Cherry blossoms

I have recently been fascinated by the oppositeness of the seasons north and south. We are definitely into winter ... there is snow in South Africa which translates as cold for us, and north of the Equator it is spring ..... erratic weather, daffodils and the like........

But some things don't do opposites.

On my way home this evening I saw a cherry tree in full blossom. And thought about the cherry trees in blossom in Washington and Japan and other cities in the north. In blossom now also.

And thought with some amusement that cherry trees stick to the schedule that they are born with, regardless of the state of the weather and regardless of their location north or south of the equator.

High Holy Days

I've had a severe bout of flu these last few days and so have been too ill to attend any of the Triduum Masses. It is the first time in years that I have missed the Triduum, which was the moment I fell in love with the Easter Liturgy as Catholics do it. It was a long faltering hop from here to wanting to become a Catholic, but this is where the desire to do so crystallised into consciousness for me.

Instead I have had a very different kind of Easter. Prayed alone for the most part.

This morning I have stood by our east facing windows and watched the sunrise, remembering……

Remembering Easter in Jerusalem some thirty years ago, sitting with other pilgrims from all over the world in the "Garden Tomb" gardens waiting for the dawn.

Remembering Easter as a small child, walking with my Grandmother down to the river and watching for the dawn, followed by sausage in gravy (kept hot in a thermos flask) on fresh baked bread.

Remembering climbing a small hill overlooking Kariba Lake in the dark as a teenager to celebrate the Risen Lord with my youth group in the first light of dawn.

Remembering those Easter's when the only prayer that made sense was "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

Remembering Easters gone by shared with family and friends, ordinary love filled holidays …….

Remembering that the High Holy Days are about remembering, as is the Eucharist. Remembering that as God has been with me in the past, so He will remain in my present, regardless of whether I am able to recognise that or not.

In my remembering I felt the loneliness of this year's Easter, celebrated by myself. Yet, in the gathering dawn I knew I was not alone, that around the world faithful people of all shades and understanding would be gathering to remember and to celebrate, just I am doing alone. And my prayer turned to my friend Theresa who was received into the Catholic Church last night. Her journey to this point has been long and arduous but joy filled, especially these last few weeks.

And so with the Christian world I can say this morning

The Lord is Risen!

He is Risen indeed!

Allelulia.

Holy Week

I have just had the most curious discussion with a friend.

She is not Christian but seeks a spiritual life attached to no particular religion or faith. I find talking to her often refreshing and exciting - she opens my mind to other perspectives that I might not have seen otherwise. But for all that I haven't realised before that she has no sense of the discipline and protection to be had within a religious faith or that she has real difficulty in seeing religious faith as spiritual. Hers is a very lonely belief, I think and not one I would chose.

She asked what Holy Week was all about and why I would celebrate it year after year. Didn't I get bored?

I did my best, but after a bit it became clear that never having been part of corporate worship she could not comprehend the nature of the Liturgy and how it is important. And I didn't have the words or concepts to explain, only a deeply felt experience.

Perhaps you could tell me how the Liturgy of Holy Week helps you?

Spring and winter

Last week when I got home from Johannesburg I got home to the early days of winter. I had left five days before in late summer, and now I had missed the two days of autumn to find myself in winter. Winter as in the tropics ... colder, dry. No snow. Winter endured for a few months in houses and clothing designed for the hot weather ......

And suddenly the odd dislocation I feel at Easter makes sense. Much of the imagery, much of the symbolism that I read and is part of the liturgy is geared to new life, to spring. Spring that is happening to the north of me, where Life burgeons anew after the layering stillness of snow and cold and long, cold winters. A physical affirmation of the Resurrection. Yet my physical world is drifting down to dormancy, leaves yellow and fall, grasses brown and die, days shorten and the light itself changes. The world around me dies ...... withdraws, bides it's time until the coming of the rains. In the deserts to the south and west of us seeds fall to lie dormant in the sand not for a season but for many seasons. Until the rain, that comes once in ten years, falls. And then in days plants spring up and flower and are fruitful ....

Here and to me just now, the Cross, Good Friday makes sense, but not always the Resurrection.

Whose Voice?

Last week I flew to Johannesburg to be with my husband and son and spend some time shopping and visiting family who live there or who happen to be in the city for the weekend. The City was it's usual frenetic self and I quickly wearied of the hours spent on the Highways and time and distance involved in getting anywhere. I watched as it residents think nothing of driving for an hour and half to be somewhere, time in the car that in Zimbabwe would take me into the deep bush but in Johannesburg barely takes me across the City. Still there were some benefits. My dear thoughtful husband, knowing how much I dislike hours in the car, had bought a new Neil Diamond CD. Neil Diamond has always been a choice that more or less satisfies all listeners and so he often accompanies us on car journeys. The lyrics to one song caught my attention …. Man of God

I'm a man of God
Though I never learned to pray
Walked the pathways of the heart
Found him there along the way

And I am, yes I am, I'm a man of faith
And faith is something you can't see
But if we want to make it through
Faith is how it's got to be

I'm thanking you Lord for giving me song
For making me strong
And for taking my hand
I'll go up to heaven when I reach the end
But up until then
Gonna do what I can

And I can, yes I can be a man of peace
Plant it like a tiny seed
It grows a little when you give
And gives you back when you're in need

No I am, yes I am, I'm a man of song
Gonna sing it far and near
Gonna make a joyful sound
One that every heart can hear

Singing for Him is like touching the sky
I don't need to know why
I just know that it is

Each time I sing out I want to rejoice
Cause when I hear my voice
I believe that it's His

And I am, yes I am, I'm a man of hope.
I haven't stopped believin' yet
And while we're headin' down that road
Hope is what we can't forget

And I am yes I am, I'm a man of God
Know I am, yes I am, I'm a man, I'm a man of faith
I'm a man, yes I am, I'm a man, I'm a man of peace
And I am, yes, I am, I'm a man, I'm a man of song

I'm a man of God
Man of God

 

In particular the line "when I hear my voice, I believe that it's His".

Everytime I opened my mouth to say something this line would echo ….. and I learned how little I believe that my voice could be God's.


 

 

Small Boy and Large Horse

It has been quite a day, what with a demanding client and a very anxious client and couple of others in between but those are really just part of my working day, on any given day.

A day that began early with hauling Vet in Training's horse to the vet for the first stage of treatment for bone spavins. He acquired this gentle giant of a mare after his his last horse died from a snake bite in his first year of University. She had been considerably neglected but somehow though physically not so sound has retained a sweet and gentle nature which so appeals to all who meet her. But for me, an anxious morning ..... hoping that nothing will go wrong .... and mercifully it didn't. She is back snug in her stable, and now we wait to see how it will turn out.

Demanding because of the visit to the neurosurgeon and a very anxious Small Boy. On that front, to every one's relief there is no surgery as yet. Mostly, the doctors want to hold off that option as long as possible as he is so young. Too young, too active (and still growing) to be getting replacement parts they say. Instead they discover that he has significantly different leg lengths and that had he never been injured would possibly never come to light. However they are hoping that shoe inserts will releive the pressure and ease the pain. and of course to continue with the core strength building.

So simple really , after all the possibilities we have been facing.

Now I think I shall go to bed. 

And in my prayers before I sleep mostly I will be offering thanks for the presence of the Holy Spirit in my day,  nudging, calming, reassuring, reminding me to breathe, and present the people I met today who gave me encouragement and focus and caring, and in my friends who offered prayers, each in the way of their own faith, and their presence and laughter.

Amen.

Small boy

Small Boy is now sixteen, seventeen in another month. So I suppose I can't really call him Small Boy any more.

Hard to remember now the whirling fright of his very premature birth or the long days of his first few years of life when I seemed to camp out in hospital or the doctors rooms. Hard to remember now the terrifying nights when he hovered between life and death.

Hard to remember .......

Yet he has always been an irrepressible, mischievous little boy, grown into an irrepressible, mischievous but deeply caring young man. A young man with strength and courage that shines through the teenage angst of girlfriends and tossing hormones.

Twenty two months ago he was in a rugby accident that fractured a vertebrae. He was spine boarded off the field with no feeling in his legs. He healed. Thanks be to God. Thanks also to the First Aid Team on the pitch who did everything right, to the surgeons and nurses and physiotherapists who worked with him, and to Father Paddy who led the most amazing Mass for him. He walks and runs and drives and dances with his girlfriend. He is learning to find a way through the despair and grief of lost dreams and hopes and to find new dreams. His dream of playing for his schools First Team is shattered and of joining the Army (which he seemed born to do) is over.

Now he faces the possibility of more surgery on Wednesday. He has a trapped nerve and is in constant pain. We see the neurosurgeon at twelve today.

He faces it with more equanimity than I do.

Late Summer Afternoon

Today my neighbours have been quiet. Their young children have not even played joyfully and noisily in their pool. I would guess that some serious hangovers were the order of the day and that the children have gone off the Granny while their parents recover.

And so I got my silence. A balm to my soul and spirit and frayed nerves and poor tired body after a hectic tax quarter.

The silence and solitude seeped into the cracks and crevices brought about by the stresses my everyday life. Filling them, providing secret water sources for the dry times that will likely lie ahead. As the afternoon wound down I was treated to the wonder of a glorious golden sunset, comfortably warm in the dying heat of the day with bees gathering the last of summers provender amongst the nodding flowers of the pink basil that is their favourite at this time of year. Watching with deep pleasure the group of Babblers scuffle in the leaf litter for bugs, until chattering almost as noisily as my neighbours yesterday they flew off, low across the wall to chatter and chirp just within earshot, and even more idly watching the lazy swirling of the gold fish in the pond with the smell of water tangy in the late afternoon warmth

The sun sets quickly in the tropics and I was reminded that winter is almost here by the wheeling and gathering of the European Beeaters to their evening roosting spots, knowing that they will soon wing their way across the vastness of Africa to their summer breeding grounds in France and Germany. Their distinctive musical twittering is so much the sound of late summer here.

This time of year always seems to me to be a celebration of all of summer's growth and fruitfulness, and golden afternoons such as this one are summer's reward.

Shattered solitude and silence

I am laughing gently and ruefully to myself.

I have the unexpected and delightful luxury of a weekend completely to myself. It must be twenty years since I have had any space free of any other cares but myself. My oldest son is at University and my husband and youngest son have gone to Durban in South Africa to watch a Super 15 rugby game. A treat for the boy before he faces major back surgery next week, following a rugby accident that fractured vertebrae twenty months ago.

We live in a quiet neighbourhood and I have been anticipating the delight of silence and solitude for a couple of weeks. I did not anticipate that many of my friends and acquaintances would consider that spending a weekend alone abhorrent and in their kindness have invited me to all sorts of get togethers, parties and the like. I have had difficulty getting anyone to understand how I was looking forward to "my" weekend and finding a way to say no tactfully in the face of their insistent invitations.

I had planned some reading and reflection with my Spiritual Director. I planned time to sit in the sun and watch the fish in the pond, time to be still and quiet and peaceful. So I planned it. So I began to do it.

Until our young neighbours started a birthday party at lunch time, a party that features a new and very loud sound system. Hours later it is still going on and I have decided that I really don't care for Lady Gaga nor for rap ... my age shows! The party grows ever more rowdy and noisy and I can hear that they have begun to drink shooters so it should get even more noisy.

Jesuit spirituality aims to find God in everything.

And I am laughing gently because my carefully laid plans, and anticipation of the luxury of silence - no TV no radio have been shattered. Instead I wait now, wondering just how to pry my mind open enough to allow God to show himself to me in this noisy bedlam.