the worst flight ever ?

The other night, we went to see "The Rite",one more film about exorcism.As if the ever creepy "The Exorcist", that I saw in the 70s wasn't enough.I remember dreading every time the two priests would start to ascend the stairs to go back in the bedroom where Ragin,who was not herself in more ways than one,lay tied to the bed. That was based on a true story but the possessed had actually been a teen-aged boy who lived in Maryland.

Apparently,in these enlightened times,there is more need for exorcists then ever before.

The Rite of Exorcism has been handed down through the centuries and has specific prayers that are to be said but the heart of the ritual is the casting out of the demon in the name of Jesus.It is His power and only His that can drive the evil spirit from a person.Every time I have seen this ritual portrayed,the invocation of the Name brings tears to my eyes.The only other scene that does this to me is when a live birth is being portrayed.I don't know the connection but there it is.

The church is very hesitant to declare a possession and will seek every other answer for a disturbed person's behavior but when all else fails and certain criteria is met,they will take the case on.

The movie brought to mind something that happened a few years ago, in May of 2004.I was flying home from Connecticut and as we started to descend to Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta,a two year old blonde little girl across the aisle started to howl.This went on for at least twenty minutes and I was getting very anxious.I had nothing to hand the Mother to distract the child.The folks around with ear buds weren't as disturbed as the rest of us.It was excruciating.In desperation,I prayed that Jesus would come into this scene and calm the child, especially for the poor mother.Immediately,the child quieted.I was stunned.Co-incidence? I report,you decide.

The plane landed and I asked the mother if I could help her in some way.She looked around and with tears in her eyes,apologized to everyone for the noise.I told her something like that has happened to all of us.I felt such love for her in that moment.That mysterious,sacred moment.

Cyclone Yasi

A category 5 cyclone is pounding the East Coast of Australia,Queensland,as I type.The winds that accompany this storm are raging at 186 mph.Unimaginable.Since Europeans settled this continent there has never been weather like this,according to reports.I am not proud to admit that I know and care about this because my youngest son has just arrived in Australia to do two months of research.He is safe in the North near Darwin and the only wildness he has seen so far are cockatoos.

Many Americans who hear of this storm will think back to Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it left in the Gulf states.I wonder,if the destruction in Queensland is bad enough,will my son think about lending a hand.

In 2005, as the images of flooding,houses washed away,people on rooftops bombarded the air waves,my son was moved to action.He was working part-time at the Atlanta Zoo and he and a friend got piles of donations from co-workers to take to the coast.His older brothers were afraid for him and told him to send a check to the Red Cross but he was determined.

When he looked at the donations, he had to leave most of it behind because it was animal food and not much else.He and his friend went to Wal-Mart and bought bread,milk,canned food and off they went in his very old ,red Ford truck that has too many miles on it.

They found a state campground in Mississippi,parked back in the woods and set up a tent.After securing their spot,they drove to the local fire house in a small town and asked to be directed to whoever needed help.From there they went to a mobile home park that had suffered damage.The first small trailer was a rusted silver and green with trees and power lines down around it.An elderly black lady came to the door when she saw the truck and said,"Thank God you're here.My cat has no food."Well, that had been left in Georgia so off they went to Wal-Mart.The next trailer's owner was desperate for beer, cigarettes,and bread so the Georgia rescue team went back for that.They did this for three days and then headed home to go back to school and work.

I found out about this after the fact and I am sure I would have tried to discourage him.But now I am wondering if those few days aren't among his most precious memories.

Do the people of Australia jump in to help other parts of the country as we do here? I think they probably do.We met a couple when we were in Scotland.They live in Adelaide and insisted we come and stay with them should we ever find ourselves there.Lovely people.

There is guidance for this type of altruism:

"If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and no food for the day and you say to them,""Good-bye and good luck !Keep warm and well fed,""but do not meet their bodily needs ,what good is that?So it is with faith that does nothing in practise.It is thoroughly lifeless." James 2:15-17.

I pray for the good people Down Under today.If my son can do more,I hope that he does.His heart will lead him.

restless

A wistful feeling of something beyond,in the distance.A time for change,a shaking up of a comfortable structure.

This Christmas season, two things happened that filled me with unease.My Christmas cards were stolen from our mail box.I found an empty envelope on a neighbor's lawn as I took a walk.The hair on the back of my neck stood up at this violation.And then,an abandoned car was parked in front of our property on New Yera's Eve.It had been stolen from Griffin,Georgia,crashed and left by someone who ,no doubt ,lives nearby.

What is next? Next is going to be an uprooting and a move to the Georgia mountains.I have always been drawn to the hills and falls of North Georgia and it is time.We have been in this house for twenty years and I have loved the Flint River flowing casually beyond the floodplain behind our house.The woods of every season,snow dazzling in the trees,the young deer who feed in our yard,sometimes as many as 13.The hawks,barred owls,bluebirds and woodpeckers, with the occasional Pileated.This place enchanted me when we first looked and I will miss it.Here my dogs roamed and created memories that cling to my heart.Canoe trips on the river,egg hunts in the woods,35th Wedding Anniversary celebration and nearby,a church home that has stretched me and brought deep ,life long friends and a surety in the Unseen.

When the kids were younger ,we used to go up to the mountains often,hiking,canoeing and when the tires of the VW van would turn onto Georgia Highway 400,I would feel a drop in my spirits.A deflation.But we always had to go back to the suburbs for jobs,school, commitments.Now, we have a choice.

I think it was the drive from Dawsonville,where my son lives,through the snowy,tree rich hills, to Tennesses this past December that did it.

Oh,I will hear these kind of things:where is the closest hospital?Please.I don't want to live like that.With fear.My parents owned a house in the Catskill mountains in New York and they never would move to this place that they loved because there was no hospital nearby.In 1983,my father had a heart attack at home, on Long Island ,and the hospital that was four blocks away could not save him.

I feel excitement at this shaking up,this new beginning.A challenge to start over.

the small coffin

I have recently found a lovely blog,"Catholic By Grace"and therein a story that has lifted my spirits on this cold January Day.It seems that the family of Christina Green contacted the Trappist monastery in Peosta,Iowa and asked that a coffin be made for their murdered child,a victim of the shooting in Tucson.

The coffin, a small one, arrived in Tucson yesterday.The monks carved her name, her dates and a cross and then made small crosses for the family members out of the same wood.They refused pay even though casket making is their lively-hood.The spokesperson for the monks said that this work was very difficult for them.I can see the monks in their brown robes,bent over their small box in deep prayer for this little lost girl and her devestated family.

Just a small thing but such a grace for anyone who knows this story.In all the violence,the rancor and finger pointing,these humble men did what they could for the family, expecting nothing,blaming no one, just praying and working.Thinking of this brings peace to me.

We have a Trappist monastery here in Georgia and I have spent many a blessed day there.The quiet,the smiling monks,the stray cats who greet everyone at the door,peacocks down by the lake,given by Flannery O'Connor's family after she died.
There is a flock of geese who own the place and I dare anyone to go on the path to the lake when they are there.My husband nearly lost an appendage one Spring day when he figured they would move.Ha.

I have chosen to be buried in the green cemetery that is near the monastery buildings.I also will have my casket made by the monks and my tombstone will be a flat rock laid in a field of flowers by a stream.I don't expect any of this to help my next journey but if my family chooses to visit, they will find a restful place and the thought of that pleases me.

desert people

Twice a month , I have to take my fluffy white quilt to the laundromat to be washed with anti-dust mite solution.I dread those days.The 20 x 20 room where the washing machines are has 3 televisions.Three!All blaring, at a deafening volume, the trials of the demented as they appear before a screaming judge.It is a horrible experience.We tried another laundromat down the road and it was the same.I have to sit in the car ,in the cold ,to get away from the noise.

If I pump gas at Wal-mart, there is a small screen at the top of the pump that is loudly telling me about the cigarette deal inside the booth or the cheap coke.I feel assualted.

Maybe I am super sensitive to this because once,unexpectedly, I found myself in the presence of complete silence and it felt like I had met an unforgettable person.

In the 80s, my family drove out West to visit relatives and we stopped along the barren highway in Arizona at a sign that said,Painted Desert.We got out of our old VW van and went to the railing and looked stunned at what lay before us.You could see infinity.No trees, just a land of colored sand.This is not the grey,hilly Sahara of the movies;this is red,grey,bronze,cooper, undulating ,rippled land that stretches out forever.And then I was embraced by a quiet that I cannot describe.Deep,thick silence and in my spirit I heard this;"This is Who I am."Those exact words.This was an emptiness that was somehow full,complete.I could spend the next hundred years trying to discern the meaning of this.

"God's poet is silence.His song is unspoken,
and yet so profound",.....
Joaquin Miller

One of my many New Year's resolutions is to find silence a few times a week for at least a half hour.I have ignored what happened in Arizona for too long.There is something more I need to learn and I have to take my pen and journal and find out what it is.

holy places

I just came back from a brief walk in the undeveloped subdivision next to ours.Five years ago they cleared the field,put in a road and then,nothing happened.I wish you could see how tall the bronze grass is and the acres of Loblolly pines that have sprung up.It's peaceful;bird song and the waving grass is all you hear.


As I neared the end of my walk, this thought came,"I should write about the holy places in my life:places where I have received insight,felt extraordinary love,places of unimaginable co-incidences."And so I will do that and in the doing I will be blessed again.

It is not always in chapels that these things happen but they occur there too.As examples let me list some of them:

-The Painted Desert

-my sister's hospital room

-the labyrinth at a retreat house in Still Point, New York

-a side chapel at the Basilica of St.Clare in Assisi.

-the snow covered trees behind my house.

These are a few places.Perhaps by reading about this, you may think of your own or start looking for them.This visible world is a sacred place and the invisible world is so close to it that only the thickness of a butterfly's wing separates the two.

Hnag on,it's going to be a bumpy ride !

tenderness of trees

This writing is about questions that have no answers.

In the early 70s ,we lived in Aurora,Colorado,a suburb east of Denver.I missed so many things I had left behind.Maple trees were the greatest lost after family and friends.

Where I grew up on Long Island, the streets were lined with maples.We grew up together.Whatever I knew of beauty, I learned from them.The soft snow resting on filigreed limbs,the reds,yellows and oranges of Fall that we tried to hold in paraffin wax,the first light green buds of spring.Especially, I remember the corner lamppost shining through the green summer leaves.Magic.

Denver is on the Great Plains and trees there are almost non-existent.You have to go West to the mountains to see pines and aspen.However, down on the plain there were cottonwoods that grew along the High Line Canal, east of the city,that is feed by water from the South Platte river.They were not maples,not as full and a lighter green but they stood grandly ,following the canal and they were treasured by tree lovers.As I would drive by,they would give me pleasure.

One night, a chain saw came out and in darkness,a resident cut down the ones that blocked his view of the peaks,it is assumed.All of Denver mourned.The canal now has a 66 mile green space next to it for recreation and I am sure the trees are legally protected but then the vandalism went unchecked.

I thought of this when a friend sent an article describing another travesty,this time in England.

Thursday morning the people of Glastonbury woke up as usual,put on their whistling tea kettles and looked up to Wearyall hill and the Thorn Tree that grows there high above their houses.The tree was planted in 1951 from the roots of a tree that sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea stuck in the ground 2000 years ago in this town.

A thorn tree lives for about 100 years and so the locals keep planting sprigs to keep the tree going, all from the same root and it is from antiquity. The tree is a site for pilgrims and is the anchor,the surety of the small town.

Each year a branch is cut from the tree and sent to the Queen to rest on her Christmas table and she always send a thank-you note.Continuity.History.

Thursday morning the tree was no more.In the dark,someone had cut off all the branches and left them around the tree.And the people look up at the absence.

This reminds me of the New Yorkers who could see Manhattan from their homes in Brooklyn,the Bronx and other points.They look over now and the skyline is off, not balanced and they remember.The sheer waste and pointless destruction.Still.

There is a lack in some human hearts,a hatred that springs from a misalignment with the Creator.These are the people who torture cats or cut trees for the malice of it.Or take down towers because they can.

Where is the tenderness?The gratitude.


The thorn tree in England has been cut before by dolts and cowards who come at night.But I have this vision of April 25,2011.The townspeople are walking up the hill with strollers;old people are coming with walkers,girls with daisy chains on their flaxen hair and boys on bikes will come and stand around the tree.And then Life will reveal what it is.Pushing out green,renewing, regenerating as it always does.And the crowd in the hushed air will look down and see the new sprouts and start to clap and the applause will build.Maybe we should do this every time we see a new bud or a sprout that we don't deserve.