Touching the Sunrise with Sister Kathryn

Jeannette and I talk today about an experience at prayer and selection of my journal: I am acting: within what breaks, I am vast Abyss within the falling, I am depthless Depth in the emptying, I am the Silence Stop Shed your mind’s unconscious gossip and still your Heart Touch your forehead to the earth    …My carpet        a floral carpet Crimson Red        on which you bumble and tumble in My Glory. ___ “Who could have thought my shrivel’d heart Could have recover’d greennesse? George Herbert, The Flower

I’m almost 57. Fifty seven years of people, situations, issues, reaction, desires, disappointment, dreams, loves….This year on my birthday, I’m making the resolution to “not look back.” To not look back at disappointment. To not look back at rejection. To not look back at loss. Of course, looking back is important to do at times. I actually began to rediscover parts of my life during the imposed solitude of the pandemic that I hadn’t taken the time to integrate precisely because I hadn’t looked back. I needed to take the time to “connect the psychological-emotional-spiritual dots” between what I had experienced and lived through and what I was still carrying today in my heart and mind. Making the connections is important. By making connections we can surrender to God what he has helped us recognize. We can let it go. We can understand it more deeply, even recognize where we may have been mistaken in our perception of what happened....

The seismic shifts that are underway in every aspect of our culture these days are nothing compared to the seismic shifts God is calling me to personally, perhaps calling all of us too if there is to be any resolution that will promote the human advancement of us all. We can no longer face anything the same way we did five months ago. It seems like such a breath of time, and yet a centuries-wide chasm has been broken open by the processes and changes that are fracturing and reshaping the world as we have known it. We collectively stare into a widening canyon of uncertainty as life spins into unexpected directions. Uncertainty: where will all this end? What will happen to me? Will I be able to keep what I have? Am I somehow also responsible for this? Am I all that God has put me on this earth to be and to do? Yet a window of possibility is emerging… The possibility that we might feel with courage… That we might decide with love… That we might listen with neutrality… That we might be ...

Hi there. I’m Sr Kathryn Hermes and thank you for joining me as we explore the Love that is the heart of the world and the work of the Heart that helps us become this Love and to discover it in the world so that all the world becomes to us like the miraculous burning bush. We have been invisibly stamped with the signature, the seal of the God who bends over us with such tenderness. 2020 has been a year so far that has called me to c-o-n-v-e-r-s-i-o-n. COVID-19 which has swept across the world, months of isolation, loss of so much ministry that had been built up by so many of my sisters, the breaking open of the tragic wound of racism and the violence that has filled our streets....                                                   Nothing is as we expected.                               ...

Hi there. I’m Sr Kathryn Hermes and thank you for joining me as we explore the Love that is the heart of the world and the work of the Heart that helps us become this Love and to discover it in the world so that all the world becomes to us like the miraculous burning bush. We have been invisibly stamped with the signature, the seal of the God who bends over us with such tenderness. In these days I have felt helplessness, disbelief, horror that one human being could do to another what we all witnessed in the last 9 minutes of Mr George Floyd’s life. Dismay that one person could do this to his brother, yes to his brother and mine, for we all, as sons and daughters of one Creator are brothers and sisters to each other, members of one another. How can we allow this to happen to our brothers and our sisters who have struggled for centuries under the intolerable burden of racism. I go back to that Gaze, the Gaze of Jesus that moment when he said to keep the quiet eye of my heart focused on ...

We are continuing a series of six Podcasts looking at Light and Darkness - Courage and Faith - Healing and Hope through a Marian Lens. Each episode features an event in Mary's life and a particular image we have chosen to prayerfully reflect on together. This Podcast Series accompanies the launching of the Third Edition of my book: Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach. In today's episode we explore how Jesus is in the darkness with us and ideas for praying in the darkness. We learn in our Marian lens into the moment when Jesus was taken down from the cross. This is today's image: Image Credit: Ugolino di Nerio [Public domain] 1280-1330 Image is in the public domain.   Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach (Third Edition) available at ww.paulinestore.org   ENJOYED THIS PODCAST? HERE ARE 4 WAYS TO GO DEEPER… God has amazing ways of knocking on people's hearts, awakening desires, arousing questions, provoking an unexpected spiritual fire. If you have enjoye...

The anxiety that has bubbled just below the surface capsizing my frightened heart through all the experiences I’ve had during the lockdown has brought me in touch with anxiety issues that are nothing new. They have been woven through my life and have affected me spiritually and emotionally. This may be happening to you. Perhaps you are touching more keenly the wounds of PTSD, OCD, scrupulosity, midlife losses as sands are shifting. Emotional struggles. Grief. Depression. Fear. I’m reminded of what I was once told by a wise mentor: What is important is not the situation itself, but how we are with these situations that are calling us to doubt, question, and fear ourselves and sometimes life itself . The realities that we live through can bring on headaches, sleeplessness, dissociation, emotional distress. Sometimes these can last for weeks, months, years. At times we are aware of how all this is wearing on us physically, psychologically, and spiritually. At other times it remai...