A Storm Rolled Through

 I have been on vacation this past week.  One of my Franciscan friends lives in CT and we made plans to spend a day together. There was time for me to pay my respects in Sandy Hook today.

Off the route 84 exit for Newtown I took the left marked for Sandy Hook. A chill came over me as I was entering a school zone and I saw the orange cones blocking entrance to a long driveway. I stopped and noticed that someone else was walking ahead and had stopped at a collection of flowers and a children's book.

The fireman across the street was working on his truck and confirmed that that was where people paid their respects and that the school was closed and off limits.

I stopped again, knelt and prayed for all children and then slowly drove out of town, admiring it for its sweet New England landscape. The stores with 'we choose love' signs in their windows. It reminded me of storm damage left behind. The terror, a memory of the impersonal blast of havoc that blows through, leaving wreckage.

The storm is just the storm. It doesn't care that it uproots and mangles bodies or trees. It might catch you, it might miss you. It's all the same to the storm, power and might rolling through.

And the Beat Goes On, Boston Style

Our meeting started at seven this morning as it does, six mornings a week. Our trusted servant asked us to keep the Boston headliners in our thoughts as we shared a moment of silence.  I hadn't heard anything about it. His son read the preamble in his clear elementary school diction, a little hesitation over some of the lengthier words. A smile from most of us at his sweet voice.

There is promise in our children. I am old enough to be the mother of the fleeing suspect or of the slain officer. I feel for the responsibility of our public servants and I appreciate them. We rest in each others arms.

My food did not come from my garden and I did not build my house. I give thanks for those who have gone ahead of me, clearing land, putting a stone wall together in just the right spot. There are those who watch over me and are there to catch me as I fall.

Today I make a dish from someone else's recipe. It involves lamb shanks. My first ever purchase of  such a thing, me the vegetarian of yore. I shyly peek at the bones in my shopping cart and looking away, repeating the credo, do new things.

At home again, I turn on the TV and deduce that we are back in the waiting game. I hear things like 'they came here to kill' and that 'they' have been here since 2001. The shanks on my table remind me of runners legs. Killers now on the run.

I pray again.

Patriots Day in Boston

Even forty miles north of the city it's a quiet day. I check in on the headlines now and then.

Yesterday, the TV stayed on for hours. I had only just gotten my new cable box connected. Everything was purple and green due to my hook up. Today I saw a close up of the scene in my iPad and I flinched seeing the red blood on the street.

We are close enough to know people who had near misses yesterday. They, too, had been sitting at the finish line and then had moved on. Their brothers had finished earlier and had left. The father and daughter from my church were not running this year, they watched from the seating where the unexploded bomb was found.

I have a heavy heart.  It was an act of evil to plant a bomb, there is no meaning to blowing off the legs of runners. Good (and God) prevail.  The acts of a few will not obscure my faith.

That's what's good about today.

Nice Surprises

Two lovely surprises today.

The first one was that it was utterly painless chairing the morning meeting. The feeling of good will among others in the room is palpable. That did not change just because I was in a service position.

The second is that I met a new co worker today. I acted as a trusted servant of my company by starting her orientation. She was quite fun and intelligent in a quietly confident way. The day flew. Twins born of different mothers Whee!

That's what's good about today.

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your World

The trouble with trying to change your thoughts is that our will alone will not accomplishment the job.  Otherwise, the first self-help book would have cured us.  I need to take action first. Then the thoughts come.

Someone out there said that our prayers are like songs.

For the first time in the five and half years I have been going to the morning meeting I will be chairing it. Mondays. From now until I am done with it. A day at a time. Stop by, wont you?

That's what's good about today.