in the woods ,again...

To write is to say that I am here .I am the observer of the things around me that make their way to the page.A witness.

 On the bench again.Sun not as warm ,breeze a little cooler.It is February after all.Bird chatter all around.A sad dove coos, a wren calls louder than his size.

This is church.This church is sound, scent and the altar is covered in dead leaves.The noon white sun is the Pascal candle,held high.The choir is many chirps,tweets,and calls and the tapping of a small beak.I bring the words,the praise,and thanksgiving.The centering of silence and emptiness.

 Everything here is holy,blemished,broken,scuffed,things with holes,branches without bark.It is in this silence and solitude that renewal happens for me.It's like I have gotten away with something-this time alone.The trees and I are congregants swaying in the breeze.All I can do with pen and journal is witness and tell what I see through the filter of who I am now.

We took a handicapped priest to Mass this morning.He is in his late 50s and has had a brain tumor,the removal of which has caused two strokes,and a heart attack.He moves slowly and sees little.His elderly mother cares for him but she was ill so we helped.Despite his many infirmities,he has a wicked sense of humor and we laughed all the way down Tara Blvd.to church.He described his bedroom as looking like the church in Lourdes with his crutches,canes and wheelchair.

I asked him how he escaped the bitterness,the depression that he
described he had once felt.He said with a broad smile:"I see it differently now.I wake up each morning and just thank God for another day,for breath ,for life."

Nothing has changed but his filter.It is possible.