Father Richard has often said that transformation mostly comes through great love and great suffering. The First Noble Truth of Buddhism shows how accepting the inescapable nature of suffering can lead to greater freedom. Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former Buddhist nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community in France, reflects on coming to terms with the unpredictable challenges of life:
In the Buddha’s most essential teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he shares his discovery that suffering is a part of life, and there is no escape from it. This is the first Noble Truth and acknowledging it can help us to suffer less. If we can accept where we are, and not judge the disruption in our life as wrong or bad, we can touch great freedom. This is because fighting what is doesn’t actually work. As the saying goes, “whatever we resist persists.” . . .
Thay [Thich Nhath Hanh] often said, “A true practitioner isn’t someone who doesn’t suffer, but someone who knows how to handle their suffering.” We could say that the measure of our accomplishment or success is not that our life has no ups and downs, but that we can surf the waves!
This attitude of acceptance is freeing when we apply it not only to our personal suffering but also to the suffering in the world. Once, as a young nun, when I was practicing a classic Plum Village guided meditation, I came to the final exercise, “Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment; breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment.” Suddenly I found myself stuck when I did this practice, questioning how we could truly affirm it was “a wonderful moment” with all the violence, hatred, inequality, and preventable tragedies that are happening in the present moment all over the world. . . .
I sat in the question of it and began to see that along with all the suffering and pain, there are also many beings that are supporting others in the present moment. There are many hearts of compassion, opening to relieve suffering, to care for others, to teach, to show a different way. There are people who are courageous and standing up for what they believe is right, protecting our oceans, cleaning rivers and beaches, advocating for those who are oppressed. There are those in every corner of the planet who are quietly doing the things no one else wants to do: caring for the forgotten people, places, species, and doing what needs to be done.
When I focused on that other part of the larger picture, I was able to touch that, yes, this present moment is also a wonderful moment. I saw that suffering doesn’t have to disappear in order for beauty to be there. That life is about all of these things. . . . The reality is that there is great terror and pain, and there is great love and great wisdom. They’re all here, coexisting in this moment.
Reference: Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption (Parallax Press: 2021), 28, 30–31.
https://youtu.be/PBQjpvZ9Gy4?si=Mpu4X9tEUIHLXrNyThe Litany of Letting GoPRIDE + CONTROL
From the belief that I have to “do it all”…
From the fear that if I don’t do it, no one will…
From the belief that my way is the best or only way…
From the temptation to give unsolicited feedback, advice, or correction…
From resistance to accepting the help or ideas of others…
From the tendency to seek inner peace by controlling my outward environment…
Deliver me, Jesus.
BUSYNESS + STRIVING
From the constant urge to be “productive,” even if it means filling my time with unimportant tasks…
From the desire to “keep up’” with those around me…
From the view of busyness as a status symbol…
From the belief that I have to earn rest or wait until I’m completely exhausted to pause…
From all unnecessary pressure or “shoulds”…
Deliver me, Jesus.
PLANNING + PREPARATION
From the insatiable desire to always know what’s coming…
From the fear that if I don’t perfectly plan or prepare, I will endure needless suffering…
From the belief that my plans are better than Yours…
From any suspicion or skepticism of Your infinite love and care for me…
Deliver me, Jesus.
SELF IMAGE + SELF-TALK
From my ruthless inner critic…
From impossible or unreasonable expectations of myself and others…
From the belief that I am lazy or inadequate if I lower or adjust my standards…
From the temptation to equate my work/productivity with my worth…
From false ideas about who I am or who You are…
Deliver me, Jesus.
PEOPLE PLEASING
From the fear of what others will think of me when I am true to myself and to Your call for me…
From the tendency to care more about what others think of me than than what You think of me…
From the desire for affirmation…
From the fear of asking for what I need…
From the fear of setting and maintaining healthy boundaries…
From the fear of letting others down…
From the fear of letting others see my mess...
Deliver me, Jesus.
RESTLESSNESS
From all forms of restlessness…
From any false sense of urgency…
From my love of comfort and fear of the cross…
From the desire to “earn” Your love rather than receive it unconditionally…
From undue attachment to anything other than You…
From fear of what will happen when I surrender all to You...
Deliver me, Jesus.Jesus, I love You. Help me to love You more.
Jesus, I trust You. Help me to trust You more.
Jesus, I surrender to You. Help me to surrender more.
Amen.
Spongy in texture Chocolatey with coffee undertone It satisfied my chocolate craving The basic recipe takes only three ingredients if you count the water Simple, easy but delicious
You could add chocolate chips if you want. In one prep, I added two tbsp cocoa which made the cupcakes less sweet but still good. I also filled the cupcake liner half full during one prep, which shortened the cooking time to less than two minutes.
Microwave Expresso Brownies From Brownie Mix
2 cups brownie mix
3/4 cup water
2 tbsp instant coffee granules
Mix all the ingredients well. Line glass or silicone six muffin pan with cupcake paper liner. Distribute batter to paper liner.
Microwave for 4 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
By God’s grace, you have been lifted into the light of God’s
love.
You are a spark of divinity.
This is not from you;
it is the gift of God…
You did nothing to deserve this.
This is the first of many gifts God gives you out of
boundless love.
You are holy because God is holy.
We are God’s
handiwork…
You are unique in all the world.
God loves what God has made.
Those who see clearly, see you as God’s handiwork.
When you see clearly, you see yourself, and all people
As God’s handiwork.
We are created in
Christ Jesus for the good works that God has
Prepared in advance.
God has a plan for you as a disciple of Christ Jesus.
You are a good
work God has prepared in advance.
God will help you do what God has planned for you to do.
Understand that others working near you are also doing God’s
work.
Whatever you do, you do in God’s name.
Jeanne Cmolik, CSJ
Ephesians 2:4-10
Ephesians 2:4-10 NKJV
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
I had to do a Wrap and Roll demo for my Plant-Based Pittsburgh group and the idea of making sushi rolls popped into my head in the early hours of the morning a few days before the event. I already have the large seaweed sheets which I obtained at the Asian Food Market BOBAEin Monroeville PA. It is a matter of deciding what to put in the sushi roll and what sauce to accompany it.
I have never made sushi rolls before. I was apprehensive and researched how to do it online. When I tried rolling it, I tried it without a bamboo mat or parchment paper. It worked! I also got away with using plain long-grain rice instead of the short-grain or sushi rice most recipes recommend. The added vinegar helps the long-grain rice get sticky. Note also that my sushi rolls had the seaweed sheet at the bottom of the rice layer and not vice versa that is why it worked. If you need to make the latter here is a site to make sushi rolls without a bamboo mat.
I was conservative with seasoning both the rice and tofu strips with salt since the Yum Yum sauce is pretty salty. I am watching my salt, but you can season both the rice and tofu strips with salt if you want.
Ingredients
·2 cups cooked rice (I just used long grain
rice. Several recipes recommend sushi
rice).
·4 tablespoons vinegar (rice wine vinegar or distilled
white vinegar)
·1 carrot, cut into thin strips
·1 cucumber, cut into thin strips
·1 avocado, cut into thin strips
·Tofu (about 4 oz) drained and cut into strips (optional)
·2 Seaweed Sheets
Instructions
1.In a mixing bowl, add vinegar to cooked rice and
mix thoroughly. Set aside.
2.Cut the vegetables into thin strips. Set aside.
3.Take one seaweed sheet and spread 1 cup of rice
mixture over it in a thin layer with wet hands.
4.Arrange your fillings along the bottom third of
the nori, stacking them on top. Start rolling it. Press it so that the roll gets tightened.
6.Cut the roll into rounds using a serrated knife.
7.Eat by dipping in soy sauce or Yum Yum sauce
(recipe below)
Yum Yum Sauce
3/4 cup cashew vegan mayo (see recipes for vegan mayo below)
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder•
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2-3 teaspoons maple syrup or to taste
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp black pepper
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl using a whisk or fork.
His grace is enough to give us everything we need to glorify Him … even with our flaws and scars.
Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
Fr Thom Miller sermon during Mass at St. Susana Church 2/29/2024.
Depth from Crucifixion and Failures
If we look at our lives and ask ourselves what has made us
deep? What has helped us to understand
the deeper things in life? If we are honest, we will have to admit that what
made us deep we're not our successes or achievements. These brought us glory but not depth or character.
What brought us depth and character are the very things we
are often ashamed to talk about, namely our inferiorities - getting picked last
on the school team, being bullied on the playground, some physical inadequacy,
our mother's weight problem, our dad's
alcoholism, an abuse inflicted upon us
that we were so powerless to stop, a
slow-wittedness the perpetually left us out of the inner circle, our failure to achieve what we'd like to in
life, a pain about our sexual
orientation, an addiction we can't
master, and many, many other small and
big wounds and bruises that helped shape our soul.
Depth never comes out
of our successes but only out of our inferiorities and failures. And these, our scars, give us character. Our souls are like huge stones in the riverbed;
they may do nothing but stay still and held their ground but the river has to
take them into account and alter its flow because of them and it's precisely
this which gives the river (and a face) some character.
This truth lies at the very heart of Jesus’ life and message. When
the disciples can't fathom or accept the crucifixion, he asked them: “Wasn't it
necessary?” Isn't there a necessary
connection between the humiliation of Good Friday and the glory of Easter
Sunday? Isn't there an intrinsic
connection between going through a certain kind of suffering and reaching a
certain kind of depth?
Indeed, Jesus struggled in the garden of Gethsemane, his
asking God three times to spare him from the pain and humiliation of being
crucified, was precisely his own reluctance to accept that a certain kind of depth
can only be arrived at by journeying through a certain kind of humiliation. And in
his case, he wasn't just going to be picked on by the playground bully, he was
going to be hung naked before the whole world. But that was the only route to Easter Sunday,
and he had the moral intelligence to see it.
And what the crucifixion produced is moral wisdom. That's why the cross of Christ is the single
most revolutionary moral event that has ever happened on this planet. What
the cross of Christ does, is rip away the veil the separate us from seeing
inside the holy of holies.
And our own crosses and humiliations can do that for us too. They
can rip away a blindness and wake us up moral.
Awake. Ready. Christ like.
The scars of worry, guilt, shame, rejection, and loneliness … help us love hurting people in a broken world. God can help us use our flaws and scars to love the people around us who are struggling and in pain. Not on our own. Well, at least not on my own… But with God’s grace.
Jesus went to the desert before big events in His life. He found peace as he prayed for courage to face what was to come. He found enlightenment.
Several weeks ago, I had my own desert experience, though not by choice. I had COVID and was homebound. I had no big events to speak of, but I needed rest from stressful stuff.
I relinquished the responsibilities I had in my volunteer jobs. I let go of any thought that I had to follow what I thought I had to do when I did not have COVID. It felt good. I was not a slave to a should-do, must-do, had-to-do mentality. I just ate well relying on my newfound love for green smoothies and rediscovered the refreshing feeling from just walking around 1 mile in our neighborhood. I felt the two were enough to keep me healthy.
Surprisingly, my mind early in the morning was daring enough to write my thoughts and share them too in emails. For some reason, my guts had no filter.
The COVID was mild but took a long time of two weeks to show negative results. I was relieved but also grateful for the rest the virus afforded me. It was God speaking in whispers and I heard Him or Her in the silence. Slow down. Let go.
I come you to this evening to pray for your guidance as I discover more about who I am and trust in who You are molding me to be. I pray to be able to see me the way that You see me. Your word says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your word says that everything created by You is good and that nothing is to be rejected. Help me to be 100% of who You made me to be. I am made in Your image. Help my eyes to see, Lord. Give me the courage to walk in the world as my true self. Help me to be honest, truthful, real, and authentic. Kill the spirit of comparison in me. Direct me away from trying to be like anyone else. Forgive me, God for comparing myself and mimicking after anyone else. I know You have specific gifts and a specific purpose just for me. Lord, show me my gifts. Reveal to me my purpose. Make it plain, God, so I can write it on the tablets and run with it.
Lord, as I’ve embarked on a journey to help others discover who they really are please order my steps. Help me to teach others how to have confident assurance of who they are and the gifts they possess. Let me be Your vessel to lead Your people to more fulfilling and purposeful lives. Help them heal where they need to heal and to grow where they need to grow. As people discover who they are, I pray that it leads them to You. I pray that they’d be transformed by the renewing of their minds.
Lord, in the quiet depths of my being, I seek your divine illumination. Illuminate the corridors of my soul, revealing the hidden parts of myself that yearn to be known. Guide me in uncovering the layers of my existence, removing the veils that hinder my self-discovery.
Grant me the wisdom to recognize my strengths, acknowledge my weaknesses, and embrace my true essence. May your light shine upon my path, leading me to the profound realization of who I am and the purpose I am destined to fulfill. In your grace, I find the courage to embark on this transformative journey of self-discovery. Amen
Bianca gave the handwritten note above to me during our last meeting. I asked her why and she said, "Because you are my favorite teacher" and gave me her signature hug, arms around my waist.
Lent is all about love. Jesus came to teach us how to live and love, even through pain and suffering.
Lent is a time to be better and to continue to learn from Jesus. It takes discipline. Thus, we fast (not only from food but also from hurtful attitudes and habits). We give alms (money or service). We pray.
As we do exercises to toughen our bodies, these three Lenten practices strengthen our souls.
Good things take effort including living and loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves. Let us together do our transformation.
Let nothing trouble you, nothing frighten you.All things are passing; God never changes.Patient endurance attains all things.Whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.
Father Richard finds the foundation for his teaching that everything belongs in the crucifixion itself:
The cross is a perfect metaphor for what we mean by “everything belongs.” The rational, calculating mind can never fully understand the mystery of the cross. These insights can only be discovered through contemplative seeing: God is to be found in all things, even and most especially in the painful, tragic, and sinful things, exactly where we do not want to look for God. The crucifixion of the God-Human is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history.
Human existence is neither perfectly consistent, nor is it incoherent chaos. Instead, life has a cruciform pattern. All of life is a “coincidence of opposites” (St. Bonaventure), a collision of cross-purposes. We are all filled with contradictions needing to be reconciled. This is the precise burden and tug of all human existence.
The price that we pay for holding together these opposites is invariably some form of “crucifixion.” Jesus himself was archetypally hung between a good thief and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, holding together both his humanity and his divinity, a male body with a feminine soul. He was a Jewish believer who forgave and loved everyone else. He “reconciled all things in himself” (Ephesians 2:14–16). Jesus really is an icon of what Carl Jung called the holy and whole-making spirit. [1]
The demand for the perfect is the enemy of the possible good.Be peace and do justice, but let’s not expect perfection in ourselves or the world. Perfectionism contributes to intolerance and judgmentalism and makes ordinary love largely impossible. Jesus was an absolute realist, patient with the ordinary, the broken, the weak, and those who failed. Following him is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, and to love the way that God loves—which we cannot do by ourselves.
The doctrine, folly, and image of the cross is the great clarifier and truth-speaker for all human history. We can rightly speak of being “saved” by it. Jesus crucified and resurrected is the whole pattern revealed, named, effected, and promised. Jesus did not come to found a separate or new religion as much as he came to present a universal message of vulnerability and foundational unity that is necessary for all religions, the human soul, and history itself to survive. Thus, Christians can rightly call Jesus “the savior of the world” (John 4:42), but no longer in the competitive and imperialistic way that they have usually presented him. By very definition, vulnerability and unity do not compete or dominate. The cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination, and the imperial ego.
References:
[1] C. G. Jung, “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” in Psychology and Religion: West and East, trans. R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 180.
Almighty God, through your Holy Spirit you created unity in the midst of diversity; We acknowledge that human diversity is an expression of your manifold love for your creation; We confess that in our brokenness as human beings we turn diversity into a source of alienation, injustice, oppression, and wounding. Empower us to recognize and celebrate differences as your great gift to the human family. Enable us to be the architects of understanding, of respect and love; Through the Lord, the ground of all unity, we pray.