Archive for category: Thoughts

One does not have to have a vocation of a writer in order to taste the healing benefits of writing. It has long been known that keeping a journal helps us to be attentive to the inner movements of our soul and to the deep life learning that each season of life offers us. Life can move quickly, and it is easy to lose a meaningful experience, a life lesson, unless we commit it to paper. Writing about our experiences also gives us a chance to come back to what we have written, to remember and to draw from it at a later stage. 

Some people use journaling to record daily events, but we can go even deeper and use it as a tool to reflect on our life. Writing gives us a chance to slow down and to pay attention to experiences that we can otherwise so easily overlook. If you would like to nurture a reflective dimension in your life, why not take a few minutes each day during this Advent to write about your day. Where did you notice God’s presence? What thoughts, emotions surfaced within you? What prayer was being formed in your depths?  

Writing gives shape to our thoughts. While we can gather many blessings by noting beautiful experiences, God’s graces that we encounter daily, it can be quite healing to take time to journal about painful events as well, such as grief or loss of any kind. Writing gives us a tool to express emotions that we carry within us, instead of keeping them bottled up inside. In this way writing can provide healing and relief. 

In a way writing acts as a mirror; at times while journaling we will write something that we have never thought about before, something we didn’t know we knew or believed. Allow yourself to be surprised with what you write, should that happen. Journaling is a good way to reflect, to pay attention, to observe, to listen, to notice our inner movements and to grow. 

I will leave you with some questions that may help your reflections as you journey through Advent:

Where in my life do I need God’s light to grow?
Did I notice that God is teaching me something new at this moment in time?
What hope have I for this Advent?
What are the ways that I can prepare my heart for the coming of Christ?

You can turn your writing into prayer. God is attentive to what is in your heart, and so be free as you write. The paper will not judge. May you have a truly blessed Advent. 

Iva Beranek
Dr Iva Beranek is the Ministry Facilitator for the CMH: Ireland

We pray for Refugees.
We pray for the 60 million people who are either internally displaced or who have fled their countries because of conflict, persecution or natural disasters.

We pray for those living in temporary settlements for years on end, in a state of limbo, their lives on hold, hopelessness chipping away at their resolve, who feel forgotten, cast aside, worthless.  We pray for those in Direct Provision in our own country and those in camps on borders around the world.

We pray for people in Bangladesh who have had to flee their homes because of rising seas, land erosion and floods, all caused by our over-consumption and our excessive relentless emissions.  Many of them flee to the cities where they live in squalor and are exploited, often to the point of slavery, by the garment industries, the same ones that provide our clothes.

We pray for people in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Ethiopia, who are becoming displaced from their land and thousands of hectares are being deforested by large multi-nationals to grow cash crops that will then be exported for our food.  Food that we then waste at such a rate that it is estimated Western countries throw away the equivalent of what the entire continent of Africa produces in a year.  We are reminded of Ireland in the 1850s, where 1.5 million people decided that leaving was better than staying to die of starvation, and all the while vast quantities of wheat, oats and barley were being exported out of Ireland to feed the British population. The devastation that food for profit instead of food for survival causes is still imposed on nations today.  Since 2013, the U.S. has sent food aid to South Sudan all the while exporting vast crops from thousands of hectares of land they have acquired in South Sudan for sale supermarkets across America.

We pray for people who are displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to lack of Governance and ongoing civil war. 5 million people have dies since the late 1990s and millions more have been displaced and live in destitution and in fear of militia. These wars have been exacerbated by the mass mining of DRCs natural resources to provide the minerals (cobalt, gold, tin) needed for our phones, our electronics and our jewellery. We pray for those impoverished communities in South Africa who have not fled when international mining companies have set up shop on their doorsteps and are now living in areas ten times more toxic and radioactive than Chernobyl because of uranium dumping.  

In many instances, the destitution that people are fleeing to, bears no thought for what they must be fleeing from. Often the poorest communities bear the brunt of welcoming thousands and tens and thousands of others who have lost their homes.  

So as we pray for refugees worldwide, we recognise our own interconnectedness, our own compliance through relentless consumerism that perpetuates the suffering and displacement of millions around the world.

All of us are on a journey.  None of us have arrived.

We pray that our cry for change would challenge us and move us to respond in a way that we become the answer to our own prayers.  May we be willing to curb our lifestyles and to demand that production and supply of goods promote peace, through food security, land rights and fairly obtained, fairly traded goods.

God is closer to you than your breath. May He bring you peace.
But may He also keep you restless and hungry for the peace of all people.

Disturb us O Lord.  Amen

As the autumn sun warms our streets, we are beginning to cross a threshold into another season of the year. Sometimes the external seasons point towards the seasons of our hearts, the internal ones. While we encounter moments of eternity in our daily living, moments when God shows us His presence among us, a lot of our lives is actually seasonal. 

Try and notice the season you are in, give it a name. Any name. It could resonate with summer, autumn, winter, spring, but it could also be a season of joy, new beginnings, growth, or even a season of grief. Often these seasons overlap. Summer hardly ever finishes on a one day, and lets the autumn start on the next. A dance of seasons is very common, in nature and in our lives also.  

What is the healing that you might need today? Perhaps your prayer is for a deep cry of your heart to be comforted with God’s love. Or maybe it is a gentle desire for rest, a desire for peace, or for something else. Spend some time in the silence of your heart and talk to Jesus about what you need. Wherever there is a need for healing, usually there is an invitation for growth as well. Be attentive to the areas of growth where God is calling you at this moment. 

May the dance of the seasons be gentle for your soul, and may you dance with the Spirit who is always leading you deeper into the fullness of life. 

Iva Beranek
Dr Iva Beranek is the Ministry Facilitator for the CMH: Ireland

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you,
you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15:5)

In our very vocal and busy culture it can be difficult, if not even countercultural, to dedicate time for silent prayer. It may appear that we are doing nothing, achieving nothing, and going nowhere in particular. Fruits of a rich (inner) prayer life are not gathered instantly. They take time to be nurtured, they take time to become visible and to show. But in this going nowhere we are meeting God, and that is what matters. 

Recently I was at a day event organised by the New Monasticisms Ireland. The speaker for the day was Dr. James Finley, once a monk at the cloistered Trappist monastery in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton was his spiritual director. Dr. Finley spoke about ways to live a more contemplative life in the contemporary world. He encouraged us to find a contemplative practice and to commit to it. “Try a contemplative practice for three months and notice how your capacity increases”, he said. For instance, our capacity to not be so reactive is likely to increase, we should be able to set appropriate boundaries (more easily), and our capacity to love is likely to increase too. Dr. Finley explained that contemplative practice is “any act habitually entered into with your whole heart that takes you to a deeper place”.

Even observing beauty can become a contemplative practice. Becoming aware of the beauty of creation and pausing in order to appreciate it can in itself be an act of gratitude to God who created the world. The act of appreciating beauty can turn into prayer. “Beauty calls us to attention. It slows us down. This, in itself, is the beginning of contemplation” (Macrina Wiederkehr). 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells us that if we don’t spend time with Him, we will cut ourselves from the source that is to feed our inner life. Out of this source all our actions are supposed to spring. Dedicating time to prayer, spending time with Christ, pausing to appreciate beauty, all of these are to take us to the source, to the river of life, where our souls can rest in God’s. Then when our unspoken words have been soaked in the silence of prayer, when our actions come out of the hands that know how to bless, we will learn to act more like Christ does. 

Contemplation, same as the Eucharist, call us to action, they call us to respond to the needs that we see in the world. But they call us to action together with God, aware that He is the only true source for healing the world’s ills. Even in our silent prayers we can offer to God situations that stir our hearts. While no one will know it, for it will be done in silence, our prayers will become a means of healing, of sharing Christ with the world. Our doing nothing will turn into ministry. Hopefully, if we practice this through prayer, we will be able to do so more graciously in real-life situations too.

Iva Beranek
Dr Iva Beranek is the Ministry Facilitator for the CMH: Ireland