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ledge three stories above her earthly comfort zone.

No matter where I live, I am a Chicagoan. It’s sights and sounds (and sound-bytes) are in my head.

This week I listened to Chris Fabry Live, a radio call-in program that addressed the topic of Lent: who practiced, who didn’t, why some did, why others did not.  Callers lined up with their very nice sounding rationalizations for what they had already decided was true. I find most people who call in to talk shows don’t do it to listen or learn, but to share their already made up minds 😉 It was an amusing use of my ‘car time’.

But it seems that the conversation has stuck with me.  So while putting my k-cup in my coffee machine this morning a metaphor came to mind regarding what I heard and it was simply this: “for the love of the game.” For the love of the game, that’s why we observe the season of Lent.  It’s all about Love… and the game (sorry if it seems irreverent) is our relationship with/to God.  We keep Lent, we observe it, we do it, we practice it… for the love of the game.

“For the Love of the Game” is the shorthand for a clause Michael Jordan had written into his contract with the Chicago Bulls.  It seemed that pro contracts did not allow you to play/practice your sport outside of their purview.  Heaven forbid you should get hurt and no longer be a cash cow for your franchise! So he went to Jerry Krause, the Bulls General Manager and they worked out the “Love of the Game Clause”  which allowed Michael Jordan to play pick-up ball, or play anytime and any place he wanted.  Jordan believed that this extra curricular playing was one of the ways he had always used to sort out stuff in his life and clear his head.

So waiting for my coffee to brew this morning the radio call-in program on Lent and Michael Jordan’s “Love of the Game Clause” collided.  That’s it! I thought.  Our observance of Lent is like Jordan’s love of the game clause.  Lent is an invitation offered to those on the path of God’s love to sort ourselves out and clear our heads.  It’s a pick-up game in reflection, in prayers, in spiritual disciplines. It’s something added to our regular season just because we can and because it brings joy and growth and maybe even the good kind of tired at the end of a long day.

No one makes you play extra.  There is no coercion.  There is just the opportunity, like seeing a bunch of guys under the hoop at the park and walking over to join in.  There’s just that something that wells up inside for more and encourages you to make a plan, or a promise and then work it out over these 40 days.  Just because. No glory. No cheering crowds. No extra jewels in your crown. Just for the love of the game…

Over the years, whether during Lent or not, when I’ve committed to a spiritual practice of one kind or another… it has always been for the love of the game and I’ve never been disappointed. And it seems to me now that the One I meet on the court under the lights is not Michael Jordan (although that would be very cool) but is instead the Creator and Author of all that is, was and is to come. 

No one ever had to compel Michael Jordan to play basketball.  And my two-cents is we ought not need to be compelled to commit to the season of Lent.  If you are in this thing we call our life of faith “for the love of the game” I’d really like to hear what you have decided to do to keep these 40 days.  Please do drop me an email: thecelticmonk@att.net   It would be a privilege to pray for you while you’re out there on the court!

In peace and joy,

Kathleen Bronagh Weller  THECELTICMONK

     It woke me this morning out of a sound sleep.We’ve been in the season of Lent for three days and I’ve still not decided how to observe these 40 days. Yes, I’ve made myself some promises of rearranging some things in my day to make more sense.  Things I probably have been putting off for too long.  But what might I do… proactively?

Over the years I’ve had my share of “giving up”  chocolate, movies, soda, ice cream [for me a real hardship] facebook, whole day fasts once a week, and for several years fasting all of Holy Week. This last one ruins Easter dinner, because that is no way to come off of a fast.

I’m already meditating in the morning before checking email WOW!  I’m already reading the Lenten devotionals from Laurence Freeman and James Martin.  But how to reach out.. how to touch?

So this is what really woke me at 3:53 a.m.  I feel led to pray for my “friends” on facebook.

It will come as no surprise that its not something in my routine.  I’m actually going to be surprised to find who is there when I go through the list!  But each day I’m going to pray my way through. No not just a “God bless Pattty and Timmy…” but really pray for each of them. 

Lying in bed I thought that would be about 100 folks and I still have 37 days left. No biggy. Imagine my surprise to find the list has inched up to 178 over the years.  Hmmm… 178 divided by 37…  4.81081081 people to pray for each day.

And when I pray, I’m going to their page and leave a note letting them know they were prayed for.

But why this… and why now?   Another thing that occurred to me at 3:53 a.m. is that my newsfeed is beginning to fill up with more and more 2nd hand information.  It is filled with posts folks are passing on because they love or hate something.  It’s filled with quick tips and ads and pretty pictures.  All of which I really LIKE.  But fewer and farther between, does someone just write what is on their mind or heart.  I miss those posts. (Sigh)

So I’m going to pray and post my way through Lent on the facebook pages of my 178 friends.  I’m going to leave behind the traces of a real breathing person instead of a re-post of a re-post of a re-post. 

I have no delusions of grandeur.  Likely I’ll find those people who have unfriended me.  I’ll pray for them anyway.  But in a world for which it seems isolation is a chosen state as much as a by-product of society, I’m going to offer the closest thing facebook has to human touch–a real post–with a little spiritual power thrown in by the grace and mercy of God.

If you are one of my 178, watch for your post/prayer on your page in these next seven weeks.  If you are not one of my 178 and would like a prayer, all you have to do is ask.  I’m off to begin.  Keep me in your prayers!

In peace and in great joy,

Kathleen Bronagh Weller  THECELTICMONK

As I came to the blog this morning, to check the date of an old story from last year I paused, a little amused, that since my post THE SOUND OF SHEER SILENCE in July–I haven’t written.  And it occurred to me that that previous title was to be PROPHETIC… as there followed a six month silence. 

Many of you already know that just weeks after that post I suffered a three part fracture of my left humerus.  And that there is nothing humorous about it.  Being left-handed only doubly disabled me.

Until quite recently, I dare not even use a key board because as the song goes… “the wrist bones connected to the arm bone… the arm bones connected to the…”  You get the point.  The repetitive movement of key strokes caused intense shoulder pain. And so there has indeed been in many ways in my life, the sound of sheer silence. 

My learnings, which still continue are many, varied and deep.  I quickly realized that I could not live my 110 percent life with only 40 percent mobility.  While at first angry and frustrated… I soon realized what my body was teaching me.  A wise friend assured me or perhaps chastened me when he said “even high performance engines only perform at about 70 percent.”  Hmmm… so my 110 percent life wasn’t realistic?  or sustainable? 

I also learned that moving more slowly through the world meant there were things I just could not do.  Some I could parse out to others.  Some things just would not get done.  There was no sense fretting, the universe (or at least mine) had shifted.  Putting it in practical terms, there was only one double batch of Christmas cookies this year instead of six which was my norm. 

Beginning August 13th I was on a path I did not choose, but I quickly surmised that there were things here to learn.  Not the least of which being that sometimes it takes a 2 x 4 to get my attention–or at least a life altering event. 

There has been nothing graceful about how I got here.  But it has been grace-filled.   As I reflect back my stumbling into this new reality has at times been comical.  For instance… not being able to sleep very long, or very well, each morning I dutifully went to my email and starred those things I wanted to act on and deleted others.  After about three weeks, I realized my habit of starring and returning later to the email was begun because I didn’t have the time in the morning to deal with them.  AND YET, it was such a habit that even when I did have the time (no place to go, nothing to do) my habit was not easily undone.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems to me that through this circumstance, God allowed a lot of time and space for me to sit in the Sound of Sheer Silence I so desire; Silence that has always beckoned to me and beckons to me still.  This time has been an awful, horrible, painful gift. Labor and delivery if I can use that metaphor…to accept and receive what I long for most.

There is an old fashioned Christian concept we don’t talk about much anymore which defines this time in my life.  Most often its used of seasons of prayer…but isn’t all of our life our prayer? It comes to us from Ignatius the Spanish mystic–who writes about “Consolation” and “Desolation.” So while at first glance, my injury might look like desolation…I’ve lived in it long enough to know that it was actually a gift of consolation.  Not because of the fact of it-but because of where it led me. 

Life, especially life lived in the spirit is not as simple as consolations are always good and desolations are always bad. Ignatius knew that.  He knew that sometimes a life of consolation, comfort and ease can lead us to complacency and away from God; and that desolations far from being punishment are sometimes necessary and what we need to find our truth. 

I’m living the consolation of a tri-fractured humerus in much silence.  What are the current consolations or desolations in your life? What are they each teaching you?

I don’t wish for this kind of consolation for you or for me.  But its good to have the language and the theology that allows  us to look at what we experience even as “desolation” and find something else there.  As you use these concepts to “sit with” your life, I hope there are new learnings for you.

In grateful joy and peace,

Kathleen Bronagh Weller –  THE CELTIC MONK
 

It’s Sunday morning at 4-ish a.m. and I’ve been woken by a storm raging out over the Gulf of Mexico. Raging, but there is not a sound to be heard except the hum of the refrigerator just now.  And of course the breathing of our two dogs Bear and Dexter who have jumped up onto the bed.

What woke me is this spectacular light show flashing brightly without ceasing.  From a sound sleep it took me a few minutes to orient myself to what all the light was about.  As first it seemed as though an electrical transformer had shorted-out with its accompanying firework-like display. But there was this eerie silence… and no popping or whizzing that comes with such an event.  When the lights did not stop, I got up to sit in my chair that faces west, towards the Gulf.

And now, for the past 90 minutes or so I’ve sat in this fantastical silence as the storm ever so slowly moves the light show northward, up the coast towards Tampa. 

Sitting in this interrupted darkness I am imagining (because it is beyond me to understand) the sheer power, real power, in these flickers and bright flashes that seem to come from nowhere in the pre dawn sky.  How distant must their genesis be to come to me with absolutely no sound…only now a few frogs and crickets, as I’ve moved to sit outside on the lanai.

My thoughts turn to the familiar passage from I Kings 19:  “The Word of the Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

But God was not in the wind, the earthquake, the fire…but in the sheer silence.  Indeed.  In your life and mine, without any sound and sometimes only glints and glimmers rather than flickers and flashes the God of the Universe makes Himself known and brings awesome power to bear in your life and mine for the single purpose of revealing His love to us.  To you.  To me.  Like the storm that is passing by in front of me just now, the Holy Spirit passes in and through our lives trying to attract our attention. Hoping we will stop and see.  Hoping we will come to know God’s intent to light up heaven and earth for us…so great is God’s love. 

I wonder how many times I’ve neglected to stand at the entrance to the cave looking out?  How many times have I instead hurried myself with things to do, places to go, people to see so that I missed God’s attempt to get my attention?  When’s the last time we answered the question for ourselves, or to God, “What am I doing here?”

I’ve been sitting here long enough now in the darkness, cell phone in hand typing this into my “Notes” with two thumbs (!) that the sky is beginning to turn navy blue.  The very tops of the thunderheads over the Gulf still flashing are starting to take on pink/orange hues from the sun rising at my back to the east.  The solitary sound of crickets now is joined by mockingbirds, whippoorwills, two morning doves, a cardinal and the first rumble of thunder.  Rain cannot be far behind.

As far as I remember, only once before have I been apprehended so literally, personally and powerfully by the Presence of the Love of God in nature.  I learned there, how to receive these moment or hours as pure gift. I couldn’t be more grateful for having been woken to experience God passing by in sheer silence.

Blessed Sabbath to you, my friends,

Kathleen Bronagh Weller, Obl.SB   THE CELTIC MONK