Words cannot help
Or begin to touch
the raw and ragged
grief of these heartbroken parents.
Oh Divine Beloved
we ask for your sweet mercy
and steadfast embrace
to somehow comfort the
families involved in this
senselessly tragic event
As we their neighbors
stand by helplessly
praying, praying, praying.
When I was younger, I had an incredible appetite for knowledge. I read everything I could find on any and all subjects that caught my fancy. If I was into trees, I had to "know" the names of each, the shape of their leaves and attributes along with their habitat and history. When I became a jewelry designer, each stone was a new world unto itself. I could sit for hours fondling and gazing into the depth of each new obsession. The crystals and stones became my personal project. I researched constantly as books have always been my mainstay in life.
As I have grown older I have noticed I no longer have the urge to know everything about anything. Does my knowing the name of a tree make it any more or less magnificent? Does it matter if I hold a rose quartz in my hand or a pink opal? Words and labels have their place indeed but of late I am animated by something deeper, more intimate. This very sentiment jumped out of a poem this morning.
The world does not need words. It articulates itself
in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path
are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted.
The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being.
The kiss is still fully itself though no words were spoken.
Dana Gioia
O Holy Virgin
When you said 'Yes'
To housing God in your womb
You asked, as its price,
For peace in the world
Redemption for all the lost
Eternal life for the dead.
May I always pray with you
That your sublime prayer be granted.
Peter Chrysostom
Reprinted from DailyOm 365 Days of Prayers with Andrew Harvey
It is a gray and rainy day in Chicago. The house is full of workers and tarps. The perfect excuse to put off any further Christmas decorating. I do NOT want to fall down the stairs with my ankles tangled in painters cloths and broken family treasures strewn about. A perfect day for a cup of tea cozied up by the fire with candles flickering and piles and piles of favorite books. Thank you God!
This is the last home game of the 2011 football season at Notre Dame. I took a stroll through the campus and soaked in the tranquil beauty of the autumn afternoon. While we have lots of historical landmarks that are well known and visited by many each weekend, I needed the road less traveled, the contemplative side of the University. Even our wonderful Grotto was already filled with pilgrims lighting candles and offering prayers. With some of our boys injured and unsure of their futures, I needed time alone to pray, dry my tears and come back to peace. It was espeicially hard this week given the terrible tragedy involving the Penn State football program. Those broken little boys with grief filled eyes haunt me and I have not even seen an actual photo. But they are there, in their silence, breaking my heart and causing tears to well in pain and confusion.
Our Blessed Lady of the Lake
Look down on all of your young warriors this weekend
from each and every University.
Protect them with your Grace,
guide their actions on and off the field of battle.
Heal their young hearts
as we move through these dark days tainted with grief.
Holy Mother,
as you gather all the innocent victims of child abuse
to your womb,
grant them and their families
the Divine and ever healing love
of your Son
the Christ
now and always.
amen
Escape and Empty
Endure. Explore. Express. Experience.
Emerge Empowered.
I am always surprised by the spontaneous eruption of pure pleasure that accompanies a little glue, paper and ink under my finger nails. Me, a grown woman, tearing and cutting, glueing and stamping, feeling like a child in kindergarten. Why don't I do it more often?
I had an astrology reading recently. I don't remember which planet is in conjuction with which house in my chart but the energy that will surround me these last few weeks of summer and into the autumn months is "Playful and Fun". I can definitely tend to take things a little too seriously. Even my journal pages "need" to have a message. How much fun did I have glueing down these odds and ends and adding a stamp or two? Lots. Is there a purpose? Who cares! It was fun. Just plain fun. No deeper intention necessary.
...man is made God's plaything, and that is the best part of him.
Therefore every man and woman should live life accordingly,
and play the noblest games....
What, then, is the right way of living?
Life must be lived as play.....
~Plato, Laws
Some of my fondest memories of summer evenings revolve around watching the moon and the stars. While swatting mosquitos and chasing fireflies, my siblings and I would compete to be the first to spot the various constellations scattered across our midwest sky. As we excitedly searched for the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and the Milky Way, I raised my round face towards the heavens with eyes squeezed shut in my own personal and private youthful ritual. Deliberately and ever so slowly, with breath held tight in my chest, I would open my eyes to the magnificent summer sky;
Star light, star bright
the first star I see tonight
I wish I may
I wish I might
have the wish I wish tonight.
Memories of summers long gone. Perhaps its time to dust off a few old rituals to help anchor my swiftly changing emotional seas.
Graduations, proms and baccalaureates have come and gone. Memories and photographs are all that remain. New paths are still unfolding, opening like the pregnant buds on my peony bushes in the back yard. Slowly....in their own time....moving ever forward. Time stands still for no one. Children grow and mature whether we are ready or not.
Everyone on the face of the Earth
has a treasure that lies waiting for them.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
My mom was beautiful. She left home before she graduated from high school and joined the Air Force during the Korean Conflict. My mother was extremely intelligent and highly driven. My aunts tell me she was a risk taker and had more than a little "devil" in her personality. She became an Air Traffic Controller in the Air Force long before women were welcomed into that elite club. She met my father who was also an Air Traffic Controller and they married. The rest, so they say, is history.
My mom has been gone for 11 years now. It was a rare day that we did not talk at least once, sometimes many more. Although I know such a small part of who she was, mostly the "practically perfect" mom part, I feel her with me every day. Every day I hear her whisper support and encouragement for the mostly invisible road we all travel together, in all directions of time, binding us deeply and forever in the sisterhood of the Divine Feminine. Could anything ever be more important than being a Mother? Thank you Mom. I know I did not say it often enough and loud enough. I would not be the mother I am today without you. I love you and miss you, now and always.
