Rituals by Robin Clossman

After my mom passed away, I realized we shared many rituals around food. We planned menus, shopped for, and prepared food together and for one another. I learned about more than food, though; it was a shared experience that informed us about who we were and what we meant to each other. It was much bigger than food prep. One Christmas, she told me to change the ritual—I was stuck washing dishes when someone began handing out gifts to my kids. She said to me, “Stop cooking all that food, set out some lunch meat and paper plates, and enjoy your kids before they grow up.”

The summer she passed, my 9-year-old daughter wanted to bake me a birthday cake because Grandma wasn’t there to do it. But she had not learned to bake yet. So, we baked together. So much love and laughter went into that cake, and we began to share the rituals. Eventually, her brother wanted to cook, and the rituals transferred to him as well. Later, he became vegan, and I thought, “Well, there goes cooking together.” But he said, “Mom, it's because of you I am vegan; you taught me compassion towards animals.” And again, I saw our rituals change to reflect our values more closely.

In comparison, there is a story of another family with a young woman who couldn’t understand why the family recipe required her to cut off the end of the roast before cooking. Her mother didn’t know why they did it, but her grandmother said, “I couldn’t afford a larger pan, so I cut it off to make it fit.”

Rituals can feel irrelevant when they no longer help us make sense of or give meaning to our lives. Our ritual should help us understand ourselves better and see commonalities. Learning about another’s rituals fosters tolerance, understanding, respect, and Ecumenism, which break down barriers and bring us together. When our rituals inform us rather than conform us, we work together, foster inclusivity and interfaith dialogue, and foster unity in our diversity.

Experiencing Dejection Within the Field of Love by Lolly Bargerstock

It was a windy day as my three-year-old granddaughter and I played outside. I asked her, “Ophelia, what do you think the wind is saying to us?” She thought for only a moment before replying, “It’s saying it loves us.” This was a child who knew her place in the company of the Divine.

Three years later, she sat at my Christmas table, appearing dejected. I asked her what was wrong. She said, “I don’t belong here.” She explained she had made poor choices and did not deserve the presents under the tree. This older Ophelia now recognized the conditional love of humans through the story of Santa, who rewarded “nice.”

In her book, The Spiritual Child, Lisa Miller suggests the most important thing we can do to assist children develop spirituality is to create what she calls a “field of love,” a relational space in which children are loved unconditionally and learn to love unconditionally. At that Christmas table, I got to tell Ophelia that none of the presents were from Santa. They were all from her family. I ended by saying. “We get to give you those presents simply necause we love you, no matter what choices you make.”

The dejection we sometimes experience as adults may seem much more complex than what Ophelia felt. But our own despair often includes questions about belonging and worth, about what we deserve and what we do not. Experiencing the dark night of the soul does not often end easily with comforting words from a loved one. I cannot help but wonder, though, how we might meet our own sorrow and that of others in the relational space Miller describes. In that space, “we are fully accepted for who we are, and learn to hold others with the same compassion…It is a super-sized we.”

Looking forward to seeing you in the field of love.

Mysticism/Mystical by Rick Hatem

Mysticism is mysterious, as is the word mystical. Mysticism and mystical are spiritual terms with positive and negative connotations pertaining to an individual’s direct communication with God or ultimate reality. There are mystics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Mystics are also found in other world religions. Mysticism is generally positive when a mystic discovers or enters relationship with God expanding their understanding of God beyond what is apparent to the senses, or strictly intellectual. It can be negative when used in a cult, incorporating secret rites, claims of superiority, or abuses authority to control others.

Ursula King, author of Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages, defines a “mystic” as “a person who is deeply aware of the powerful presence of divine Spirit: someone who seeks, above all, the knowledge and love of God and who experiences to an extraordinary degree the profoundly personal encounter with the energy of divine life.”

A graduate student at the University of Toronto, Gustave Ineza, wrote A Critical consideration of contributions of mysticism to the Christian-Muslim Dialogue. He shares how Western scholars fascinated by the Sufi mystical tradition in Islam seek a common ground for spiritual dialogue with Islam while remaining faithful to their own religious tradition and their faith.

Many people know of Thomas Merton’s interest in Buddhist and Taoist spirituality. Ineza quotes Merton’s letters to people from different social, political, and religious backgrounds in The Hidden Ground of Love. The book includes Merton’s dialog on mysticism with Abdul Aziz, a Muslim from Karachi. Their correspondence reveals a Christian-Muslim dialogue on the spiritual level. The two men shared on their methods of meditation and prayer, spiritual experiences, theological insights, and practical ways to live that dialogue.

Meister Eckhart perhaps summed up mysticism’s appeal to many people in this quote attributed to him. “Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.”

Reflection on Darkness by Kevin Orr

So often, I notice that people associate darkness with fear. Children want a night light in their bedrooms because they are afraid of the dark. Horror movies are marked by darkness. Even if a scene takes place in the daytime the light is muted. It takes some bravery to enter a dark room of an unfamiliar building without a flashlight.

Yet, I confess that when I encounter darkness, my experience is seldom that of fear. Darkness can also be an invitation to sit and be still. Darkness, giving way to a lit candle, can be a space in time when the interior sense is stirred and we become aware of what is unseen. I have encountered in the depth of my being the mysterious presence of God in dark, candle lit rooms.

Darkness is something we all are experiencing more of this time of year. Short days and long nights. Even the daytime sun is often blocked by a grey blanket of clouds. The lack of sunlight can cause many of us to become melancholy. Our bodies want to be more sedentary. Perhaps you are reading this reflection while wrapped in a warm blanket.

This season of darkness invites us to sit and be still, to light a candle or maybe a fire. We are invited to become aware of the unseen within and around us. In the stillness and quiet of darkness, when you allow yourself to be open to the mysterious Presence…who knows what might sneak up on you?

God Dwelling Within Each By Sue Sack, Ph.D

“You hurt my dignity, Poppa,” complained my six-year-old grandson to his father. The lament so startled me, as we walked near their home outside Tokyo, that I stumbled. When I mentioned it later, my son explained that he and his wife were always sure to stress to their son the need for respect toward all creatures. A proud mom moment.

Within any pastoral ministry, recognizing the innate dignity of all is paramount. When I was chaplain in a local inner-city hospital perhaps the most formational lesson I repeatedly learned was how amazing people were, regardless of their faith tradition (or none), their education and economic status, their race, native language or age. They constantly awed and humbled me. Even though I have always had a wide group of friends, I found myself increasingly touched in that diversity by the beauty of the human soul, and the dignity that signified God dwelling within each.

This unique dignity is also found in the variety of gifts any group brings. Too often when encountering another we assume we know what they are about. Or, we haul along our own unaddressed shadows, hurts or fears, and so seeing the transcending fingerprints in the other becomes far more difficult!

Today in our country the ability to cherish the dignity of each is even more crucial, isn’t it? May our work as pastors and spiritual companions therefore be blessed with this love and respect for the Divine present in all those we encounter.

Journey of Awareness By Kristin Santiago

The Camino de Santiago via Frances is a 500-plus mile journey across northern Spain, moving from east to west, from the Pyrenees Mountains in France toward the Atlantic Coast in northwestern Spain. Some walk this ancient pilgrimage for fitness, others for the travel experience, and most have walked this road in search of or longing for what is often beyond expression, deep within the soul, born of the spirit.

It is a journey of awareness. Awareness of physical limits, and physical gratitude, the earthy awareness of breath, the smell of olive groves, the feel of footsteps and foot holds, uphill, downhill, pace. Awareness of other pilgrims along the way, some who share blessings before departing. The blessing remains. Awareness of eternity.

All along the way, I had prayed, “I wait for you, Holy One, my soul waits for you. What do you want me to see, to notice? At the conclusion of the road, 500-plus miles, I entered a small chapel to rest and pray. After praying, when I lifted my eyes, my gaze was led to notice a little message on the noticeboard. It simply said, “I have been waiting for you.,” signed “God.”

Awareness is born of the Spirit opening our soul. It comes toward us with open arms from the heart of Great Love, who simply welcomes us, saying, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Mentorship Close to Home by Michael Doran

As I wondered about the topic of mentorship, the thought that most captured me was not about identifying the role of mentor and expectations—how I believe a mentor “should be.” Instead it was the mentors I didn’t see coming and the posture of what mentoring looks like in (those) unusual places—in life, in relationships and even in spiritual direction. Yet I’ll begin with my starting place by going through some of what I unlearned about mentoring.

In my adolescent years involving sports, mentoring resembled coaching. Through the eyes of a young man, it was those who had “accomplished,” “achieved,” and “won.” It was the elusive thing “they had” that I wanted, and didn’t know how to get. Yet I was hopeful they could tell me how so I could do what they did, and become the person I hoped to be…or maybe the person they wanted me to be.

As I reflect on that place, my view was limited; of me, of the other, of what was unfolding. I didn’t know if I wanted change as much as I wanted to be different. And getting there, my desire was that it would be painless, easy, guaranteed, and kind. It wasn’t quite like that, but the experience and the relationships were secondary to the outcome (I wanted). Sometimes focus and drive can be overrated.

The next place I looked for mentors was in the world of “business.” Much like sports, it was a hierarchical view of how I saw others better than me, and how I could “get” what they had; success, recognition, and control. Or so I thought. One of the gifts in life is that it refuses to “settle” for the easy answers. Instead, it invites some of the most unlikely “mentors” into your life and offers mentoring in ways that you’d not imagined.

Who have been my best mentors and what kind of mentoring have they offered? My children would not refer to themselves in that way. They have been mentors in how they lived—from babies to young adults. They have a posture of loving me, giving to me, receiving from me, wanting the best for me without wanting to change or control me. They, like me, want safety and belonging to wonder, to grow, to have difficult conversations, face awkward moments and not be abandoned.

That, perhaps, is the truest mentoring I’ve experienced: a willingness to stay. To walk alongside without fixing. To hold questions without rushing to answer them. And to remain curious when my soul wanted certainty. For me, that’s the heart of spiritual direction.

Mentoring has changed for me—not as a pursuit of achievement but a participation in  meaning, in relationships and even in mystery. It’s not so much about finding someone who has the answers, but someone who holds the questions with me, allowing me to be brave when I’d rather not. And sometimes, that someone is my own inner voice, finally given permission to speak—especially that which I would rather not say aloud, or to another.

In spiritual direction, we often speak of companioning. It’s such a gentle word. One that resists the pedestal and invites the step or the stillness when there is no clear path. The longer I live, the more I believe mentoring is less about quidance and more about presence. Less about clarity and more about courage. Less about the performance of success and more about the permission to be—confused, joyful, afraid, expending.

I once believed a mentor’s job was to help me “become somebody.” Now, I wonder if a true mentor helps me return to myself. To remember who I already am beneath the striving. And in doing so, awaken something I didn’t know was waiting.

I am increasingly drawn to those who carry a quiet wisdom, who aren’t impressive at first glance yet become unforgettable in their kindness and their love. Who don’t speak in answers but in stories that connect hearts and souls.

I don’t always recognize them right away. They might be friends, a stranger, a spiritual director, a child. And they don’t wear the badge of “mentor.” They simply show up. And somehow, that is enough. It’s always enough.

House Finches By Luke McCuster

A pair of house finches began building a nest outside my window. All through the third week of June any time I wanted I could lean over and see the soon-to-be mother with dried grasses clamped in her beak weaving a bed behind a petunia flower in the corner of the window box. Her partner stood on the lip of the gutter watching and burbling cheerfully. After a few days I looked into the nest—four perfect eggs. Two weeks later, two babies, each baby body seventy five percent mouth and the mouth reaching up and swaying and jerking a little crazily on a delicate stem of neck, hungry and blind and wild and desperate. Father bird came and fed mother bird, then she fed the mouths and sheltered them with her body and waited for the other two to hatch. A friend I told called it a blessing on my home and that is how it felt. I have made a nurturing place here. I am doing something right.

Two days later, the nest was empty. A predator took them, and it left a house-finch-sized tear in the fabric of my assumptions about the world. Can animals be evil? Was the predator feeding its own babies? Should I have protected the birds? Could I have? Should I become vegan? Of course, this is not just about birds. When I look through the tear, I see a reality that does not care what I expect or assume. Its ugliness hurts and offends me and its shimmering beauty scares me because I am afraid it will be lost. I want to look away.

But my life is here, in this world, and I want to be in my life. So I have not removed the nest, a place where possibility and loss overlapped. I am lingering at the tear. I am looking through it into a big, deep, dark, bright, ugly, beautiful, pulsing, true world. And with disappointment, or trepidation, or on my knees in trembling or in gratitude, holding tenderness and violence and everything in between, I say, “yes.”

Infinite Love By Lisa Palchick

“Infinity is as far as your imagination stretches, and then some.”

~~Iain Cameron Williams

When my budding scientist brother and I played make-believe together, we got very intrigued with the concept of infinity. What does infinity mean anyway, a number that we couldn’t count? We thought of stars, it awed us. We teased each other back and forth on the subject. Tim had an infinity for something I wanted. An infinity for toy black panthers, for example, when previously we fought over having one. That strange sideways 8, so mysterious and so frustrating when he won the game with infinity Monopoly houses, infinity puppies, infinity everything.

I still think about the concept, so mysterious, so connected to the Divine. I found this definition, “The word infinity comes from the Latin word ‘infinitas’ which means endless or unboundless. It signifies that life is not just a one-time journey. But rather it’s a series of cycles, reincarnations, and spiritual evolutions. It’s also akin to nature’s endless rhythms.”

This concept connects transcendence, life, death and rebirth to infinity, divine mystery. At death we merge into the vast consciousness of the Divine, continuing the vast unknowable boundlessness of God.

I can hear my brother now, playing Monopoly, “but Lisa I just bought the Grand Hotel, I win! It has an infinite number of guests!” And then, “but Tim, if the hotel has an infinite number of guests, then the owner can add a huge owner’s suite for me and then I own it. I win!” This goes on and on until the end of time. It turns out this is Hilbert’s infinity paradox, exploring the boundaries of infinity, but we were getting way beyond our understanding. Tim probably knows these things now.

What I know is this, I love my brother. I love recalling memories of our conversations when we were just little curious children. We touched on profound mysteries of the universe. We played make-believe about the unbelievable nature of the universe. We laughed and danced in the deep pools of infinite love and through the grace of God; we flourished.

Now I am almost eighty, Tim 78, we talk of our grandchildren. I try to fathom the concept of the infinite, but all I know is human love is wrapped in divine love, a love that transcends the boundaries of time and is everlasting.

Now that should even trump the Grand Hotel.

To Be Illumined by Christine Hiester

Only in our doing can we grasp you.
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
it thinks us out of our world.
~Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. Macy and Barrows)
 

Once every quarter I practice retreat in a Hocking Hills tiny house surrounded by trees. I write, sit by the fire, walk, birdwatch, sketch, read, eat when I’m hungry and sleep when I’m tired. I settle into the rhythm of the day, listen to the rhythms of my body, and with each successive retreat, follow the seasons of the year. In October of 2024, it rained nearly nonstop. In January of 2025, the temperature barely cleared 0 degrees. In April, it “snowed” cottonwood fluff for the entire three days, collecting in clumps around my feet.

When I began this practice two years ago, I knew I needed the silence and the regular time away, but I did not realize how much I needed perspective and the grounding that being intentionally present to the turning of the earth– and my part in it– could offer. I didn’t realize how my mind, especially in this season of instability and global disconnectedness and fear, was “thinking me out of our world.”

To be illumined is not to cognitively understand; it is to open to the Light so that we can see– and be seen– rightly. Gaining knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to deep knowing; sometimes it just serves to obscure what is most true. So I’ve been asking myself, how do I yield to the Spirit in daily life? What helps me gain perspective and illumine the stirring of God that is happening just beneath the surface of things? How do I truly and authentically live in the world, and not just visit it? 

I don’t believe any of us has the answer– I definitely don’t– but being seasonally with the trees and the quiet makes it possible for me to hold the tension of the question with more grace and purpose. To recognize all beings as sacred, to recognize in myself the turning of the world, and do my part in the work of illumination, right where I am.