Lectio Divina — Day 18 of the Season of Creation
WOMEN
Living Water for All
1. Lectio — women
> “…and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary, called Magdalene… Joanna… Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their resources.”
— Luke 8:2–3
Today one ordinary word stops me: women.
Luke could simply have told me that Jesus traveled from town to town proclaiming the Kingdom. Instead, he tells me who traveled with him. The Twelve are there, but so are women—Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and others whose names have disappeared from history but whose service has not disappeared from the Gospel.
They are not scenery around Jesus’ ministry. They help sustain it.
And they remain.
These women will follow Jesus toward Jerusalem. They will stand within sight of the Cross. They will discover the empty tomb. They will carry news of the Resurrection back to the apostles.
In a culture where the public association of a rabbi with women could itself be remarkable, Jesus allows women to draw near, to accompany, to provide, to witness and to proclaim.
During this Season of Creation, I hear something else in that word. Creation itself survives through relationships of receiving and giving, dependence and provision. Nothing truly lives alone.
Even living water reaches me through relationships.
Perhaps I need to notice more carefully the people through whom God has been quietly sustaining my life.
And many of them are women.
—
2. Meditatio — The half of The Glenn I seldom photograph
Most of the time when I speak about The Glenn, I speak about what is outside.
The sheep. The LGDs. The chickens. The grass. The flowers. The coyotes. The fences. The wind. The drought. The water.
I photograph those things because that is the realm in which I spend much of my working life.
Yet there is another part of The Glenn that appears much less frequently in my reflections: the house.
That omission strikes me today because the house is the place that sustains me.
And it is principally Kim’s realm.
Over the years Kim and I have arrived at an understanding. The outside is principally my responsibility; the house is principally hers. We discuss what each of us intends to do, but within those respective areas we ordinarily allow the steward responsible for it the final word.
That arrangement is ours. It need not be everybody else’s.
But perhaps what matters spiritually is whether I recognize stewardship rather than superiority.
The house is not less important because I am outside working with sheep.
The work Kim does is not somehow secondary because much of it happens behind a door rather than beneath the Texas sky.
Indeed, I am frequently convicted by the comparison.
I walk inside from the portion entrusted to me and see how carefully Kim tends the portion entrusted to her—and sometimes her stewardship becomes an examination of conscience concerning mine.
Why am I not caring for my part as well as she cares for hers?
Today’s Gospel makes that question even more interesting.
The women accompanying Jesus were “providing for them out of their resources.”
How easy it would be to read quickly past that sentence.
Jesus and the Twelve are preaching the Kingdom, while the women are supporting them.
Yet remove the supposedly ordinary work of providing and sustaining, and what happens to the supposedly important work?
Perhaps there is no insignificant work when work becomes love.
Laudato Si’ reminds me that work should be a place where the human person grows—where creativity, planning, talent, values, relationships and worship of God all come together. That dignity belongs to both men and women.
The difference between us need not become competition.
Nor does equality require sameness.
Kim does not have to become me for her work to possess dignity, nor do I have to become Kim. What matters is that neither of us reduces the other to a function. We are two persons, male and female, each capable of reason, creativity, moral growth, spiritual depth, work, love and stewardship.
And this Season of Creation makes me think again about living water.
I notice water outside because I am responsible for troughs, hoses, animals and land. But water flows inside too—through the kitchen, laundry, cleaning, cooking, drinking and countless ordinary acts through which a household remains alive.
Perhaps I have been photographing only half the watershed.
The Glenn is not merely the acreage beyond my door.
The house is part of the ecology of The Glenn too.
And the women in today’s Gospel remind me that some of the work most necessary for sustaining a mission can become nearly invisible precisely because somebody faithfully does it every day.
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3. Oratio — Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You welcomed women into the company of Your disciples
and received the gifts through which they helped sustain Your mission.
Give me eyes to recognize the women
through whom You have sustained my own life.
Today I thank You especially for Kim.
Forgive me when I notice the work that resembles my own
more readily than the work upon which my own depends.
Keep me from confusing stewardship with domination,
difference with inequality,
or responsibility with superiority.
When I see how carefully another person tends
what You have entrusted to her,
let that faithfulness challenge me
to care better for what You have entrusted to me.
During this Season of Creation,
teach me that our common home begins
with the actual home in which I live.
May living water flow through it with gratitude rather than waste,
through the land with justice rather than exploitation,
and through my heart as grace rather than possession.
Bless the women who followed You,
the women who remained near Your Cross,
the women who discovered Your empty tomb,
and the women whose faithful work still sustains Your Church and my life.
Amen.
—
4. Contemplatio — Disarming the house
There is something wonderfully ordinary about the arrangement Kim and I have developed at The Glenn.
We each have a realm of responsibility.
But neither realm needs to conquer the other.
Perhaps that offers me an unexpected doorway into the call of Magnifica humanitas to “disarm” artificial intelligence.
The word disarm initially sounds military. Yet the deeper problem is the assumption that greater power automatically produces a greater right to rule.
I recognize that temptation even without AI.
My land. My animals. My decision.
Or inside the house:
My authority. My preference. My way.
But stewardship says something quite different:
This has been entrusted to me, therefore I am responsible for serving it.
That is a radically different understanding of power.
And perhaps men and women can teach the technological world something desperately needed here. Human flourishing does not require every difference to become a contest for domination. Nor should every sphere of life be transformed into a competition in which whoever possesses the greatest power, wealth, data or computing capacity earns the right to determine everybody else’s future.
The household would become unbearable if Kim and I lived that way.
The planet is becoming unbearable when humanity lives that way.
And artificial intelligence could magnify that mistake enormously.
If AI becomes another arena in which nations, corporations and individuals race simply to possess the most powerful system, then technology has become armed even without carrying a weapon.
To disarm it means restoring technology to service.
Not: What can this machine make me powerful enough to control?
But:
Whom can it help me serve?
That sounds remarkably like today’s Gospel.
Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and the other women possessed resources, and they used those resources not to dominate the mission but to sustain it.
There is a model of technological stewardship hidden there.
Resources placed at the service of relationship.
Power placed at the service of mission.
Gifts placed at the service of others.
And suddenly I am back at The Glenn during the Season of Creation.
The house and pasture are not competing ecosystems. They form one home.
Men and women are not rival species. We share one human dignity.
Technology and humanity need not become adversaries, provided technology remains servant rather than master.
And living water offers perhaps the simplest image of all.
Water does not become great by accumulating itself into one inaccessible reservoir.
It gives life because it flows.
Perhaps that is what I need to learn from the women walking beside Jesus.
They had resources.
They shared them.
They sustained a mission larger than themselves.
And two thousand years later, I am reading their names.
Actio
Today I will deliberately photograph something inside The Glenn.
Not because the house suddenly becomes my realm, but because I want to train myself to see the part of my common home that my photographs and reflections usually overlook.
Before taking the picture, I will notice one ordinary thing inside the house that exists because of Kim’s stewardship and silently thank God for it.
Then, when I go back outside to my own work, I will ask myself:
Does the way I care for my part of The Glenn honor the care with which she tends hers?
And whenever I turn on a faucet today, I will allow the living water passing through both of our realms to remind me:
One home.
Different gifts.
Shared dignity.
Mutual stewardship.
No need to dominate.
Only the call to serve.
Day 18 of the Season of Creation
