Dear Friends,

We hope that many of you will be with us this Sunday to meet and share with a guest from the University of Utah. Christina Gringari, an Associate Professor at the University, is doing research on the Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement.

She’s eager to experience one of the communities where a womanpriest ministers….. and I told her “have we got a community for you!” This is the Sunday for our monthly Spiritual Discussion following liturgy, and we’ll be continuing to explore and share with one another our personal experiences of God. Our previous discussions: “Why am I Catholic?” led to “Images of God” which had led us to this week’s theme: “Where I Meet God.” We hope you can be with us!

The reading below speaks to God in our midst today, not contained in buildings, but in the temple of our hearts. We invite you to pray with these words which will serve as one of our readings this Sunday.

What's In The Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They've been frightened--sat on 'till the spirit cried "uncle."
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can't name.
They know he's out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can't talk about God and make any sense,
And I can't not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don't build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can't be contained.
Or maybe it can't be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It's the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

~ Tom Barrett ~

One of the endeavors we are presently engaged in, which we hope will “bear fruit” is the nation-wide effort in support of women religious taking shape as prayer vigils across the county. Here in Boston, we will be gathering in prayer on Tuesday evenings throughout the month of May at 5:30PM in front of Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 1400 Washington St., Boston. We invite you to join us for this time of prayer together. We had a wonderful presence last Tuesday, even in the rain, and we hope that you will join us on any Tuesday that your schedule allows. These actions are meant to offer prayerful public support for Women Religious who educated many of us and serve as profound models of social justice for all.

At The Spirit of Life, through our time of prayer and sharing together, we work together to grow in our self-understanding and in our relationships with God and with God’s people. We celebrate the gift of our faith and the responsibility that is ours as followers of Jesus Christ. It is our prayer that what we as a community experience in our praying together will overflow into the rest of our lives, making us more fully human and more ‘whole’….holy! We invite you to join us in this endeavor and journey with us as we seek to grow in our love of God and to grow in our capacity to be living expressions of God’s loving peace and justice in our world.

May you deepen your capacity for love and may it bear fruit in your life…and for all the ways in which you give birth in our world…we thank you!

Jean & Ron