Fr Jim's Blog

Vespers is the name we give to the Evening Prayer of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, which monks, nuns, clergy and many lay people around the world pray each day. Here at Creighton we pray solemn, chanted vespers every Sunday night, and as I enter into my final week here I realise with a tinge of sadness that tonight was the last night I'll do vespers here in St John's Chapel at Creighton University. It's odd that I'll miss it, because I don't really enjoy it. At least, I don't like the way we do it here. It's a slightly unusual form of chanting, unlike you'd find in any monastery. We use the same psalms every week, rather than using the four week rotation which most places use. For some reason we throw the hymn Salve Regina in. And we use incense, which I'm never a fan of. So why do I even go? You can pray the Divine Office alone or in public, but as its the prayer of the Church, for the Church and the world, and it makes sense to pra

 This is Sr Thuy (pronounced Twee). She's a Sister of the Lovers of the Holy Cross, a Vietnamese religious order which is the only women's religious in the north of Vietnam (the more communist end, closer to China). She came to the United States ten years ago to study. She spent the first two years in California just learning English.This was a difficult and lonely time.Then, she moved to Milwaukee which is in the far north of the US where it snows for five months of the year. What a contrast to tropical Vietnam! She studied a Bachelor of Arts, then a Masters of Counselling, then over the last three summers (in what should have been her holidays) came over to Omaha to do the spiritual direction course (and another masters degree). She only went home to visit  her family once during this time, due both to cost of airfare and the Vietnamese government being restrictive on travel for religious. She's been our classmate here at Creighton, and everybody's favourite p

Here are the books (plus some online articles) which I am reading  this month for my two classes in liturgy and conversion. It looks like a lot - and it is - but fortunately I have plenty of time on my hands to do it. My job right now is to read, rather than finding time to read in between other things. My big challenge will be carrying them all home; I have  as many books again from last month also. What makes reading here so interesting is that we're not just reading for comprehension, we're reading for transformation. Lots of us had the experience of school or tertiary study where we cram to remember the details  for an exam or essay, but  then forget it within a few days or weeks We remembered just long enough to spit it out again for assessment. Here though, the details don't matter so much.  I read the large book on the bottom last  week, From Age to Age by Fr Ed Foley (who taught me in Chicago). It's 2000 years of the history of the Eucharist. There's

Yesterday I went to Kansas City for the day with my classmate Jeff who offered to take me along while he visited his brother. It was good to get away, as I haven't been more than two and half miles away from campus for a month. We had no particular plan for the morning, so we began to walk down the main street when we caught sight of a seemingly life-size T-Rex outside the central railway station. It turns out that the old Union Station has been renovated as an exhibition space as well as a train station, and had a dinosaur exhibit within. Even more interesting though was the architecture itself with beautiful ornate ceilings and magnificent art deco columns. Where as most early 20th century stations such as the original Penn Station in New York have since been demolished, this is a rare example. There was a great history exhibit within the station showing the history of railroads in the US. It turns out that many major train stations are called Union Station because they were

Sr Evelyn and Sr Elizabeth, celebrating I'm here doing a Master of Arts in Christian Spirituality. But within this is a second program, the Graduate Certificate in Spiritual Direction, which can also be taken as a separate award, without the MA. So last night, my friends and I graduated from the Certificate, and today, many of them are heading home. Only some of us, in fact mostly only the clergy and religious among us are staying for a second term each year to complete the extra subjects for the MA. Me and Kevin My graduation class

It's Independence Day here in the US, and for a country that loves it's flags and its fireworks that adds up to a whole lot of patriotism today. Australian history is bound up with US independence. The 13 colonies of the US declared independence on this day in 1776. After a few years the British realised they actually meant it, which meant they could no longer send their convicts to the Virginia, Maryland and Georgia penal settlements. After a couple of years of leaving prisoners in ships in the Thames the British thought they might try out that great southland which James Cook discovered before he went and got himself killed in Hawaii. And lo, the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, eleven and a half years after the Declaration of Independence. So that's the history. But I sometimes wonder about the alternatives. 1. What if the US  didn't declare independence, but waited another century and just federated like Australia's British colonies. No need to have a