Have you followed the news last week? Terrorism has struck New Zealand, a beautiful small country that looks just like Ireland in many places: rolling green hills alive with herds of sheep.

Because I spent a month there a number of years ago, and loved every minute of the trip, I felt very keenly the pain of the terrorist attack that killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch.

I was struck by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s words: “You, you’re us!” when responding to the senseless violence against the Muslim community there.  She covered her head as a sign of respect when embracing a Muslim woman, while visiting those grieving people. Good people who committed no crime and who only sought a peaceful and productive life.

Her leadership in this horrendous moment is a sign of courage and strength to all of us, no matter our faith tradition. Her instinctive sensitivity to the community and courage to act to protect her citizens from harm holds up a higher way.  Good must be our response to evil. Compassion must be our response to loss. When evil seems to prevail, good must come from our actions.  Bad action must be met with good action.

The other day, the Gospel reading we prayed with was from Luke:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

In hearing it, I imagined that Jesus was aware of the laws of karma: that is, when you send good energy out into the universe, it comes back to you in some other good form.

According to the basic Sanskrit definition of karma, it simply means “action”.  Laws of karma (there are 12 of them) are all about the positive or negative valence of our words, thoughts, and deeds. In essence, everything we do creates a corresponding energy that comes back to us in some form or another.  A good action creates good karma, as does good intent. A bad action creates bad karma, as does bad intent. This concept is in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and other traditions that originated in India, and various schools in each of these tradition.

Every human heart is geared to this exchange and balance of good, no matter what tradition you come from. This is not revolutionary. Normal people want to be treated with respect and want to be generous toward others. Jesus holds up to us the basic laws of human decency and takes it further.  Do good even in the absence of good; do good even in the face of evil.

Prime Minister Ardern says to the Muslim community: You belong to us, you are us. There is no separation, we are one. Terrorism, racism seeks division, violence, and hate. Her courageous response was not to simply say, what a horrible thing has happened. She has put claim to her citizens, we are together, you are us and we will not let the evil of this act separate us from one another.

May it be so everywhere.

These two questions are bouncing around together as I struggle with a collage about the Spirit of peace. It started with some decorative renditions of doves of peace, and these are almost complete—I’m sending a couple examples along. This labor of design has been absorbing and I’m happy with them. But I’ve been trying to find an arrangement, a background-foreground interaction to create movement in order to convey a Spirit surprising and unfettered. And it hasn’t happened. I’ve played with all kinds of letters and patterns and shapes and materials to get both “Spirit in pose” and “Spirit-on-the-fly” connected in one visual whole.

I have been at this for a whole year. This labor has at long last given rise to a revelation: I’ve been trying to make two different collages out of one. The first idea,the doves of peace, is far from the experience of Spirit that I had hoped to convey. Now it is clear: one cannot bring to vision the essence of Spirit in static portraits. The searching eye/heart must be led into blurred quickness, shimmering, gusting, blazing, cascading….

Not long ago I attended a funeral. Inside the booklet was an admonition about who was permitted to receive communion, reminding non-Catholics that they could not approach unless they were seeking a blessing, and Catholics that they had to be in the State of Grace.

Grace—a state?  As in unchanging? Stable? Something we hold carefully within ourselves, a garden perhaps, or a reflecting pool, a holy emptiness found somewhere beneath our ribs, something that needs a regular refill?

And here of course, is my Spirit-puzzle in a different dimension. Grace is not a state (apologies to Thomas Aquinas and Greek philosophy). It is impossible to “have” it or “contain” it. Grace moves in and through us, an ongoing happening, a shared adventure with others, building, bonding, giving and receiving, stretching and reaching out.

The science of the universe is a revelation of constant change in a  vastness of time and space so huge, so ancient, so expansive. Those who study the tiniest of things have discovered worlds beyond imagining on an infinitesimal scale—neurons, cells, molecules, viruses, DNA. Physicists have split the atom into tiny moving parts. The Big Bang, the beginning, was an explosive trillionth of a second, a  bursting forth of particles of energy which crashed into each other and sizzled into the basic chemistry of the universe which over billions of years became the birthing clouds of stars and the building blocks of every element of our precious earth and our amazing selves.

There is an ever-recurring mystery here. It is mobility, not stability, that underlies and supports the matter-ing we are and which surrounds us.

All is grace, suffused by grace, abounding and transforming, alive in our bodies and our communities, in every dying and blossoming anew. And moving in it all is the Spirit of Creator and Christ, that mysterious pushing and pulling and longing and yearning that throbs in our veins and erupts in our voices of praise and witness to the call of a divine Mover. And we will be carried by the grace which swirls in the galaxies and in every human heart, pledging a future whose dimensions are beyond all imagining, a vast gathering into the Christ.

I have another collage taking shape. The doves of peace aren’t going anywhere. I’ve enjoyed the process and I will finish and frame them. But this work- in- waiting demands dynamism, fire, and wind, getting into the flow. And even if I finish it to my own satisfaction, it will be so limited a conveyance of the Holy that I  wonder both why I bother and why I can’t wait to start in again. Veni, Creator Spiritus!

Every year, people wait for March 1^st, and then say in great hope of spring when it is usually still very cold outside: “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” In the coming month as the Earth continues its orbit around the Sun, we will tilt as a planetary community towards the Sun (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).  We won’t necessarily get any closer to the Sun, but our orbit will tilt us TOWARDS IT, making us warmer by the end of our late winter’s journey.

This year, Lent begins rather late, in fact today, and I’d like to suggest: “In like a sinner, out like a saint,” in hope of what will happen this Lenten season.  In the next 40 days of Lent, I hope we will all choose to tilt towards God and grace, as we continue our daily lives, both alone and in community, even if we don’t feel closer to God and grace while it’s happening.  I hold this hope not only for myself, but for all those around me: my family, my friends, my students, my colleagues, my neighbors and even I suppose my enemies.

How does this happen?  Traditionally we are told to include fasting, almsgiving and prayer.  Whatever we do to live these out in our lives, they connect us more closely both to God and neighbor.  As we spin around the globe each day of Lent and make our journey that will tilt us towards God and grace, so we will naturally warm up to one another too.

This Lent remember it’s not just about God and me. It’s about all of us together on one planet, leaning into the inexhaustible grace and mercy of God.  We are all called to become saints together by our leaning into God and to one another and to the warmth of whatever we need to thaw our frozen hearts to make them ones of flesh again. May we support one another well on this Lenten journey in the coming days!

I intended to write about another subject this month, but I did not have enough time to do the research it would require, and I just was not “feeling it”, so another time….

Instead, I write about what I am really feeling— and that is a great excitement and gratitude for completing a project we started three years ago. This week, we launched the electronic edition of “Dominican Praise, a Provisional Book of Prayer for Dominican Women”.  It is a new e-book edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, which was first published in 2005 by eight Dominican congregations in the US.

It was a project with every reason to fail. We had many moments when we could have given up in the face of naysayers, software glitches, tedious, monotonous work, anxiety about whether we could actually do it and worries about whether or not anyone would actually want it. (Ok, we could not imagine anyone not wanting this book). Here we are now at the launching pad, the countdown is complete and the rockets have fired. For the next few months, word will get out and we hope that many Dominicans will discover this beautifully-written treasure.

In addition to the acknowledgments of the many sisters previously listed in the 2005 original edition of Dominican Praise, I want to express my deep gratitude to a number of sisters and lay partners who carried this project for many months amidst other responsibilities and demands. In particular, I want to thank the members of the Mission Advancement and Communications Office of the Dominican Sisters of Peace who worked on this in a number of ways. Ashley Apollonio created the electronic edition from original digital files, designed the cover, and other innumerable contributions. Ashley is responsible for the look and feel of the book and in many ways, this was her baby. Ashley, we are so proud of your work!

Alice Black, Ph.D., OPA, tirelessly shepherded the electronic conversion software requirements and found ways around obstacles, roadblocks and errant software code. Mary Ellen George, OPA, helped to proofread. Sr. Honora Werner, OP, Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell, NJ, made sure the chant markings were correct, a tedious labor of love. Sisters Judene Lillie, OP, and Denise Bourgeois, OP, helped clarify some copyright permissions.

My role was to keep the project moving, seek and acquire copyrighted reprint permissions, and provide the guidance and leadership needed to bring it to completion. Tom Henry edited and enhanced my video tutorials and polished them to an attractive shine. Finally, we are indebted to the Leadership Team who gave invaluable support and encouragement to everyone who collaborated in its completion.

The electronic edition of Dominican Praise offers up the beauty and soaring language of the psalms to new generations and new Dominican audiences. It makes the original edition accessible in a new and broad way and our hope is that members of our English-speaking Dominican community will find inspiration in its pages.

The Dominican Praise e-book is available for Android and Apple devices on Kindle through Amazon.com. You can use it on a tablet, iPad, or smartphone. Font sizes and styles are adjustable, bookmarks, highlighting and other Kindle features make it easy to navigate. Be sure to use the tutorials at www.oppeace.org to know how to find your way around the book.

Enjoy!