Ramadan begins

I meant to post this at the beginning of Ramadan (also pronounced Ramazan) as I did on Facebook, but got bogged down in a major work project. I'm posting this later in July but back-dating to early July so that it appears when I intended to post it...

To those about to enter the holy month of Ramadan, Ramazan Mubarak!

To those who are not, have a look at the message below the image from Khalvat Dar Anjuman (Ibrahim Baba) about Ramazan with a few thoughts on how to honor and support the observance of Muslim friends, acquaintances, neighbors, and co-workers.

Because the calendar of Islam is a lunar one, Ramazan rotates around the seasons (and thus around the months of the Gregorian calendar). This year in the northern hemisphere, with Ramazan in the summer, the fast from sunrise to sunset, every day for a month, is particularly long and demanding.

We who are not Muslim can learn much from those who are spending this month in the ancient traditions of fasting and prayer, of almsgiving and awareness of common humanity and of the needs of the poor, of gathering for breaking the fast with family and friends, of deepening and re-focusing attention on the All-Merciful, the Creator. Can we, during this month, learn about and from our neighbors? How can we do so without burdening our neighbors, but by taking on some discipline or task ourselves? How can we attune our listening and attention? How will we be challenged to deepen our own walk, our practice, our faith, our ethics? How can we be mindful and compassionate neighbors? How can we learn to be friends on this polyphonic planet Earth?

And here is Ibrahim Baba's message, which I first read on Facebook and which he has given me permission to re-post here. (I have left the lower-case and upper-case spellings as written intentionally by the author.)


on Tuesday, 9 july 2013, many of us will enter into the Sacred Month of Ramazan, the Queen of Months. some of us will be fasting from sunrise to sunset, going about the activities of our day. others will be feeding others as their practice during this sacred time while others will build community in other ways. this is the most precious time of the year for some of us. for some of us it is a time of exceeding joy; for others it is a time of struggle. as any kind of religious time, it brings issues for some, troubling memories or fears of isolation and exclusion. it is also a time of intensifying our efforts for justice, equity, equality, access, accessibility, radical inclusion, etc. through more prayer, more dhikr, more work in our communities, etc.. because we actually have more time as we are not eating throughout the day, lol!

if you are not a muslim and know muslims who are fasting, you can offer to prepare an iftar meal for them at the end of the fasting day or cook something for their pre-dawn meal. or you can invite them to eat somewhere with you. or do something to bring smoothness to their day. for people who work all day during Ramazan, it is nice to not have to worry about their end-of-the fasting day meal (iftar). the iftar meal is often part of a community-gathering, but for some people, certain community-gatherings can be very painful and isolating. so, if you are friends with someone who is fasting and you all are part of a community that is not muslim but which unites and sustains you, perhaps that community could offer an iftar meal in recognition of your friends who are fasting. it is REALLY ROUGH to come home and have an iftar all on your own, especially if you are from a culture or place where Ramazan is a month-long party. If you find out that your friends are lonely and alone, weeping over their dates and a bowl of soup, please see with them what you could do to make some Ramazan community for them.

Greeting: Ramazan mübarek! A blessed Ramazan!
Response: Ramazan karim! A generous Ramazan/a Ramazan of generosity!

and a teaching from Sri Lankan Sufi shaykh, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, from a talk he gave entitled, "What is Ramadan?" http://www.bmf.org/ramadan/ramadan.html

The sad, glorious, fragile spring of this year

Posted the paragraphs below the photo yesterday afternoon (Sunday, May 5) on Facebook - and (why was I surprised?) though I felt like a voice in the wilderness when I posted it, it drew many comments, most of which expressed kinship and understanding. So perhaps I was giving voice to something many of us feel right now.

The photos are from yesterday and the past few weeks in Boston.

This spring feels sad. Glorious flowers everywhere, here one week but gone the next, and the world a mess. Like my friend Lindy, who wrote about this a couple of days ago, I find that some days are just for weeping --or at least grieving if the tears don't come, which often they don't. It is worse on the days one can't cry, I think. I find consolation in the fact that Dorothy Day, surely one of the strong holy people of the 20th century and among the ones who did the most good, tough as she was, sat and wept with great frequency.

Once in a blue moon she got to weep with a friend. This is a passage about times with her friend Catherine de Hueck Doherty ("the Baroness"), a woman of very different background and temperament from hers, but who was her comrade in Christian work of mercy and justice, and who after Dorothy's death, remembered:

"When I moved to Harlem, Dorothy Day and I became even closer. There were only about five miles between her house and my Harlem house. So occasionally when we both had enough money, let’s say about a dollar, we would go to Child’s where you could get three coffee refills (for the price of one cup), and we used to enjoy each cup and just talk.

Talk about God. Talk about the apostolate. Talk about all the things that were dear to our hearts.

But we were both very lonely because, believe it or not, there were just the two of us in all of Canada and America, and we did feel lonely and no question about it.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Restoration, February 1981

This story came via Fr. Bob Wild (who is doing research on Day and Doherty) on the Madonna House website, but I remember reading it in the Dorothy Day anthology edited by Robert Ellsberg.

All photos (c) Jane C. Redmont. If you reproduce them without permission or attribution, the archangel in  charge of copyrights will get fiery mad. Please give credit where credit is due. Thank you.

Perseverance, suffering, a word from a Desert Father, a commentary, and a commentary on the commentary

During Lent I read excerpts from a book by David G.R. Keller (an Episcopal priest and scholar)  Desert Banquet: A Year of Wisdom from the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Liturgical Press 2011).

It is now the season of Easter (which lasts for 50 days, remember and celebrate!) but I picked up the book again yesterday. It has a meditation for each day and this was yesterday's. Each meditation is composed of a short saying by a Desert Father or Mother and a paragraph-long commentary by Keller.

Abba John continued, "Do your work in peace. Persevere in keeping vigil, in hunger and third, in cold and nakedness, and in sufferings."

‎Abba John knew the path to transformation must be single-minded but is not easy. The "work" is not an end in itself and we will have difficulty letting go of control of life and our false self. A decision to commit our lives to God does not automatically mean freedom from temptations or anxieties. We will be distracted from God's voice. The desert elders valued stillness because it helped them do their "work in peace." Their peace was not the absence of inner conflict. It was resting in an openness to God's grace. One example is "keeping vigil," a period, usually at night, where various postures of openness, combined with chanting psalms or expressions of a desire for God's presence, open the heart for God's presence. Fasts from food and water helped keep their focus on God rather than physical satisfaction. The desert nights were cold and their clothes were simple. The self-imposed hardships brought a variety of "sufferings" that would refine the soul's quest. (Meditation for April 26, Keller, p. 78.)

To which I add:

For us and for many around us, the desert is the daily reality: because of poverty, oppression, sorrow, alienating work, the demands of family and other relationships. 

 The question then becomes not so much choosing those sufferings and fasts in the night (and the day) but how to live in a holy manner with the desert fasts and hardships that are imposed on us. The same discipline applies. 

Amid the sufferings that we did not seek, can we keep our focus on God? Can we open our hearts? Can we somehow seek and find stillness and rest in God's grace? Can we decolonize our souls? Can we live in our bodies with hope in the Presence? Can we too, like the desert mothers and fathers, keep vigil?

Cross-posted in slightly different form on Facebook on April 26. 

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942), Granite Rocks Base of Laramie Peak, 1870.

We'll be back soon - and a few words about Teresa de Ávila and #OccupyGSO

Greetings, friends.

The blog has been dormant for two and a half months for a variety of reasons: some travel, the start of the academic year in a continually demanding job, a lot of Facebook activity (I am going to start cross-posting, I think), a bit of illness (nothing life-threatening), and other demands and choices. I'll be back soon though with regular posts. Just wanted to leave a note to let readers know that the blog is still alive.

Today, October 15, Catholic, Anglican, and some other Christians in the West celebrate the feast of Teresa of Ávila, 16th century Spanish Catholic woman of Jewish descent (her paternal grandfather was forced to convert to Christianity), reformer of the Carmelite religious order, mystic, and theologian. The Roman Catholic Church also honors Teresa as one of only three women "Doctors of the Church." Her prayer-poem "Nada te turbe" ("Let nothing disturb you") has become well-known and exists in a beautiful chanted version from the Taizé community.  Enjoy the chant by clicking here. 

The original poem is longer, but the words used in the Taizé chant are these: 

Nada te turbe, nada te espante

Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta

Nada te turbe, nada te espante

Solo Dios basta

Also, #OccupyGreensboro, one of the many gatherings related to #OccupyWallStreet, begins this afternoon. (I currently live in Greensboro, North Carolina.) Local newspaper story here. (I think the man quoted at the end is overly optimistic: we are in another Gilded Age already.) For the human stories at the base of the movement around the U.S., see here.  In fact, read them first.  Stay tuned.  Peace to all.

St. Teresa as a young woman, painting by François Gérard (France, 1770−1837)

Feast of Ignatius of Loyola

Happy Feast of Ignatius of Loyola! This is a link to a [2007] blog post about Ignatius, his feast, his rooms in Rome (which I had the joy of visiting), some new statues, the Infanta Juana, and related topics. I just fixed about half a dozen broken links, so everything should work.

This comes with deep gratitude to the worldwide Ignatian community.

Cross-posted on Facebook.

To those for whom the New Year is difficult

Special warm wishes to those for whom New Year's Eve and Day are difficult. May you discover hope and consolation in the struggle; may regret and resentment melt away as time goes by; may peace of mind and heart and body visit you and dwell in you; if grief is your companion, may its company be gentle; if you are in recovery from addiction, may you find strength to persevere; may you know true friendship, human and divine.


I just posted these words on Facebook. I have decided there is nothing wrong with duplicating posts here.

Photo: Jane Redmont

Book sale! Get your cool books! ("Cool" rather than "hot:" it's a steamy summer here in the U.S.)

The writing crawls along. Some days are worse than others.

In other news, my paperback publisher has a sale on my book on prayer at deep discount, so buy it! (Let's hope this doesn't mean trouble, just summer sales. Addendum: Nope, no trouble, just some overstock.) It's less than half the usual price! You know you want it. So does your mother. So do your rector, pastor, best friend, father, sister-in-law, lover, parishioner, and spiritual director. Seriously.

I posted this little announcement on Facebook (woe is me, I returned to Facebook, but only for that announcement - true!) yesterday and several people wrote very nice things about the book in response to that update. Those people includes a prison chaplain, an M.D. pathologist, a counselor-in-training, a vocational deacon who works with people who are down and out, and others. Here endeth the shameless self-promotion. Buy the book. Buy ten of 'em.

Facebook updates

A day at home writing after an intense half-week of teaching.

Thus lots of opportunity to procrastinate (or take comforting breaks, depending on your spin) on Facebook. Posted a lot of updates. They are a bit like haiku, just longer. This may be the day with the most updates since I started Facebooking. (Is that a verb? If not, it will be soon.)

I still dislike Facebook's changes of this summer with the change in the update formula. Silly. But like lemmings, we have all started talking about ourselves in the 3d person. Mostly.

Jane R. Link

Jane R. Today, the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Maya Pavlova, Feline Bishop Extraordinaire, is my supervisor.

Jane R. Sometimes it's good to take some time simply to breathe and observe.Even, or especially, in the midst of urgent concerns, policy discussion, and activism. Link.

I posted these next two to the blog way back; revisited the music to listen and shared them on FB today as I listened.

Jane R. Link.

Jane R. And a live version... J.S. Bach never gets old. All hail to the best of his ancient and recent interpreters. Link.

Jane R. has now hidden from her news feed Vampire Wars, Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Farmtown, Funky Flowers, Pirates, (Lil') Green Patch, 101 Eggs, YoVille, and Pillow Fights. I'll keep hiding these sorts of apps as they keep appearing. I do like reading your personal and news updates, though, all y'all.

Jane R. Thanks to Vince Masi for pointing out this article. And hey, that's my old friend Edward, the Exec. Director whom the article quotes! Link.

Jane R. was attacked by a thorny branch while mowing the lawn and has the scratches to show for it.

Jane R. wants to keep looking at the recently arrived photos of her 6-year-old great-nephew instead of working on the Big Tome... But we do our theology for our children, don't we? If it doesn't make the world better for them, it's not worth the time. Another picture to post above the desk. What a cutie. And I'm not biased or anything.


Jane R. is remembering her beloved friend David, now deceased (brain tumor, summer 2002), who rushed downtown (he worked midtown and lived on the Upper West Side) on September 11, 2001, to see if he could find his nephew, and who miraculously ran into him, alive.

Grading music prescription from Kirkepiscatoid

We had a little conversation going on Facebook last night about the appropriate music to accompany end-of-semester grading. I raised the question and a remarkable number of people chimed in with suggestions.

Our friend Kirkepiscatoid, who is not only an Episcopalian, as her nom de blog indicates, but also an MD pathologist (not to be confused with pathological) who trains and thus grades medical students, had a suggestion I cannot resist posting. It is, as it were, part of the core curriculum of grading music.

Enjoy. And note the brass players tapping their feet to the rhythm!

If you're one of my Facebook friends, you will probably see more links to grading music on FB as the evening continues. Or you can just go to my update from last night and see some suggestions and links already present.

P.S. Kirkepiscatoid is also a thoughtful blogger on matters spiritual and temporal, so you might want to check out her blog.