trying hard to show love.

Four male turkeys are resting in the leaves in the woods out back. They are huge and pretty stunning when they chase us around our driveway. Windham Hill artists are pleasantly filling the day with calm and cheer. Winter.

Something kept going through my mind as Mass was about to begin.....God tries so hard to show us His love.That thought kept swirling around like a colorful mist. I know it is true in my core. I sat in peace with this knowing. Yes, above all else, that is what He does. It is the direction that His energy goes:  a sunset here, a particularly beautiful leaf there, a swaying branch with snow when everything else around is still, a kindness.

If we truly know that, what else matters? Truly.

As I was leaving church, a member of our writing group shared an insight that she received while on retreat:
Be still and be in the moment.Yes, oh yes. What a gift. Will we see that sunset, that leaf, that snow encrusted branch at all? Pay attention, He is moving. Do not think ahead, see the leaves under your feet ? Here. Now.

Another member of that group of courageous writers gifted me with his first book today. So much work has gone into this labor of his heart. Inside was a poem of his creating, that thanked me for our group. A very lovely thank you.

On a Sunday morning, what I heard came to be. "Look at these two gifts that you hold to your heart. See?"

looking for Thomas Merton.

It was a bright summer day. I remember every detail. Having been urged to faith by the words of the monk , Thomas Merton, I was on the way to a pilgrimage of sorts.Now living in Louisville, I would finally be able to see the Trappist monastery where he lived and wrote, Gethsemane.

This sentence he wrote in 1965 touches me again: "I come into solitude to die and love. I come here to be created by the Spirit of Christ."

John and I and our three young children wandered the grounds and visited the chapel. I have pictures of them tumbling down a small hill as we sauntered in the shade of old trees. A most pleasant day, as I looked for the spirit of the monk whose writings had lit a fire in me. Merton had died 5 years before in 1968.

Up a gravel path came a monk in denim with a sunshine smile of hello.Ah, here was a monk like my dear Merton.We can chat and talk of holy things.We walked and talked and I found him to be so honest, so likable.He was tall, slender and in his 40s and before long he shared this: "I don't know what I am doing here.I have lost my faith and want to leave." Oh, my.

He became our friend and would write beautiful notes to us. I loved his writing. He came for dinner a few times and later revealed he had fallen in love with a nurse and was due to leave.Soon we moved back to Georgia but kept in touch. I would send him an overtly religious Christmas card and he would offer a black and white card with birds.We continued this for years and, when
 I could, I shared my faith.

His last note , a few years back, brought tears to my eyes.It was just this, part of a famous poem:

                                         "I fled Him down the nights and down the days,
                                         ..I hid from Him..........still with unhurrying pace came 
                                                the following Feet and a Voice, 
                                                 'Rise, clasp My hand and come.'

                                            'The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson...

Streams will burst forth in the desert.

His friends must have loved him. He lay on a thick mat and with ropes they hoisted his weak body up onto the roof and then down through a hole in the roof. What a sight to those gathered as he lay at Christ's feet. Eyes searching the Face. Heal me, please.

This reminded me of something that I hadn't thought of in years. It was spring break thirty years ago and I took my youngest son and his friend to the monastery in Conyers. They may have been 11 years old and ready for an adventure.

It is always there, the entrance road that leads past tall, full magnolia trees.They are the welcoming committee. The path through the trees begins the transition from the profane to the holy. From the  noise to deep silence.

On that day, as we sauntered down to the pond where the geese rule, I saw a stranger ahead. As we approached, I could see he was a young priest and his face was beaming with warmth. As we got closer, I could tell that he was wanting to talk.We sat on a bench as the boys wandered. I wish I knew his name. He shared that he was on retreat after the busy Easter doings at his church in Massachusetts.And then he began as tears filled his eyes.

It was Holy Thursday and, as he gave out Communion, he noticed an older man who had just received, standing in front of him. He was swaying and his face was awash in tears. He stood there for the longest time before returning to his pew. After Mass, the same man approach my new friend and simply said: "I can see."The man had been blind for many years as a result of diabetes and on that holy night his sight was restored. We both sat in profound silence and wonder. It was such a holy moment and for the first time, I can tell this story of healing.The paralyzed man walked and the blind man saw.

Across from the monastery is a green cemetery. Surrounded by three tall trees is the place where John and I will rest after our journey. The hill slopes a bit but it is shady and peaceful. It is here that our remains will be but..."Those whom the Lord has ransomed will return and enter Zion singing, crowned with everlasting joy; They will meet with joy and gladness, sorrow and mourning will flee." Amen.

can a park become glorious?

Can a humble place where animals shelter and feed be glorious? Hmmmm. The writer of today's Advent meditation said that very thing.The Lord did not need a castle as a place to be born.Where He was born didn't matter because anywhere Love appears becomes glorious. I really like that idea. And then it came to me. A scene in a park.

It was a Facebook video of a curly haired little boy, perhaps three years old, wandering around Piedmont Park. His parents had told him it was time to go and to say good-bye and off he went on a mission. Sitting down, walking towards him, people with their backs to him, nothing mattered as he hugged each person and then moved to the next.The smiles, the unconstrained joy!  It was if this child had golden pixie dust and he just sprinkled it on everyone in the park.What he did that day, brought tears. A glorious thing.

"Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid;The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.....There shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain; and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as water covers the sea." Isaiah 12:6-9.

Abide the Winter

Dried leaves crunching under my shoes. Broken sticks blown down. A pink rose petal in a puddle.The only color in the woods, the tawny beech leaves. Spare, stark, clean and simple : winter.

The darkness comes and will reach its depth at the solstice. By then we will be looking for more brightness beyond colored Christmas lights. Windham Hill artists present a song, "Abide the Winter". Perhaps we can do more than abide it. Maybe we can poke around in the darkness of this bitter season and find bright shining objects.That is what I will do this Advent.

As I listen to the music of the above named group,  I think of a call I made today to a person that I have met just a few times.The last time was at the doctor's office where I was dreading the discomfort of a mammogram. I know Irma from church and, that day, she walked up and whispered: "I have breast cancer."This dear soul has been battling this disease off and on for years. She is now 80 and you will find no person on this earth who is more alive and joyful.And loving.It is an honor to breath the same air as she.Today, her news was good, she has stopped taking some medicine and is feeling well enough to go to church again.

As we closed the conversation, I told her about the new baby Graham that arrived last month."Oh" she said, "he must have a warm hat and a blanket", which she will make.Light.

Advent is the season of waiting for the coming. And in the rich dichotomy that my faith provides: He is coming and He is here.The Light.

on the grace train...

 



It always starts with a nudge.

"Go and talk to her."So I leave my pew, make my way up to the wooden statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe and touching her feet I whisper :"Help." Her gaze is off to the right, eyes half closed but I know she hears.

Our chats are brief .She advises patience, peace and always prayer. I nod.

What I have brought to her is a painful situation in my family.New and troubling.The holiday time of family has become sorrowful. When I walk away from our talk, it is with the confidence that I just need to keep my eyes open and watch. My mood lifts. I know I have been heard.

When I get home from Mass, I open my e-mails and find one from a high school friend who reads this blog. I have not heard from Alice in months. My mouth falls open when I read the link she has sent me. It is an interview with a Jewish, atheist Harvard professor named Roy Schoeman, whose heart was converted when Mary appeared to him and they had a chat. Alice was looking for a music video on you tube when she happened on the conversion video and sent it on. Mary at work.

That day, an e-mail and then in awhile, a call and the healing has begun.

Hail Mary, full of grace.

an American original

The wind whips fiercely as she stumbles along the desert floor. It is winter and the white sun gives light but little warmth. It suits her mood. She has always been drawn to the dry, empty waste that is the West. Here poets write, painters sit and saints pray. She is none of these. She has come to seek his bones.

He has been missing for over 80 years; but she hears his voice sometimes. Is it that face, full of youth and maleness? Or is it the picture of his burros, abandoned and grazing idly by the stream ?Or is it enough that he was a young painter and poet who cut all  ties to be as free as the eagle? She is haunted.

This young man took the road less traveled and left these words behind: "I have seen almost more beauty than I can bear."By foot and burro he would walk the empty spaces of Utah and the surrounding states for months, seeing no one.Setting up his easel occasionally and with great simplicity, he painted what he saw.

"Where is Everett," his parents in California were asked time and again."Oh, he's wandering ", they always said." We send him money to a post office in Utah and that keeps him going. He comes home once in a while."And then all contact ended in 1934.Silence.No word. The world empty of Everett Ruess. Men searched for years. Bones were found , not his; theories expounded. The poet never found , never seen again. Did he cry out at the end? Did he regret his wildness?

His last words answer:, "I'll never stop wandering and when the time comes, I'll find the wildest, most desolate spot there is."He was 20 years old.