Sr Kym Harris – Page 7 – Benedictine Monastery

July 24, 2020July 24, 2020

Whatever you do, keep holding hands.

One of the most poignant effects of mobile phones is what happens when people get caught in disasters. Facing their death, they ring their loved ones to tell them how much they love them. Like most of us, they probably went through life taking the next day for granted and in that mindset would have had all the usual discussions and disagreements with the ones they love. Now with only a few moments left they want to convey all the preciousness of their love. No-one ever rings to have the last word in an argument.

This experience raises the question: how are we to go through life, expressing our love, yet still having all the problems that normal relationships entail. I heard of a practice of Marriage Encounter. At one stage in that programme, the couple were to sit holding hands and then they could say whatever they wanted or needed to say to each other – so long as they kept holding hands. The holding of hands expressed a love deeper than any pain or hurt that may have been expressed. In our life together, we need small rituals like this to convey to each other that our love transcends any ‘problems’ that arise between us. So if we never get the chance to make that final call, our love still would have been expressed.

We need that too in our relationship with God. At times we do not like what God is doing in our lives, and we need to be frank about how we feel, so long as we keep holding hands with God. No matter what we say or do, we can be assured God will never drop our hands.

Loving God you want us to love like you.. Send us your Spirit to strengthen our love so that whatever difficulties we face we may continue ‘to hold hands’ with each other in love. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 24, 2020

Being like God.

Over the past months we have seen very different sides to our character as a nation. We have been inspired by the extraordinary generosity towards those who have suffered natural disasters. As a nation we were united in our care. On the other hand how different are the feelings concerning the grieving asylum seekers. While their sorrow is recognised, our leaders don’t know how to act. Where should the funerals be? Who should pay? Who should be allowed to stay?….and how will the voters react? The situation is difficult, confusing and confronting.

While we each will have little influence, except at voting time, on that situation, it does provide us with a lesson for our own lives. Helping people we get along with is relatively easy. For good family and neighbours, we will do almost anything. But when we have to deal with people we don’t understand, people different from us, people tricky, demanding or unpleasant, we become confused and don’t know what to do. We can try to ignore them or blame them for their situation – anything but face the challenge Jesus gives us. He calls us to be like God and act in a loving manner towards them even if they don’t deserve it. This is a big ask, usually expressed in small actions: saying hello to the grumpy neighbour, helping out the selfish relative, welcoming the new people in the street who are different to us. Even if our good actions bring about no change we will have grown into our calling to be daughters and sons of our loving God.

Heavenly Father, you call us to love like you even when we find it difficult. Give us the wisdom of your Spirit that we may love as Jesus loves and show your love to our family and community. We ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will here us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 24, 2020

Things I love about you!

This week we celebrated Valentine’s Day, which was also my parents’ wedding anniversary. They were married 50 years before Mum was widowed. I say it that way because she misses Dad very much, everyday. He is part of who she is. Both were strong personalities and they had an ‘interesting marriage’. Amongst the things they loved, they loved free and frank conversations – especially with each other, and often to the angst of us children. But that was their way of doing marriage and they loved it. The pretty pictures used to symbolise Valentine’s Day just don’t ring true with Mum and Dad’s relationship – it was far more real than those pictures. Being real, it was also messy, but in the midst of the messiness they knew there were things they loved and admired about each other and they let each other know what they were. I think that was part of their success, recognising and conveying what they loved in the other.

What is successful in marriage can also be successful in our relationship with God. Instead of just drifting in that relationship, each of us can consider what it is we love about God. We each have special things. And we can ask ourselves what it is that God loves about us. God had a unique glorious vision in mind when we were each created. Ask God what it is that is delightful about you.

Loving God, you created us in love and we are made to love. Send us your Spirit to guide our minds and hearts that we may discover and delight in what you have made in us. We ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 24, 2020July 24, 2020

Be Prepared

So Cyclone Yasi has passed with few fatalities and no serious injury but with enough destruction to let us know how lucky we were…but was it luck or good management. Perhaps both but certainly plenty of the latter. When we see seriously ill patients lined up in an orderly manner in Cairns airport, hear of hundreds of southern SES workers flying in to relieve their northern counterparts, even hear that the wheelie bins can go out in Cairns two days after the cyclone passed, we know that a lot of thought and planning has taken place. One of my brothers, a manager in a major utility, tells me they have long tedious meetings where responses to different crises are explored. How grateful we should be for that largely unknown, unsung public service.

In our daily life, we can learn from this response. So often in the Gospel, Jesus calls on us to consider the direction of our lives and the consequences of the decisions we make. God does not want us to drift through life without assessing the quality of our actions. It is no good waiting for the crisis to decide how you will respond. How we chose to live and love in ordinary circumstances will show when the crisis comes. Let us take some time this week to consider the direction of our lives, and ask God what we can do to live more fully and to love each other more dearly.

Loving God, we ask you to be close to all who have been affected by recent disasters. May your Spirit give them strength and courage and may we all be guided to live and love like Jesus our brother. We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us.

July 24, 2020

Where is God in all this?

Across our country this month we have experienced devastating disasters – flood and fire. In the anguished grief that has engulfed our community we can well ask : Why is such suffering allowed? Where is God? To the first question I do not know the answer but the answer to the second is: God is with us. God is not some super being that takes away our pain and makes everything all right. Rather in the person of Jesus we see God coming close. Jesus lived our life, suffered our sufferings, died our death so that we may share the divine life. God shares our passion.

In Jordan Rice, of Toowoomba, who sacrificed his chance of survival that his brother might live, God is with us. In the passing rescuers who risked their lives to try to save his family, God is with us. In the police swift rescue teams who saved people foolishly playing in raging waters, God is with us. In the pharmacist at Emerald who chose to fill scripts so people had their medicines rather than work to save her house, God is with us. In the police and army personnel who sift through the houses at Grantham that all bodies may be treated with respect, God is with us. In the numerous volunteers who help with the clean up, God is with us. In our leaders, who have risen to the occasion, God is with us. Whenever we see people, move out of their self-centred concerns and care for others, we see God in our midst.

I write this in the Rockhampton region. I have been amazed at how smoothly this disaster has been managed and would like to honour the public servants and civil authorities who have drawn up the Disaster Management Plans that allowed our leaders and present authorities to respond so quickly. I think especially of the engineer (sadly unnamed) who decided to rebuild the Alligator Creek bridge, north of Rockhampton, 20 centimetres higher after the 1991 flood. Because of his foresight, our region, which has 100,000 people, always had food, fuel and medicines during this crisis. In that type of care, good ordinary work by ordinary people, God is with us.

Loving God our hearts, minds and even our bodies have been bruised by the disasters that have hit our country yet we have been inspired by the generosity and goodness of so many. Send us your Spirit that we may continue to live and love generously. We ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear us

Sr Kym Harris osb

July 23, 2020

Are you the one?

A woman was searching for a birthday card for her husband. She saw one that read. “Darling, you’re the answer to my prayers.” Thinking this might just be the right one she opened it and read, “You’re not what I prayed for exactly, but apparently you’re the answer.” How true to life. We may pray for certain things and yet what we get may be quite different. Is that any different from our experience of parenting? We know in rearing our children that what they what and what they need are often two different things and that giving them what they want can sometimes be disastrous.

The Jewish people, John the Baptist included, expected a very different Messiah from the one they got. Some wanted a fierce warrior king who would expel the Romans and rule the people righteously with a strong hand. Others, John included, wanted a fierce judge who would smack everyone into line. All wanted the healing and liberation that Isaiah described. But nobody, nobody expected Jesus. He looked fairly, well, ordinary. He did not force people to follow him rather he lured them, he spoke to their hearts. What he wanted was not conformity to his rules but conversion to his way of loving. He calls, lures us today in the circumstances of life but don’t expect it to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’ rather he calls us into the fullness of life, and sometimes that takes a challenging path.

Loving Father, your desire is for us to come to fullness of life. Give us the wisdom of your Spirit to embrace all circumstances trusting that Jesus our brother is there helping us. We ask this in his name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris,

July 23, 2020

The Gift of Difficult People

St John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, was a difficult person. He just didn’t fit it. Just as well he went off into the desert to live. But people were still drawn to him because he ‘told it to them straight’. The dregs of society loved him and were transformed. The leaders and religious people rejected him. Eventually he was murdered for doing what a prophet does best: challenging people into the ways of God.

Most of us do not have prophets on hand to challenge us into Gods ways but we have difficult people, or people who dearly love who can sometimes be difficult. Our natural response to difficult situations is ‘fight or flight’, to submit or to be aggressive. But God’s creative love wants more from us than either of those. These are the moments of grace whereby we are being called into being bigger people. This does not mean it will be easy. These ‘moments’ can last a long time and can take an awful toll on us. When we are in such situations we need to enter into ourselves and in our hearts ask for God’s guidance. We need to listen, to think, to take advice and then bring the wisdom of God’s strong love into our lives.

Loving God, you not only console u,s you also challenge us. Give us the wisdom of your Spirit that in the difficult situations of life we may love like Jesus, our brother. We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us. Sr Kym Harris

July 23, 2020

The Opportunity of Change

Things change and now, with the end of the year, we have one of the regular changes of life. Some children, and even some teachers, will be changing schools, others changing levels. There are all sorts of reactions to change: from excitement at the new to fear of the unknown. For our children, change is the stuff of life.

But what about us adults? What can it mean to us? The newly beatified Englishman, John Henry Newman, said “To grow is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often”. Some people want change for the sake of change, others don’t want any at any cost yet change offers us possibility: we can become better people, or we can become worse. We can be open to life or we can close down on life. God’s desire for us is to fully alive, according to the style of our unique personality. When a change comes upon us, instead of just going with the flow, or reacting against it, we can stop and ask ourselves, how can I become more full of life in this new situation. Pray for God’s spirit to guide your imagination to see the different scenarios and when you choose your response, let the Spirit be the wind beneath your wings.

Loving Father, give us the wisdom, joy and creativity of your Spirit as when encounter the changes of life. With Jesus our brother, at our side, may we face all situations confident in your love. We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris,

July 23, 2020

Authority Issues.

Authority issues! We all have them and a lot of them come to the fore when we begin to parent. Even before the first ‘No!’ of the first child, we are confronted with the enormous challenge of how to be an authority to our precious children. This coming Sunday we celebrate the feast of Christ the King, which is a celebration of Christ’s authority. The way Jesus exercised authority is a good lesson in parenting.

Firstly, he is God-with-us. He came down very close to us. He was not a distant authority but one who has lived in our flesh and known our experience. ‘Being there’ is the first skill of parenting. Time is the most important gift we can give and it should be given generously. But sometimes it can’t. Work, illness, separation are not excuses for not being there but challenges to find other creative ways. Letters, cards, phone calls can make us present when physical presence is not possible.

Secondly, Jesus sets clear principles on behaviour. We all know the ‘Golden Rule’, that we should be compassionate, forgiving etc. Jesus does not love us and let us do what we like. We need to love like Jesus, setting clear principles that will allow our children to grow into their best selves with behaviour that makes them fully human, fully alive.

Thirdly, he sets the example. What behaviour Jesus wants us to do, he himself did first. You example is your strongest parenting.

Finally, Jesus loves us no matter what we do. He may not like or approve of our actions but still he loves. So it is with our children. We love not for what they can give us or do back for us, we love because we are created in God’s image…as they are, too.

Loving God, you author us into life. Send us your Spirit that, in following Jesus’ example, we may give loving authority to our children. We ask this in Jesus’ name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris

July 23, 2020

Remembrance and Ritual

Last week, we celebrated the Melbourne Cup. This week we have Remembrance Day. On both these days we have rituals that help us enter into the meaning of these events. Having lived in Melbourne for 18 years I can say that the Melbourne Cup is more than a horse race. It is one of the times that the serious city of Melbourne breaks out into exhilarating frivolity. Later this week we will honour our war dead by the solemn ritual of a minute’s silence. Only silence can hold together honour for the dead and the conviction that we must work for peace in their name.

Rituals are very important in helping us express and understand the movements of our heart. Our heads want stimulation but our hearts grow deeper through repetition. Routine signs of love can actually deepen our relationships if we do them attentively. As something is done over and over, the memory adds layer upon layer of significance. Our children delight in family rituals as they tell them who they are as a family. Many of your children will now be looking towards the things “we” do at Christmas.

For Catholics, ritual prayer is very important. God is so great and mysterious that we can only go deeper into our hearts little by little. Regular prayer helps us in our relationship with God. Ritual prayers, like night prayer, with your children are a wonderful way for you to help them grow in God’s love. Ritual prayer in our schools is central to our Catholic identity. But the greatest ritual of all is the Eucharist – the outstanding prayer where Jesus is present in our midst.

Loving Father, our hearts are so mysterious because they are made in your image. Send us your Spirit to appreciate the place of routine in our relationship with you and with each other. May Jesus our brother lead us into the ways of love. We ask this confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris