RBWords - Volume 23 - Number 1: January 2010
Something to Think About
– As I begin this twenty-third volume of RBWORDS, I am on a personal retreat out in Tucson, AZ, not far from the Newman Catholic Student Center at the University of Arizona, where I was director 1977-80. I come here almost every year about this time and find that it helps me to put my life in perspective and gain some inspiration for the months ahead. I try to do a kind of “state of myself” examination based on the four “pillars” of Dominican life: prayer, study, community life, and ministry. Occasionally I enlist friends here and elsewhere to help me do the reflection. Almost everyone I know out here, I’ve known for 30 years or more and their comments are always helpful. I also take a day to pray for my family and for the wonderful friends whom God has brought into my life over the years. A day, too, goes for praying for the Dominican Order, and especially for the Southern Dominican Province and the preaching community in Austin, TX, to which I was assigned last Summer. Our province will be holding its electoral “chapter” this next May and a whole new leadership will be installed for the next four years. Whether this event will have any impact on my life and ministry remains to be seen. Stay tuned! The same is true for the worldwide Dominican Order. The “General Chapter” will meet in Italy in September and elect a new “Master of the Order.”
On the matter of ministry, I begin this new year and this new volume of RBWORDS in a ministry that was mostly part time for me since the early 90’s – preaching retreats and parish missions. Now I am engaged full time and it means a lot of travel. My Lenten schedule will have me in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, preaching parish missions. I will spend Holy Week at a monastery of cloistered Dominican nuns in Marbury, AL. Spring and early Summer will include retreats of various kinds and a couple of weddings. I continue to receive requests for my preaching ministry, which gives me hope that I will be able to continue in this vein as long as my health is good and I can travel.
The small online daily preaching that I began in 2003, THE WORD TO THE WISE, has grown considerably and is accessed from all over the world – something I had never dreamed of! I am especially grateful to my faithful “webmaster,” Craig Baker, for setting up a preaching website for me (www.rbwords.com) and encouraging me initially. My “congregation” and readers are always helpful with their comments and reactions. You are all my “partners in preaching.” I beg your prayers as I begin this new volume of RBWORDS and develop my preaching ministry. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
It Has Been Said
God created, and it was joy: time, space, matter. There is, and we are part of that is-ness, part of that becoming. That is our calling: co-creation. Every single one of us, without exception, is called to co-create with God. No one is too unimportant to have a share in the making or unmaking of the final showing-forth. Everything that we do either draws the Kingdom of love closer, or pushes it further off. That is a fearful responsibility, but when God made “man in our image, male and female,: responsibility went with it. Too often we want to let somebody else do it, the preacher, or the teacher, or the government agency. But if we are to continue to grow in God’s image, then we have to accept the responsibility.
From AND IT WAS GOOD: REFLECTIONS ON BEGINNINGS by Madeleine L’Engle
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