Hope......

Curious thing today.

But I was in the car a lot. Tax quarter again so doing the rounds of all my clients.’

It was hot today. Wind dropped and the cold disappeared with it. And it has been hot and very, very dry. The sky is white. I wondered why this is always my favourite time of year.

I get it. Suddenly I get it…………It is the season of unreasonable hope.

Hope when it is dry and hot and the last drop of moisture is being sucked out of every plant.

Yet the tababouya’s are blooming bright daffodil yellow, the jacaranda’s are nearly in full bloom, the bougainvilleas are magnificently magenta, acacia’s are bright green with the flush of new leaf. All with not a hint of rain, not even any humidity. We all know that it’ll still be weeks before the rains come. Yet all around me are signs of life. The plants believe that the world is a good place. And they trust that it will rain in due time. So they flower and leaf and do what they do, well before there is any proof that it will. Rain that is.

Hope when there is no good reason for it to exist.

And I guess that is faith.

So I love this season.

Coming home

We have been on holiday partly to celebrate Vetboy's 21st birthday and partly to just spend time sitting on the beach. At the last minute I decided to disconnect from the world and left my laptop and blackberry at home. I didn't think it would be as easy as in the end it turned out to be, and I did enjoy just not being available and I think my assistant liked my trust that she would run my office perfectly satisfactorily while I was away - which of course she did!

We were back a couple of days ago  and so this morning I picked up my duties as holiday sacristan and went early to the chapel to prepare it for the Mass. The weather had deteriorated resulting in overcast and so the empty church was darkened and quiet as I moved slowly and softly and respectfully lighting candles, laying out vestments, setting out out vessels and missals and filling stoups with holy water.  It was peaceful work, full of deep seated pleasure and still happiness. When I was done the candles and brass and bright flowers shone with hushed and waiting expectancy.

As I finished the first congregants were trickled in. Familiar faces, elderly folk who like to come early and say a decade or two of the rosary before Mass. Gradually the chapel filled and Mass began in familiar cadence and song and prayer.

I thought

I am home, amongst my family of faith and it is a good place to be.