Mennomystic

 I am BOTH - Mary and Martha   Luke 10:40-42 "Martha, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to Jesus and said, 'Rabbi, don't you care that my sister has left me all alone to do the household tasks? Tell her to help me!' Jesus replied, ' Martha, Martha! You're anxious and upset by so many things, but only a few things are necessary - really only one. Mary has chosen the better part, and she won't be deprived of it.'" A few months ago, I had the privilege of performing Laura Funk's Midrashic monologue, "Mary's Martha" - based on Mary Schertz's commentary on the passage above. I got to share the stage with Steve Bell and his sister, Dorothy Fontaine for the launch of Laura's book People and Places of Sacred Interior Spaces - Midrashic Monologues and Guided Meditations.  In preparation, I opened my own heart to the monologue to experience what Spirit was speaking to me, and in the process I found a...

  The Nature of Death and Life – Contemplating on the Prairies Most of my life has been spent on the Prairies of Southern Manitoba, save for a few months up North. It is from this place that I sit and think prayerfully about life, my lived reality through God in whom I live, and move and have my being. I literally walk this Contemplative path in this environment. Being on this Contemplative journey leads me to new ways of thinking and living in relationship with the rest of the world. This path is not straight, nor easy. The journey has been a painful process of dying small deaths. And it’s only now, as I look back along the trail that I see all the resurrections. I’ve observed the Prairie soil, not as a farmer or soil scientist, maybe as a gardener, although a very poor one, but more so as a Contemplative. By being a part of the Prairies for decades and learning a bit about how they were formed and knowing a bit about plants I began to ponder over the nature of creation. Knowi...

  It’s only love that can explain a girl’s shining eyes as she watches out her window on brown textured spread of prairie. What else but love could quicken her heart in this in-between winter-spring. No white snow blanketing the world in wonder. No greening haze to grace the ground and trees. What beauty in scraggled leaf abandoned wind-rows could she see? It must be love. Unconditional love, waiting patiently through apparent barrenness. This girl is one with the naked branches reaching out in endless expanse of space, stretching herself within the clear and clean blue sky. Her soul knows too the body’s ache to bury itself in the prairie’s deep, rich soil. To plant itself as seed. To die to itself, to live. This is pregnant latent love. It is this prairie-girl’s heart and soul and mind and body that aches with love as she looks out over fields to farms and is reminded that the Christ who dwells within as God breathed Spirit longs to look through her eyes to see what she sees...