a sharp contrast to public agencies for the care of children. In the program’s early days when funds for food and supplies were few and meeting payroll was a constant challenge, Clara Hale’s personal faith in Christ and the love and active concern of ordinary people were her only reliable sources of strength and support. They brought her disposable diapers, formula, and other items that were in constant demand.

One notable admirer spent more than two years, off and on, trying to track down Clara Hale because no one among his circle of friends knew her name. Finally, John Lennon found her and sent a check for $10,000. “He came with his wife and son and spent time with the children,” Hale had said. After Lennon’s tragic death the following year, Yoko Ono, his wife, sent more gifts, including a check for $20,000, which arrived every year thereafter.

One morning, another fan made her way to Hale’s doorstep. As she emerged from a black limousine, the usual paparazzi who typically pressed for pictures were elsewhere. This was a private visit, for sure. Nonetheless, the presence of Princess Diana made it a royal and memorable one. As the princess stood at the top of the brownstone stairs, she lovingly held a baby in her arms. “Thank you for the work you’re doing here for these children,” she said to Mother Hale.

On February 6, 1985, at the close of the State of the Union message to Congress, President Ronald Reagan turned to Mrs. Clara Hale, seated at the side of the first lady, Mrs. Reagan, and recognized “Mother Hale” for helping babies of drug–addicted mothers in Harlem, N.Y. The president said to members of Congress and to all America, “go to her house some night and maybe you’ll see her silhouette against the window as she walks the floor, talking softly, soothing a child in her arms. Mother Hale of Harlem, she too is an American hero.”

More

The media made her a bit famous. Here is a Mother’s Day report from NBC in 1984:

Times obituary [link]

What do we do with this?

It may have been harder than Mother Hale let on. By 1983, 28,000 women had succumbed to drug–addiction in New York City alone. More than 50,000 children were born chemically dependent. These children were also at high risk of acquiring AIDS from their mothers during pregnancy. In New York State, there were about 250,000 addicts. At least 450,000 were users of cocaine, with one out of every 20 people over the age of 12 involved in drugs.

Today, such people are officially known to suffer from “Substance Use Disorder.” But in the 1980s, rather than declare their situation a national health crisis, society declared a crime wave was sweeping the nation. Mass incarceration and benign neglect of poor minorities became the response, rather than the implementation of well–funded addiction treatment and mental health programs.

Systemic issues are just that. If you want to make an individual response to social issues, talk to the powers that be as well as act with compassion in your neighborhood.

Love can accomplish a lot, even if you are needy yourself! Spend a minute a let God love you, needy child who you are.

Transformation often starts with a small inspiration or opportunity and grows up to accomplish a lot! Spend another minute and see what love is doing through you or your church. Give praise for how the love of Jesus flourishes even when the powers-that-be are against it. Maybe it is a good day to imagine how Jesus would like to work through you, or yours. Tell someone about the seed thought you may have and see where it goes.

Catherine Doherty — December 14

Europe, North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do so that I may obtain eternal life?” And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not give false testimony; Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man *said to Him, “All these I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you want to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.

And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:16-26 (NASB)

All about Catherine Doherty (1896-1985)

Catherine de Hueck Doherty (née Ekaterina Fyodorovna Kolyschkina) was a Catholic lay apostle, a social activist, a pioneer in the struggle for interracial justice, a spiritual writer,  a lecturer, and a spiritual mother to priests and laity.

Doherty was born in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia to parents of deep Christian faith, who also communicated to her an extraordinary love for the poor. She was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1920, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church while in London. Over her lifetime, she integrated both traditions within her own spirituality.

In 1910, when she was fifteen, Doherty entered an arranged marriage with her first cousin, the wealthy nobleman, Boris de Hueck. During the First World War (1914-18), she volunteered as a nurse on the German front and was decorated with the Cross of St. George for courage under fire. Boris was an officer in the Russian Army.

As Russia collapsed, the couple returned to St. Petersburg, where they found nothing to eat. They escaped Russia, rummaging through garbage cans in Finland where they were attacked by Bolsheviks for being aristocrats. Westerners, Catherine later insisted, can’t  understand real starvation, “never having really experienced [food’s] complete absence.”

They ended up in London and eventually moved to Toronto where their son was born. Catherine worked at what menial jobs she found to support her infant and her sick husband. After a time, she found a well-paying position as a lecturer on the the Chatauqua circuit, and later became an executive with the Leigh-Emmerich Lecture Bureau in New York City. Meanwhile, Boris managed to form his own company, which went bankrupt in the Great Depression. Their relationship unraveled and their marriage was annulled by the Catholic Church.

Catherine became a single parent with a small child to support. Yet she felt called by Christ.

During those days I was in the throes of hearing the Lord say, “Sell what you possess … come follow me,” and I was running away from him. One night, while dancing with this man, I heard laughter, a very gentle and kind laughter. I heard what I thought was the voice of God laughing and saying: “You can’t escape me, Catherine, you can’t.” I pleaded a headache and went home. Some new phase of my life was about to begin.

With the blessing of her bishop, she went to live and work with the poor in the slums of Toronto, where she founded Friendship House.

When the work fell apart in Toronto, she went to New York. Two things shocked her: the extent of white racism, and the living conditions in Harlem. At Columbia University, she asked a professor why African-Americans weren’t discussed. He responded: “Oh, we don’t study the Negro. We study American history.” The United States, she wrote, “had this marvelous Constitution, but it doesn’t apply to Negroes.”

In Harlem, she found “a no-man’s land of fear and doubt.” She asked, “Where is God in it all?” In 1938 she founded a Friendship House there, an interracial apostolate dedicated to fighting segregation. Similar missions sprang up all over the country, some sponsored by Doherty. A similar mission that became Fellowship Farm near Pottstown started in Philadelphia in 1931. Like her friend Dorothy Day, the “B.” (the Baroness), as they called her, attracted idealistic young people nationwide. One volunteer recalled:

White people, black people—talking, laughing, friendly, sipping coffee. How simple the solution all seemed then: the sooner we of different races learned to work together, to pray together, to eat, to study, to laugh together, the sooner we’d be on the way to interracial justice.

Advocating civil rights in America, she discovered, could be as deadly as revolutionary Russia. She was spit at and called a “n*gger lover.” At a Catholic women’s group, she was berated for eating “with dirty n*ggers.” When a woman told her, “You smell of the Negro,” Catherine lost her temper: “And you stink of hell!” Once at a lecture in Savannah, she was nearly beaten to death by a group of white Catholic women.

“You have to preach the Gospel, without compromise, or shut up,” Catherine said. “One or the other. I tried to preach it without compromise.” She always ended her lectures the same way:

Sooner or later, all of us are going to die. We will appear before God for judgment. The Lord will look at us and say, “I was naked and you didn’t clothe me. I was hungry and you didn’t give me anything to eat. I was thirsty and you didn’t give me a drink. I was sick and you didn’t nurse me. I was in prison and you didn’t come to visit me.” And we shall say, “Lord, when did I not do these things?” I would stop here, pause, and in a very loud voice say, “When I was a Negro and you were a white American Catholic.” That’s when the rotten eggs and tomatoes would start to fly!

One of Catherine’s key supporters was New York’s Cardinal Patrick J. Hayes, who was “always worried” about her. After she organized a study group at Friendship House, the local pastor visited her:

“Listen to me, you Russian nitwit. What are you trying to do? Make them think they are loved just because they have become Catholics? You are giving them the raw Gospel and it isn’t getting you anywhere. Stop it!” I said, “Father, would you like to come with me to see the Cardinal? If he orders me to stop, I will stop.” “Oh, hell,” he said. On the way out he slammed the door and smashed the glass in the window.”

Our Lady of Combermere at Madonna House

Catherine would eventually marry Edward J “Eddie” Doherty, with whom she co-founded the Madonna House Apostolate in 1947 in Combermere, Canada. Their ongoing mission included publishing a newspaper, Restoration, which still exists.

Wherever she worked, Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty sought to actualize the Gospel message in the present moment. As she once told a Fordham University Jesuit: “I have never read anywhere in the gospel where Christ says to wait twenty years before living the gospel. The Good News is for now.”

More

  • Read Poustinia, by Catherine Doherty. Borrow it on Internet Archive [link]

The poustinia (literally meaning “desert”) is an Eastern Orthodox tradition in which God calls someone to live in a poustyn—a bare-bones cabin where they pray and fast, alone except for the Holy Spirit. Catherine Doherty brought the idea of the poustinia with her to the States.

“To go into the poustinia means to listen to God,” she wrote. “It means entering into kenosis—the emptying of oneself. This is really a climbing of this awesome mountain right to the very top where God abides in his warm silence.”

Importantly, the poustyn is usually in a village, and the poustinik is also a part of village life, helping where help is needed and always praying and sharing the love of Christ.

“If I touch God I must touch man. … Christ incarnated himself and became man, so I must, like Christ himself, be a person of the towel and the water. That is to say, wash the feet of my fellowmen as Christ did, and washing the feet of my fellowmen means service. …I cannot pray if I don’t serve my brother. I cannot pray to the God who incarnated himself, when my brother is in need.”

The poustinik is always praying, always immersed in the silence of God, even when they are not alone. Every act of service is also a prayer. They carry the poustyn in their heart.

  • Catherine Doherty writes about prayer and sacraments as ways to welcome and know the presence of God in “First Meet God.”  While you are there, check out the rest of the Madonna House Archives.
  • Luminous Lives, a Renovaré e‑course hosted my Mimi Dixon
  • Doherty as Thomas Merton’s spiritual mother [link]
  • Dialogue about her spirituality:

What do we do with this?

The core of Doherty’s spirituality is summarized in a “distillation” of the Gospel which she called “The Little Mandate” — words which she believed she received from Jesus Christ and which guided her life. Use it to ponder your own distillation of the Gospel:

Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me, going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.

Little — be always little! Be simple, poor, childlike.

Preach the Gospel with your life — without compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.

Do little things exceedingly well for love of Me.

Love… love… love, never counting the cost.

Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray, fast. Pray always, fast.

Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbor’s feet. Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you. Pray always.

I will be your rest.

Margaret Guenther — December 11

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

To answer before listening— that is folly and shame. — Proverbs 18:13 (NIV)

All about Margaret Guenther (1930-2016)

Margaret Guenther was an Episcopal priest, wife, mother of three children, grandmother, spiritual director, mentor of spiritual directors, retreat leader, prolific writer and, as she said, “administrator, lay medical practitioner, scrubber of floors, washer of clothes.”

As a child she excelled in school but found her greatest joy in long rambles through the countryside with her father, developing a love of the outdoors that she maintained throughout her life. She was happiest sleeping under the stars with just her bedroll, well into her seventies and loved nothing more than waking under a dusting of snow. (WaPo obituary)

She served as Emeritus Professor at General Theological Seminary in New York City where she taught Ascetical Theology.

She was also the Director of the Center for Christian Spirituality, a pioneering program for the training of spiritual directors. She was a noted retreat leader and lecturer both in the United States and abroad, travelling as far away as China and Australia to speak at conferences and lead retreats.

When she began writing about spiritual direction in 1992, Guenther was one of the few women doing so. She noted, “If Priscilla had written our epistles instead of Paul, I suspect there would have been more about Incarnation and relatively little about circumcision.” The “feminine” wisdom in her books offers new ways to talk about spiritual direction, such as allowing the director a measure of self-disclosure (as opposed to the protocol of psychotherapy).

Her approach was simple. After a short “catch up time,” she began sessions with silence, asking the spiritual companion to let her know when she or he was ready. She ended the meeting with a “little” prayer. She kept no written records and cautioned spiritual directors to recite ten “Jesus Prayers” before saying anything or interrupting.

In June 1997 Guenther retired from General to write more books, give retreats and lectures, and serve as Associate Rector of St. Columba’s Church in Washington, DC.

Quotes

“The New Testament is not very helpful about family values. Jesus, unmarried at an age when most Jewish men were husbands and fathers, exhibits a cavalier attitude toward families as he gathers his followers around him. Think about the call of the disciples from their wives’ point of view: Jesus meets Peter and Andrew, James and John, as they are tending their nets. he says, “Follow me,” and immediately they abandon their livelihood without a second thought. They abandon their families as well: did they ever go home to tell their wives that they would not be there for dinner? Did they make any provision for their families? When, in my imagination, I translate this story into the present time, were I the wife of Peter, Andrew, James, or John, I would be furious. “You did what? What about the health plan? Your pension? College for the children? Are you planning on coming back sometime? How am I going to manage? Who will look after the children if I have to get a job?” … Jesus might have been an effective healer, but he also certainly knew how to disrupt a household.” ― At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us

“The spiritual director has the double task of holding up the demands of absolute responsibility and the promise of absolute forgiveness.” — Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction

“[My students}… presented me with thoughtful and candid papers. They had examined their use of time and energy, reflected carefully on their relationship with those whose lives touched theirs (including the difficult and incompatible ones), scrutinized their performance as custodians of God’s creation. All in all, it was exemplary work except for one thing: these were grim, dreary schedules that allowed no place for fun. No room for holy uselessness or the joyous and restorative wasting of time, a spiritual discipline that bears absolutely no resemblance to guilt-producing procrastination or avoidance of whatever the next step might be. If they were able to live out the plan that they laid out for themselves, they would be exemplary citizens, conscientious pray-ers, and ecologically beyond reproach. but they would never have any fun.” ― At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us

It was a happy day when I discovered that in the English of Chaucer’s day – which was also the time of the Black Death – the word “silly” meant “blessed.” I am not sure when we strayed away from its original meaning, when blessedness took on a churchy aura and silliness became the realm of Monty Python and fourth-grade scatological humor. As hard-working adults we too often lose the gift for letting go, for delight in simply being. We persuade ourselves that every moment must be lived productively; like the busy little bee, we feel a holy obligation to improve each shining hour. We would do well to take very small children or big silly dogs as our teachers. I have learned much about holy uselessness from Perry, the dog.” — At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us

More

Margaret Guenther on waiting  [link]

SDI learns from Rev. Margaret Guenther :

Rod is a fan [link]

What do we do with this?

Guenther talks like a mother, a very wise and educated mother. She talks like a person who has spent a lot of time in the woods, and a lot of time in New York City. She talks like a woman who has the scars of leadership and like a person who doesn’t disrespect their scars. Their is room at her spiritual table and she is at the table with Jesus. Sit with her a while.

How does someone find a spiritual director? This little article might help [link]. Some are Evangelicals [link]. Some are Anabaptists [link].

Thomas Merton — December 10

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain. — Psalm 139:1-6

All about Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Thomas Merton, known to the other monks as Father Louis, was born in the south of France to a American mom (a Quaker) and Kiwi dad (a painter).  He was baptized as an Anglican. When Thomas was six years old, his mother died of stomach cancer. He was sent to live in the U.S. with his grandparents while his father, an artist, often travelled. As an early teen, he was reunited with his dad and educated in Europe until his father died when he was 16. After finishing school, Thomas was agnostic. In 1933, while in Italy, he experienced a sense of spiritual emptiness, anxiety, and a hope it would all lead to a dramatic conversion.

In 1938, while finishing up an M.A. in English (focused on William Blake), Merton joined the Roman Catholic church after experimenting with other forms of Christianity. He was rejected by the Franciscans and did not feel drawn to become a priest. In 1942, he was accepted as a novice monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

His abbot directed Merton to write his autobiography, which became The Seven Storey Mountain. The book became an unlikely best-seller and is considered today to be one of the spiritual classics of the modern age.

Merton would go on to write poems, articles, essays, and more than 60 books, among them New Seeds of Contemplation, The Sign of Jonas, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, and No Man Is An Island.

In the latter decades of his life he became increasingly interested in Asian religions, particularly Buddhism.  His leadership helped spark Christian-Buddhist dialogue that continues to this day. Merton is an example of a devoted Christian who had dialogue with others respectfully and as a learner. He was particularly interested in Eastern ways of thinking and understanding of self. His conversations about these issues were largely with other monks, Christian and Buddhist, as well as his superiors.

His abbey still receives revenues from his work. His work telling the stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers has been inspirational and influential to many in our circles. His writings have been translated into over 30 languages.

Merton died on this day in 1968 of an accidental electrocution while attending an interfaith conference of contemplative monks in Thailand at age 53.

Quotes:

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” — Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them” ― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” ― Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

More

The Thomas Merton Center [link]

Director’s page for “Soul Searching,” a documentary about his life [link]

The Thomas Merton Society replayed an argument that Merton was murdered, probably by the CIA, instead of killed in an accident. The book The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton, an Investigation by Hugh Turley and David Martin (2018), may be an addition to the era full of conspiracy theories or it may be a window into overlooked or suppressed evidence [link].

Cistercian Order homepage.  The term “Cistercian” comes from the Latin word Cistercium, which is the name of the village of Cîteaux in France. In 1098, a group of Benedictine monks from the Molesme monastery founded Cîteaux Abbey in Cîteaux, with the goal of living more in accordance with the Rule of Saint Benedict.  The Cistercian Order is stricter than the Benedictine Order. Cistercians follow the Benedictine Rule, but they have a more defined structure and wear white cowls instead of black ones like Benedictine monks.here are two religious orders that share the heritage of Cîteaux: the Cistercian Order and the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, also known as the Trappists.

Merton teaches with great inclusion and acceptance. He offers a path to the deep places of God, starting from where you are right now. Feel the freedom of that, and also a bit of the terror of that trust. Enjoy your solitude.

Nelson Mandela — December 5

Africa, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

Therefore My people shall know My Name and what it means. Therefore in that day I am the One who is speaking, ‘Here I am.’”

How beautiful and delightful on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace,
Who brings good news of good [things],
Who announces salvation,
Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”

Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices,
Together they shout for joy;
For they will see face to face
The return of the Lord to Zion. Isaiah 52:6-8

Then-President Nelson Mandela revisits his South African prison cell on Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, in 1994.
Then-President Nelson Mandela revisits his South African prison cell on Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, in 1994.

All about Nelson Mandela  (1918-2013)

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country’s first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalized racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.

Mandela was not outspoken about his Christian faith. However, in his autobiography, he noted that he has always been and always will be a Christian and that his actions and conviction stem from his Christian faith. He kept his Christian beliefs discreet in favor of his great life’s work of reconciliation. “He was a deeply religious man; he believed sincerely in the existence of the Almighty,” said Bishop Don Dabula, who first met Mandela in 1962 and met to pray with him whenever he was at his home in Qunu

The former president had the last rites administered by a Methodist minister in his Houghton home as he was nearing death. Nearby, in a private room, long-time friend Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana said Mandela’s favorite blessing as he died. “I asked not to be in the room when he died,” said Mpumlwana, who had prayed at the family home regularly towards the end of Mandela’s life. He looked at the time midway during what he knew was Mandela’s favorite blessing and saw it was 8:49 p.m. He chanted the words that always made the elderly statesman’s face light up when he heard them: May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. “May the Lord look upon you with kindness, and give you peace. “I later realized that was when he died,” Mpumlwana said.

It is testament to Mandela’s universal appeal that he has been claimed to be everything from a communist to a true liberal by his many admirers. And the image of the father of South Africa’s secular democracy as being deeply religious may well sit uncomfortably with some. But Mandela’s relationship with religion was always significant, if muted.

He was raised and schooled as a Methodist, an experience he recalled fondly in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela was married to his third wife, Graça Machel, by the then head of the South African Methodist church, Bishop Mvume Dandala. At a religious conference in 1999, he said: “Without the church, without religious institutions, I would never have been here today…Religion was one of the motivating factors in everything we did.”

But Mandela held an aversion to speaking publicly about his own faith for fear of dividing or—even worse—using religion as a political tool, as the apartheid regime did. In his autobiography he wrote:

“The [apartheid] policy was supported by the Dutch Reformed Church, which furnished apartheid with its religious underpinnings by suggesting that Afrikaners were God’s chosen people and that blacks were a subservient species. In the Afrikaner’s world view, apartheid and the church went hand in hand.”

The head of the Methodist Church in South Africa, Bishop Zipho Siwa, agreed: “He is a leader whose role was to unite everybody.” Ultimately, his faith, like everything else about Mandela, played to the great theme of his life: reconciliation. This was illustrated in a 1994 speech to the Zion Christian Church Easter conference, in which he said: “The good news was borne by our risen Messiah, who chose not one race, who chose not one country, who chose not one language,  who chose not one tribe, who chose all of humankind.”

More

More biography.

Nelson Mandela Day resources from the United Nations.

Nelson Mandela Foundation archives. 

Nobel Peace Prize (1993) pages.

The biggest criticism of Mandela might be “he cared too much about reconciliation.” [WAPO 2024]

Mandela and the church

Long Walk to Freedom trailer

What do we do with this?

Mandela spent years in prison waiting his opportunity to serve. He had no choice, and maybe you do not either. Will you be bitter when you receive your chance, or ready?

Who can you help reconcile today? Be sincere as you provide a way for people to love. They need your help.

Dorothy Day — November 29

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible Connection

Read Psalm 42:1-4

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

All about Dorothy Day (1897-1980)

Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn Heights to stable, middle class, and marginally Christian parents. After her family experienced several major relocations, Day was raised mostly in San Francisco and Chicago. After two years of college, she dropped out of school in Illinois and moved back to New York City. During these younger years, Day’s interest in adventure grew to include alternative social organizations, particularly socialist anarchism. She began working with several socialist publications around 1916.

Although she had been baptized in the Episcopal Church as a child, at this point she identified as agnostic. The next few years were full of adventure and rocky relationships including heartbreak, abortion, a short marriage, and then an unexpected pregnancy and birth of her daughter, Tamar in 1926. She wished to baptize her child, which caused more tension in her relationship with Tamar’s father. A year later, Tamar was baptized and so was Dorothy, now part of the Catholic church.

In 1932 she met French immigrant Peter Maurin with whom a year later she would found the Catholic Worker movement. The publication of The Catholic Worker (almost named the Catholic Radical) began in 1933 and continues to be published. It’s goals were to promote Catholic social teaching in the depths of the Great Depression and to stake out a neutral, pacifist position in the war-torn 1930s.  The vision grew to include “establishing houses of hospitality to care for the destitute, establishing rural farming communities to teach city dwellers agrarianism and encourage a movement back to the land, and setting up roundtable discussions in community centers in order to clarify thought and initiate action.”

She became famous for saying

“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.”

By 1941 over 30 independent yet affiliated Catholic Worker communities had formed in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. While the Catholic leaders told her to change the name of the publication because it did not represent the Church, they refused. By the 1960’s, Day became popular with Catholics, organizers, and counterculture leaders. While maintaining radical social ideas and practice, she opposed the sexual revolution of the decade, describing the ill effects she had suffered years before. She continued to be critical of transnational companies like United Fruit and violent governmental policies, and praised aspects of Communist movements in Russia, China, and Cuba.

Dorothy-Day-Lamont-UFW-1973.jpg
Dorothy Day before her last arrest at a farm workers picket line in Lamont, California, in 1973. Credit: http://rosemarieberger.com. All rights reserved.

Day was a prolific writer and joined movements for justice. At 75, she spent a week in jail helping Cesar Chavez working for justice for farm workers in California. Dorothy Day died on this day in 1980, three weeks after her 83rd birthday.

More

The Catholic Worker Movement homepage [link]

Writings  [link]

Day teaching on TV [link]

Nice, brief biography from Maryland Public TV 

Dorothy Day: A Rebel In Paradise [nice biography and teaching from community members]

NCEA webinar: Revolution of the Heart.

Lecture on The Long Loneliness and why it matters:

What do we do with this?

Dorothy Day’s radical views and uncompromising attitude caused her grief and trouble. But her long loneliness, as she called it, made her faith deep and her influence wide. What is it that you must do?

C.S. Lewis — November 22

Europe, This century (1937-2024)

Bible Connection

And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables. — Mark 4:11 (KJV)

All about C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1898. His mother, Flora, was the daughter of a Anglican priest (Church of Ireland). His father, Richard, immigrated from Wales and worked as a lawyer (solicitor). He and his brother Warren had a dog named Jacksie, who was killed by a car when Lewis was four years old. He decided that he would take the dog’s name in his mourning, eventually allowing his family to call him Jack—the name friends would refer to him by for the rest of his life.

He was privately tutored and sent to the notoriously abusive Wynyard School in England for two years with his brother after his mother died. He came back home to Belfast and attended Campbell College (for boys 11-18) only to drop out because of respiratory problems. He was sent to a health-resort town back in England where he attended preparatory school. It was there, while he was 15 that he decided he was an atheist. Later in life he would reflect that this decision was largely based on being mad at God for not existing.

His interest in mythology, beast fables, and legends developed—especially Norse, Greek, and Irish mythologies. In them, he sensed what he later named “joy.” He was bound for Oxford to study when he volunteered to fight for the British Army in the trenches of France during World War I. The trauma and horrors during the war confirmed his atheism. Lewis was injured during an accidental friendly fire explosion that killed two of his comrades. He had a pact with a close friend that if either died the survivor would take care of the other’s family, and after “Paddy” Moore died Lewis took care of Jane Moore until her death in the 1940s. The two had a close relationship, during both Lewis’ recovery and the period before Moore’s eventual death. Lewis often referred to her as his “mother.”

He resumed studies at Oxford in 1918. He excelled academically and began getting published. In 1929, largely because of the influence of friends and colleagues: J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, Lewis decided to “admit God was God,” kneel, pray, and admit he was a Theist. Two years later he had a conversion experience with the two friends playing a huge role in his shift to becoming a Christian. He would later recall in Surprised By Joy, “When we set out [on a motorcycle trip to the zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

Two years later, the three friends along with some others began a group they called “The Inklings” which would meet up once or twice per week for sixteen years. For most of 1941, Lewis published 31 weekly Screwtape Letters, donating the proceeds for them to charity. He began giving radio talks on the BBC that developed from “Right and Wrong” to a later series about “What Christians Believe” and then “Christian Behavior”—these later became his enduring classic Mere Christianity. He published The Great Divorce in weekly installments. In all, he wrote about 60 books, most of which are non-fiction, often apologetics of the faith. It was perhaps in his fiction, like the Space Trilogy, where he did his heaviest theological lifting.

In 1956, Lewis and his intellectual companion, Joy Davidman, entered into a civil marriage so she and her two sons could stay in the U.K. She was separated from her abusive husband. Later that year, after discovering her advanced-stage bone cancer, the two had a Christian marriage ceremony. Joy died in 1957 while on a family holiday. Jack raised her sons as his own. Four years later, Lewis had kidney issues that developed shortly into renal failure. He died on November 22, 1963 a week before he would have turned 65 (the same day as John F. Kennedy — book by Peter Kreeft).

Quotes

  • I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. — “Is Theology Poetry?”
  •  I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. — Mere Christianity
  • There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way.’ — The Great Divorce
  • It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.– Mere Christianity
  • If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning. – Mere Christianity
  • A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word “darkness” on the walls of his cell. — The Problem of Pain
  • Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained. — “God in the Dock”
  • God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. — Mere Christianity
  • Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. — The Joyful Christian
  • Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. — Mere Christianity

  • It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. — “The Weight of Glory”

More

Christian History biography

BBC biography

C.S Lewis’s surviving BBC radio address

C.S. Lewis – from atheism to theism

Mere Christianity — Internet Archive,  The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses — Internet Archive

The Great Divorce — audio book on YouTube, PDF online

Till We Have Faces — PDF online

The Silver Chair (BBC dramtization) — Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Illustrations of Lewis’ books. Some by Lewis himself. [link]

The works of C.S. Lewis at C.C. Lewis.com [link]

The Most Reluctant Convert (Movie – 2022). Buy or rent on YouTube

What do we do with this?

C.S. Lewis was a brilliant apologist for Jesus in the mid-20th Century. Some of what he wrote is beginning to sound dated. Most of it is timeless. Some of it has been perverted by marketing and profit-taking. If you have never read one of his adult books, try one: Mere Christianity is a compilation of his radio productions. Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce are allegorical tales about life and death. Till We Have Faces is his last work that makes a Christian story out of a Greek tale.

Consider the time it takes to think deep thoughts. Lewis learned about Jesus before there was TV. After TV, our information started coming to us in ever-decreasing bites. Plan for a few hours to read, pray and think. Plan some time when there is no plan. Those are good times to be freed from your “silver chair.”

Christophe Munzihirwa — October 29

Africa, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this:

‘Blessed are the dead,
those who die in the Lord from this moment on!’”

“Yes,” says the Spirit, “so they can rest from their hard work, because their deeds will follow them.” — Revelation 14:13

All about Christophe Munzihirwa (1926-1996)

Christophe Munzihirwa was born in Sud-Kivu Province, in the Belgian Congo.  In 1958 he was ordained as a priest. In 1968 he joined the Jesuit Order, from whom the first Catholic missionaries were sent to the Congo. He studied social science and economics in Belgium, but returned to his country in 1969, nine years after independence, to become the formation director for Jesuits in the Kinshasha province (now home to one of the largest and youngest cities in Africa)

Munzihirwa’s prophetic streak surfaced in 1971, when the government of CIA-backed dictator Mobutu Sese Seko responded to a youth protest movement by forcibly enrolling university-age persons, including seminarians, in the military for two years. Munzihirwa insisted on being enlisted alongside his novices, much to the embarrassment of the regime.

Munzihirwa became the Jesuit provincial superior for Central Africa in 1980. In 1986 he was made a coadjutor bishop in Kasongo, and in 1993 he became archbishop of Bukavu.

Munzihirwa earned fame for his refusal to accept patronage from Mobutu. That occasionally created obstacles for him, as in 1995 when a Catholic missionary and members of an international solidarity movement were arrested in Kasongo. When Munzihirwa demanded their release, military officials taunted him for not being a “friend” of Mobutu. Munzihirwa solved the problem by saying that until the group was let go, he would sleep outside their cell. They were freed that evening.

Munzihirwa was unafraid to denounce what he considered military misconduct. During a mid-1990s mass to install a new bishop in Kasongo, in a time in which Mobutu had ordered the city sacked because he believed it was harboring dissenters, Munzihirwa said: “Here before me I see these soldiers. I see the colonel. Stop troubling the people! I ask you, I order you: Stop it!” The commander wanted Munzihirwa taken into custody, and he replied: “I am ready. Arrest me.” Other bishops present, however, intervened and prevented the arrest.

That intervention notwithstanding, Munzihirwa’s criticisms of Mobutu often left him isolated within Zaire’s bishops’ conference. In 1995, a missionary asked him why the bishops were not more outspoken, and he replied: “Father, you can’t imagine. We are just a short distance removed from being part of the presidential mouvance,” a French term meaning “inner circle” or “movement.”

After the genocide began in Rwanda in 1994, Munzihirwa became an outspoken protector of the Hutu refugees who flooded his diocese. He recognized that a few had committed atrocities against Tutsis, but regarded most as innocent victims. He called for healing across ethnic boundaries.

In these days, when we continue to dig common graves, where misery and sickness appear along thousands of kilometers, on routes, along pathways and in fields … we are particularly challenged by the cry of Christ on the Cross: “Father, forgive them.”

Munzihirwa said in an August 1994 homily.

God’s mercy, which breaks the chain of vengeance, is hurtful to militants on every side. But in reality, that is the only thing that can definitively shatter the infernal circle of vengeance.

Final days

As Rwandan troops poured into the eastern part of what was then Zaire in the fall of 1996, Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa issued a final, fervent plea for help. “We hope that God will not abandon us and that from some part of the world will rise for us a small flare of hope,” he said in his Oct. 28 message, broadcast to anyone, anywhere, who might have been listening. As it turned out, few were.

The civil and military leaders of the region, representing the last shreds of the crumbling autocratic regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, had fled weeks before, knowing that Mobutu was doomed and the Rwandans were unstoppable. Those Rwandans were largely members of the country’s Tutsi minority who blamed Mobutu for harboring Hutu militants, and as their armed bands moved east they were killing anyone who got in their way.

Munzihirwa, bishop of the diocese of Bukavu in eastern Zaire since 1993, was the only authority that stood between hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees and potential annihilation. He had long criticized all parties which were part of the region’s violence. His last hope, shared with the handful of missionaries and diocesan personnel who stayed behind with him to shelter the refugees, was for rapid intervention by the international community. It was not to be. Less than 24 hours later, in the afternoon of Oct. 29, death came for the archbishop.

Munzihirwa, a Jesuit who called himself a “sentinel of the people,” was shot and killed by a group of Rwandan soldiers, his body left to decay in the deserted streets of Bukavu. It was more than 24 hours before a small group of Xaverian seminarians was able to recover the body and prepare it for burial. Munzihirwa had surrendered himself in the hope that two companions might be able to get away in his car; however, they, too, were caught and executed. At his Nov. 29 funeral, someone recalled Munzihirwa’s favorite saying: “There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.”

In Munzihirwa’s region of Africa millions of people have since died in a continental war, involving the armies of eight nations and an ever-shifting constellation of rebel groups. Other conflicts in the Sudan, in Algeria, in Angola, in Sierra Leone — in a bewildering series of trouble spots scattered across the continent — have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Inevitably, killing on such a vast scale creates martyrs, people of faith who lose their lives because they refuse to turn away from danger.

Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa has become a symbol of hope and resistance in his country, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo. His martyrdom was not unexpected, at least not to him. Munzihirwa had written in an Easter meditation:

Despite anguish and suffering, the Christian who is persecuted for the cause of justice finds spiritual peace in total and profound assent to God, in accord with a vocation that can lead even to death.

More

Hutu/Tutsi conflict [3-minute video]

Long but great video on the Congo Conflict(s), conflict resolution and Munzihirwa

The music video below is in Swahili subtitled in French, but it still might be the most inspiring five minutes of your day. It is a tribute to Monsignor Christophe Munzihirwa the “elder of the council,” or “the wise one,” the one who provides advice to members of the community, sets the tone for what is acceptable behavior, and leads the community, especially the youth, by example.

What do we do with this?

See where Bukavu is on Google Maps.

Conflict resolution is sometimes a lost cause, especially if the church is not committed to it. Consider where the church is today — what are we doing to stay reconciled? What is the responsibility of Jesus followers when society breaks down?

Operation World’s prayers for the DRC.

Thomas Keating — October 25

North America, This century (1937-2024)

Bible connection

Now when the Lamb opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. — Revelation 8:1 (NET)

All about Thomas Keating (1923–2018)

Thomas Keating, was an American, Roman Catholic monk and priest of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists). He was born into affluence and privilege in Manhattan, walked away from it all when he entered an austere monastic community in Rhode Island, and was rewarded with spiritual riches. As he told the story:

“At 5, I had a serious illness. I heard adults in the next room wondering whether I’d live. I took this very seriously, and at my first Mass bargained with God: ‘If you’ll let me live to 21, I’ll become a priest.’ After that, I’d skip out early in the morning before school and go to Mass. I knew my parents wouldn’t approve, so I never told them.”

Keating was known as one of the principal developers of a contemporary method of contemplative prayer called centering prayer that emerged from St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Over the years, his thoughts crystallized into what friends said became one of his favorite sayings: “Silence is God’s first language. Everything else is a poor translation.”

Keating went to the Buckley School, a private school on the Upper East Side, and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts before entering Yale. As he studied Christianity, he was drawn to the mystics and came to believe the Scriptures call people into a personal relationship with God. Eager to explore his spirituality, he transferred from Yale to an accelerated program at the Jesuit-run Fordham University in the Bronx. He graduated in 1943. He expected to be drafted in World War II but received a deferment to enter the seminary. In 1944, at the age of 20, he entered the strict Cistercian Monastery Our Lady of the Valley in Valley Falls, R.I. He was ordained a priest in 1949.

“I felt the more austere the life, the sooner I would achieve the contemplative life I sought,” he continued. “I spent the next five to six years observing almost total silence.” In 1950, while Father Keating was in Rhode Island, the monastery burned down and the monks moved to St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, in central Massachusetts. He left Spencer in 1958 to help start a new monastic community, St. Benedict’s, in Snowmass, Colo., not far from Aspen. In 1961 he was elected abbot at St. Joseph’s and returned to Massachusetts, where he served in that capacity for the next two decades.

In 1971, after the Second Vatican Council, at which Pope Paul VI encouraged priests and religious scholars to renew the Christian contemplative tradition, Father Keating was invited to Rome. This led him, along with William Meninger and Basil Pennington, to develop the practice of centering prayer.

But his enthusiasm for this approach led to tensions within the abbey, and a vote on whether he should remain as abbot was evenly split. He decided he did not want to remain in a house so divided and moved back to Snowmass. It was a liberating move for him. He began organizing conferences with representatives of other religions, including the Dalai Lama, imams and rabbis.

During this period he focused more on centering prayer, holding workshops and retreats to promote it to clergy and lay people. In 1984, He helped found Contemplative Outreach, a network of people who practice centering prayer, and was its president from 1985 to 1999. “Centering prayer is all about heartfulness, which is a little different from mindfulness,” the Rev. Carl Arico, a co-founder of Contemplative Outreach. “It goes to the relationship with God, who is already there. It’s not sitting in a void.”

Father Keating wrote more than 30 books and created various multimedia projects; one of his most popular is “Centering Prayer: A Training Course for Opening to the Presence of God,” which consists of a workbook, DVDs and audio CDs. One reviewer called it “a monastery in a box.”

More

“A Big Experiment“: A brief history of the beginnings of the Snowmass Conference and the Eight Points of Agreement that came out of the initial years of dialogue.

“Father Thomas Keating is a Rebel With a Cause,” March 2018.  A look back at the history and evolution of Thomas Keating.

Books by Thomas Keating, listing in Goodreads.

Video: Thomas Keating: from the mind to the heart.

Video: Thomas Keating: A rising tide of silence  Amazon • iTunes • Google • Vimeo

What do we do with this?

Check out the work of Thomas Keating preserved in the work of Contemplative Outreach. Here is a link to their guides for contemplative practice.

Prayer Keating’s “Welcoming Prayer:”

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within.
Amen.