Sr Kathryn’s Podcast - Touching the Sunrise

4 Habits for Calming the Tempests of your Spirit

Ever-happening transition and the need to keep up with the changing expectations around us, as well as the not-so-peaceful world we live in can create tempests in our spirit. I call it verbal pollution when I feel harmed by the disrespectful words and attitudes and reactions of people in both the social conversation and in my own personal space. Sometimes I myself don't respect and truly love others into profoundly gifted relational bonds through unending kindness myself. So here are four habits that might help to calm the storms that rage within no matter what their source. Let me know if you find them helpful.

Three Ways to Avoid Being a Workaholic

I have many inner struggles around the work I do. Some of the things I have been asked to do in mission required long hours. Sometimes I have gotten angry about the amount of work expected of me; other times I know I could give more but am holding back. On the one hand, I feel like I need to always be available; on the other hand, I can use work as an escape. I look at others working more, working less, and in both cases I feel guilty. I want what I do to flow from who I am, and the integration — when it happens — feels wonderful! How complicated is the human heart!

Reflecting on my own experience, over the past months I have identified three guides that help me in unraveling the motivations of my heart; to connect my "doing" with my "being" so that my work flows not from workaholism but from something deeper.

Reclaim Regret: Interview with Sr Germana Santos, FSP

Sr Germana and I have known each other for many years, and I'm really grateful for her sharing her expertise as a spiritual guide and counselor with us.

A 3-step tool to turn stress into grace

We all face surprises, pressures and difficult situations. The good news is that by making a few small changes to the way we work through them, we can shift from angry assumptions to intentional love.

In this podcast I offer a three-step tool I use when I'm angry or frustrated may be helpful.

Reclaim Regret: Healing Comes as God Walks With Us

This is our last conversation, Jeannette and I, on the book Reclaim Regret... I'm sharing some of my experiences and dreams which were part of my healing and I pray will be part of yours. It has been a blessing to share these conversations with you.

Be the Christmas you celebrate

"See how they love one another!" From the origin of Christianity, people were so attracted by the joy they saw in the followers of Jesus that they eventually felt they no longer could tenably hold to their viewpoints and prior beliefs. This joy and this love then spills over into legal and social action, ministries of justice, and service to the most vulnerable.

Pope Benedict XVI stated in his book Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures: "Our greatest need in the present historical moment is people who make God credible in this world by means of the enlightened faith they live. ... We need men who keep their eyes fixed on God, learning from him what true humanity means ... so their hearts can open the hearts of others"

So here are some suggestions for this Christmas and holiday season.

Advent is a time for online watchfulness

The end of the liturgical year, the anything-but-quiet waiting weeks of Advent filled with the tug between the contemplative and commercial, the awesome birth of Christ in hearts anew on Christmas night, the first day of the brand new year and the World Day of Peace. . . . There has always been something almost magical about the turn of the year. Children with their excited hope for what Christmas morn will bring and cloistered nuns with their contemplative immersion in the mystery of all Christmas is — and everyone in between — are swept up by something fresh and exciting and innocent in these weeks.

I've been thinking about how much we need this gift particularly at this time, this year. Our hearts have been so beaten and tainted by the mainstreaming of aggressive and violent language. It has infiltrated our hearts and minds through social and news media on our computers and television screens. Then like an unwanted blot of dark ink it has soaked into our conversations and relationships and thoughts and desires and dreams....

How can I keep a deep spiritual sensitivity of mind and heart so that I live as a citizen of heaven while yet on this Earth? (Philippians 3:20) The ancient practice of cleansing our thoughts holds a key. This is how I've started practicing this watchfulness in these end-of-year weeks.

10 - Can God Be Trusted?

Big questions. Is God reliable? Is life reliable? It makes me think of when I was 21 and had a stroke. How can God be trusted when something goes wrong in life: an illness, a failure, a betrayal.  How do we recover from these situations? Does God really love us?

9 - How to Live with Greater Love

God created the human heart to be like a large box vast enough to hold God himself. When we hate ourselves for what we’ve done or who we think we are, our hearts become smaller and smaller until our spirits have no more room to breathe. Sometimes we don’t think we can bring our shame into the open before God. Perhaps you believe that God won’t forgive you. You hide from God just as you hide from others when you are afraid to reveal your true self. At the root of this unhealthy behavior is the reality that you have rejected yourself. Do you love yourself in all your vulnerability and imperfection? When we refuse to allow ourselves to be held by God in the midst of our struggles, we deprive ourselves of God’s tenderness toward us.

To see who we really are is to see ourselves as God sees us. We need to expose ourselves to the messages, the Voice, the Words of God to know ourselves and others in truth.

 

8 - God Loves the Wildflowers, the Mystery of Repentance

When I lead people through the journey you have been experiencing in this book, I often find that at a certain moment—a sacred moment—something wells up deep within a soul: repentance. Your regrets may be a mixture of things you have done, sins you have committed and things that have happened to you. But all of us have done things we look back on with regret. In this journey of life, we experience regret around things we could have done differently, ways we have hurt others, words or actions we can never take back, and relationships that have ended. As you explore your regrets, do not feel surprised if you begin to feel the bubbling waters of a cleansing sorrow that are as different from burning shame as day is from night. This sorrow is pure gift, but we can ask God for this spiritual sensitivity.

Repentance is a step into the mystery of our salvation. It does not always feel good but it ultimately leads us to wholeness and healing. Our human nature is frail and we know from experience that we are dust, weak, and prone to sinful passions and desires, even when we know better. But God himself took up our struggle as his own. Christ came, as Healer and Savior, to heal the sickness of our human nature. ­­When Christ was conceived in Mary’s womb, he received from her his human nature. God became incarnate. In Christ the Word, his human nature was united to the divine nature in the unity of the second Person of the Trinity. Because he is divine, Jesus exalts our human nature and transforms it. Jesus became man, journeyed to Calvary, and rose from the dead so that we might become partakers of his divinity through faith and baptism (see 2 Peter 1:4). By dying on the cross, Jesus took our sins upon himself and by his resurrection he clothes us anew in the garments of his glory.