Do you ever feel like you are running through life without letting it run through you? Pearls lost to a pig in muck :)…wasting the precious.

So I want to slow down, name and take hold of the special moments – light and dark – so as not to miss the Spirit, as she passes. Before the month is over, I just want to name my July graces.

I started the month working with this wonderful woman (nearly the same as wonder-woman) on music in and as theology.

It’s not to frequent to find friendship, love for music, thirst for good theology and common concerns in the same space – time slows down and become utterly fruitful.

So we wrote two songs, one conference presentation, and one article (nearly there)… with some simple shared spaces for R&R&R (rest, relax and running). I am grateful to God for this friend and theological accomplice?.

Then I shifted gear to sharing with this other beautiful person the completion of one stage of his life’s journey as he was ordained to the priesthood for the Toowoomba Diocese.

Tom (along with four other seminarians) was in the first class I ever taught here in Australia, and we have passed through shared learnings, Spanish-speaking, praying, preaching, teaching, theological thinking, challenges and choices to this point of arrival and departure. There are many things that need to grow in this Church I belong to, but I name this as a graced moment my heart celebrates deeply.

I need to mention here as well that this was preceded by the ordination of Josh in June for the Archdiocese of Brisbane… and a third, Emene, coming up in Townsville, in God’s timing. Three gifted and generous people I am privileged and blessed to have worked with. 

But each month has its grace :).

And then last week, we had our 3rd Xavier School of Mission, this time focussed on preaching and teaching.

I won’t go into what it is (see here: Xavier School of Mission), but there is something magical when a mission, good preparation and planning come together in teamwork.

I have been working at the Seminary for a few years now, and this was, without doubt, one of the high-points – a sister among brothers (no change there, as in the Heaneys I come between my two brothers:)!), working for the common cause of others coming to know Jesus. If all our ministerial training felt like this, I believe God’s reign would come more quickly :).

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Finally, this weekend, I was back in the studio at The Songtore  with the most wonderful music-makers ever: Barb and Adrian Hannan… and their son, Josh, who has a voice to die for and graciously sings on my next album.

And again, with  partner in crime, Danielle Lynch 🙂

No matter how tired I am, making good music touches a space in my soul that renews all things… like the company of a soul friend into the wee hours.

I have written a song that is dear to me as it is born of prayer and my honest attempt to name our loving God Creator for the people I love (nieces and nephews, friends yet unknown on the edge of my Catholic world… the ones who struggle to sense God close). As Pope John Paul I already wrote, “God is Father and Mother”… and more than both, beyond our gendered understandings of personhood: the God in whose image we are all made. Before the Incarnation, God had no gender – the early Church Fathers were very clear on this. But we have lost the art of naming in careful ways the One who created us.

Today would be the birthday of my father, who together with my mother taught me the reality of unconditional love. And to this day I owe them both much of whatever understanding of self-giving I have. God loved us through them, very clearly.

So I dedicate it to you, Mum, and you Dad, who I trust now knows more about the face of the One beyond all names.(Listen to the song here: God by any other Name.  Thank you for teaching me that “you can be anything you want to be”. JC Heaney. Your words echo still in me, Dad.