saints answer the phone when it rings...

Early in our Camino walk , we found ourselves at a hostel table with several pilgrims from around the globe.As we passed bread and filled wine glasses, I asked the young good looking Dane next to me what he did back home.His answer surprised as he works for the Red Cross interviewing and placing Afhgan refugees.I asked how he does this as I would expect the language would be a barrier.He said that he does the best he can but that the work is very draining.The people he helps have nothing and have nowhere to go and such deprivation overwhelms him.He came on the Camino to clear his mind.I asked if he was a saint.The work he does ,it seems to me ,is God's work.He laughed and shook his head.A young West Coast walker who sat across from me asked with curiosity:"Why would anyone want to be a saint ?"It's a good path,like the one we are on,I replied."And I think that this is so.

Pope Francis was quoted recently about listening to God in the quiet of your heart and responding .I think he must have seen me on the train platform when we were leaving Sahagun.As we approached some benches at the station with an hour until train time,I heard this loud Irish voice pontificating from the other end.He was an older pilgrim with a white beard and ruddy face talking to another hiker and either he was deaf or he thought she was.John and I had planned an hour off our feet reading and were annoyed by the voice booming in our ears.A few minutes later, another group joined the small throng and the Irishman must have known them because he scurried over,sat down and left the first pilgrim alone.Now, there were groups of two or more and her, alone on the platform.I thought,she speaks English ,I should go talk to her but the book I was reading was so enjoyable as I sat in the warm sun.A few minutes later, someone else went to talk to her and I was glad.
But as I walked many steps the next day,clarity came.This is not how saints are made.

Was I listening?What opportunity did I miss,what call?Unbelievably,I saw her again,this bedraggled woman who looked more homeless than hiker,she who was not clad in Columbia wear,leaving the Leon station.She had a new friend and she was glowing .Her Camino was blessing her.

we become what we receive

At Mass today, we sang a Spanish hymn that I had never heard before.We have a seminarian with a wonderful voice who is helping with music for the summer and he belted this one out.And the words....
"The body and the blood;we become what we receive."

This line struck me and I thought about the expression, 'we are what we eat.'If that is true, then we also become what we allow to enter our minds and souls.

My family recently had a spirited discussion about religion and things spiritual.After I shared a God moment with the group, one member said that nothing like that has ever happened to him."I've been there,"I thought, "when the spiritual world seems non-existent." In my view, this is the land where I am not praying or reading any inspiring books.Just me, my mind and the "real' world.In this place, my mind is taken afield with thoughts of money,worries,and what the senses put before me.

I recently read a book that expresses this another way.The author,Melvin Morse, writes that ..."when we use our right temporal lobe,we directly perceive a reality unfiltered by input from the five senses.The input from those perceptions fuel intuition...."He claims that this part of the brain is "Where God Lives", which is the title of his book.To him, we have a choice to use that part of the brain that ,when exercised, changes how we view the world ,visible and invisible.

This is the part of the brain that felt and perceived my deceased dog Cooper, laying beside me on a gurney as I awaited a colonoscopy.And noticed a posting on Facebook ,a picture that appeared that day of the same dog ,put there by someone who had taken it five years early,and concluded that there is a Power at work beyond my seeing.

I love this encouragement from Mr. Morse...."Connecting with the Universe is my personal challenge.I do not want to wait until I die to hear God's voice."Amen.

there are heroes on the trail

This summer, my husband and I spent alot of time trudging up mountains and hiking along wooded paths,getting ready for our pilgrimage in September.None of it was easy but I took heart when I saw some others on the path.A man whose stroke has caused him to drag his left foot pitifully behind him when he walks and a woman hiking with a cane.In my view they are special, strong and determined older folks.They inspired me.

And then there was this:we hiked at North Lake in the Catskills with my oldest son and his family.It's a short hike but very steep but the view of the Hudson River Valley and the river itself way in the distance is breath-taking.On the way up to the top, the kids spied a black bear but I didn't see it.They were pretty excited,me,not so much.

On the way down, I looked ahead and saw my son stopped on the trail.He called back that the huge beast was coming up the hill to the trail and would be between us very soon.I felt this might be dangerous, so I blew my very shrill trail whistle and heard the sound of something huge crashing through the woods to my left.I saw the bear's back side which was the size of a small truck and I was terrified.Happily, he was going away from us.

When I turned around there was my son coming up the trail towards.Seeing him was such a relief; my husband and I were not alone with the bear.He later told us that he planned to run at the bear and hit him with his shoulder.I am beyond glad that this didn't have to happen.

When my dear son was two years old, he used to ride his Big Wheel down our drive way into the garage.Over and over, he would crash down at a fast pace with a smile the size of Texas on his face.When he went skiing as a teenager,word came back that he had raced down the course with no poles and that same smile.Twice in the intervening years, I have found myself in a sad situation,once at Edisto and another at St.Augustine. To hear this son's voice saying that he's coming to get me, always made me breathe easier.

The silver haired woman is being wheeled back to her room in 2005,
after minor heart surgery.She is frrightened.At the foot of her bed is a tall,good-looking young man with tears in his eyes and flowers in his hand."Hi Mom," he says,"are you O.K.?"He is her son,her hero.

the geometry teacher

The room is full of tired students,this being the next to the last class of the day.The windows of the room face the street and more than one girl is thinking,soon we will be finished with this mystery that is geometry.

The teacher is Sister Mary Ulick and she is a plain ,no nonsense woman ,clad all in black.I don't recall a joke or light remark passing her lips.This was serious work getting a gaggle of girls interested in and understanding rhombuses.She was an enigma to us because she was all work.

And yet,on the first day of Spring, something remarkable happened in that class.We would drag in as always and when we settled down, she would fling open the three big windows and say in her simple way;"Look girls, look at the glory of God."She would point to the new buds on the maples that lined Cathedral Avenue.Gesture with her hand to the blazing pink and red azaleas across the street, and breath in deeply of the new warm air.We were mesmerized .Our eyes followed hers and we drank it in,this long awaited Spring.The next day, we were back to isosceles triangles.She did this every year.

What I now think she was saying was:"Girls,like you, I want to take off  this uniform and run madly around in the grass singing Cohen's "Hallelujah".Let's do this now.I'll meet you out there and we will shout for joy and singing like birds".I think I can see her more clearly now.I picturre her at a desk in  the convent writing poems in the evening light.Hidden behind the walls, what beauty did she put on paper that has never been seen ?Who among us did she inspire to be poets by her rapture on that spring day when the windows were flung open and the air was sweet?

seeing

If I hold out my hand , what will be placed there?

In the garden, so lush from a bounteous spring of rains, the bright white of two Easter lilies just blooming.They were both from church Easter throw aways and as they bloom I think of their bulbs,grateful to have found a spot of dark dirt and sun.

Many years ago when we first moved in,I saw a rock down by the river and wanted to bring it up and put it out front by the pines.My son, who wants nothing changed in his woods sanctuary was against it but I won.Years have passed, ivy and pine straw covered the rock and I forgot about it.Now, however, I have a tiny Zen garden in the back with a small red rose,a new slip of a lilac and an oriental garden lamp.As balance nestled in the pine straw,the rock glitters in the sunlight.Perfect place to start the day,gazing on this simple place of memories.

As I read on the porch, turkeys appear as if conjured.There are two young males with a tie of feathers down their chests that are called beards.There is another group of larger males and a smaller female and then a solitary young female.They are all getting comfortable here hardly fleeing when I put out the corn.A solitary brown doe may stop by and they quickly charge her and usher her back into the woods.She must know they are dangerous with the spikes on the back of their skinny legs.Last year ,we had a baby turkeys,or poult,all beige fluff but not this year.I have a friend who lives now in Montana whose grandparents fed turkeys in Georgia years ago.If they didn't get the corn out fast enough, the birds would peck at the door and wake them up.I am not ready for that.

The crows,blackness itself,arrive and out of the six regulars,one holds his leg up and hops,injured.I feel sad until I recall that crows are known to help each other especially the aged ones.I have not seen this yet,but I am hopeful.

The waning sun shines through the woods and captures the fox and as if lit from within he is copper glory; then he's gone.

my soul in stillness waits.....

For some reason,dawn found me this morning on the porch doing my morning prayer.It was still grey,not even squirrels were at the feeder.The only sound was the early rising wren, whose shrill call pierced the air and made me smile. There is something so blessed about this time of day.I felt alone in the world and it felt good.

 This was a perfect place to read a book of meditations by Carlo Carretto, a Catholic lay person who ,at God's call ,left Italy and went out to the desert to live and serve the poor in the waste land of North Africa.Something he wrote stayed with me and I offer it to you:
"Is there any creature which does not speak to us of him?Which is not his photograph and symbol?Which is not an invitation from him?"

Pondering this can change a life.

We have three turkey neighbors that come every day to eat under the feeder.One is a huge Tom ,the other a smaller male and a female.When she is around,he struts and all his plumage is shooting out included that amazing brown fan of a tail.He doesn't eat, he just struts and I know he is letting her and the world know that he is protecting her.It is so obvious. God doesn't strut but I feel His protection.When I asked him why I am not an alcoholic like so many in my gene pool,his answer:"You have been protected" and I know this to be true.I feel it.

 The wrens who seem to enjoy living here are known for putting their nests in the strangest places.They always seem to be nesting,feeding young ,just busy little creatures.Caring ,feeding, nurturing and calling.Doing creation's work.

I recall seeing a snow covered limb moving one glorious February day in Georgia and knowing it was an angel telling me that she was with me in my enjoyment.Nothing else was moving in the stillness of the white woodland.

There is a dear church friend who is suffering from the effects of meningitis and is in a hospice.Are her eyes when I visit her not God's invitation?I now think of them this way.

You may say that this is all a stretch.Fair assessment.But I proffer this:what would a life or even a moment spent looking for the hand of God be like? Would it feel like wonder?

still water

"Balance is the perfect state of still water.Let that be our model.It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface".Confucius

I used to have a tape that played in my head and I can still remember the lashing sound as I beat myself with words."Failure,never good enough,not pretty,not likable.what am I here for?"In my travels,I have learned that I am not alone in this grey land of negative thinking.Did my childhood predispose me to blue days of self-flagellation?One day, I realized that ,without my effort, the recording had stopped.

What happened?

A golden smiling grace came to me yesterday while doing spiritual direction.Perhaps I have been looking at this phenomena in a wrong way.Could it be that this self punishment is just that?Sub-consciously do we know that we are not in accord with Divine will and so to balance the invisible scales, we punish ourselves with our thoughts or self-destructive actions?We know that we are not measuring up and deserve some punishment but there is no one to give it because the world  thinks we are just fine.

Charlie Sheen comes to mind.I think he might be in better place now but his outrageous acting out when he has the world in his palm is to me a cry for help."I have it all;two women at my beck and call and all the drugs there are and I am so angry.Why?"Does anyone see balance in his life?

I cannot put a finger on the day that my tape stopped playing but maybe it was the day I knelt interiorly and gave the Lord my heart and ask him to lead me .
Could our souls be so sensitive to our inner workings that they automatically work to bring a healthy balance to us?I think this maybe so.Whatever happened, I am grateful beyond words to have left the land of constant beating.

If I ever find myself there again, I will pray for wisdom to know what to do to return to the land of balance and still waters.I love this encouragement from Albert Einstein:"The most important endeavour is striving for morality in our actions.Our inner balance and even our existence depend on it.Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life."