Dear Friends,

As we build the Beloved Community, we pray for you every day that you might continue to bring it about in your little corner of the world.

Today's Meditation is a reflection by Joan Chittister on Benedict and a new way of seeing and Kateri Tekakwitha and May Sarton and Rembrandt and Mary McLeod Bethune and the poem Living in the Body.

We invite you to join us as we commit

ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.

In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.

We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!

With our love and care,

Ron and Jean

MEDITATION: Joan Chittister: Benedict and a new way of seeing and Kateri Tekakwitha and May Sarton and Rembrandt and the Poem: Living in the Body

This story from the life of Saint Benedict is about a special kind of seeing.

On July 11, we celebrate the feast of St. Benedict of Nursia.

To see the vision, too

Of all the stories told about Benedict, this one may be the most impacting of all on our own lives. Most of us will never work miracles or found monasteries or humble invaders, that’s for sure. But one thing we can all learn to do is to see. This story is about a special kind of seeing.

Benedict left the company of a neighboring abbot after an evening’s conversation about the spiritual life. The period predates both universities and books, remember, let alone televisions and computers. Personal conversation was the key to learning then–a factor that may well explain the popularity of gurus and spiritual masters in that culture. At any rate, people came in droves to talk to Benedict about their spiritual questions, the great no less than the simple.

On that particular night, it is the Abbot Severanus, a deeply prayerful person himself, with whom Benedict had been talking. But then, retiring to his own room, alone and filled with ideas on the spiritual life, Benedict suddenly began to see what he had never seen before: the sky filled with light “more brilliant than the sun, and with it every trace of darkness cleared away.” Then, according to the Dialogues, Benedict “saw the whole world as in a single ray of light.” More than that, while he watched, Benedict saw the soul of his friend Abbot Germanus taken into heaven. Astounded by the sight and intent on testing his own perceptions, Benedict called on Abbot Severanus, a solid and dependable person, to look at the sky and sent a monk to inquire about Germanus as well. The confirmation was clear: Severanus too saw the vision and Germanus, he learned, had indeed died at the very time. Benedict had developed sight and insight. Benedict had begun to see things differently.

Here’s the real beauty of the story: Severanus saw the vision too. It wasn’t a spiritual trick of Benedict’s; it was the natural byproduct of the spiritual life. It’s what we take into a thing that we get out of it, in other words.

At first it seems to be a contradiction: at the very time that Benedict saw the whole world in one glance, he saw only one person in it. But once we begin to look at the world as God looks at the world, that’s exactly what happens. We see every person in it as unique, precious, all-absorbing. People cease to be numbers and stereotypes. They become individuals to us. Every one of them is on their twisted, limping way to God.

—from The Radical Christian Life (Liturgical Press), by Joan Chittister

What's New: July 10, 2023

Essay on Joan Chittister's WisdomA new blog post on Patheos reflects on the author's encounters with Joan Chittister's lectures and writings and their impact on him. Vance Morgan writes, "Joan Chittister was the writer who helped me see the miracle of incarnation in a new way, a new understanding that revitalized my Christian faith." Click here to read the full essay.

Internship at Mount Saint BenedictThe Benedictine Sisters of Erie are excited to announce a new residential internship program for young women ages 22-35 interested in seeking meaningful work immersed in a community committed to peace and justice. Internships are offered in a variety of areas (Care for the Earth, Monastic Spirituality, Social Outreach, Development/Communications), include room and board at the monastery and a monthly stipend, and have a flexible time range (3-6 months). If you, or someone you know, is interested, click here for more information.

If you are interested in the Joan Chittister Writer in Residence program, which is a one month stay at Mount Saint Benedict focused on a specific writing project related to the works of Joan Chittister, click here.

Gathering at Monasteries of the HeartMonasteries of the Heart, the online monastic community founded and animated by Joan Chittister, recently underwent its first-ever re-design. The new face of the site was rolled out at the beginning of June, and tomorrow—in honor of the Feast of Saint Benedict—there will be the first-ever All Members Gathering. Hosted for free via Zoom, open to all members—new and old—of Monasteries of the Heart, we will come together as a community to connect and deepen in our commitments to cultivating our monasteries of the heart. Make an account here, if you don’t have one already, and register for the Zoom gathering here.

SOUL POINTSJuly 10: Mary McLeod Bethune, the educator and advocate for equality, was born on this date in 1875. The daughter of parents who had been enslaved, McLeod Bethune was the only child in her family who was able to attend school, and had to walk five miles each way to get to class each day. She went on to spend her life working for education and civil rights for African Americans, especially women and girls. She established schools and hospitals for Black people, and became a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, and served on President Franklin Roosevelt’s Federal Council of Negro Affairs. An excerpt from her “Last Will and Testament,” written some years before her death, says, “I leave you to love. I leave you to hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously. I leave you a responsibility to our young people.”

July 14: Today is the feast of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint. Born in a Mohawk village in what is now New York State, her parents and brother died of smallpox, and she was adopted by her father’s sister and her husband. When she was ten years old, her village was burned by the French, and the Mohawks signed a peace treaty which demanded that they would tolerate the presence of Jesuits in their vicinity. By the time she was in her late teens, Tekakwitha made it clear that she would refuse her family’s efforts to arrange a marriage for her. She became interested in Christianity and was baptized at the age of nineteen. Her health was always poor, and she died when she was twenty-four years old. She is the patron saint of the environment and ecology.

July 15: “The artist Rembrandt was born on this day in 1606. When the soul is heavy and the work seems futile, a visit to an art museum—where art and beauty run rampant and meetings, proposals, finances and debates have no place—revives the heart and makes it soft. Then going on seems possible; then life has vision again; then going on seems necessary.”

—from A Monastery Almanac, by Joan Chittister

July 16: “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be,” wrote May Sarton, the Belgian-American poet and novelist who died on this date in 1995. A writer all her life, with works that touched on the themes of love, solitude, nature, and spirituality, Sarton suffered a debilitating stroke five years before her death, but continued to write by dictating her thoughts into a tape recorder.

LET'S DO JUSTICEThe war in Ukraine is continuing to escalate, with the Biden administration offering cluster munitions to the Ukrainian military. Cluster munitions are particularly harmful to civilians, and more than 100 countries have banned their use. Click here to contact your congressional representative and ask them to oppose this decision and look for other responses to the brutality of war.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Living in the Body

Body is something you need in order to stay

on this planet and you only get one.

And no matter which one you get, it will not

be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful

enough, it will not be fast enough, it will

not keep on for days at a time, but will

pull you down into a sleepy swamp and

demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry

from one day into the next. Always the

same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same

skin when you look in the mirror, and the

same creaky knee when you get up from the

floor and the same wrist under the watchband.

The changes you can make are small and

costly—better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave

eventually. You know that because you have

seen others do it, others who were once like you,

living inside their pile of bones and

flesh, smiling at you, loving you,

leaning in the doorway, talking to you

for hours and then one day they

are gone. No forwarding address.

—Joyce Sutphen

Compiled by Jacqueline Sanchez-Small, Anne McCarthy, and Benetvision Staff

Upcoming Events

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi vel congue libero. Aenean non mattis lacus. Phasellus porta nulla sit amet ipsum blandit porttitor. Sed eget ipsum a est hendrerit tempor ut nec augue. Ut venenatis ornare vehicula. Sed vehicula euismod nulla eu scelerisque. Aenean ut mauris nec nulla maximus posuere. Aliquam pulvinar gravida odio nec fringilla. Sed sed diam iaculis quam dapibus commodo. Nulla tempor sapien at urna placerat, quis luctus tortor condimentum. In pellentesque urna sed libero scelerisque ornare. Proin feugiat ultricies augue sed tristique.