Cousins and Friends

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baptize, cousins, family, Jesus, John the Baptist, relationship, relatives, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is the commemoration of the birth of John the Baptist. Tradition tells us that he and Jesus were related, probably cousins. In addition, John was an important figure in the life of Jesus. In the synoptic gospel texts (Matthew, Mark and Luke) we meet John the Baptist as the one who recognized Jesus most clearly and wanted Jesus to baptize him. Jesus convinced John, however, that he was to be baptized by John and John reluctantly acquiesced. Although somewhat rare, John’s appearances in the gospels were significant and his dedication to the ministry of Jesus was complete.

I wonder about the “in-between” times in their relationship. Did they ever play together when they were children? It seems they didn’t live in proximity to one another. Were there family visits? In adulthood, John seemed to be a renunciate, described as being in the desert and having a stringent diet – much different from our picture of Jesus. It seems likely that the baptism encounter was the first meeting of the two men – at least in their adult life – but that something in them “recognized” each other.

Having moved to another state at the age of 12 and then entered the convent at 18, in the days when there was little connection with the “outside world,” I have rare encounters with cousins but understand the connection that can endure beyond the times of physical presence. Today I plan to bring to mind each of my 17 first cousins and pray in gratitude for the ways in which they have touched my life, especially those who have become friends to me.

The Restless Wind

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Earth, fileds, hearts, home, mother nature, Native Americans, natural world, oneness, relatives, rivers, Sister Wind, skies, St. Francis of Assisi, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trees, weather, wind

As light comes outside my window this morning I wake up to the fact that what sounded like a truck or a train passing by (no tracks here though…) was the wind. It’s as if the tree in my sight line is keening after a tragedy – as well she might, given the destruction yesterday in the Midwestern states where winds reached 165 mph, leaving whole towns in a shambles. When we used to say that “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb,” we never dreamed of that kind of extreme force. It was just a way to characterize the vicissitudes of mother nature trying to birth the season of spring. It seems that by now, with all the talk about climate change and the advances in science, we would be shouldering more responsibility toward “Sister Wind,” as St. Francis used to call her.

I am not a scientist, by any stretch of the imagination, but this morning I cannot ignore what is right before my eyes. I do not understand why we in the Northeast are so lucky as to be virtually unscathed by the weather events that have been happening in different parts of our country over the past year or two. I’m sitting here watching our tree struggle as the refrain of a 1960’s song plays in my mind: The wayward wind is a restless wind, a restless wind that yearns to wander, and he was born the next-of-kin…the next-of-kin to the wayward wind.

Call me silly, but what if we were to consider all of the natural world as our relatives – as St. Francis and the Native Americans always did? Would we perhaps take better care of our trees and rivers and fields and skies? Would we heed the environmentalists a bit more seriously and be more gentle on our walk through this world? It seems to me that all of this follows from my reflections of yesterday about the necessity of recognizing that even now we can open our hearts a bit wider to the possibility of the oneness of all that exists, thereby taking a bit more responsibility for our actions toward Earth, our home.