Inspired by Scholastica

Hildegard of Bingen, a 13th century Benedictine nun, was not always a saint. She went through a conversion experience, and her breakthrough makes her a great patron for oppressed peoples. In her earlier years, she admits she was passive, without a voice, frustrated, and physically sick. "I refused to write for so long that I felt pressed down under the whip of God into a bed of sickness," she says. Filled with doubt and erroneous thinking, she was stymied with the "I can't" syndrome. When she began writing, she regained her health, energy, and voice. "In the process of self-expression, of art as meditation," she was healed. Hildegard felt she had been given the Pentecostal fire just as the first apostles who overcame their fears and began to prophesy and to preach. She wrote of the wonders of God in her own unique way of speaking which included, music, drama, preaching, and biblical as well as medical commentaries. Her conversion was a kind of &quo

I've often heard people say "it's the little things that count." I've said it too at times. When I think of what that means, all kinds of ordinary daily experiences come to mind. Picking up something an older sister has dropped, greeting a person who seems sad or preoccupied, finding a cushion for a someone with a back problem, offering to carry a tray for an older sister, writing a thank you note to someone who gives of herself without expecting anything in return, offering to run an errand for a super busy person, helping someone with a burdensome task, making a cake for someone's birthday or no reason at all, wiping up a mess that someone left, calling a friend who is lonely or depressed, visiting an elderly person who rarely has company. It often takes just a few minutes, but it means a lot to people in our often impersonal world. We often take people for granted or think we're too tired or too busy to interrupt our plans. If we only knew what our

Hollow my heart, Lord. Empty me of all that is tarnished, stale, contaminated, burdensome, unnecessary – all that keeps me blocked, distressed, unfocused and unfree; take away stuffing that stifles, padding that covers up and prevents transparency, filters that sift out the pure and leave the deadly dross. Heed not my groans, my griping, my indiscriminate complaints, my clinging to what might have been, to lost loves and unfulfilled wishes. They leave no room for you to enter, to surprise and delight me with sumptuousness beyond compare, with solace unearned and undeserved. Fill me with your Spirit.

  When I was growing up I had asthma and during an attack, it was difficult to keep breathing. It was scary, and my mother tried all sorts of home remedies. The worst was when someone recom-mended giving me warm milk with butter in it. I didn't like milk at all, much less warm with butter. Going to a doctor was the last resort in those days. I spent many a sleepless night propped up on pillows, trying to breathe. I eventually outgrew it, for which I thank God. I think of that when I do centering prayer and become conscious of my breathing. As I breathe in and out, I focus on how God gives me each breath I take, and what a gift it is to be alive and able to breathe normally. Most of us take breathing for granted, yet those who have heart, COPD, pleurisy, and other health problems often need extra oxygen to breathe. We take so many ordinary things for granted, like water, clean air, rain, electricity, air conditioning, plumbing, freedom, and so much more. We ought to be bursting

It is hard to teach children respect for people of color, other religions, other cultures, when we hear presidential candidates who disdain and make derogatory comments about these groups. It would seem that educated, cultivated leaders would know better how to treat those who are fellow human beings on our one planet. Have they no understanding for how unintelligent and prejudiced they sound to those who have been raised on Judeo-Christian principles? Have they no regard for the U.S. Constitution which states unequivocally that "all men (sic) are created equal and have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" If they hope to get the vote of decent, God-fearing people, they ought to take a serious look at their rhetoric and see how it is alienating and divisive. If they truly want to make America great again, they would uphold our nation's founding principles and promote ways that unify rather than divide. Then we might be able to look to candidates who h

Before dawn breaks open the new day, and tinges of light are barely seeping through the night’s cover, birds awaken, wide-eyed, not yet ready for flight, but eager to welcome rosy streaks of sky, to dance across dewy blades in search of tidbits to feed on. Brackish and discordant notes fill the air as they begin their day of gliding from tree to tree, alert for predators as breezes fluff their feathers. and sunbeams filter through swaying branches. Bird songs alert the world to see afresh the same old fields of weeds and stubble, ready to be plowed and planted, ready to burgeon with fresh sown wheat and tasseled corn after lying fallow under winter’s hoary stiff and frozen earth.