Listening

Until I learn to listen -- to the Scriptures, to those around me, to my own underlying life messages, to the wisdom of those who have already maneuvered successfully around the dangers of a life that is unmotivated and unmeaningful -- I will really have nothing whatever to say about life myself.  To live without listening is not to live at all; it is simply to drift in my own backwater.

Joan Chittister
Wisdom Distilled from the Daily

The liturgical year

Those who see the spiritual life as a life of restrictions and demands, of only yes or no, of life bounded by limits and denial, fail entirely to understand that the spirituality of the liturgical year is a spirituality made out of the shards and triumphs of life. It is a spirituality for the living and the joyful, the insightful and the wise, as well as for the suffering and the sinful. It makes of us the spiritual poets who see the beauty of life. In all its minuscule pieces magnified for us to see as we have never seen them before, perhaps -- one rose, one windstorm, one baby, one tomb -- life over time becomes, without doubt, one great, happy feast day.

Joan ChittisterThe Liturgical Year

Regular prayer

“Prayer that is regular [based on a daily rhythm, like The Office] confounds both self-importance and the wiles of the world. it is so easy for good people to confuse their own work with the work of creation. it is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important than what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow.. But regularity in prayer cures all that. Regularity harnesses us to our place in the Universe. Morning and evening, season by season, year after year we watch the sun rise and set..w e come to realize that we are simply small parts of a continuing creation..

“Benedict called for prayer at regular intervals of each day, right in the middle of apparently urgent and important work. The message is unequivocal. Let no one forget what they are really about. Let now one forget the purpose of life. Let no one forget to remember. Ever.

“To pray in the midst of the mundane is simply and strongly to assert that this dull and tiring day is holy and its simple labors are the stuff of God’s saving presence for me now…

“To pray when we cannot, on the other hand, is simply to let God be our prayer.

Joan Chittister, quoted by Len Hjalmarson in his blog. Source not listed.

Lent

Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull, perhaps, by a life more marked by routine than by reflection.  After a lifetime of mundane regularity or unconsidered adherence to the trappings of faith, Lent requires me, as a Christian, to stop for a while, to reflect again on what is going on in me.  I am challenged again to decided whether I, myself, do truly believe that Jesus is the Christ -- and if I believe, whether I will live accordingly when I can no longer hear the song of angels in my life and the star of Bethlehem has grown dim for me.

Joan Chittister
The Liturgical Year

Receiving Grace

Grace and goodness come from God ... We are not the sole authors of our own story.  What does come from us, though, are the decisions we make in the face of the graces we receive.  We can either respond to each life grace and become what we might be in every situation, whatever the effort, or we can reject the impulses that the magnet in us called goodness brings in favor of being less than we ought to be.

Joan Chittister
The Rule of Benedict

In the Heart of the Temple

Joan Chittister

Sexism, therefore, is heresy, is pathological pride, is hubris raised to high art. The truth is that science has rediscovered theology for us – and calls it ecology. Science knows now that everything is interrelated; that humanity is only one aspect of the fabric of life; that our connectedness is infinitely complex , and that, having poisoned the earth and polluted the air, we are now on the verge of extreme natural degradation and irreversible natural changes. If we do not see our sin and call it that, the anthropocentric – human-centred – worldview has failed us, has left us spiritual orphans. The androcentric – male-centred – worldview has destroyed us, has left us spiritual amnesiacs, has put us in contention with ourselves, with the universe, and with God the creator.

The world does not exist for us alone. On the contrary. Diversity is necessary. It is diversity we degrade and it is diversity we destroy. But it is specialization that is entropic. It is specialization that kills. If we farm only one product, the land dies; if we insist on only one social system, creativity dies; if we honour only one culture, peoples die; if we elevate only one sex, the fullness of humanity dies.

That is why feminism confronts androcentrism, this simplification of life to a one-gendered viewpoint only. Because simplification isn’t good for anyone. It’s not good for women. It’s not good for the planet. It’s not even good for men – it isolates them emotionally, it distorts them socially, it overdrives them physically and makes impossible demands on them psychologically.

Androcentrism is unspiritual because it ignores the spiritual value of the other half of the human race; it is immoral because it exploits the rest of creation. And it is un-Christian because it fails to find God incarnate in everything. That is why feminism denies the universalization of the experience of male experience. Women know that they see differently too, and they want that vision honoured for the sake of the human race. Women know that they think and feel differently about many things, and they want those thoughts and feelings factored into decisions – for the sake of the human race. Women know that they are different physically and they want their bodies valued, honoured, and listened to in all the questions that affect life (not simply the biological ones) for the sake of the human race.

Feminism rejects hierarchy and domination, not for itself alone, but for the sake of the rest of the human race. In fact, ecofeminism – a feminism that integrates Genesis 2, science and ecology and the fullness of humanity – reconceives feminism itself. An equal rights feminism that simply wants what men have already is not enough. A radical feminism that seeks separatism and divides the human race on the pretext of bettering it is not enough. A socialist feminism that concentrates on what is good for humans but takes no account of nature is not enough.

Feminism – real feminism – is a new worldview that transcends male chauvinism, rejects female chauvinism, is not just anthropocentric, but embraces creation and rejoices in nature and sees the ‘image of God’ in equal grandeur in both female and male, in the cosmos and the totality of creation.

From Chapter 9 of In the Heart of the Temple – my spiritual vision for today’s world, published by Bluebridge/Benetvision 2004