Shortly after I turned ten years old, my father died from cancer. He told my mother that he wanted to tell me about his impending death himself. On a sunny, fall day he went outside with me. He directed me to use my little shovel and dig up a small area of ground by the fence. I dug up the earth, broke up clots of dirt and raked it smooth. Then my father took some tulip bulbs out of his pocket. He showed me how to dig the holes where the bulbs would go and I planted them making sure they faced the right direction. Soon they were all planted. After we returned to the house, he said to me, “Kathleen, soon I will be planted in the earth just like the bulbs you planted. Do you know what will happen to them in the spring?” I said, “They will bloom.” My father told me, “This will happen to me. You will not see it right away, but like the bulbs, God will give me a new life and I will bloom in God’s time. It is called the resurrection.” Looking back with adult eyes, I realize that this was my first lesson in transformation. It was revealed to me through my dad’s life. He was rooted in God, lived in harmony with his own self and with his family and friends.
Rooted in God
When writing to the community at Ephesus, Paul prayed that they may be rooted and grounded in God’s love through the power of the Holy Spirit. In The Message, Eugene Peterson expands on Paul’s prayer. “And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you will be able to take in with all the followers of Christ the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.”[i]
Catherine of Siena, a fourteenth century Dominican mystic, desired to live fully in God’s extravagant love. She thought that this meant to withdraw from the world and live a life of total solitude. Jesus had a different plan for her. After three years of solitude Jesus offered her an invitation. “I have no intention of parting you from myself, but rather making sure to bind you to me all the closer, by the bond of love for your neighbor. Remember that I have laid down two commandments of love, love of me and love of your neighbor. On these two commandments as I myself have bore witness ‘depend the Law and the Prophets.’ It is the justice of these two commandments that I want you to fulfill. On two feet you must walk my way, on two wings you must fly to heaven.[ii]
Jesus called Catherine to join a life of activity to her life of contemplative solitude. She was reassured that the life of activity would not separate her from God. From this time on Catherine lived an extraordinarily active life while continuing her contemplative life. She cared for the sick and poor and outcast of her society. She counseled and gave spiritual direction. She reconciled feuding Italian families, and carried out social work in many cities and states.
Jesus invited Catherine to live on the threshold of life with one foot planted in the world and one foot firmly planted in her contemplative cell. Catherine invites us to walk on two feet as well. We walk on our contemplative foot when we go into the world and when we bring the footprints of cares and concerns about the world into our cell of prayer. If we tried to walk only on one foot, we would not be able to maintain our balance. The contemplative life can become “me and God” without the balance of action and the active life lacks transformation without the insights of contemplation.
Contemplation
But, what is contemplation? From the sixth to the seventeenth century the words contemplation and mysticism were often used interchangeably. Like mysticism, contemplation is not extraordinary nor is it only for the elite. It is a radical ordinariness, for everyone. It is a call to the depth and height of what it means to be human. And it leads to the transformation of both the one who prays and the world.
Contemplation is a way of looking, observing or considering. It involves looking within for a reason. Contemplation embraces a view. It is a way of being attentive, a particular way of looking. Contemplation is the gaze of the heart that opens itself to God. It is not a quick glance. It is the gaze of love that desires to see God’s presence in the world.
Harmony with Family and Friends
I always looked forward to Saturdays with my dad. The day began with a visit to grandma’s house. After that we walked a few blocks to the Swedish bakery. We visited with everyone along the way. Our last stops were to visit the sick in the hospital or at their home. I learned from my dad how to reach out to a variety of people without judgment. I know his example forms my ministry today. My dad was not a pastor. He was an engineer. He reached out to others from his prayerful center.
Several years ago I discovered the writings of Dorotheos of Gaza. He was a sixth century teacher of the spiritual life. Some of the brothers in his monastery had unrealistic expectations of the others and that often led to hurt feelings, criticism and judgment. Dorotheos addressed these problems in a discourse he taught on loving God and neighbor. He used the metaphor of tracing a circle with a compass, “Suppose we were to take a compass and insert the point and draw the outline of a circle. The center point is the same distance from any point on the circumference…. Let us suppose that this circle is the world and that God is the center: the straight lines drawn from the circumference to the center are the lives of human beings.”[iii]
This metaphor of tracing a circle with a compass invites us to a profound truth. The closer we are to God the closer we are to the other. The closer we are to others the closer we are to God. The opposite is also true. When we move away from others we move away from God and when we move away from God we move away from others. The mutual movement of God, self and neighbor is constant and unbroken.
Relationship With Self and God
Catherine of Siena also uses the metaphor of circle. She records a dialogue with God.
“Imagine a circle traced on the ground and in its center a tree sprouting with a shoot grafted into its side. The tree finds nourishment in the soil within the expanse of the circle, but uprooted from the soil it would die fruitless. So think of the soul as a tree made for love and living only by love. Indeed, without this divine love, which is true and perfect charity, death would be her fruit instead of life. The circle in which this tree’s root, the souls love, must grow in knowledge of herself, knowledge that is joined to me, who like the circle, find neither beginning nor end, yet never leave the circle. This knowledge of yourself, and of me within yourself is grounded in the soil of true humility.”[iv]
For Catherine, the circle is the shape of our lives in God. From center to circumference, our relationship with God has no beginning and no end.
We are firmly planted within our own human reality in God. When we think about trees we often think about what we see above the ground; trunk, branches, leaves and fruit. It is, however, the roots that balance and nourish the tree. The root’s nourishment comes from the soil. We are rooted in God and our life depends on that life and strength that is buried deep within us.
The root of the word humility is humus (ground). Humility is the firm foundation on which our spiritual life is built. Humility is not underestimating our worth or allowing ourselves to be defined by another. Humility is the opposite of this. It is the life-giving knowledge of self and knowledge of God.
Catherine compares humility to digging a well. In her day it was a slow process of digging through the soil, moving rocks and debris before reaching water. We must dig through the soil of our own poverty to come to a deeper sense of knowledge of self. We dig through the rocks of resistance and rejection, the stones of selfishness and sin. We come into contact with our own inadequacies and imperfections.
Our thirsty roots reach down to the running water. The water becomes a mirror in which we see our reflection. Can we separate our reflection from the water? If we seek self-knowledge outside of God, we end up confused and confounded. When we see ourselves in the mirror that is God, we see ourselves as we truly are.
Catherine may have heard this mirror image when she was in the Church of San Domenico and a reader proclaimed this message from Paul. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord, as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit”(Ephesians 3:18, NRSV). In Paul’s time, Catherine’s as well, a mirror was made of polished metal, usually bronze. The best of these mirrors could only give an imperfect and somewhat distorted reflection. The image in the mirror, although smaller, was clearest in the center, the deepest part. Although the image was larger farther away from the mirror, it was incomplete and blurred. When we try to see ourselves only farther away from the mirror, we often see an incomplete and blurred image and turn away. We see only the part of ourselves that is fragmentary and limits our wholeness in the image of Christ.
Catherine invites us to gaze into God and see God’s profound love for us at the heart of our being. Our identity is being transformed by God’s Spirit. Transformation is not a destination or a goal we accomplish. It is not a narcissistic search for perfection in the false mirror of society.
Can we see transformation? I had an experience of seeing it in my fourth grade classroom. My little county school received a science cart. It contained all the ingredients for simple science experiments. One day my teacher opened up the doors of the cart and took out a round Pyrex pie plate. She poured some water into the plate and then added blue food coloring. She mixed up the water and food coloring and then she took out a yellow sponge and placed it right in the middle of the blue water. My eyes were fixed on that sponge. I watched the yellow sponge slowly turn green as it soaked up the blue fluid. The purpose of the experiment was to teach us about osmosis.
I’ve been pondering that story as I think about transformation. God invites us to be soaked in grace. The sponge was no longer the same after it was soaked. We will not be the same when we accept God’s invitation to dwell in the circle of Grace.
My dad taught me about being prayerfully rooted in God, walking God’s love and compassion on two feet, and being my true self in God. O, by the way, the next spring beautiful white tulips bloomed.
About the Author
Kathleen Flood, OP, is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, WI. She holds the D. Min. in Christian Spirituality. Sr. Kathleen is the co-founder and director of Stillpoint, Inc., offering programs in spiritual direction and contemplative prayer. She serves as a member of the faculty for The Academy of Spiritual Formation sponsored by The Upper Room. She is currently working on a book on Catherine of Siena.
[i] Peterson, Eugene, The Message. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002,
[ii] Raymond of Capua. The Life of Catherine of Siena. Trans. Kearns, Conleth, Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1980, 116.
[iii] Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings. Trans. Eric P. Wheeler, Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977, 139.
[iv] Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, Classics of Western Spirituality, Trans. Suzanne Noffke, OP, Mahway, NJ:Paulist Press, 1980, 41-2.
