Attenshun!!!

Attenshun!!!

Attention is one of the most important gifts we can give in a relationship.  Work, presents, even time, can be of little value unless we give our attention to another.  When we give it well, we give of ourselves.  But why don’t we recognise its importance?  

Did you notice that the title beginning this piece is spelt incorrectly?  Of course you did!  We seem to have an  inbuilt radar for noticing when other people do things wrong.  We then pick them up on it – even if we don’t say anything. Our attention exudes criticism not love.  But imagine if we used that attentiveness positively.  Maybe ‘Johnnie’ is playing up and you notice he does this just after his father has returned to a mine shift – then you can take steps to deal with his need.  Or Susie is ‘out of sorts’ because she has probably picked up on grandmother’s serious illness – which no-one is telling her about. Or your spouse or partner gets cranky regularly – is that when they are tired?  All these are little things but they are the small attentivenesses that transform a relationship.

In the Gospel Jesus tells a strange parable about a master returning from a trip.  His steward has been waiting, not knowing when he would return but attentive all the same.  When the master returns he is so impressed at how ready everything is, he takes over and serves the steward.  Would this happen?  Of course not.  But by using such an absurd example, Jesus shows how much value God puts on attentiveness.  God wants us to notice the good things in our lives and thank him.  When we do this, our eyes are opened even more the love of God in which we live and move and have our being.

Loving God, open our eyes to your Spirit at work in the people around us – the love of our families, the kindness of friends, the politeness of shop assistants.  In turn, may we be attentive to them, showing your love.  We ask this is Jesus’ name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

What makes life wonderful.

What makes life wonderful.

I recently spent a week with my brother who lives on the Greek Island of Lesvos.  Beautiful – its views would rival the Capricorn Coast’s. Peaceful  –  nothing like the images of violence coming from Athens. Safe – Lesvos is extra-ordinary, there is hardly any theft, the people are gentle but direct, divorce is unknown and personal debt is non-existent.  Overall there is real contentment in people’s lives.  These people have known poverty, in the not too distant past, but now, with some tourist trade, they have enough to be comfortable.  They work well but not so hard as to disrupt their family and community life.  They have time for each other.  In the daily routine, one sees that the men and women have time to chat with each other.  They are not chasing even more money or trying to be wealthier than their neighbours.  They know when to say “We have enough things, building community is more important.”

Jesus warns us against letting our hearts be blinded by material possessions. It is so easy to get hypnotised by the ‘desire media’ who tell us our happiness lies in more and better things while we know in our hearts that it lies in love for our family and friends, for our community and our God.  Consider your own life and ensure that you have time, on a regular basis, to just enjoy the company of the people you love.   

Loving God, you desired to be with us so much that you sent your Son to be with us in the person of Jesus.  Give us your Spirit so that we may know how to treasure our time with you and with each other. We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris

Feisty Prayer

When we think someone praying, the image that often comes to mind is of someone quietly communing with God.  Funny, Jesus does not use such an image.  Rather he says we should be like a belligerent annoying neighbour, or a feisty persistent widow.  If he lived today, he could possibly tell us to be like a toddler in the supermarket who wants the chocolate biscuits he saw in aisle 3.  Nothing is going to put that child off: he is persistence personified. In his behaviour, we see the other attitude we should bring to prayer.  That annoying child looks to his mother as the one to give him what he wants/needs. Even if he doesn’t get those biscuits, even if he is thwarted, the child still trusts his parent.

Next time you have one of your children coming to you and annoying you for something, ask yourself: “What would it be like if I prayed like that? What would I be prepared to pray for in that way?”  You would find that such prayer, in an adult, would come from the depths of your being.  No sweet polite manners, no gentle words beating about the bush, rather you would move right in close, trusting God’s love enough to really pour out your needs and your wants.  You would open your heart to God.

Loving God, send us your Spirit that we might pray like Jesus.  May we be as trustful and as persistent as children.  May we truly open our lives and our hearts to you and to your love.  We ask this is Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb

Wisdom to Care.

Wisdom to Care.

When Jesus came to visit the home of Mary and Martha, he was greeted by two loving friends in two very different ways.  Martha impressively bustled about.  She welcomed Jesus, cleaned and cooked for him.  Mary, also welcomed him, but sat at his feet listening to his words. Jesus, tired from the challenges of his preaching life, appreciated them both and both loved him. But Martha couldn’t let Mary be, she wanted Mary to be up and about like her, showing her love by her actions. Jesus, though, was so pleased to have Mary just listening to him with her heart.

Like people everywhere in every time we can be caught up in too much busyness thinking, like Martha, that what we do is all important.  We can show love by cooking meals, washing the clothes, turning up for work, paying bills.  But it is also important to take time to listen to each other’s hearts, just to be gently present with each other. 

Try to take some time each day, listening to the heart of another – one of your family or friends – or to the heart of God.  As you listen you will find your own heart opening to even deeper love and care. Listening quietly in such a way will make you wiser in your relationships.

Loving Father, your love  watches over us at all times..  Send us your Spirit that we can learn the ways of being gently present to the hearts of those whom we love.  We ask this in the name of Jesus, our brother and friend, confident that you will hear us. 

Sr Kym Harris osb

Strange Relatives

St John the Baptist

Strange Relatives

Jesus had some strange relatives, or rather at least one of whom we know: his cousin, St John the Baptist.  John was the only child of parents so elderly that his birth was regarded as a miracle. He must have been quite a handful.  He went bush quite early, lived off the land in the desert and was fiercely religious.  But that didn’t stop the people, high and low, flocking to hear him.  He challenged them all. The despised – the prostitutes, the tax collectors (who were little more than legalised thieves) and the  occupying soldiers – had their lives transformed by his preaching.  But the influential people in society, religious and political, were too proud to listen with their hearts and ridiculed him.  The king, when challenged for immorality, killed him. Living on the edge of society, John called things as they were.  He was the one who recognised his ordinary looking cousin Jesus, as the Messiah. 

We all have strange relatives, friends or acquaintances. Often we just dismiss their views on life because of their strangeness yet they still have something to teach us, even if we don’t agree with them.  They give us a different perspective on life, challenging our easy assumptions. Even if we disagree with them working through why we disagree enriches us.  So long as we are open and listen, God can teach us through them.  Consider one of your strange relatives and ask yourself what can you learn from that person.

Loving God, you have made us all in your image and likeness and reveal some part of yourself in every person.  Guided by Jesus and your Spirit, make me open to those people I would reject because of their strangeness.  I ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear me.

Heart speaks to heart

Heart speaks to heart

“What do you want?” – these are the first words of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  And the people who he asked were flustered when the question was put to them – just as most of us would have been.  Constantly we are being told by the media, by family and friends, what we should need or what we should want.  And more often than not, those things are not what we want.  Pressured, quite often in a nice way, to agree we feel as though something is missing from our lives, as though we are a little lost, as though we are running on empty.

“What do you want?” is an important question that we should ponder.  We need to make space in our heads and hearts and let this question sit there and echo for a while.  We need to listen long enough to find out what we hunger for.  Our hunger can tell us what is important.  Nearly always what we truly want deep down is love, or courage, or security or peace or passion or some other quality of the heart.  And all those Jesus offers to us.  Uniquely.  What I want in the way of passion or love will be just that little bit different to what you want.  In listening to the need of my heart and opening it to Jesus, I will desire what it truly is that I want and what I was created for.

Loving God, our hearts are restless until they rest in you.  Send your Spirit into my heart that I may truly know, embrace and celebrate the unique way you have made me in your image.  With Jesus as guide may I embrace your love.  I ask this in his name, confident that you will hear me.

Sr Kym Harris osb

Food for our hunger.

Food for our hunger.

We know so much about healthy eating and yet our society is plagued by the results of unhealthy eating: obesity, anorexia and excessive emphasis on body image.  Let’s just consider the issue of body image.  People will chose what they eat not according to whether they want or need it but because of how some one else will judge their body at a latter date. This is crazy, but it is also common.  Recent studies have shown that people who eat slowly and take time to enjoy what they eat are less likely to be obese.  In other words they focus on what they want and need and enjoy that.  They do not mindlessly eat food they particularly don’t want or need.  A good way to balance our eating habits is to ask “Do I really want or need this?” and if the answer is “Yes” to take the time to enjoy it.

Jesus used food as a sign of our relationship with him.  Deep down we hunger for God’s love, yet we pursue experiences and things that we neither want nor need, things that make us unhappy.  Jesus so desires to fulfil our true needs and wants that he even offers himself in the Eucharist, his Body and Blood given under the form of Bread and Wine. We need to often stop and ask ourselves about the things we do, “Will this fulfil the deep hunger in my heart?”

Loving Father, you give us bread from heaven – your own Son Jesus.  Give us the wisdom of the Spirit to open ourselves to him and fulfil the hunger of our hearts.  We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us.

All for One and One for All

All for One and One for All

If you wanted to know what God is like, you couldn’t find a better summary than the motto of the Three Musketeers:  All for One and One for All.  What is distinctive about the God we Christians worship is that our God is a community.  God is not a solitary divine person, ‘goding’ it over all creation, solemnly saying to us “I have made you so now you have to do what I want”.  No, our God is very different from that. Our God is three persons who we usually name Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are so passionately in love with each other, enjoying each other so much, that their love and delight spins out into creation.  Creation is not some blobby thing in which we exist but rather God’s playground where we are called to share in God’s delight and love.

Love is so much of the nature of God that it defines us as well.  We are made to live in love with each other.  Much of the suffering and pain in our world comes from our failure to love.  God knows this and didn’t just wipe them away.  Rather he sent his Son to live in our midst, suffering our pain, dying our death, and transformed all these – living, suffering and dying – into ways of understanding the immensity of God’s Love.  This is all beyond our understanding but we are going to have all eternity to enjoy it.  

Holy God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we do not understand you yet we want to join in your dance of love.  Loosen us up and free us of our inhibitions that we may enjoy the glory of being your creation.  We ask this in Jesus’ name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb.

People of Spirit

People of Spirit

Nelson Mandela, Jessica Watson and Kieran Perkins, all inspire us, not only because of their extraordinary talents, but also because of the way they faced their liabilities, difficulties and failures.  There is a spirit within such people that transforms challenging situations into something positive, something within them that makes every post a winner. Personally, I am even more inspired by the people who deal with their addictions to alcohol, drugs or gambling.  Each day, every day, they have to humbly face the crack that runs across their heart just to maintain normalcy.  We do not see how heroic their lives are when they are successful, because they seem so….well, normal.

We are inspired by these people because we too want to be people of spirit. No matter how ordinary we are, something in our hearts desires greatness.  And this is what God wants for us too.  We weren’t created in God’s image and likeness just to be ordinary.  We are to be works of divine art. For most us, this art lies within our family relationships.  These long term relationships can humble us but they can also be our glory. To love and to be loved, deeply and humbly, is the greatest human achievement: it is the work of God in our lives.  Each day, every day, God’s Spirit comes to us offering grace, divine help,  so that we can love as God loves.

Loving God, help us to live our lives in your love.  Filled with your Spirit, we can show the face of Jesus to all who we love, and from them we can receive his love.  We ask this in his name, confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb.

Growing up to Salvation.

Growing up to Salvation.

Ask most parents what is one of the greatest challenges in parenting and they will answer: “Letting them go”.  When your children, leave home, marry, make their own lives, your role as a parent does not come to an end but it does come to its fulfilment.  We do not have children to have them stay as children. We have them to become adults and leave. That can be tough.  Having spent so many years trying to instil in them values to live by, you worry about how they will live them out.  But they will never truly live those values until they do it for themselves.

After his Resurrection, Jesus showed himself to the disciples and then left them.  He ascended into heaven. Wouldn’t the logical thing have been for him to stay around and keep the disciples, and us, on the right track?  No, because he didn’t want us to be childish in our faith but to own it and live it for ourselves.  God wants us to own the life of Jesus, but to express it in our lives according to our own unique personalities.  As followers of Jesus, we are not clones of him. Of course we need guidance.  Instead of Jesus being physically present among us we, have the Holy Spirit to guide us in our lives.  In our lives, especially in times of chaos, we can turn within to hear the still small voice of the Spirit guiding us into the ways of God.

Loving God, you want us to grow up to salvation.  May your Spirit move over our lives, especially when we are fearful, overwhelmed or in pain.  May that Spirit remind us of the love of Jesus and guide us into his peace.  We ask this in his name confident that you will hear us.

Sr Kym Harris osb.