adorning her tomb with sacred poetry

Today, my feet are firmly planted between two worlds.Here,the sky is clear,daffodil shoots reach up for the blue ,so blue, sky. Buds appear at the top as pale green nubs,holding back the startlingly bright yellow to come.A crisp breeze has the buds and the green shoots swaying and rippling in the garden.I am here with them,swaying and grateful.Present in the cold.With praise.

The present is where our happiness is.And yet the today, the Church encourages us to look back.A long way back ,to 304 A.D. and to celebrate the 12 year old girl whose death on this day, inspired her time.She, who loved the Christ so much that, without compromise, she went to her death singing His praises.It is clear that the Pope of her time was inspired.History says that he engraved sacred poems on her tomb.Sweet Agnes of the iron will.

When I was in grammar school, there was another Agnes.Mulligan was her last name and she was two years older than I.When she would pass the altar in our hushed church ,she would stop,look at the cross and pray with lips moving and eyes full of love.Her visage could only be described as beatific.I have never forgotten her extraordinary lack of care for what anyone around her thought of her actions;she seemed utterly caught up in what she was witnessing at the altar.I wonder if she still sees with those eyes of love?

My husband and I are to be buried in a lovely "green" cemetery on the grounds of the Trappist Monastery in Conyers ,Georgia.I have a deep connection to this holy ground and we will have a space in a green meadow with trees, streams and flat stone markers.If you come by to say hello, how grand it would be if you left a poem.