When I was studying theological ethics at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, one of my main research areas was the ethics and spirituality of Christian nonviolent resistance.
Resistance of course now is a trending hashtag on Twitter. I was invited to share some of my thoughts and research about the urgent need for an ethic of resistance grounded in relationship in a guest blog post for NETWORK Lobby (the folks behind Nuns on the Bus).
Whatever comes next, it is crucial that we develop an ethic of resistance that is grounded in human dignity and right relationship. Otherwise, we face the danger of recreating and repeating negative cycles of violent and dehumanizing language and actions. …
In fact, we would all do well to read up on the history of resistance to social sin. Resistance is not futile, but neither is it easy. The Christian tradition of resistance begins with Jesus, and think of where his path of resistance led. Jesus resisted dehumanizing social norms, created a wide web of relationship, and engaged in liberating action for the oppressed. In the centuries since, Christians have followed in his footsteps and resisted social sin and injustice.
So for the past two weeks I have been in (a one-sided yet public) 140 character conversation with President Donald J. Trump.
I committed on the first Monday of his presidency to pray for him (and our country/world) every morning and to send him a tweet each day. I also pray with the newspaper in the morning, and so my messages are often focused on a recent policy announcement. And as you may guess, I have been troubled by many if not all of them these first two weeks.
By taking to prayer my righteous anger and disbelief at policies which do not seem to reflect equality, justice, the common good or other American values, I realize something happens within me.
I do not soften my belief in the Gospel or justice or the need to speak strongly on behalf of those who are most vulnerable. I do not soften my resistance to evil or injustice. Those are strenghened.
But I do soften my heart. I relate as a human being to the human being presently holding the highest elected office in this country. I engage rather than disengage. I focus on the heart of the matter. Sometimes I even offer advice. And I always offer my prayers.
This daily practice is not easy, but for me I believe it is important. If I am to talk the talk of nonviolent resistance grounded in the primacy of love as taught and modeled by Jesus, then I need to live that out in my own life, words and actions. My #dailytweet @potus is one simple yet challenging spiritual practice.
Because it is public, I am accountable.I have also heard from various quarters that others have found my daily tweets helpful to them as they reorient themselves in this time. One friend told me how she appreciated that my messages were not soft on policy or on where I disagree with the President, but grounded in the Gospel and respectful.
That is my goal, to be grounded in the Gospel. And to model respectful dialogue, even if the odds of him reading or responding are slim.
Those are my reflections two weeks in. We will see where this journey leads!
In today’s reading from Paul’s Letter to Timothy, we hear
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.
I think we all need to pray with and reflect on these words, especially as we enter into a time like none we have experienced in our lifetimes, when the widow, the orphan, the refugee, the marginalized and vulnerable are under attack by misguided, isolationist and dare I say non-Christian policies.
But God did not give us a spirit of cowardice. God gave us the Holy Spirit to disturb us, urge us on, and give us the energy and inspiration to stand up for what is good and right and just.
We were called to these times to bring the Gospel values of love, justice, peace, inclusion, equality, and compassion to our lives together. We are called to work with the Spirit on behalf of the common good.
The church, which means both leaders and the people of God, needs to be a strong voice for Gospel values during these dark days.
For my part, I have decided to tweet to the president each day of his administration, since it is a platform he follows religiously as it were. But more important than whether or not he actually reads any of my tweets, I am committed. I am praying for him each day. I am praying for those who are impacted by his unjust policy choices. And I am speaking out. Resistance must be centered in the goal of right relationship, and at this point when I want to just hide under the covers, I am called to stay at the table and engaged, to keep my eyes open, and to act with a compassionate heart and a loud voice for justice. As someone who follows Jesus, it is the least I can do, and hopefully this commitment will lead me to courageous action on behalf of the common good.
Even though today is the beginning of the last week of Advent, and we actually have a full four weeks of Advent this year, I must admit to being a bit liturgically mixed up.
For one thing, I’ve been experiencing a lot of waiting and expectation these past few months, so on the one hand I feel like my Advent has been much longer than usual. And given that some of the expectation will continue into the new year, my Advent will also continue.
Next Sunday is of course Christmas, but I’ve not gotten much into the spirit just yet. This will be a simple and easy Christmas spent with community in a much needed low key kind of way. Spiritually, I am ready to welcome God with us, Love incarnate, and to remember and share that miracle through ritual and prayer and celebration. Christmas is good, even if I’m not super into all the festivities this year.
Then there is the rhythm of ordinary time, which we won’t take up liturgically for a while but in our lives is part of the every day mix, some good, some bad, all of it part of life. I’ve been reflecting a bit on the storms of life, both literal (we had a minor winter storm yesterday that has turned to mild rainy weather) and the figurative ones in our lives that rock our world from time to time.
The other day, a song popped up on my play list on my music player in the car. I’ve been avoiding Christmas songs, trying to stay in the Advent mood, so the other day I listened to a play list I created for retreat a few years ago. It included a song I’ve not listened to much, by singer songwriter Amy Speace – “How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat.” Her words and music really spoke to my heart and where I’ve been a bit lately, seeking peace in the midst of the storm. The song has helped me to bring that to prayer, and today I spent some time in prayer creating a video prayer set to her words and music.
It’s not necessarily liturgically appropriate for the fourth Sunday of Advent, but life is pretty stormy right now for many people I know and even more I don’t know, so I offer this as a pre-Christmas gift in case it is helpful on your journey.
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.
I like to think of it as a celebration of Mary’s YES.
Yes to love, life, and possibility.
Yes to uncertainty and confusion.
Yes to perhaps not always understanding or being understood.
Yes to life as a mix of joy and sadness, suffering and compassion.
This morning I ask myself, how am I living into my yes?
Mary shows us that our yes, freely given and lived into day by day, has the power to change the world.
Or as Pope Francis recently said in an interview about negativity in media: “Today there is a need for a revolution of tenderness in this world that suffers from ‘cardiosclerosis.”
Things I find myself especially grateful for this Thanksgiving morning, in no particular order.
The gift of life itself … Think about it, we get to live and breathe and smell pumpkin pie baking in the oven and laugh with friends and family and maybe drive each other a little crazy and hopefully do something productive in the middle and love people and be loved and go to sleep and wake up and spend yet another day experiencing the gift of life.
I am grateful for community. My world has been rocked a bit lately, what with accompanying a dear friend on her cancer journey and then our motherhouse caught fire and I have been displaced ever since and then my dear friend died and we pulled together to give her an amazing send off (in a local parish since we cannot use our chapel due to fire damage) then too all the regular stuff of life and leadership in community. When I end my day looking back in prayer, I am filled with wonder at the ways community supports and challenges, comforts and empowers me to keep on going on and continuing to face the future together as peacemakers in gratitude and hope. Such gift.
I am grateful to family and friends, mostly far and some near, who I know love me and send good vibes of love and support and are there if I ever need them. More phone calls are coming soon I promise.
I am grateful for our system of government, for checks and balances and ways to participate in democracy. I am grateful for the model and witness of nonviolent peacemakers like Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King and Thomas Merton and my Sisters of St Joseph of Peace and my mother Eileen and countless others. They faced evil and oppression head on and countered it with love in action and solidarity with an eye toward the common good and those Jesus loved so well. They started walking the path in their time and our world is a better place for it. In these dark days I am grateful for their memory and for those who I trust will walk the path with me in our time.
I am grateful for creativity and intellect, for curiosity and compassion, for a passion for peace through Justice, for God’s sustaining love, for laughter and sadness and everything in between.
I am back from my private retreat days, ready to face what this day has in store. Or as ready as I can be. This morning after my morning coffee I sat for my solitary morning meditation, and then wrote these words which I share in case they speak to any one of you who are reading them:
A messy solitary morning sit, present to the messiness of life these days. This and that flitting in and out along with my breath.
So messy, yes, but still this overwhelming sense of God, one with us, inviting me, inviting us, to be present to and amidst all the messiness.
To be present, to recognize the goodness that is there in the mix, clouded though it may be by all that is messy.
To nurture and build upon that which is good, co-creating even more goodness with our loving Creator, Jesus our brother, Emmanuel, God with us, and of course the pesky and mischievous Spirit.
As best we can, as best I can, breath by breath, step by step, moment by moment.
One with God, one with it all, even the suffering and anxiety and impasse, believing there can be more.
Commiting to staying with the messiness and bringing light to the goodness, with God.
I’m spending a few days of private retreat at the ocean. Sometimes you just need to step away and renew your spirit, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to do so these days.
This morning as I was watching the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean (a favorite past time of my mother who I was communing with this morning through memory and action), I reflected on the amazing love of our creator. Sometimes it is easier to recognize God’s loving presence in the midst of it all than at other times, but looking back, God is there, one with us through it all. Later, as I was taking a long walk on the boardwalk while the sun continued to rise, the song “Constant One” by Steffany Gretzinger came into my heart and mind, step by step, which led me to make this video prayer, pairing her music and words with my photos and video of the sunrise this morning.
Constant One – Lyrics
In the moment I am hiding
Your love, it seeks me out
You hold me and You know me
From the inside out
From the inside out
Constant One
Endless is Your love
Like a river can’t be stopped
You’re faithful
Constant One
Who is like You, God?
Your mercy’s like the sun
Always rising
Over us
It’s amazing
How You take me just for who I am
In the valleys and in the mountains
I’m always in Your hands
I’m always in Your hands
Constant One
Endless is Your love
Like a river can’t be stopped
You’re faithful
Constant One
Who is like You, God?
Your mercy’s like the sun
Always rising Over us
There is no place that I could run
That You won’t chase me down
You won’t chase me down
There is no place that I could hide
That I will not be found
I will not be found
Constant One
Endless is Your love
Like a river can’t be stopped
You’re faithful
Constant One
Who is like You, God?
Your mercy’s like the sun
Always rising
Over us
(Bethel Music, Steffany Gretzinger, The Unfolding album, 2014)
November is a time for remembering. In our Christian tradition we remember all saints and all souls. We also remember our veteran’s on November 11th, which is known as remembrance day in the UK to remember the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when the first world war ended. November 11th is also the day I professed final vows five years ago.
I now have another reason to remember on November 11th, because this Friday my dear friend, leadership teammate and local community member Sister Kristin Funari passed away after a rapid yet valiant struggle with cancer. It was an honor and a privilege to accompany her on this journey. We spent many precious moments together these past few months. She has taught me so much about living and leading and loving. My heart aches that she has left us, but she is now free and one with her loving God. As for me, I am a better person for having shared life with her these past two years.
In her last days, she planned her funeral with an old friend who shared the notes with me when the time came to plan the service for real after her death. It was a surprise and a great honor that Kristin wanted me to give the welcome at her funeral liturgy. These are the words I shared at the funeral yesterday:
We gather this morning to celebrate the life of a shining light in our lives, Sister Kristin Funari, who burned with a passion for everything that is good.
Many of us are used to Kristin herself giving the welcome at an occasion such as this. I know I am, yet it is also a deep honor and a privilege to be the one to welcome you today on behalf of Kristin, her family, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace.
We gather in this beautiful sanctuary, yet we pine to be at home in our own Chapel. As you know, those of us who live at St. Michael’s experienced a major fire last month, and we are still adjusting to our new reality. We are grateful to be able to find shelter here at St. Anastaia’s. As it happens, I discovered this weekend that Kristin took Anastasia as her confirmation name when she was a young woman, so perhaps this was meant to be.
We welcome Kristin’s brother Ralph and his wife Chickie, along with their children Felicia and her husband Stephen, Renata and her husband Craig, Anthony and his girlfriend Kim, and three of Kristin’s grand nephews Ashton, Nicholas and Sebastian. We also welcome Kristin’s cousin Sandra, het husband Joe and their daughter Kristin.
We remember too Kristin’s parents Ivo and Helen, her Auntie Viola, Uncle Joe, and her sister Ricky. I have no doubt that they are enjoying great Italian meals and catching up on all the news of the Funari family among the stars.
When 20 year old Elaine applied to enter the Congregation in 1965 as a postulant, she wrote in her application that she wished “to bring myself and others to God.” Decades later, in an interview with Jan Linley, Kristin reflected that “seeking God and seeking truth is part of why I stay and why I entered. You know, really wanting to know God.” Kristin has finally lived into the deep desire she expressed in her final vows, “to live in the joy of a celibate love that does not lie in a separation from but a deeper penetration into the universe.” She is now at one with God, with the angels, and the stars.
But we all know that Kristin’s life shined bright like the stars when she was with us. She was passionate about community, her family, and poor and marginalized people. She was passionate about good food and a nice drink at the end of the day. She was passionate about life … and of that, any of us who were ever on the losing side of an argument with Kristin, have no doubt.
When Kristin was featured in an article in the National Catholic Reporter in 1996, she outlined her passions.
“I’m passionate about the gospels,” she said. “Passionate about the economy. I want to get more passionate about the poor. Get more passionate about the violence in our cities in the United States and say what can we do to change that. … I get passionate about the suffering that’s caused by all that and then the wrong people who are blamed. Passionate about the beatitudes. Passionate about the truth being the way. None of us have the total truth. Passionate about us being able to peel that apart together and break it open together and single-mindedly staying in community, pursuing those gospel truths. That’s what makes my passion. I get passionate when I see real struggle around who we say we are or want to be.”
Community was a constant in Kristin’s life. She built community wherever she was. As a social worker in Rockleigh and in Jersey City, at St. Boniface and of course, the York Street Project, Kristin loved and learned from those she served and accompanied them as they made positive change in their own community. In Congregation leadership, Kristin challenged us to face the future with gratitude and hope, while staying true to our roots as what she called meat and potato women. Before her death last year, Sister Jeanne Keaveny, who taught Kristin in Penns Grove, described Kristin to me as someone who had one foot firmly in the past, and one foot firmly in the future.
Kristin was unforgettable. We heard many stories to that effect last night at the wake. She left a lasting impression on everyone she met. I would often joke that Kristin would even make the local dog catcher feel like he was her dear friend. You felt like a valued whole person in her presence. Relationships and community, presence and hospitality were part of Kirstin’s core. Who among us did not enjoy her delicious cooking, her infectious laughter, her open heart, her willingness to always make room at the table for one more?
And so today, we gather at this table, to celebrate this shining light in our lives. We know that she is now one with her loving God, penetrated by love. Let us now give thanks for her transformation from death into life through the celebration of this liturgy.
Susan Francois, CSJP
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 