Carla Mae's Blog

The Easter glow has moved … from an outer experience then to an inward reality now. He is no longer where he once was. He is now where we are. We shine because he has come to dwell in us by the Holy Spirit.   But we often feel we have lost the glow. In fact, we feel pretty dull. Yet feelings are not facts…we are learning that. So the Church takes us by the hand and leads us into Ordinary Time by assuring us we will have food for the journey…his very self.   This month opens with the great celebration of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ. We celebrate the wonder of the Lord’s genius. “I am going to my Father…yet I will be with you always…” and he means it. It is his final step down into time/space. He becomes our food. First step…he presses our humanness with all its brokenness to himself. Second step…he dives like an Olympic diver into the cesspool of our sin and violence. Third step…he bounces up out of death to show us it will not hold us either. Then the final ...

As we move toward our Business Chapter, we continue to pray, “Holy Mystery evolving, energize our response.” Have you wondered what these words really mean? Let’s check it out. The Holy Mystery is God, right? Not so fast. God doesn’t evolve . God is the hiddenness that calls forth evolution into the future. God is the Word in whom all things come to be. God is the Spirit of self-giving love in which all things unfold into the future. God is love-hidden; God is love-expressed; God is love-given as gift. So what is this evolving all about? What’s evolving? In an amazing act of self-giving love, the Mystery we call “God” burst out of its dance of love to create the angelic and material world. This outburst of love was a single Word, and “all that came to be, came to be in him, and without him was made nothing that was made.” On the science side this breath of love, this outburst, is called “the big bang.” Atoms met and kissed and basic elements appeared. We finally appeared, m...

With the coming of May, we are still in the Easter glow. We appear in the darkness of human struggle like some human firefly. Faith lights us up and yes, by faith we can see in the dark.   Easter calls us back to our baptism, when we shed our mourning clothes and he claimed us as his own. But we forget. So the Church in these Sundays keeps reminding us of our primary intimacy: God-with-skin-on, as the pre-schoolers say. He is the one by whom we are saved.   We are identified as those who “know” him…and he “knows” us. He marries us in the wedding chamber of the virgin’s womb. Then he hob-nobs with us, and we can’t quite figure him out. Then he goes to the depth of our violence toward one another…only to let it swallow him. But he is a poison-pill, for in destroying him physically, death itself is destroyed. It splits open, and we get a peek at what comes after…for he is the Truth that loves, and he cannot be destroyed. But wonder of wonders, he show us that this i...

We’ve pinned it down for now… both our Mission Statement and our Focus Statement begin with a reference to presence. So why all this emphasis on presence , and what might it mean ? A few thoughts… Our primary of being preaching women and men is by our presence, wherever our feet take us. As part of the Dominican Family we identify with the Word; we keep our eyes on the Word; we immerse ourselves into the Word, both in our prayer and study. Then we try to walk-the-talk.   So what kind of presence do we bring as consecrated women wherever we are? And what kind of presence do we bring as associates as we are present to our spouses, to our children and grandkids, and to our dear friends? Maybe it’s time to go back to basics.   We are all vowed, folks. We all have affirmed our baptismal vows this last Holy Saturday. That’s where we all start, on the common ground of being signed, sealed, and delivered as followers of this Christ Jesus who has stolen our heart...

  That’s our name – our scriptural name. Pay attention, don’t brush it off. Remembering that it is what God always calls us can bring us out of a funk. We need to remember.   The liturgy has brought us into the brilliant light of the resurrection. We are almost blinded by the beauty of Word as he emerges from the tomb like some magnificent butterfly: the same as went in, but now so different. Pay attention to what comes after misery and death.   We almost breathe a sigh of relief. The shadows and darkness of the Passion are behind us (Really? Be careful.) and it is so great to see that this sweet Word sent to us from the Father is no longer dead. He lives. So, as beloved, why must we be careful? We need to stop a bit and remember: this is not only about Jesus. It’s about the beloved too. It’s our story, closer to us than our cheek.   Most of us don’t live too long in the blinding light of the resurrection, in the promise that one day we will be...

It isn’t the way we would plan it: the suffering of war, of political disagreement, of hurt people in the Church, the suffering of children, sickness. No, surely the human race can be redeemed another way. Surely we can be saved without all this suffering, can’t we? We are in the midst of Lent, the season that faces us with the outlandish fact that the Word of God, in the New Covenant of our flesh, reveals to us that, no, the best way is the way of the cross. Now why would God plan it this way? We are not going to presume that we know the Mind of God, but we are going to get hints. Check it out. The all-powerful Word of God getting slapped in the face. He does nothing, except stand there in the greatest dignity, when with one glance he could destroy them all. What is he trying to tell us? If Christ Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” then we are seeing a love so powerful that it refuses to be a victim and to victimize anyone else by passing the violence on. It ends ...

  Finally, in reflecting on our expanded Mission Statement, we come to the part we know best: …we are committed to truth and compelled to justice.   To be committed to something means to be dedicated to it, focused on it, drawn to it like a magnet. But what “truth” are we talking about? Well, there is mathematical truth, economic truth, scientific truth, racial and political truth. No doubt, we have been, and still are committed to these truths in our educating and advocacy activities. Yet even more as Dominicans we are committed to the Person who said, “I am the... truth…” We seek to take on his mind, form our values with his heart. The truth we are committed to is a person, not merely a proposition.   It is this relationship that compels us to seek a just world. Like the barking dog, so symbolic to the Dominican heart, we cannot be silenced. We cry out to God for justice, for the reign of God to come, for peace. We doggedly search it out in our study ...