We would like to humbly thank San Damiano Daily Giving for their generous contribution to Schola Ministries. Their kind offering will aid our outreach, feast day blessings and more.

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We are delighted to announce that our free iSchola app, launched recently on iPhone is now available for Android users. We wish that all find their way to our Oratory, the virtual chapel, and that it aids our friends in daily contemplation.

iSchola is still in its early stages and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Schola Ministries is committed to becoming a carbon nuetral organization, our use of paper decreasing day by day and our online resources becoming environmentally friendly as we develop.

Click here to download the Android app today.

Pax,
Team Schola

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Schola Ministries are delighted to share with you Robin Bradley Hansel’s ‘Wisdom of the Labyrinth’ interview with Kathleen.

Kathleen speaks to Robin about her life and work, her own labyrinth in Ireland, the home of her parents, and her work on and with Thomas Merton and Thomas Berry. Sr. Deignan also talks about her music and spirituality, and shares her views on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its impact on the environment.

Schola Ministries would like to thank Robin Bradley Hansel and Labyrinth Wellness LLC for their interest, support and permission to use this interview.

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Kathleen’s beautiful music was today featured on Domestic Church Media radio along with other artists. You can listen at WFJS 1260 AM, or hear Cheryl’s full show online! We are delighted with Schola’s first foray into radio, and equally excited to kick this adventure off with Cheryl and Domestic Church Media.

Schola music has been added to Cheryl’s “Distinctive Beauty of the World’s Cultures” playlist, reflecting Kathleen’s Irish, American, Catholic and Ecological background. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Team Schola

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Schola Ministries are delighted to be able to share with you our virtual chapel, news and blogs via our free new iPhone application, iSchola.

Technology is an important part of our ministries, a way for us to share prayer and hope, and Sr. Kathleen’s beautiful music. Any feedback at all would be greatly appreciated, and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible.

We hope you find iSchola a calm place for you to breath in contemplation, no matter where you are.

With thanks,
Team Schola

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All of us at Schola wish to acknowledge all who still bear the intimate wound of 9.11’s great wounding – the families and friends of those who perished in the attacks on our city and country. We sincerely pray that this has been a decade of healing for you and your hearts’ profound grief.

As one of the first responders in the ministry of spiritual care, permit me to share something of the lessons learned in that season and the many seasons since then.

It has been a daunting task to revisit those dark days and discern the wisdom offered to me and to us, buried in the rubble of that catastrophe. But I shall try to tell you a story of my experience and learnings ….

Like all of you I woke up to a glorious day on September 11, 2001. The pristine clarity of the air and the sky after the previous night’s rain and eerie fog that had veiled Manhattan was really heavenly. I had an early doctor’s appointment that morning and was listening to National Public Radio on my drive when I heard that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Immediately I called my Congregation sister Stacy Hanrahan with whom I lived to say, “Stacy don’t go to the UN today,” (she was our congregation’s NGO representative to the United Nations); “don’t go down to the city – something is terribly wrong.” I rushed home to her and to my sister and another dear friend all of whom were watching the second tower come down while my sister was on the phone with the wife of one of the her patients who worked in that tower. All of it was happening so suddenly in real time, telecast for all to see, and we actually knew, calling people at the center of this surrealistic drama.

I watched in horror and amazement trying to calculate the dimensions of the devastation unfolding before us, but no doubt, like all of you, none of the ordinary faculties were able to take it in. It was all shock, incomprehension.

In that room with us was a dear friend, truly a sister to me, Peggy Healy, who had been a Maryknoll Missioner in Central America in the 70’s and 80’s – Salvador, Nicaragua particularly – during the decades of war there that left thousands dead, maimed or disappeared, wars largely supported by our country. She had accompanied countless impoverished widows and children who were dispossessed by these wars, and had herself found countless victims in their shallow graves, the road kill of barbaric violence, not the least of whom were her four dear friends in mission, the American Martyrs of El Salvador, in whose jeep she was to have been traveling the night of their executions.

I knew that Peggy, no stranger to the heart of darkness, would be down there at Ground Zero in a New York minute and so I said to her: “I am going with you.”

The next day she was down there scouting out opportunities for service, and a day later we were down there together at the Robert Kennedy Center preparing food and cots for the rescue workers for their respites, and like so many other New Yorkers, doing whatever needed to be done. We listened as the first responders came in dazed, bewildered that there were so few persons being rescued or recovered. Then it began to dawn on us that this was a disaster like no other, and the gaping hole in the depths of our city was replicating itself in human hearts whose calculus was nearly impossible to compute: nearly 3000 times infinity. Our concern quickly shifted from victims to survivors and the thousands of families and friends who in the space of moments had their whole lives devastated while most of them watched the dark drama unfold on their TVs.

For days Peggy and I would go and walk the city streets accompanying people holding up photos of their loved ones hoping that someone had seen them, or looking for relatives in the city’s hospitals and morgues. So many, so so many people roaming the streets, and many alone, and we would just walk with them, close beside them, sometimes inquiring for them in the hospitals that were so in emergency mode and little organization to aid them in their desperate search.

We would offer them food and drink, we would wait with them and pray with them, and then move on to the next hospital with them. It was only the first week but I was learning from Peggy how to just move toward the suffering, with immense kindness and fierce intention. With a steely and tireless will and an immensely tender heart. My first lesson of 9.11 was solidarity and showing up: getting there and being there. Like the rescue workers who just go into the catastrophe to see whom they can save, I was learning to move toward, to enter in to the wreckage of the human heart.

As the days went on the city began to organize and redirect its relief and support to the families of the victims with the opening of The Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 on the Hudson, and then there was a call for volunteers of all sorts. Peggy and Sister Stacy were immediately qualified to be caregivers because one was a nurse practioner and the other a social worker. But I had no credential – theologians were a bit beside the point at this point. But ministers were not – they were greatly needed, anyone duly ordained was urged to come and form teams of a whole new corps of aid workers: spiritual care givers.

But since my church does not ordain women, I had to imagine how to procure one immediately. Why not my own Congregation confer its ordination? And so it did, sealed in a letter from our Community Leader, echoing the words of our founder, Marguerite Bourgeoys: “go: gather up the blood of the Savior which is being shed through the ignorance of human persons…” With this ordination in hand I went to the training sessions for interfaith ministers, sponsored by the American Red Cross and SAIR – the government’s air disaster relief core that offers spiritual care, counseling and comfort to the families of plane crash disasters.

The three day training was intense and serious, and I found myself one of an interfaith cohort of spiritual care givers that gave me a whole new sense of ministry for this new millennium and the crises we would be facing as ministers – not preparation to walk with a few people or even a congregation of people, but now in this “seminary for disaster, and mega disaster” I was learning that the field of ministerial care in our time was way beyond the church or mosque or temple or synagogue. It was as it probably always has been, on the streets and in hospital waiting rooms and makeshift tents that shelter survivors. And I was learning that ordinations abound and that suffering and need was the mother of ordination. And I was learning to rejoice in this kind of covert ordination that seemed to suit me well.

My first day as a spiritual care giver was the opening day of the Family Center at Pier 94, probably near the berth our ship The Marine Tiger slipped into when my parents and I arrived in America a half century earlier with nothing but hope, and a few phone numbers. I was totally apprehensive, and laboring to anchor myself in the silent Jesus Prayer. The arena was vast – whole city blocks of space filled with booths from the companies that employed the victims of the Towers, to the aid and relief agencies, support groups, food court – just an enormous city within a city. And in the back, past the bank of desks in their dozens that serviced the translators of every imaginable language spoken on this planet, was the DNA station where family members were to bring samples for their loved one’s identification.

When they opened the doors to welcome the families I stood in dread at the tsunami of suffering coming through those doors, just incalculable waves and waves of people for more than 9 hours, that never lessened in density or desolation as the time went on.

As I stood there alone completely unknowing of what to do or how to be and feeling that I could not do this, and who was I to even imagine I was up for this – this fathomless depth of grief – just as I was about to pass out, a woman on the arm of her son did in fact pass out right at my feet, overcome by her own anguish and its augmentation in the weeping and wailing that echoed throughout the arena. As she went down, I went down too, but not to faint: to catch her. As kept keening “I cannot do this; I cannot do this” (bring her daughter’s DNA to the ID area), I told her son I would say with her while he did. So I did, and for hours as she rested in my arms, weeping and swooning, crying “O Dios Mios – my daughter, my daughter.” And though we could not speak each other’s language, the primal word of human embrace was an eloquence all its own, as I held her and she held me, as I comforted her and she comforted me, empowered me.

In that long, silent interval of communion, I learned that I did not have to take all this suffering in en mass, in its totality, in its ceaseless human waves, but simply one Maria at a time. Just one – this one person before me, just that one, whomever God would send. And in touching just that one, I had somehow, would somehow, touch it all – so commingled were all the victims and survivors and witnesses of this horror, so commingled is every being and element of this stunning and suffering planet. Maria was a great teacher to me.

A week after the pulverization of the Towers and all within them, my sacramental self wanted so much to sacralize the site, and to ritually acknowledge the presence of thousand of presences there, and let the families receive the cremains of their loved ones’ bodies. So I wrote a letter to the mayor and the Cardinal to ask them to commission a rite and ritual of reception of the sacred ashes of lost loved ones, to be offered in a small urn or flask that could be given to the families.

I got no reply. But several weeks later we were called to administer the distribution of the ashes of the Trade Towers to the families and loved ones at Pier 94. I learned that a city of incalculable diversity – Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and all the atheists and agnostics in between can ritualize together – we can be one beloved community together. It is possible.

As I stood at my station, a young man was presented and received the ashes of his new bride. It was my charge to escort him down the long lanes of such stations, fanning out into a maze of many such alters. With my heart beating nearly explosively inside me with emotional confusion and anguish, I dared to say: “what was your beloved’s name…” He said back softly and curtly to the stranger beside him: “Patricia.” And I burned with shame and regret that I could not just hold my own collateral pain and be his silent escort, his guard, his shield against intrusion in this most intimate and disorienting moment of having his young spouse once again and never again in his embrace. This bereaved young man, full of rage and desolation all at once, was a great teacher for me: say nothing in the face of such suffering. Learn the lesson of solemn silence. Presence. Just this: real presence.

How had I not learned this lesson from the fire fighters and steel workers at the Pit? I had ample opportunity while escorting the Families to the Site each day over the several months. At first the protocol was very raw and rugged: a care giver or minister would be assigned a family to mind on the short boat trip down from Hell’s Kitchen to the tip of Manhattan where the Towers had been. We were given Teddy Bears to offer them, which made my pseudo-sophisticated New York sensibilities cringe – “why do they do this?” Well it turns out that all the hundreds upon hundreds of stuffed animals were the gift of Oklahomans who had lost their loved ones in the Murrow Building bombing by a young, handsome, blond and blue eyed American terrorist named Timothy McVeigh. And not just their bears, but they came themselves and stayed for weeks and weeks – these family survivors. How it humbled me to witness them in their ministry of solidarity and care, and as I arrived that first time down to the site which was our Earth’s own black hole, I found myself clutching the ludicrous teddy bear to shield my heart against the magnetism of Ground Zero’s merciless maw. At that mind-bending moment I learned that love can travel in any vehicle.

As we docked, everyone who was in any vicinity of the Pit or pier went into an absolute stillness: a whistle would blow and hundreds of rescue workers would just freeze, the ones closest to the ferry, forming an honor guard. Hard hats in hand, hand over heart, they would form cordons of honor guards covered in dust to welcome the families into the mysterious place, to protect them and bow to them while being very still.

The families would likewise stand in perfect silence, just gazing, just doing a 360 of regard for what was there, for who was there, and not there. This was a great grave, a resting place – a never resting place. They would linger; we would stand like valets, attending, accompanying. It all felt timeless. At last we would form our recessional, make our way back to the boats, through the same aisles of solemn silent witnesses who had met the families with immense dignity as when we had arrived.

At Ground Zero I learned that the most moving liturgists were not priests trained at Notre Dame University’s School of Liturgy and Worship or some Episcopal seminary, but in the real and deadly sanctuaries of suffering and eclipsing mystery. How I wanted to apprentice with them to learn their dignified restraint in the face of such sorrow, how they disappeared themselves, how to practice their authenticity and humility and decency in their self-sacrificing ministry.

So many many more memories and learnings yet to be excavated from the cavernous depths of memory, and even the senses’ files, but for now these few lessons and the learnings, one decade later:

I learned at Ground Zero and the Family Center that a hell realm could be transformed into the Kingdom of God by loving presence to one who suffers – that we can really transform a war zone into a new city of hope. It’s in us to do it so why don’t we do it?

I learned that as the whole world was changed by 9.11 (the whole world literally suffered it in the great diversity and pluralism of our one global city New York) that I do desire to be a citizen of such a city where all are welcome and all are aided. The kind of America I want to rebuild is one more open and daring in its generous welcome of everyone from anywhere, as it did me, and the countless every-kind who perished on that tragic day.

I learned, too, that we live among some of the most splendid human beings on this Earth, the ones who have congregated in the great sprawl that is the metropolitan area of NY and our neighbors New Jersey and Connecticut and all who suffered nearly unsustainable loss those days.

I learned that we can be an interfaith and meta-religious world if we wanted to be: that Jews and Christians and Buddhists and Muslims can minister and pray together because we did it there at Pier 94 and GZ for months and months.

Sadly, and perhaps most tragically of all, I learned that we could take and squander the grace of that sacrificial moment and turn it toward the desolation of other peoples in two wars that rage on, with few counting the months and years of our folly and in one case fiction, nor the deaths upon deaths piling up in America’s longest wars: our response to 9.11. This breaks my heart: that we have chosen to respond to the horrific and savage violence of 9.11 with shock and awe, with deeper and deeper entrenchment in the way of war and violence – the way that can bring to others, and mostly to innocents, nothing but the very anguish we commemorate today. In that we as a nation have missed the lesson of 9.11 and so may be doomed to repeat it.

One foggy night as I walked to the Family Center for the 8 PM to midnight shift, I suddenly felt as if I were back in London, but in the body of my own precious mother, who would then have been a young Irish girl in her twenties, an orphan from infancy, an immigrant and in many ways an exile making her way home from her shift at the Savoy Hotel. I could feel her anxiety that night in 1944 transform into resilience as she was determined to survive the terrorist attacks on her city that happened almost nightly – the Nazi Blitzkrieg that killed countless people during the Second World War. Then I thought of the countless modalities of terrorism at play on our planet and realized our US disaster, while unique, is nothing new; in some form or another it is happening all over our planet – times past and present – Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Nigeria, Syria, Gaza, and in the drug wars of Mexico and Latin America. The list is endless, the victims countless wherever blood-rage spreads its viral pathology, and if we don’t learn how to heal this most lethal strain in the human system, it will be our future.

As I turned the corner astride the majestic mist veiled Hudson, I swore by the spirit of my resilient mother who had survived her own generation’s terror to bear me, that if such evil was dedicated to destruction, I would create. If its ministers would rupture, I would learn to mend. If they brought down, I would build up; if they would crucify, I would practice resurrection. If they would be hate, as The Little Flower said with her dying breath: “I will be love.”

Sr. Kathleen Deignan, CND
Contact Kathleen

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I was one of many first responders among the spiritual caregivers who ministered at the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 in Manhattan for several months to the families and friends of the victims of 9.11. It was a time of unprecedented public, civic love and compassion and generosity… Continue reading at The Huffington Post →

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It was an honor to meet you in late spring at the Sophia Center in Oakland, CA. I am writing to you today to tell you how moved my spirit is not only by your Great Work instruction at the Sophia Center but also, your songs, the words, the music, the tones. My soul has not been lifted this high since when, I was a young girl romping on Lake Erie beaches at the age of 5, being enthralled with all beautiful forms of Nature and Nature sounds. Kathleen your presence, your voice, your singing, is magnificent and while listening intently, I sometimes spontaneously imagine, is this what it was like for people 900 years ago when they listened to Hildegard von Bingen music? Thank you Kathleen for your Great Work. Thank you for lifting my soul and spirit to a greater height.

Deborah Jane Rafter

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Sister Kathleen has focused the mission on our relationship with the Creator. Creation is the first revelation of the Godhead. She has taught us through lecture and song how to be present to the Presence which is God manifest in creation through the Cosmic Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are to be present to the Presence as Creation groans and struggles toward the Omega Point—completion in the Cosmic Christ. The Cosmic Christ is fully incarnate—present—in every element of creation. We are all coming forth from the stardust which flares forth from the Creator at every moment. The Cosmic Christ is also up ahead calling us to be what we are—people created in the very image and likeness of God. The Cosmic Christ is present in the depths of our souls propelling us toward that which we are meant to be. The Cosmic Christ is ahead of us and, in Merton’s words, calling us to become our true selves. Merton was fond of saying that Christ became human so that we might become divine. Here the new cosmology meets the new theology.

From the very beginning of the Bible we see stories, shaped in the folklore of their time, which speak of being present to the Presence. Today’s reading from Exodus is a perfect example. Moses is performing the routine probably somewhat humdrum duty of tending the sheep; however, Moses is a person who is open to the presence of the Presence. A mindless, non-grounded shepherd would have walked by the burning bush. Moses did not. Here again light, the pervasive cosmic force, is used as a symbol for divinity. Moses sees the Creator, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—his forebears—present in a burning bush on a mountain. In Moses day, God the Creator was always present on mountains—the epitome of creation’s magnificence.

Moses was practicing what Elise Garcia calls “Creatio Divina.” (Center for Action and Contemplation, Radical Grace, Spring 2011) What a wonderful takeoff on Lectio Divina. We read, ponder and chew over the revelation of God in the Sacred scriptures. Should we not also place ourselves in God’s presence as manifest in the first book of revelation—the cosmos? Moses is practicing Creatio Divina when he pauses form his daily duties to be present to the Presence—God manifest in a burning bush. I plan to start practicing Creatio Divina on a regular basis.

Karl Rahner and Merton were kindred 20^th century spirits. Merton would agree wholeheartedly with Rahner’s assertion that the Christian of the 21^st century would be a mystic or not be at all. Mystics take time to place themselves in the present where God can manifest. Mystics simply show up. They show up open to the gift of the present moment as God comes to them disguised as their lives.

Dennis Hamm, SJ (Creighton University Daily Reflections) comments on the Gospel passage for today:

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to the childlike.

In order to be present to the Presence, we, in Hamm’s words, must become “small.” We must become like children letting go of all preconceived notions and expectations. Who would expect to encounter the Living God in a burning bush or in a piece of communion bread?

We should read the rest of the story. God is never just about personal piety. God goes on to tell Moses that God is concerned about the oppression of god’s people. Mystical encounter always results in communal or corporate involvement.

It is quite simple. We take time to abandon our hectic busy technology-driven schedules just to BE. We slow down. We let go. We allow ourselves to stumble into the dark abyss where we truly encounter the Living God—the Creator—deep within our very being. We understand that our relationship with God involves us in a web of relationships.

We stop. We look. We listen. We may encounter a deer and spend time just being with the deer as we look at the deer and the deer looks at us. We become one with the deer, the Creator and all of Creation. (I believe it was Thomas Keating who described contemplation in this manner—I look at God and God looks at me.) Or, we may simply observe something. Did you know that a tomato plant leaf has texture and delicate patterned structures?

Be present to the Presence. Sister Kathleen made us very aware of the fact that the broken wounded and fractured Merton found healing in the solitude of the monastery. Our practice of being present brings us health and wholeness. It brings us healing. It brings us communion with the Creator, one another, and all God’s creatures.

Richard Rohr in the aforementioned issue of “Radical Grace” reminds us of Paul’s words in his Letter to the Romans:

Ever since God created the world, God’s everlasting power and divinity—however invisible—have been there for the mind to see in the things that God has made.” (1:20)

Rohr begins the reflection by quoting Job:

If you would learn more, ask the cattle,

Seek information from the birds of the air.

The creeping things of the sea will give you lessons,

And the fishes of the sea will tell you all. There is not a single creature that does not know

That everything is of God’s making.

God holds in power the soul of every living thing,

And the breath of every human body. (12:7-10, emphasis added)

Praise be to the Creator and to all creatures!

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Hudson Valley New York July 15, 2011. The Guild for Spiritual Guidance, a thirty year-old, pioneering organization in spiritual formation, transformation, and the training of spiritual guides announces the selection of faculty members for its two-year Apprenticeship Program in Spiritual Guidance. “We are pleased to announce these faculty appointments. The founders and former faculty members of the Guild represent many leading 20th century American contemplatives and spiritual guides,” stated Bernice Marie-Daly, the Guild for Spiritual Guidance Steering Committee Chairperson. She continued, “The newly appointed faculty members follow this same tradition.”

Faculty members within the Guild are called Cultivators. “The Apprenticeship Program combines the strands of Judeo-Christian mystical tradition, Jungian psychology, and the cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin,” explained the Reverend Dianne Disston, LP, Coordinator of the Apprenticeship Program. She further elaborated, “Faculty members provide instructional and formational experiences for the participants and weave the three content areas together.”

Our Mystics Cultivator will be Robert Jonas MTS. (Weston School of Theology, Cambridge, MA: Masters in Theological Studies), EdD (Harvard, Cambridge, MA: psychology and education). He is the founder and director of The Empty Bell, a contemplative sanctuary in Northampton, MA, with a special emphasis on the Buddhist-Christian dialogue and on the arts. An author, musician and retreat leader he is a Christian in the Carmelite tradition and sits on the Board of the Henri Nouwen Society.

Andrew Harvey will companion our Apprentices through four sessions in the Mystics strand. He is an internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, translator, mystical scholar, and spiritual teacher. Harvey has published over 20 books including The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism (Hay House) and Heart Yoga: The Sacred Marriage of Yoga and Mysticism (North Atlantic Books). Harvey is a Fellow of All Souls College Oxford from (1972-1986) and has taught at Oxford University, Cornell University, The California Institute of Integral Studies, and the University of Creation Spirituality, as well as various spiritual centers throughout the United States. He was the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic. He is the Founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism in Oak Park, Illinois, where he lives.

The Teilhard Cultivator will be Sr. Kathleen Deignan, CND, PhD, GreenFaith Fellow ‘08, completed North America’s only comprehensive interfaith education and training program to prepare clergy and laity for religious-environmental leadership. A student of Father Thomas Berry during her graduate work in the History of Christian Spirituality and Historical Theology at Fordham University, New York, Dr. Deignan is a Sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame and Professor of Religious Studies at Iona College where she is the founding director of the Iona Spirituality Institute and The Thomas Berry Forum for Ecological Dialogue. Sister Kathleen is President-Elect of the International Thomas Merton Society and sits on the boards of the American Teilhard Association and GreenFaith.

The Jungian Cultivator will be Harry Fogarty, PhD, who is a Jungian Analyst in NYC, an analyst and faculty member of the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts (PAJA) and the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association in NY, a Lecturer in Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, NYC, and a faculty member for the NY C.G. Jung Institute. Dr. Fogarty received his training at the Jung Institute and his PhD in Religion and Psychiatry from Union Theological Seminary.

The next Apprenticeship Program is slated to begin in January of 2012 at the Mariandale Retreat Center in Ossining, NY. Applications are currently being accepted. The Guild for Spiritual Guidance website is www.spiritualguidance.org. The Guild can be reached via phone at (845) 418-4587 or by email at administrator@spiritualguidance.com.

Contact: Rev. Dianne Disston,
administrator@spiritualguidance.com
(845) 418-4587

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