As promised, I have returned “at the turning of the calendar.” I cannot, however, be blamed for bringing the blast of arctic cold home with me. It was sunny summer in Peru with temperatures about 100 degrees higher than here in New York State! What I have brought home are memories of an extraordinarily beautiful and generous population, rich in kindness if not in finances and a willingness to welcome others with open arms.
The gospel acclamation for this morning says this: “Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth; you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the Kingdom.” Immediately I am thrown back to the large room inside the front door of the convent in Lima where we made puppets with the neighborhood children one day last week. Newspaper, scissors, markers and a few other sheets of shared paper – one with an outline of a rabbit’s face – were all Alexa and I needed to create our puppet and share the delight of everyone in the room. At the end of the morning the children prepared to leave with their treasures (including one Hershey kiss and a piece of bubblegum). There was no pushing or shoving as they lined up single file. Rather, kissing each of us in turn as they walked out the door, they whispered, “Gracias, Hermana” and blessed us with happy smiles.
There will be more to tell, I promise, but for now, it is enough to hold those sweet faces in my heart.
Speaking of antonyms (as I was doing yesterday), I have no choice but to choose love as the theme for today. Psalm 119 announces it when it declares: Blessed are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!” (vs.1-2), waking up those who have slept through the first reading from the second letter of John. In a clarion call that John sees as only a reminder of what God’s law proclaims, he says: “I ask you, not as if I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another.” 
6:03AM: It’s impossible to stay asleep with all the different birds that are announcing morning outside! I suppose it’s my fault for leaving my bedroom window open all night, but how could I resist? Spring is finally bursting everywhere and it is glorious! It was definitely worth waiting for, although the delay throughout all of April made me wonder if it would ever happen! I celebrate May as the most beautiful month of the year because new life is visible everywhere outside and, as a result, is rising up inside as spontaneous hope. Listen to how Joyce Rupp describes it:
My sister gave me a book a long time ago entitled, Our Lady of the Lost and Found. A work of fiction, the story is about a middle-aged writer who (the book jacket explains) “on a typical Monday morning, enters her living room and finds a woman standing by her fig tree. the woman is wearing a blue trench coat, white Nikes and a white shawl over her hair. She is holding a purse and a suitcase. She is the Virgin Mary…”
After reading a traditional translation of Psalm 122 in today’s lectionary, I came upon what the author called a “metaphoric” rendering wherein “one can experience the peace of the city of God and the kingdom of God as an interior reality…where the sacred geography of the Middle East becomes a reality in the heart.” Listen with your “inner ear” and see with your “inner eye” the vision presented, and then consider the author’s call to go deeper by reflecting upon “the inner geography of your own heart and being” and answer how you are that city, that temple, that kingdom.
We are in the midst of tropical storm Philippe this morning – the first weather event this year that has affected us at all. While other locations in our country have been devastated by flood or fire, we in Upstate New York have been blessedly spared from any damaging storms. Even this one just seems to be a steady, soaking rain but we are being warned to prepare for flooding. I believe the warning is just for overflowing streams in locations around the state as it seems that the storm has done its worst elsewhere. I will need to check the basement for water seepage later but mostly today it seems that our task will be to stay inside as much as possible and reflect on the fact that we are still not in charge of everything in life.
I love the feast that we celebrate today: the Visitation of Mary to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. This was no “stopping ’round for tea” visit. Mary traveled “to the hill country” and stayed for three months. Elizabeth was a woman past child-bearing age – whatever that meant in those long-ago days. In her 30s, perhaps, and probably concerned since she had heretofore been unable to conceive. Mary was just a teenager, and likely frightened by the process of carrying a child. For both of them this “favor” wrought by God was what many would have called “hard grace.” On a human level, how lucky they were to have each other! We speculate that Elizabeth was further along in her pregnancy so it must have been a relief to have Mary around to help her. The Scriptures intimate that Mary had rushed off to Elizabeth soon after receiving the message from God that she was pregnant. Her comfort would likely have been an older woman, who obviously loved her, to lean on and share with as she interiorized what was happening to her body and her life. Such a great story!
A little over a month ago, when I was not sure of my ability to do this morning writing practice because I was leaving on vacation, I promised to leave a series of quotes for our tech wizard, Mary Pat, to post day by day. I was so satisfied with myself for having completed that task but as I was driving the next morning, I realized that the quotes were still sitting in my computer as I had not sent them to her! Humility is a great virtue and I have learned a lot about it along the way. The best thing about that virtue, I think, is the ability to admit both the great things about oneself and the failures or missteps without agonizing over either. In that spirit, I am going to try again to complete what I didn’t on my first try.
I am unable this morning to sort through the many thoughts running through my head to find coherence. Everywhere my eye falls or a synapse fires, another topic appears like a small rivulet that cannot find the stream, so I call on Joyce Rupp for a word suitable for this day. Here is what she offers:
What follows is only the beginning of a text found in Teilhard de Chardin’s book, 