Per Ipsum

 Last week I found a little book I had forgotten, shoved back on my bookshelf behind heavier things. It was The Reed of God, one once dear to my heart. I've been reading it every night and so it is again. She begins with emptiness, the necessity if we are to be filled with Christ, We must be empty; we must be filled; and then—only then—and can we be the hands, the feet, and the beating heart that carries Christ where He wishes to go. She speaks of three kinds of emptiness. The reed is the delicate emptiness through which the music of God can flow. The chalice is the solid emptiness in which sacrifice, necessary, and needed, can occur. A next is a soft emptiness in which life can be nurtured. We are, she says, all called to our own specific emptiness in order to be what He wishes. My first image of God was of as the hub of the wheel that is my life. In that vision, a world of people, things, issues, worries, activity flowed in a chaotic circle held in place and given meaning by that

 Black Lives Matter.  God created man in His own image, Genesis 1:27 Black Lives Matter If it is on the tip of your tongue to respond “but all lives matter,” stop right there.  Don’t say it. You’re missing the point. Life is God’s precious gift to be valued always. But for hundreds of years black lives specifically—precious and beloved of God—have been held cheaply in our culture. For 250 years, black lives were used, abused, bought, sold, and snuffed out with impunity in the United States. For the next hundred they were over-policed, underserved, and, yes, still snuffed out with impunity too often. It didn’t end with MLK making a speech as his death makes clear.  The cry of the streets, what we must understand, is that precious lives continue to die as a result of hunger, the worst of the income gap, poor access to health care, and the actions of bad apples of law enforcement the structure can’t seem to control. Those things are only able to go on because our culture as a whole DOESN’

This I believe: God is. Nothing else really matters. God is love. He is the trinity of Lover, Love, Beloved in neverending exchange. The logic of love is creation~the sharing of love. The gap between humanity and God demanded redemption. The continued gap calls out for salvation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.    He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being i n him was life, and the life was the light of all people. T he light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. ..  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.   I accept the formulation of the Nicene creed, and I choose to be a submissive daughter of the Roman Catholic church, never blind to its greed, sins, and administrative blunders, but joyful in its life in the

...for our gospel did not come to you in  word  only, but also in  power   and  in the Holy Spirit                     1 Thessalonians  1:5 In the middle of the angst, divisions, and failures of the Catholic Church this decade, I've looked for a spiritual home. My parish, as luck would have it, is lovely; bible study there keeps me going. But it is shrinking. Between the flight of believers, aging out and changing demographics, it teeters toward disappearing. In my heart of hearts, I have my doubts about the old structure of parish/diocese/archdiocese/conference... It doesn't seem to be working. I have total faith that we as a community of faith can march on no matter what, but the structure? It may be time to let it fall. I considered one of the traditional religious orders, some, including the one that raised me, take affiliate members. I've looked at various lay movements without finding much satisfaction. I spent some time perusing Formed and some of the on