Here and Now

Welcome to the present moment, wherever you are; whatever is on your plate at this time may you receive it with open hands and heart. Our morning prayer this Lenten Friday brought some reality home to me: it doesn’t work to try to live in some ideal way. The first two days of Lent knocked me flat for trying to get up earlier to have extra prayer time along with fasting. Today we read from Jean-Pierre de Caussade, “Every moment we live through is like an ambassador who declares the will of God.” The path to holiness lies in everyday tasks and duties, not in heroics.

Christ arrives now carrying eternal riches. Christ arrives NOW carrying eternal riches. I was pondering the incomprehensible riches of Christ’s presence here and now. As this awareness came to light, I suddenly I saw the acronym formed by the first letters of this little meditation; it reads “cancer.” I was quite startled. I didn’t figure that out; it was just there. Christ IS present in every experience so, of course, the experience of cancer is no exception.

In recent months, we Sisters have learned numerous persons very dear to us have been diagnosed with cancer. Many of the prayer requests we receive are for people with a diagnosis of cancer. Sometimes the intent of the person requesting prayer is to help the individual “battle” cancer. “God, help me beat this!” Can I pray to “win this war?” I’d rather pray that instead of preparing for battle, we enlist the healing energies of courage and grace to face whatever lies ahead. I pray we all stay in touch with Christ’s eternal riches of immeasurable compassion here and now.

Franciscan Morning and Evening Praise

by Sister Jan Kilian

Franciscan Morning and Evening Praise is a new prayer book blessing our community.

I, personally, enjoy using the psalms, scriptural and Franciscan readings presented to us day by day. Our community here at Clare's Well uses it as we gather in our chapel either with just the three of us or with our guests, who sometimes join us.

Of particular delight to me are the weekly daily themes during what we call Ordinary Time. These are divided into the four primary values highlighted in our Franciscan Rule: Conversion of Heart, Poverty, Contemplation and Minority.

In the spirit of saints Francis and Clare of Assisi, Conversion of Heart means turning to God again and again, allowing ourselves to be drawn to our Loving Source in repentance, gratitude and worship.

Poverty calls us to remember we have nothing of our own. We live sine proprio, without property, in gratitude and trust we have all we need and can be generous in sharing.

Contemplation: that delightful uncomplicated prayer module by Francis and Clare. "My God and my all", says it all.

Minority means "to conform oneself, through a life of penance, to Christ who is the servant of God ..." Francis modeled the servant Christ in his life, recognizing all are equally mirrors of God, who is to be loved and served in all.

Our book is published by The Franciscan Federation of the Third Order Regular of the Brothers and Sisters of the U.S. That is a big long title which includes us. Our Franciscan Brothers and Sisters (including Sister Elise Saggau from Little Falls) worked together for years to bring it to birth. I can't do justice to a commentary on the prayer book in this short time. I am blessed with the daily reminders, not only of sacred scriptures which are in most prayer books, but also of reflections from Franciscan sources, including our Rule and Life, writings of Clare and Francis and others. Thank you to all who worked to bring us this nourishing collection of prayers and readings to support us as we live lives steeped in Conversion of Heart, Poverty, Contemplation and Minority.

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TWO WAYS TO LIVE YOUR LIFE

by S. Jan Kilian

“There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein

“Miracle: a divinely natural occurrence that must be learned humanly.”
I chose this definition of miracle because it speaks of learning, learning to notice (and perhaps comprehend) the extraordinary in what has become too familiar to be of interest. It doesn’t take an Einstein to know there are very many ‘miracles’ in what we call ordinary, every-day days.

September 2009 was a month of apples, tomatoes and wonder-working friends who helped move produce from yard and garden, through the kitchen, on to shelves of sealed jars of future meals.
What were the miracles?
There were no murders,
not even harsh words,
when we felt overwhelmed by extraordinary crops
in the midst of needing to provide hospitality
for extraordinary numbers of guests
while one or another of us was on retreat or vacation.
Isn’t it a miracle that neighbors and family
still come to help like they did when I was
a kid on the farm?
I am so glad I noticed these gifts:
overly-generous trees and gardens
accompanied by
sisters and friends who came
and worked
through sweat and aching backs.
Thank you for September miracles.

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"CREATION"

By Sister Jean Schwieters

Spring is the time of year when all of Creation seems to rise up and shout, "I’m alive!" The barrenness of Winter made us wonder if we would ever again see green. It seemed a stretch of the imagination to believe that anything could survive beneath the cold, cold ground. But then comes the thaw and the whole world around us begins to be charged with a new bolt of life. Out from the hard surface we’ve tromped over all winter little sprouts poke up their noses to remind us that life is stronger than death, that nothing can keep a really good thing down, not even ice and snow.

The cycles of Creation are marvelous. Each year they treat us to an unbelievable drama, an endless story book display that produces a new picture on each page. No matter how often we turn the page the scene is different each time causing us to wonder how the artist could possibly come up with such an awesome array of splendor. Give the truth that Creation’s artist is none other than God, we immediately know of the limitless ability of our Divine Creator.

Francis, the simple little man from Assisi knew all of this implicitly. He sensed the interconnectedness of all creatures without the aid of scientific research. He sensed the interdependence that drew all creatures together as members of an earthly family. He affectionately called each creature by the name of Brother or Sister. He recognized each as siblings of a gracious Mother whose home was the Earth. He spoke with tenderness to insects and plants. He encouraged the birds to sing out their prayers of praise to God and he acted as mediator in times of misunderstanding and stress between humans and animals.

It is no mystery as to why he has been chosen as the Patron of Ecology, why his intuitive grasp of the circle of life is what we need today. It has taken us centuries to uncover the beauty, the wisdom, the thoughtfulness that engineered this massivecathedral of intricate artistry and magnificent craftsmanship. Only a meditative reflection on Francis’ "Canticle of the Creatures" can begin to bring us to see what he saw, to feel what he felt in the presence of such grandeur. Should we ever be able to truly experience what he had come to know then all of creation might rightly be "reborn".

Harnessing the POWER of LOVE

By Sister Michelle L’Allier

Some day, after we have mastered the winds and the waves, the tides and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
--Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Easter Blessings! I give thanks that the Easter Season is 50 days long, coinciding with the emergence of spring. Here in Minnesota it’s been a tumultuous transition from winter to spring with flooding in the Red River Valley and concurrent drought where I live in the Twin Cities.

Reflecting on the beauty and challenge of nature’s rhythms, I recognize the same beauty and challenge present in human relationships as well. Chardin invites us to “harness for God the energies of love;” Jesus witnesses to this path as he lived faithfully unto death, laying down his life in love, followed by rising to new resurrected life. Those of us who follow his way as Christians continue to learn how to live on in God’s love.

Our community of Franciscan Sisters, too, has been moving through the passage of death to new life—we buried four of our Sisters last month. It was a Lenten letting go for us who had come to know, love, and share life with these wisdom women in their 90’s. Each one was ready to enter fullness of life with God, showing us the way with great grace.

Sister Loretto Schneider

, for example, influenced my professing as a Secular Franciscan after college. She served as Spiritual Assistant to our emerging fraternity of idealistic young Franciscan men and women, and encouraged me beyond my comfort zone and into unfamiliar waters. We lived the Gospel life, experimenting with how to translate Gospel values in the marketplace of everyday life. One of the ways I experienced the transformative power of love was in our fraternity’s risk to tend to the beginnings of Listening House of St. Paul, a drop-in center for men and women on the streets.

Years later, Listening House continues to flourish, and I found my way to religious life within the Franciscan family as a Franciscan Sister of Little Falls. For all of this, I give thanks to God, mindful of what Margaret J. Wheatley says about the power of love:

What gives power its charge, positive or negative, is the quality of relationships. Those who relate through coercion, or from disregard for the other person, create negative energy. Those who relate to others and who see others in their fullness create positive energy. Love in organizations, then, is the most potent source of power we have available.
Cited in Bennett Sims, Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium

As you and I learn to harness “the energies of love,” may we share this “potent source of power” bringing it to bear in our interpersonal relationships, in our organizations and in our world.

MORNING PRAYER: Fidelity to Practice

by Sister Jan Kilian


We have an additional pre-morning-prayer ritual since Sister Paula moved in with Carol and me at Clare’s Well. Our Staff always did have a spiritual practice of private prayer time before gathering for shared morning prayer. Paula has added a physical practice of daily morning stretches for our bodies in the living room before we move into chapel to stretch our spirits in shared prayer. This physical workout helps me to see even better what good there is in daily morning prayer: Fidelity to practice is key to growth.

Practice. What is its value? We practice music so we can sing or play with ease. In Lent we have spiritual practices, such as fasting, to grow in freedom from needing to satisfy wants and to open ourselves to God. What happens when we maintain a practice of praying together every day? Would it make a difference if we didn’t do it? Unequivocally, yes!

Just the thought of dropping communal morning prayer from our schedule makes my stomach queasy. I feel off balance and out of touch with something very essential in relating to the world. As the morning light replaces darkness, we sisters (and sometimes guests) join together with scripture, inspirational reading, psalms, song, shared silence, and reflections to open the gift of this new day. Our morning hour is rich with insights from saints of every stripe as we share the story of old or contemporary saints of the day. We experience the wide range of Grace as we share our deepest prayers.

I see practice as hungrily repeating routine, sometimes with difficulty, waiting for Light to break through. And when a breakthrough comes, I see us enjoying the paradox of a daily practice so fed with abundant Light that it hardly seems routine at all.

Morning prayer: to see my God-experience in another is to see God Incarnate. I can sit in my room and pray, “Your love is everlasting.” To hear others pray those same words from their hearts, opens doors: “Oh, you know that, too?!” This is the bonding that shared prayer produces. Pulsating from soul to soul, Light is refracted; the Word is amplified; Stillness is very dynamic. We say “Amen”, ready to minister from the Gift of this practice.