Episodes
Sunday May 21, 2023
Suffering and Forgiveness: Lessons from Corrie Ten Boom
Sunday May 21, 2023
Sunday May 21, 2023
For us, forgiveness is a matter of becoming capable, of being given the power, to disrupt the cycle of continued wrath and suffering we experience as inevitable. Forgiveness is always going to be demanding, costly, and a freely chosen effort. Others cannot tell us when and how we must forgive. No one but we ourselves can require us to forgive.
Through the amazing story of how Corrie Ten Boom discovered that she herself still was learning how to forgive, you'll learn what forgiveness is not, and what forgiveness is.
As we wrestle with forgiving, you'll learn three things that will help us open to God’s grace.
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Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
How to Bear the Fruit of Christ in Your Life
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
I certainly would never compare my life to that of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity. The memories I have of my childhood are of a little girl who always wanted to be a nun and who was—by my own standards at least—well-behaved. St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, however, had a will of steel and a temper that raged into violent outbursts even at the age of four. She was impossible to control. Family and friends recalled how she would lock herself in a room in a rage when she didn’t get what she wanted, kicking the door in her fury. Only when she had spent all her energies and was exhausted could her mother sit down with her and attempt to teach her gentleness and charity.
Though my childhood personality, at least as I remember it, was pretty calm, I have a distinct memory at twenty-one of raging against God. Just a month after suffering a stroke, and a year after my first profession of vows, I was silently before Jesus in the Eucharist one day in the chapel and from somewhere deep inside came words which surprised me, even shocked me. “I hate you,” I said to him. I had lost dreams and ambitions and physical abilities and, what seemed to me as a young adult, my future. And from somewhere within me, this anger and hatred at the one I felt was to blame came raging out. It took me by surprise, for, after all, I had been “well behaved” up to that point. Day after day, in a struggle that stretched to weeks and months and years, I submitted my heart to the transforming action of the Spirit at work in the Eucharist. Each day after receiving Jesus in Communion I prayed, “Help me, for I see now how poor I am, how in need I am of you, Jesus.”
In her diary, Elizabeth herself recorded how her first encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist was a moment of transformation. In fact, she said that it was decisive for the rest of her life. She began to take on from that moment the gentle self-control that would characterize her as an adult.
“In the depths of her soul, she heard his voice…. [The] Master took possession of her heart so completely that thenceforth her one desire was to give her life to Him” (The Spiritual Doctrine of Sister Elizabeth, pg 2)....
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
You, yes YOU, are God’s choice (Horizons of the Heart 8)
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
Wednesday Oct 05, 2022
The most important truth to be convinced of is not that God loves you. As broken, wounded, wandering as we each may be, as desperately yearning to know that we matter and that we are worth someone’s attention, contrary to what we might think, we do not need most to know how much God loves us.
I almost cringe as I write these words. For almost 40 years this has been both my mantra and my misery, my hope against hope, the alphabet of my feelings of spiritual failure. I had not realized that I was seeking for something that was only half-true, a shabby imitation of the fierce and passionate, surprisingly disconcerting way of divine love.
In the first week of the spiritual exercises, St Ignatius draws the retreatant into love through the very narrow and demanding path of coming to grips with what is not loving in one’s life. The retreatant comes to Jesus in prayer, again and again, begging for the grace to acknowledge the mystery of iniquity which spins a web of deceit around them. Repeatedly I came before Jesus begging for the grace to become deeply aware of my personal sin history and my hidden disorders. I begged Jesus and Mary for interior knowledge of my sins, an awareness of the disorder of my actions, that I might hate them and allow God to bring order once again to my life.
The way of truth is the only foundation for the confidence of love. But ah! how hard is this truth!
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
How to keep love alive in violent times
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Lord, remember not only men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they inflicted on us. Remember the fruits we have borne thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of this; and when they come to judgment let all the fruits that we have borne be their forgiveness.”
~ Written on a piece of wrapping paper found near the body of a dead child in Ravensbruck, the second largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich, where 92,000 women and children died in the Holocaust.
How, O my God, could a woman in this death camp write these words?
How did she find the courage to keep her heart open? To care about the eternal salvation of those at whose hands she suffered and very likely died?
Friends, today we also are living through turbulent and violent times. As we watch the social fabric of our nation disintegrate with mass shootings and watch with horrified anger at what Russia is inflicting on the Ukrainian people and the world, we may find our hearts closing. It could be that our hearts are hardening in fear or anger without our even realizing it. Whatever we are feeling, it is okay. We might feel overwhelmed at the prospect of the future for our children and grandchildren. It is okay. We might feel lost in the midst of everything that is going on around us. It is all okay.
How difficult are you finding it to love and believe in the power of love in these days?
The news cycle overwhelms and incites the fires of anger and fear and hatred in our minds and hearts. It all can feel so righteous, so right. After all, there is a clear bad guy in these incidents, and our hearts immediately take the side of the innocent victims. Today only the bravest can keep lit in their hearts the flame of charity.
Monday Jan 03, 2022
2022: Like Mary and Joseph Let Yourself Be Swept Up Into God’s Purposes
Monday Jan 03, 2022
Monday Jan 03, 2022
You are an indispensable instrument of God’s plan and in perfectly surrendering to the divine flow of love, as mysterious and incomprehensible as it sometimes appears, you will find your happiness.
New Year's Resolutions often target weaknesses in order to increase strengths so we can be who we want to be. Mystery and divine providence often relies specifically on our weaknesses to be the places where the glory of God shines through as we play our part in the drama of the mysterious plan of salvation.
In the end, life is Mystery: not perplexing confusion, but the Wisdom that is larger than our strategies, the Future that is greater than our projects, the Love that will encompass all of our potential.
Mystery means God has a plan for you that is perfect in every way, a plan that can encompass and save even suffering and disappointment.
Mystery means God will use you just as you are for a plan that has existed since before the foundation of the world and will exist into the unending future of the eternal kingdom.
Wednesday Apr 21, 2021
Let Jesus break open your heart: An Easter meditation
Wednesday Apr 21, 2021
Wednesday Apr 21, 2021
There are times when we have to deal with big questions. And then there are times when big questions sear deeply into our identity, shake our consciousness, tear our hearts with guilt. They toss us about with fear, doubt, and loneliness. The big questions seem to be dealing with us. We might stay up at night wondering where we fit in God’s plan. Questions haunt us: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? How will I go on from here?
When we’re haunted by these big questions, we are like the apostles after Calvary’s sorrow and the collapse of their hope, when rumors suddenly swirled around that some of them had seen Jesus alive. How they must have longed to see once again the face of their Beloved Master, and yet also perhaps felt their hearts shrink in the uncertainty of what his eyes would say to them.
The forty days of Easter before the Ascension are like an educative process. After the resurrection, Jesus doesn’t engage the apostles on the level of emotion. He becomes their guide through the complexities of their hearts and the events that left them fearing what God’s plan might be. To them, Jesus asserts the authority and gentle power of his presence: Do not be afraid. It is I.
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Jesus meets us at our charcoal fires
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
Tuesday Apr 13, 2021
The joy of Easter is the joy of the Gospel, the Good News that breaks open our lives with the possibility of mercy and hope.
That life could be more than we could ever have dreamed, that our days could be other than what we believe we’ve deserved.
Resurrection joy this year has been a time of real grace for me.
I like to imagine the apostles after the Resurrection. The Gospel stories leave us with a sense of breathless wonder and excited disbelief. Slowly, though, ever so slowly do our minds change and our hearts reshape their hopes. There must have been such gentleness about the gradual realization that Someone had changed everything about what they thought would be their future. Even Jesus thoughtfully came again and again in different places, in different ways, to help his incredulous followers take in sips the ultimate Reality of his Resurrection and continuous presence in and among them.
Slowly is the perfect word to describe this Easter for me. Slowly has my heart warmed to the fact that I am different than who I thought I was. Broken then, still broken now, but loved forever.
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Song of Quiet Trust: A Midlife Meditation
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
Sunday Jan 31, 2021
These past two weeks I have spent from 3 to 5 hours most evenings or early mornings sitting beside a dear sister-friend who was making her last great ascent. That final walk. The ultimate journey. The loving return.
Each breath of hers was precious and on that last night before she died God helped me to realize that in the end, really, that is all we have…our breath…our current breath. We are not promised our next breath. We already have kissed the last breath goodbye. We cannot cling to it, as we cannot hold onto the past.
And even that breath is a gift. A gift of total gratuitously glorious love from a divine Lover who is supporting us in his arms even as we breath.
On that last ascent, it will not matter what we have created or achieved or known or acquired. The fact that I have written a book, or started a company, or sold an astounding number of widgets, or even loved will not be mine as a monument to me..
I will have only this breath that is a gift to me right now at this moment.
Saturday Dec 26, 2020
How To Bless Your Christmas Tears
Saturday Dec 26, 2020
Saturday Dec 26, 2020
This year’s Christmas season is not laden with the expectations of extended family celebrations, festive Christmas meals, and open doors to visitors come to share the joy of the days of rest and peace that fill the Christmas season.
Pandemic loss and grief weigh upon these Christmas days and bring shadows to our hearts.
Maybe we feel empty. Like the world has stopped. Worry for the future seeps into the celebration of God-with-us who was born among us…. And…where is he for me? Now?
Your heart’s cry, whatever it may be, let it blend with the wail of the Infant King that midnight at his birth.
Sr Kathryn Hermes, FSP, author of Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach and Reclaim Regret: How God Heals Life's Disappointments
Wednesday Jul 29, 2020
God's Promise: "I am acting"
Wednesday Jul 29, 2020
Wednesday Jul 29, 2020
Jeannette and I talk today about an experience at prayer and selection of my journal:
Iam acting:
within what breaks, I am vast Abyss
within the falling, I am depthless Depth
in the emptying, I am the Silence
Stop
Shed your mind’s unconscious gossip and still your Heart
Touch your forehead to the earth
…My carpet
a floral carpet Crimson Red
on which you bumble and tumble
in My Glory.
___
“Who could have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse?
George Herbert, The Flower