Make Your Needs Known!

Make Your Needs Known to One Another

“Be confident in making your needs known to one another. For each of you, to the extent that God gives you the grace, should love and nourish one another as a mother loves and nourishes her child.”  ~St. Francis of Assisi~


It's hard for many of us to ask for help when we need it; we are often the caregivers of our entire family and the cliché about being the glue that holds everything together is not so far off in our crazy lives. If you are a parent or a caregiver, you understand this concept of nourishing love, the feeling of showering another with compassion, understanding and attendance to their need. On the other hand, you also understand the concept of another human being making their needs known to you, constantly in some situations. St. Francis calls us to be confident in sharing our needs with others too, reflect today on what your needs may be and make a mental list of the people in your life that you can make your needs known to.

Is it noisy?

Francis saw that the world’s noise has a way of deflecting people from the deeper realities of life. It keeps us preoccupied with the superficial at the expense of the meaningful. It deafens our souls and subdues our hearts. For Francis and other saints, monastics, and mystics down through the ages, the desire for solitude isn’t an effort to flee from the world; it’s an attempt to run toward God, to know God better, and to hear God’s voice amid the din.


Excerpt from The Lesson of St. Francis by John Michael Talbot

Do you find yourself running toward the noise? Or, away?  I find that when I am not noticing it I seem to be drawn to the noise, to the busyness of life.  It takes a conscious and concerted effort to turn away and find the solitude.  How does the process work for you? 

Present Moment

Our true home is in the present moment.

To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment,
to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Peace is all around us-
in the world and in nature-
and within us-
in our bodies and our spirits.
Once we learn to touch this peace,
we will be healed and transformed.
It is not a matter of faith;
it is a matter of practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Do you allow yourself to be in the present moment?  How is this time spent?  For some it is in the delight of silence and solitude.  For others it is having heightened awareness of what is happening "now."  How can we slow down from the hustle and bustle of life and be more in the present moment? 

Angels across the Chasm

Zion National Park

“When I was a youngster I wanted to go out running among the mountain peaks. And when, between two summits, a gap appeared, why not leap across the Chasm? Led by the angel’s hand, all my life long this is what happened, this, exactly.” ~Dom Helder Camara~

We all reach these ‘gaps’ in our lives where we are paralyzed by fear and anxiety because we cannot see a safe way to cross over the Chasm. All we see is a wide open canyon with no bridge or road to pass safely onto the other side. Today, can you trust that there is an angel waiting to lead you by the hand? Reflect on what that feels like to have a sense of security and companionship on your journey. Who are the angels in your life? Have you thought about the fact that YOU may be the angel guiding another across the Chasm of life?

Experience Solitude

It’s true: Solitude, silence, and stillness help us connect to God. But God doesn’t intend that we take such spiritual riches and keep them to ourselves or hoard them away. Instead, the genius of the Franciscan approach is its balance between quiet meditation and activity in the world. Intimacy with God becomes a prelude to intimacy with and service to others.


I have found that the discipline of solitude brings three important beliefs:
- You know yourself better.
- You know God better.
- You know your purpose better.

Excerpt from The Lesson of St. Francis by John Michael Talbot

If you are ever in seek of such solitude.  Consider attending the Franciscan Hermitage Experience.  It is a 4 day retreat spent is solitude in the spirit of St. Francis and St. Clare of Assisi.  A perfect opportunity to know God better, yourself, and your purpose better.  Click here for more info.

Persevere with St. Francis

"Happy will they be who will persevere in the things they have begun."

~St. Francis of Assisi~

 Reflect on what this quote means in your life today.  Are there relationships you have neglected?  Are there projects and crafts laying around your home unfinished?  Did you call the dentist back?  Is there yard work that needs to be done?  Are there prayers you've been meaning to say?

Please take the opportunity today,  take one step closer to happiness,  and complete a task that may be difficult for you.  Ask St. Francis to guide you in your effort!

Life's a Banquet

By: Laura Engle For the past three years my spiritual directors and pastors have asked me a version of the following question during Lent: From what are you fasting and on what are you feasting? Author, poet and pastor William Arthur Ward offers the following suggestions: Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude. Fast from pessimism; feast on optimism. Fast from discouragements; feast on hope. Paradox is a friend of the spiritual seeker. So often we find, to the surprise of our busy, linear minds that two opposite things can be true at the same time. In the paradox of the fast that is actually a feast we may find that, to quote the character Auntie Mame, “Life’s a banquet.”

As Christians, we are taught that we can find hugely vibrant, potent hope in the smallest things. This has sometimes been called “mustard seed faith” because of Jesus’ words, “if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed you can say to this mountain, move from here to there and it will move. Nothing will be impossible to you.” It is a kind of law of inverse proportions.

At a minimum, religious teachers in many traditions tell us that times of fasting make our experiences of our feasts all the better. For as our Proverbs teach: “He who is full loathes honey, but for the hungry every bitter thing is sweet” (Prov. 27A:7). It is a matter of perspective. The feast of Easter is the ultimate experience of this truth for Christians.

We must be careful, however, that our notions of fasting are not left to the realm of food only, as means of self-punishment, piousness, duty and deprivation, because to do so cuts us off from the “go- spell”, the good news! Returning to that canny theologian Mame, the entire quote is, “Life’s a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Whoa. Could it be that when we get caught up in our “to do’s” and, let’s face it, daily struggle to be humans, in certain ways we are starving to death? How do we get in on this banquet? Mame’s prescription was to receive it, celebrate it and enjoy it.

I saw a card in a gift shop recently that had a picture of a Buddhist monk, seated in meditation on a rocky cliff. Behind him the sun blazed in a brilliant blue sky. The inscription in the card read, “Nothing to do. Nowhere to go.” As I let myself drop down momentarily into the imagined experience of nothingness, it felt as if the blueness of the sky, the breezes in the canyon, the radiant stillness of the sun were all suddenly right there for me to enjoy.

Speaking personally, the invitation to simultaneously “fast from and feast on” life reframes the entire practice of fasting. It is the gift that Saint Francis holds before us in his well-loved Canticle of Brother Sun in which the Poverello or the poor one, as he was known, finds in his experience of self-emptying his place on earth in kinship with all created things, even the elements. “Praised be you, My Lord, through Brother Wind and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.”

In a simple and yet ultimate way, this way of being, a way that “fasts from (fill in the blank) and “feasts on” brings us home to the planet, ourselves, our community and our Creator.

“And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Gen: 1:31)