This poem from Rainer Maria Rilke struck me this morning as particularly apt for this Lenten season and to the dawn of spring. It reminds me of how during Lent we take a kind of spiritual inventory … perhaps “to find releases and seek new hopes”. As we continue our Lenten journey, in what ways are you silently growing … and bearing fruit?

The Apple Orchard

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard’s green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season’s hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke from Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems, translated from German by Albert Ernest Flemming)

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AS064 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 18, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Guest: Sister Julianna Vagnozzi, CSSF. Topics include: confession and reconciliation, chapel veils, Lent, a real nun on the set of Sister Act II, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• New Protestant religious order seeks advice on habits.
• What’s up with chapel veils and mantillas in church — too old-school, sign of respect, gender stereotyping?
• Confession and reconcilation
• Do habits “cause” vocations?
• Lenten solidarity with people who are poor
• A real sister gets into the act in the movie Sister Act II

Do you have a question for us? Visit “Sister Mary Evoca” at http://anunslife.org/contact and record your question or comments for us and the A Nun’s Life Community. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Today is the first day of Lent, one of the major feast days of the Church. Traditionally it has been a time of “repentance.” It is not a time for guilt-inducement, to think about all the things we’ve done wrong or could have done better and feel bad. It’s an opportunity to look at our life in relationship with God, and make some real and positive change.

One of the practices that I’ve heard people say they’ll be doing this Lent that appeals to me is to greatly reduce multitasking. They’ve talked about it as being being present to one thing at a time. For example, to not read a book while watching TV and checking Facebook messages. For me, the focus will be on reducing “mental multitasking,” so that when I spend extra time talking with someone, I’m not also, in the back of my mind, worrying about phone calls I have to make, the paperwork piling up on my desk, and the meetings I need to prepare for. I will repent of my distractions.

It would be a way to make a fresh start, to begin again. Lent gives us this opportunity to reinvent, to recreate ourselves into the persons that we are called to be by virtue of our baptism. It is an opportunity to tap into that which makes us most uniquely and fully who we are.

And we do not so this alone. With us is our Christian community and the communion of saints and holy people who have gone before us “marked with the sign of faith.”

Let us keep one another in prayer during this sacred season. If you would like the A Nun’s Life community to join in prayer for persons or situations in need of a sacred reinvention, please comment below.

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Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

Praying the Stations of the Cross is common custom during the season of Lent. It is prayer in which we remember the scenes of Jesus’ passion and death. It is begins with Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane and takes us through the way of the cross, Jesus’ death on the cross, and his burial.

The custom of praying the Stations of the Cross originated with pilgrims who went to visit the Christian holy places of Jerusalem. Of course not everyone could make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem so the good Franciscans created outdoor stations that could be walked and prayed so that people could meditate on the passion and death of Jesus. Eventually people started incorporating the stations within the church building itself.

And now, the Stations of the Cross is as close as your phone. Ave Maria Press recently launched the Stations of the Cross, its very first application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is free for download and is based on the popular John Paul II’s Biblical Way of the Cross by Amy Welborn and Michael Dubruiel.

It’s not just an app … it is a “prayer companion”and I have to say, it really is. The artwork by Michael O’Brien is stunning and is a prayer itself, even without the words. The actual interface of the app is elegantly simple which allows one to be truly present to the meditation without the distractions of trying to figure out how to navigate or dodging advertisements which are common in other free apps. I love having this on my phone and it has become a daily prayer for me. I can also go “old school” with it and take it with me on a hike so that I have both the stations and the sense of pilgrimage.

The Stations of the Cross application is available in the iTunes App Store. You can find out more on the Ave Maria Press website. Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the Indiana Province of the Brothers of the Holy Cross.

What other holy apps do you have on your mobile device? What are some of your favorite customs or experiences around the praying of the Stations of the Cross?

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CP004 Mardi Gras Community Podcast recorded live on February 16, 2010. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. This day before the beginning of Lent is also known as Shrove Tuesday or Carnival. Listen to Mardi Gras stories, customs, prayers, and recipes.

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During the Community Podcast we talked about what Mardi Gras actually is, listened to music selections relevant to the feast, took a peak at Bourbon Street, shared recipes, and even have a Mardi Gras quiz!

• Join us on air. Send us an email ahead of time so we can schedule a call to you during the show.
• Leave us a voice mail with your favorite Mardi Gras story, custom, prayer, or recipe by calling us at 888-703-4732 (toll free in the US and Canada).
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• Write out your story, custom, prayer, or recipe and email it to us and we’ll read it on the air and post it during the show.

Don’t be shy! We’d love to hear from you. And please invite your friends, fans, followers and any one else who would enjoy hanging out with the A Nun’s Life crowd!

O Lord, teach me your paths,
and I will come to your truth.
Make my heart simple and guileless,
so that it honours your name.
I will proclaim you, Lord my God,
and give you praise with all my heart.
I will give glory to your name for ever,
for your great kindness is upon me:
you have rescued me from the deepest depths.
~ from Psalm 86 (85)

This morning’s prayer (from the Liturgy of the Hours) gave me pause today because it kind of summed up how I feel this Lenten season.

For me, this Lent is a time to pull up a stool and sit at the feet of the Lord, to be mentored in God’s ways. This is something we must do regularly throughout life. It’s like going back to the basics, but learning and re-learning them at deeper and deeper levels.

Simplicity is also something I strive for, especially at this point in my life. There’s a couple levels to this. First is an “outward” simplicity. I am trying to get rid of the clutter that surrounds me. Oh, it’s not like there’s a ton of stuff, but there is more than what I need to live on. I was cleaning my porch last night and found 6 bike pumps. Seriously more than I need or can even use at one time! “But what if … ” is the phrase that runs through my head. “But what if one breaks, or someone needs to borrow one, or you lose one …” I am commiting myself to stopping the “But what if’s” and passing along this stuff to others who actually need a bike pump or whatever.

There’s also the “inward” simplicity. “Make my heart simple.” For me this speaks to living out of my heart’s desire — not getting distracted by “lesser” desires or attractions. I have to think more on what this means. I know there is a message in there for me, but not sure what yet.

How does this psalm speak to you?

Lent is here and all I want to do is shout the A-word! If you are recoiling in horror at this, then let me clarify.

During the Church season of Lent, Catholics refrain from using the word alleluia until Easter. The word means “Praise be to God!” and is not only an expression of joy but should permeate all of one’s life. As Saint Augustine wrote, “The Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot!” Because Easter is a celebration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, it is especially dramatic to hear alleluia song after fasting from using the word for 40 days.

Lent is one of my favorite seasons, and I rejoice in this time that the Church sets aside to reflect, repent, and renew. One important thing that I am going to do this season is to return to my spiritual reading. It’s a good thing for all of us to read regularly books or articles that inspire us and teach us about God and the spiritual life. But it’s all too easy to put that book aside as soon as life gets busy, which is what has happened with me. I miss my spiritual reading and so I’m going to make a point of returning to it and incorporating what I read in my life and prayer.

I’m also going to fast from using the car as my main source of travel. I haven’t quite worked this out, but I am going to walk and bike more for local trips instead of using the car. And I hope to get my car usage down to once or twice a week at most.

What are your hopes for this Lenten season? Are you taking on anything or fasting from anything? Let us know in the comments below.

And, if you’d like to know more about the season, my friend Joe (a Catholic catechist) put together a great Lent FAQ video.

At long last I am returning to a book about Saint Teresa of Avila that I picked up last year. It’s called Interior Castle Explored: St. Teresa’s Teaching on the Life of Deep Union With God by Sister Ruth Burrows, OCD, a Carmelite nun in Norfolk. I am a big fan of both Teresa’s and Sister Ruth’s writings. But I don’t always take the time that I need to do some spiritual reading. So I took out the book again and started reading it again from the beginning.

In Chapter One, Sister Ruth quotes a poem by Nikos Kazantzakis, a Cretan poet whose birthday, coincidentally, is today. Sister Ruth writes, “I do not know his beliefs but, as it stands, the poem wonderfully expresses what I believe.”

Blowing through the heaven and earth, and in our hearts and in the heart of every living thing, is a gigantic breath — a great Cry — which we call God. Plant life wished to continue its motionless sleep next to stagnant waters, but the Cry leaped up within it and violently shook its roots: ‘Away, let go of the earth, walk!’ Had the tree been able to think and judge, it would have cried, ‘I don’t want to. What are you urging me to do? You are demanding the impossible!’

But the Cry, without pity, kept shaking its roots and shouting, ‘Away! Let go of the earth, walk!’

It shouted in this way for thousands of eons; and lo, as a result of desire and struggle, life escaped the motionless tree and was liberated….

The poem continues, but my reflections remained with this first part. How timely it is in my own life as well as in the life of the Church as we approach the wonderful season of Lent!

Some thoughts …

• What is the great Cry that I hear in my own life?
• What might God be asking me to let go of?
• In what ways am I tethered by roots that keep me from letting go and walking free?
• Is there something that I’ve been putting off for “thousands of eons”, thinking it impossible, that actually is possible?

Ahhh, the high holy days are upon us! This is such a wonderful season in the Church. We celebrate the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ and how each one of us participates in this Paschal Mystery, the movement from life to death to new life. I must bid you farewell as I immerse myself in the liturgies (with a brief pause to check out the evening news on CBS and vote) and the spirit of this season. Know that you are in my prayers. I’ll be back after Easter.