963: It should go without saying that our faith decries both lies and violence
Day 963: Friday, November 4, 2022
It should go without saying that our faith decries both lies and violence. Catholics should be forceful in opposing both.
News of our Community:
We received this note from our dear friend John Poole yesterday.
I'm sure we will hold him in our prayers.
"Hi Friends, Dr.Lee, the oncologist whom I see in Santa Rosa, called last night to let me know that a small spot had shown up on a recent P.E.T. scan. It is near to where the bottom of the neck meets the shoulder on the left side. I can feel a nodule there that is slightly tender to the touch, but no pain.
The next step is for someone from Memorial Hospital to call me to schedule labs for blood work, a Covid test, and a biopsy.
Until then, I will continue to meditate, pray, and work on the recycling project.
Take Care,
John"
Daily Reflection from National Catholic Reporter:
Last week, just 10 days before the midterm elections, an intruder carrying a backpack filled with zip ties, rope and a hammer broke into the San Francisco home of the U.S. speaker of the House. His intent, he later told police, was to take the speaker hostage and "break her kneecaps." Because Nancy Pelosi was not home, the intruder instead assaulted her 82-year-old husband, Paul, fracturing his skull.
The attacker, whom some have described as struggling with mental illness, told investigators that the speaker was "the 'leader of the pack' of lies told by the Democratic Party." He also compared himself to the Founding Fathers, saying "he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender," according to the federal complaint filed Oct. 31.
The attack echoes the Jan. 6, 2021 attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, where the mob chanted, "Nancy, Nancy, where are you, Nancy?" In San Francisco, the attacker allegedly yelled, "Where is Nancy?" before being taken into custody.
This attack — let's call it what it is: an attempted assassination of the second-in-line to the U.S. presidency — comes at a time of increased threats of violence against political leaders, with threats against lawmakers on track to double this year. Although members of both political parties receive threats, violent rhetoric has become especially commonplace among Republicans, notably after four years of a president who himself spoke in violent terms about his adversaries.
Nancy Pelosi, who is Catholic, has become the top target of vilification — including from Catholic leaders. Pro-life activists regularly demonize her for supporting legalized abortion, and when NCR chose her as the "Newsmaker of the Year" in 2019, we needed two batches of letters to the editor because the choice was considered so controversial.
In 2021, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone launched a "Rose and Rosary for Nancy" campaign to attempt to change her mind about support for legal abortion. When she didn't, he later banned her from receiving Communion.
After the attack on Paul Pelosi, Cordileone tweeted that he was praying for his "swift recovery" and "comfort for his wife and family too." Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, released a brief statement, saying he was "deeply grieved over this violence, which should have no place in our communities, our political process, or our great nation."
But many of Pelosi's political opponents on the right quickly shared a false conspiracy theory about the attack. Donald Trump Jr. posted a crude meme that made light of the attack, and Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor of Arizona, joked about it at a campaign event while Paul Pelosi was still in the hospital.
We cannot become numb to the rise in political violence in our country. Imagine if Newt Gingrich had suffered a similar attack when he was House speaker in the 1990s — it rightfully would have dominated the news for months.
Today, outrage over political violence is replaced with misinformation and mocking memes. It should go without saying that our faith decries both lies and violence. Catholics should be forceful in opposing both.
Announcement #1 of 2 from Nancy McFarland:
Podcast: Stories for a Living Future
Stories for a Living Future A Podcast with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Over the last two years I have written a number of stories about returning our consciousness to the living Earth, a numinous world alive in both matter and spirit. As we travel through the darkening days of the present time there is a primal need to find a pathway back to this landscape, experienced through our senses and our dreams. These stories are both simple and radical, simple because they describe what is already around us, the wind in the trees, water flowing over stones. Radical because they point to a fundamentally different quality of consciousness, which belongs to both our distant past and our possible future. Presented here as a series, these stories are an opportunity to become immersed in this landscape, physical and imaginal, and through this shift in awareness to be able to walk towards a living future.
Subscribe to our podcast:
Stories for a Living Future
A Podcast with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Blood Moon
https://workingwithoneness.org/podcast/podcast-blood-moon/
Announcement #2: An In-Person Retreat: Meister Eckhart's Advent Wisdom for a Vesperal Age with The Rev. John Michael Hayes, PhD, ABPP, Priest-Psychologist-Psychoanalyst
Friday, November 18 - Sunday, November 20, 2022
Retreat Theme
We are born into history that we did not create and did not choose, even as we know we bear responsibility for its problems. A theologian described our time as a vesperal age, an apt metaphor for our time. Vespers, the evening prayer of the church, is prayed as the light diminishes and night approaches.
We should have no illusion: darkness is upon us and night is fast approaching. We are all desperately aware of the unsustainable and worsening enormity of problems facing us: the escalation of racial tensions, the galloping obscene economic inequalities, the widening political divide, the insanely inadequate responses to looming ecological disaster, and the very real threat once again of world war. The poet Yeats’ indictment of our age was eerily prophetic: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Advent reminds us of our collective weariness with our entrapment in our declining culture, and arouses our anticipation of radical change, of new light, and of new beginnings. From a distant age very like our own, the mystic Meister Eckhart speaks to our distress and our longing, and points a way forward. Eckhart calls us to wake up to the ‘really real.’ That is, to the reality of God beyond all our idols and distractions, to wake up to the unfailing nearness of God, the very Ground of our being. He reminds us that the birth of Christ means nothing if that birth is not experienced even now within the human heart. Eckhart tells us that authentic political and social change must begin with a change in consciousness, an awakened heart. Eckhart summons us to share a letting go into God, a discovery of our Ground in God, and a transformative breaking through into God. In this retreat, we will explore Eckhart’s way to God through radical self-knowledge and acceptance.
Presenter Bio John Michael Hayes is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. An experienced psychologist-psychoanalyst and spiritual director, John teaches spirituality and pastoral psychology at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, and serves on the psychiatry faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The full schedule is on the St. Columba's webpage for the event in downloadable PDF format.
$400 per person shared
$500 per person single room
$250 Full retreat and meals/no room
$175 Commuter - Full retreat, no room/no meals
More information and registration
Questions may be directed to Anna Haight annahaight@stcolumbasinverness.org
St. Columba's Inverness
12835 Sir Francis Drake Blvd.
Inverness, CA