Who are we?

“Presence”

by Felicia Ezeobi, SHCJ

In being, our real selves are revealed.

The gift of God to us and others Real self – authentic image of God. Come and be with me, the voice echoed Loud and strong. The voice continues, Give me the smiles I long for When I am a stranger.

Give me a gentle touch I desire When I am in pain.

Yes, I need your presence.

Could you spend a little time with me?

I long for a listening ear.

Kindly say some kind words to me To restore my feeble spirit.

Could you listen to my stories?

And share my feelings It matters a lot because I need you.

Oh, your presence is all I need.

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age — Who Are We? — “Presence” — April 2025

EXPANDING THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY Mary Evelyn Tucker — graduate of School of the Holy Child, Suffern, NY; long-time friend of SHCJ; lecturer & research scholar, Yale University; co-director of the Yale Forum on Religion & Ecology; article adapted from Orion Magazine, December 2024

HOW MIGHT WE unlock hope in an expansive spirit of democracy for present and future generations in this time of upheaval? ….

Can we own our past and create a more equitable society, just economics, and inclusive politics? May we ask forgiveness and restore compassion? Can we recognize that democracy rests on peace, not violence and bloated military budgets? In short, how can we rediscover and expand the spiritual roots of democracy?

As these roots lie in the hope of living with inclusive representation in government, with equitable participation in society, and with fairness of opportunity for education and jobs, our challenge is how to make this viable. This will be impossible without a recognition that humans are interwoven with each other and with the larger kinship of life – interconnected and interdependent. This is because relationality is at the heart of life. In this spirit, an authentic democracy affirms the inherent dignity of humans and the intrinsic worth of nature.

Our task, then, is to enhance the wellbeing of both humans and nature as a basis for a truly comprehensive democracy …. In this search to expand what community is, we might first examine some historic documents that led to our democracy today, imperfect as it is. These are noteworthy to build on, but we need to enlarge their potential. a Greek democracy — limited decision-making to an elite and excluded others, such as enslaved people. a Magna Carta (1215 ) — began to limit monarchial rule, but privileged the aristocracy a American Declaration of Independence (1776) — says all men are created equal, but slavery was enshrined in the social code a French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen — equality, liberty, and fraternity were noble aspirations but not realized in the colonial and postcolonial periods

OUR QUESTION IS how can we find our way back to being members of the Earth community on this precious blue green planet that has given birth to an extraordinary diversity of life — human and more than human?

Where do we look for aspiration and inspiration to be reunited with the spiritual roots of our democratic yearnings? aWe must begin with indigenous traditions that have strong cosmovisions celebrating the kinship of all life forms and communitarian social ethics that emphasize a shared common good …. aWe must examine global statements of the last forty years pointing to a broader spirit of democracy that includes both people and planet. We can start with the UN World Charter of Nature (1982) …. aAnother document we may cite is the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth (Earth Day 2010) ….

What distinguishes the World Charter for Nature, the Earth Charter, and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth is that they are planetary in scope and involve the expansion of rights to include all people as well as nature itself …. aThe Papal encyclical Laudato Si’ (2010) is a letter that calls for an integral ecology that brings together the “cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor” …. aA broader context for these documents and movements is our growing recognition that we have emerged as part of a universe story …

“Humanity is part of a vast evolving Universe.

Earth, our home is alive, with a unique community of life.”

This sensibility offers a narrative that illustrates how all life originated in the cosmic explosion of stars where the elements arose. Moreover, we humans have a common origin arising out of Africa, leading to migration around the planet, and the ongoing formation of unique cultures, complex societies and varied political systems .

Can we dream again amid such unraveling of life and communities? Can we revive and expand the spirit of democracy for our time, for our challenges? Can we draw on the great movements that have preceded us, such as the abolition of slavery and the fight for civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights?

Can we call on new spiritual depths that acknowledge the great mystery of being that contains us all? Can we awaken a fresh reverence for the dynamic complexity of life in which we are embedded? Such a dream may be our best hope.

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age — Who Are We? — “Expanding the Spirit of Democracy,” January 2025

“Let There Be Life” – see a beautiful necklace of beads made from fossils; listen to a fascinating commentary on the story of creation — CLICK TO ENJOY THE ABUNDANCE & COMPLEXITY OF LIFE ON EARTH. from The Visual Commentry on Scripture — ttps://thevcs.org/campaign/let-there-be-life Creation proceeds by multiplication, and by accretion, layer upon layer. Annie Dillard, in her great meditation on the complexity of nature, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, wonders at the sheer profligacy of it all, the extravagance of all these swarming things dying to make way for new things: ‘though nothing is lost, everything is spent’ (Dillard 1974: 66). Fertility and death have always been related: everything that lives stands on the shoulders of everything that has died. And yet, nothing is ever quite lost. Things leave prints and traces; sometimes fossils of astonishing beauty.

Each of Katie Paterson’s beads is a swirling world in itself: lichen yellow, glowing amber, sparkling quartz. Still today, the animal, plant, and fungal kingdoms roil forward in

ongoing creation. As one hymn puts it: ‘there is grace enough for thousands of new worlds as great as this’.

RE-SOURCE #2: Meet the Wants of This Age — Who Are We? — “Let There Be Life”

QUESTIONS of GENDER & SEXUALITY “The Church & the Transgender Person”

James J. Martin SJ is an American Jesuit priest, writer, editor-at-large of America magazine and the founder of Outreach which is an LGBTQ Catholic resource. On the website Outreach.faith Martin published an in-depth, extensive article entitled “The Church and the Transgender Person” in 2022 – https://outreach.faith/2022/05/the-church-and-the-transgender-person/ . The complete article covers the transgender situation in the United States, the approaches of some US dioceses, and the experience of transgender persons and those serving them in diverse professional relationships.

Here are some excerpts from Martin’s “urgent steps” toward a pastoral approach as people continue to grow in understanding this complex and critically important facet of being human.

WAIT. There is an immediate

need to set aside the current temptation to judge, declare and teach, when so little is still understood about the transgender identity, and, moreover, so many are at serious physical risk from persecution and harassment …. Thus, waiting may be the most important thing that the church can do right now …. The primary danger in rushing out condemnatory policies is that they will vilify a group of people precisely when they most need support …. A final danger is the alienation of youth–and not just transgender youth.

LISTEN. “Before they say

another word about transgender people or gender identity, the US bishops needs to show significant evidence that they have listened to a wide range of experiences from persons for whom gender is a question,” (Francis De Bernardo, co-director of New Ways Ministry.) “They also need to show that they have read, studied and seriously considered the scientific and social scientific research that supports positions that challenge gender binary” ….

DO NOT JUDGE. With

ongoing research, new discoveries and increasing numbers of personal testimonies about the transgender experience being shared—as well as the fact that transgender people are under attack–the last thing that bishops should do is issue policies that are condemnatory, restrictive or punitive. In other words, the church should listen to Jesus who says, “Judge not” — not telling transgender people that they are the result of sinful or selfish choices, abandoning God, destroying the family, annihilating the concept of nature, merely bowing to peer pressure or giving in to gender ideology.

DO NOT BIND. Setting

binding policies now, especially restrictive and punitive ones, for an entire diocese, much less an entire country or an entire church, removes from the individuals involved in decisions about transgender people—bishops, pastors, pastoral associates, educators and parents—the ability to use the latest scientific, medical and psychological data, which are updated almost weekly ….

ADVOCATE. Transgender

people are among the most marginalized people in society and surely the most marginalized group in the church today. As I’ve mentioned, they are at a severe risk of harassment and beating, as well as suicide and self-harm. In much of Western society, there are moves towards welcoming gays and lesbians, but in most places the door is shut for transgender people.

As I see it, most of the world treats transgender people today the same way that it treated gay people 50 years ago: with confusion, rejection and disgust …. In his public ministry, Jesus continually stood with the most marginalized, the most vulnerable and the most rejected. And there are few groups more marginalized, vulnerable and rejected than the transgender community.

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age: Who Are We — “Questions of Gender & Sexuality” — December 2024

Can a portrait painting help to behold the Infinite in the face of the other? When I truly

encounter another person, in that meeting of eyes I will see the humanity of this person. What does this require of me?

And what do we refuse to see? How much truth can we bear to face? …. How different our world would be if we treated each individual as a reflection of the image of God and of equal value in God’s eyes.

The use of gold leaf in my portraits is symbolic of this sacredness regardless of what someone has suffered. The technique is intentionally reminiscent of icon paintings….

CLICK for video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D391u2Si_I

Hannah Rose Thomas is a British artist …. named a Forbes 30 under 30 and a Vogue Future Visionary. Plough Publishing House published her art book Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women in February 2024. The artist says: “... Tears of Gold gathers my portraits of Yazidi women who escaped ISIS slavery, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar, and Nigerian women who survived Boko Haram captivity, as well as Afghan, Ukrainian, Palestinian, and Uyghur women....

These women are survivors, yet their lives cannot be reduced to a single violent experience. My paintings are an attempt to honor these ‘living icons’ and to convey their extraordinary resilience, resistance, and dignity.”

Plough, Winter 2024, p.65

RE-SOURCE #2: the Wants of This Age: Who Are We? — “Tears of Gold” — December 2024

THE VALUES OF SOUL: The spiritual practice of REPETITION, as a ritual of every day life

Summary of an essay by Francis Weller, psychotherapist, writer, soul activist, specialist in the healing work of ritual, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, & other books — https://www.francisweller.net/about.html which we gain a precious essence and without which the soul cannot live.”

Our sense of discontent, in part, arises out of neglecting the core practices repeated unbroken for hundreds of generations. When largely forgotten, the ritual of life is reduced into the routine of existence, a repetition that deadens.

We live in a society prizing constant growth and innovation.

New devices and technologies provide a degree of ease seldom known by our ancestors. It also casts a long and weighty shadow, felt in the constant pressure to have more, be more, achieve more [surely reminding us of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness] but leaving a residue of discontent.

Soul [individual or collective], on the other hand, values repetition, a sustained attention to a place, person, or practice that engenders depth and familiarity. There is no depth without digging into the marrow of what matters to soul and culture. Consider how often we are brought back, often unwillingly, to the cave of our wounds.

James Hillman says our wounds and traumas are “salt mines from

Increasingly our cultures encourage amnesia and anaesthesia; we forget, and we go numb. Whereas soulful remembering, through dances, rituals, songs and stories; the intricate knowledge of plants and animals; how to shape adult human beings; the continuity of wisdom passed on through generations, was crucial for our survival.

Nearly all enduring cultures developed practices designed to help us remember who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred. Prayer, meditation, and ritual, are, at root, designed to help us stay awake.

Soul repeatedly calls us into the rich loam of image, emotion, memory, dream and longing,

drawing the community together.

The great stories were told over and over again and the multiple layers hidden in the tale slowly revealed. Our earliest shared acts were designed to weave and knit the community together, and then into the surrounding field of nature and cosmos, renewing and reaffirming the entangled nature of our beings.

Soulful repetition is musical, rhythmic, and enduring, a gesture of affection, of fidelity. We return again and again to tend what it is we love and so keep it alive and vital.

PRACTICE/REFLECTION:

In what ways do you nourish the ritual of everyday life?

What core practices help sustain your intimacy with soul?

LISTEN TO Everyday God https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=erZuM8rJWso

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age — Who Are We? — “The Values of Soul” — January 2025

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN? https://www.bbcearth.com/news/what-does-it-mean-to-be-human

“It’s a question we have been asking for thousands of years. Priests and poets, philosophers and politicians, scientists and artists have all sought to answer this ultimate puzzle, but all fell short, never able to fully capture the vastness of the human experience…. Why do we behave the way we do? How do we live better? How did we get to now? What is our future?”

“So what is our story? …. We are one species of primate that emerged from the dry savannahs of East Africa just over 100,000 years ago and began a migration that continues to today … We had an unusually large brain and held ourselves upright, giving us a high vantage to scan the distant horizon for enemies, and the freedom to use our hands for other purposes. Over time we began to fashion tools. …. Other animals could communicate, but we evolved astonishing vocal ability, able to create sounds that represented not just

objects, but also concepts. We learned how to express ideas. We could speak of danger, hope, and love. We became storytellers, able to weave together common narratives about who we are and how we should live. From this point on the pace of change was electrifying.

Twelve thousand years ago, we learned how to domesticate plants and other animals for food, and were able to settle in one place. We became a social animal, building complex communities … learning to trade with each other using a concept called money.

By 2500 years ago, a small group of humans in Southern Europe and the Middle East started to ask big questions about who we were. What is the best way to live? What is a good life? What does it mean to be human? How we responded to these questions is how we built our civilisation, art, and philosophy. Five hundred

years ago, the scientific revolution began, allowing us to harness the resources of our planet to live longer and more productive lives.

When the digital revolution began only 50 years ago, the world shrank. We became a global village, our hopes and dreams converted into an infinite stream of ones and zeroes echoing throughout cyberspace. Today, we stand astride the world as a god, with both the power to destroy our own planet and to create life.

We may even be the last of our species to be fully human as bio-technology and artificial intelligence begin to rip apart the very core of who we are. Indeed, BBC’s Being Human campaign is led by Sophia, an incredible lifelike robot who is developing her own intelligence. She looks human, she sounds human, but she cannot yet think or feel like a human. How many years until she is truly one of us? Or we are one of them?

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age: Who Are We — “What does it Mean to Be Human?” — December 2024

WHERE AM I FROM? WHAT AM I HERE FOR? “I will turn 64 in a few weeks, and it has crystallized “On a recent retreat, while contemplating the Principle and Foundation, I realized that in my mind and moral imagination altogether that this is what I am here for: I should have consulted St. Ignatius about my heritage sooner. Because what he offers is the nourishing of those who insist on critical for me—and for you—to know.” pursuing the highest qualities of being human, and on being of service So when you are asked, to healing and transformation “Where are you from?” on a long horizon of time.

Let me remind you, You are from the mind of God. I believe this is our longed-for state of being, but we You are from the heart of God, are bombarded by so much that primes us for its Creator of the Universe. You are precious, opposite, activates our primal fear of ‘the other’ and a Chosen, self-destructive desire to wall ourselves away instead.”

Cherished, and Beloved. from “Stitching What Lies Beyond: Finding Hope and Human Do you feel it, Connection in Times of Profound Division,” by Krista Tippett feel it in your bones— That boundless Love?

We are God’s.

That makes you, dear, my brother, my sister.

When you hurt, we hurt.

When you rejoice, we rejoice.

So let us go then.

We shall walk together, heads held high, raising the heads of our brothers and sisters whose heads have been bowed.

Let us build a land where peace prevails and justice the norm, The Kingdom of our heritage— All of us. Where all are honored, loved, and respected, dignity affirmed, centered in the Sacred, that Divine spark, from whence we all come.

by Rebecca Ruiz, www.ignatianspirituality.com

Incarnational humanism. We believe that there is a mystery at the heart of being human, a depth and density that is also an opening for the divine.

We believe that human creatures, made in the image of a divine creator, live most fully into their nature when they are creative. from IMAGE MAGAZINE: Values & Vision Statement

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age: Who Are We — “Where Am I From? What Am I Here For?” — December 2024

QUESTIONS of GENDER & SEXUALITY

2. “Who am I to judge?”

HOMILY FOR WORLD AIDS DAY November 28, 2024 — Brendan Callaghan, SJ https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/51188

A remarkably candid Pope Francis struck a conciliatory stance toward gays Monday, [July 29, 2013] saying “who am I to judge” when it comes to the sexual orientation of priests ….

We shouldn’t marginalize people for this.

They must be integrated into society,” Francis said during an extraordinary 82-minute exchange with reporters aboard his plane returning from his first papal trip, to celebrate World Youth Day in Brazil.

“If someone is gay and searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”

Four decades on from the start of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we are continually challenged to grow in inclusiveness. In our current world — still traumatised

by COVID — it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that more people than ever (more than 30 million) are now living with HIV. As CAFOD reminds us, only half of those who need treatment are receiving it, and stigma, taboo and misinformation persist even as medical progress continues. … Jesus never sent anyone away without stopping to listen and to speak to them, whether men or women, Jews or pagans, doctors of the law or publicans, righteous men and women or sinners, beggars, the blind, lepers or the sick .... By listening to the needs and to the faith of those He met, and by responding through words and gestures, He renewed their lives, opening the path to healed relationships ….

We are participants in the way that God in Jesus Christ comes to meet each of us. We are not simply imitating or honouring or remembering — we are participating in God in Jesus Christ coming to meet us.

In being invited as we celebrate World AIDS Day to respond to the continuing challenge of HIV/AIDS, we are being invited to that inclusive welcome that we are learning to live as a synodal church.

May we let ourselves be moved by the mercy of the Father, and allow this to become our own life's work; a discreet mercy, silent and hidden, but still capable of sustaining and restoring the life and history of each one of us.

RE-SOURCE #2: The Wants of This Age: Who Are We — “Who am I to judge?” — December 2024

This podcast is the audio track of a presentation given in 2019 for the non-profit organization Science and Nonduality

by Bayo Akomolafe, Nigerian philosopher/writer/activist, and executive director of Emergence Network. The full video version is available on YouTube — https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=xIr2hOMVhIc Akomolafe poses some jarring questions:

What if the ways we think about the climate crisis are the crisis?

What if the feverish quest for "solutions" (which characterizes climate justice movements today)

is getting in the way of radical transformation?

Introducing stories and myths from African tradition, Bayo extends an urgent invitation to notice climate change as the deconstruction of the human, and to approach demise and dying as abundant fields of surprise — a radical discontinuity.

CLICK TO LISTEN TO PODCAST

“When my people say: ‘the times are urgent, let us slow down’ they’re not saying, be slow, like it’s a function of speed; they’re inviting a different kind of awareness. They’re helping us notice the insurgency of the invisible, that is, what we ... pushed aside and made a by-product of our exclusive search for progress. They’re inviting something different altogether ....

I invite you to notice that as well — that we will

not come out of this intact; there is a de-fraction that needs to happen, a dying to self ... I mean all the conditions ... ideas that make us possible, permanent — this is the instability of the world. Maybe it’s time to let that go. We might find ourselves in a different mode of being entirely by adopting de-colonial ways of seeing, sniffing, noticing, of being in the world. We might find other ways of being alive.”