Sr. Thea Bowman was born in 1937 on December 29th. This was in Mississippi and her parents named her Bertha. She was the granddaughter of slaves; her parents were a doctor and a teacher. She was raised Methodist, but when she was nine years old, she converted to Roman Catholicism. At 15, she joined the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.
Over the years, she received a B.A., a M.A., and a PhD in English and then went on to teach. She also received an honorary doctorate in theology from Boston College. She was a poet, a preacher, and a teacher, and she used all of those embodiments to bring a light to her calling that couldn’t help but be infectious to her contemporaries and those of us who have come after and continue to read of her works.
“When we understand our history and culture, then we can develop the ritual, the music and the devotional expression that satisfy us in the Church.”
She said this and it illustrates her impact on the development of a particular worship dedicated to and for Black Catholics. She was invaluable in the 1987 publication of the Catholic Hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The Arican-American Catholic Hymnal.
Her “ministry of joy” led the Diocese of Mississippi to bring her on as a consultant for intercultural awareness. In reading up on Sr. Thea, I really preferred this descriptor of intercultural rather than multi-cultural. It feels more natural to me. A person who knew her called her “the springtime in everyone’s life,” a visual that leaps out in color and light and blue sky.
Imagine what more she could have done and influenced in the past twenty-nine years had she not died at the young age of 52, on today’s date in 1990 of bone cancer.
There are at least twelve institutions named for her from Boston in the east to as far west as Illinois.
The Diocese (of Mississippi) has begun the research into Sr. Thea’s “heroic virtues” after which a cause for canonization can be opened in Rome if warranted.
Two of her written works you could look into for more from Sr. Thea are:
Families, Black and Catholic, Catholic and Black. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference. Commission on Marriage and Family Life, 1985.
Thea Bowman: In My Own Words. Liguori, Mo.: Liguori Publications, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7648-1782-3. index of Bowman’s speeches, writings, and interviews, with a brief biographical sketch and epilogue (with Maurice J. Nutt)
I will leave you with her own words that spoke to me prayerfully earlier this week:
“Maybe I’m not making big changes in the world, but if I have somehow helped or encouraged somebody along the journey, then I’ve done what I’m called to do.
Click to visit an article on Pope Francis’ coat of arms and motto. He kept both coat of arms and motto from his time as Cardinal with the addition of papal symbols. MISERANDO ATQUE ELIGENDO translates to “he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him” from a writing of St. Bede. All Rights Reserved, Vatican and Pope Francis. (c)2019
Jorge Mario Bergolio was chosen as the 266th Pope after Pope Benedict XVI resigned his position of Pope in 2013. Jorge was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1936 to Mario and Maria Bergolio. He had four siblings: two brothers, and two sisters.
Cardinal Bergolio chose Francis as his papal name after St. Francis of Assisi, indicating his concern for and his commitment to the poor. His focus is towards the poor, and the church meeting its people where they are as well as encouraging mercy by and for Catholics worldwide.
Pope Francis is also a pope of many firsts: he is the first Pope who is a Jesuit; he is the first from the Americas as well as the first from the Southern Hemisphere. He is also the first pope from outside of Europe since the 8th century.
You can find Pope Francis on Twitter and on the Vatican website, where you can read all of his writings (as well as other Popes) and homilies. I’m currently in the middle of reading Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad; an Apostolic Exhortation on the call to holiness.) The website is a fascinating virtual pilgrimage of its own.
He was inaugurated as Pope in 2013, on March 19. That was nearly exactly one year since I had been visiting and praying at my church.
Giving up something is hard to choose, and giving up something for Lent can be a daunting task. Sometimes what I choose feels arbitrary and superficial. Some are good ideas, but not meaningful enough. Will giving it up bring me closer to G-d? Or just make me miserable for forty days? My feeling on giving something up is that it should be sacrificial – you should definitely notice that it’s absent. I won’t be giving up brussel sprouts or beets. I don’t eat them anyway. That would lack sincerity and significance. However, it should also not be something that is impossible to give up like driving or any number of things that you find indispensible.
I asked for help from my friends on Facebook, and I received some very good suggestions. In spite of their excellent responses, some of those very valid suggestions don’t (or won’t) work for me:
TV? Then I’d miss family time. We watch most things all together and enjoy that time. I’d be abandoning them for forty days.
Cable news? I don’t watch it 24/7 anymore, but I do need to keep informed, especially in this era of misinformation.
Internet? Besides keeping in touch with my family, it is essentially my livelihood.
Chocolate? Soda? Bread? Been there, done that. I’m not sure it holds the same meaning as the first time; at least not yet.
Caffeine? And go through withdrawal? Too physically taxing.
Ice cream? Maybe. My doctor would certainly like that.
Bacon? Hmm. Possible. Very possible.
I do always add a spiritual component to my forty days in the desert:
Prayer time.
Reflection.
Rosary.
Reading.
I already read two devotional books throughout the year on a daily basis: Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2019 by The Irish Jesuits and A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His journals. I’ll be adding two more: My parish gives out a small book, Not by Bread Alone 2019: Daily Reflections for Lent by Mary DeTurris Poust. This takes about five minutes to read each day and provides a reflection and a suggested meditation to reflect on. We’ve used this book for a number of years and it really is a good way to meet G-d everyday. The second book is Lenten Gospel Reflections by Bishop Robert Barron, which was given to my by the person who will be sponsoring me on my Cursillo journey (more on that in a later post). This one looks to be short readings also and it has space for notes or journaling.
Daily Lenten Reading, 2019. (c)2019
i’ve also decided to set aside $1 every time my family eats out or buys a non-grocery food item like Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, etc and on Easter money donate all those dollars to my parish’s St. Vincent de Paul Society.
I’m currently getting ready to attend Ash Wednesday Mass followed by a parish soup lunch. It is a really lovely way to begin Lent with other like-minded people, all on different paths but the same journey. It reinforces the community of the church.
In addition to my own commitments during Lent, Lent has three pillars of prayer, fasting (and abstinence), and almsgiving. Fasting and abstinence sound similar, but are very different in practice, and for me, Catholic fasting is much different than my decades of Yom Kippur fasting (which I still observe). Fasting during Lent is only required of those 18 through 59, and may include one regular meal as well as two smaller meals. Fast days in Lent are today, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Additionally, Fridays in Lent require abstinence from meat as well as other enjoyable sources, freeing us to grow closer to G-d.
My church also included a forty day calendar offering suggestions on ways to make Lent moe meaningful. It is provided from Take Five for Faith and I sill share it with you this weekend.
I will keep you updated on my progress and I hope you will comment with your own reflections and suggestions this Lenten season.
St. Brigid in stained glass from the St. Joseph Catholic Church in Macon, Georgia. Image in the public domain. (c)2019
May Brigid bless the house wherein you dwell Bless every fireside every wall and door Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof Bless every hand that toils to bring it joy Bless every foot that walks its portals through May Brigid bless the house that shelters you.
Today is the Feast of St. Francis de Sales. His motto is: “He who preaches with love, preaches effectively.” And I would say that St. Francis did just that, both with love and effectively.
By the time the holidays are over, we are all in need of a good de-cluttering, whether it’s our surroundings or the inside of our heads. Last year I began to attend a workshop on organizing, downsizing, and letting go of clutter. It began for me with a weekend retreat on the same thing. It was a spiritual retreat and it really focused some things for me. I’ve committed to going to at least four to six of the monthly workshops and keep the momentum going despite not doing so well at the end of the year.
The first thing on my list is my closet and getting rid of my professional/teaching clothes that I won’t be using (not that any of them fit anymore).
One rule of thumb and piece of advice – fifteen minutes is all it takes. Take fifteen minutes and do one thing. And then do another fifteen minutes. Don’t overwhelm yourself. I started by not letting things come into the house in the first place. One example is mail. As soon as the mail is in my hands, all of the junk goes right into the garbage.
Good luck.
I’ll check in with you in fifteen days.
Click picture to link to the source (The Hearty Soul dot com). Copyright belongs to them and the author. (c)2019
My Christmas story is a couple of days late because my keyboard ran out of juice. It has a weird battery. It will go for months without needing a recharge, but then right when I absolutely, positively need to use it, right now is when it doesn’t work, and with Christmas being Christmas we had other family goings-on, and cooking and present things to do instead, and I let this wait until now.
A few days ago I was scrolling through Twitter. My Twitter is mostly fandom and politics, and so far, I’ve been pretty lucky about staying off the troll radar for my politics (and believe it or not, my fandom also), so it’s not a terribly awful place to be for me, and I get my punditry and news headlines to look into more closely on other sites and I get to make comments somewhere other than talking to myself, although Twitter often feels like that too.
Recently, I attended a weekend retreat that centered around letting go of clutter, and letting G-d in. It was both practical, in addressing the myriad of physical clutter around us (and me in particular), but also the clutter that occupies space in our mind that blocks off the spiritual.
There were so many things explored that I couldn’t possibly describe my notes and do them justice or to describe how much I got out of the sessions.
However, there is one thing that I wanted to share that I’ve started, practically as soon as the retreat was over.
It’s a Good Morning Journal.
Along with deciding what you want to get out of your schedule and inventorying what your schedule actually looks like, this is one way to take care of yourself. Self-care is the most important thing you can do for your mental and spiritual health. We get in the way of ourselves by not allowing us to take care of ourselves.
It’s like the emergency directions on an airplane. Put your oxygen mask on first; then you can help others with theirs.
To help others, help yourself first.
The Good Morning Journal is one of those ways.
The object is to read it every morning after you wake up, while you do your morning rituals, whether they be taking your medication, praying, meditating, centering yourself before the start of your busy day. Use this time in the morning to empty the vessel so you have room for what’s going on in your day.
About a week after this retreat, I saw the spiritual director, and I told her that while I didn’t read the Good Morning Journal every morning, I thought of it every day, and it really increased my positivity and my feeling closer to G-d.
It’s for you. No one else has to see it unless you want to show it to them. I’ll share a few of my pages with you so you can see some examples of what I’ve done. I chose a small book so I’m able to carry it around with me no matter what bag I’m carrying. I’ve written some Scripture readings, quotations from books I’ve recently read, quotes from Twitter, small drawings that I was moved to draw specifically for this journal, a list of positive resources in the back, an affirmation coin, and the string that each retreatant was given that binds us to the other.
We’re never alone.
My Good Morning Journal. (c)2018
The original idea for a Good Morning Journal came from Susan K. Roland’s book, Make Room for G-d: Clearing Out the Clutter. There are many other good ideas within her pages.
Do you have resources for morning rituals or centering activities and meditations? Share them below.
Griffins and Ginger Snaps 