Oh this morning the words are hilarious. I desire to pull several things together that seem disparate yet coherent. And I suspect I’ll be working backwards this morning.
A couple of friends and I use the Marco Polo app to chat with each other. One friend recently went through a major job change and move. I’m so ridiculously happy for her. On a weekly basis for years I’ve sent her Polos of encouragement. One thing I know I need to keep doing is that encouraging along the way. Although all of this is good for her, for her family, for the company she is working with, there are still challenges. Reminders, we all need them and may we be them at the right moment.
With this and another friend we celebrated our ten year friendversary on the social channel where we met when I started working with them. I sent them both texts yesterday celebrating this delightful moment. I am wildly grateful they are both still present in my life and are, in that presence, a source of encouragement. Last night the other friend called and we had a lovely conversation that took a bit of a surprising turn. Part of the beauty of this conversation was sitting on my front porch, viewing a very clear and cold night sky, under a quilt, pieced by a long ago friend, quilted by me when I learned how to stitch feathers.
Yesterday I also listened to Lent: A Time of Renewal on the Abiding Together Podcast while driving to my parish for Mass, a drive which took longer than usual. At one point I was kind of annoyed, however as both the podcast and the day unfolded there was a keen awareness of God’s grace. I listened to the entire podcast on the way. At the moment where I started to wonder if I’d make it to Mass (which I later discovered there isn’t Mass on Monday) Michelle shared a specific part of her silent retreat where God is inviting her to play. Play is my word of the year so I listened with interest. And later while I prayed in the Chapel I looked up the word “play” and discovered several things: it is both an noun and a verb, it is relational to what is happening.
I am continuing to read St Catherine of Siena, a lay Dominican and spiritual director.
Imagine a circle traced on the ground and, at the center of the circle, a tree with an off-shoot grafted into its side. The tree finds its nourishment in the earth within the expanse of the circle. But, were it ever uprooted from the earth, it would die, yielding no fruit.… It is necessary, therefore, that the root of this tree, that is the affection of the soul, should grow in and issue from the circle of true self-knowledge, knowledge that is joined to me, who, like the circle itself, have neither beginning nor end.225
Catherine of Siena - St Catherine of Siena Mystic of Fire Mother of Freedom Paul Murray OP Word on Fire
As I read this quote there is a deep sense of rootedness, this description of an off-shoot grafted into its side is profoundly beautiful. Creative brain could almost see this as a quilt. It’s been a long time since the imaginings of quilts happened. This is twice this week! I am in awe in so many ways of this.
After Mass I was meeting a new friend to help her with some of the backend on her website. I’ve been trying to talk with someone else for days and we finally connected while I sat in the parking lot of the Church and talked for about 30 minutes. Both this conversation and the conversation with my friend on the backend of her website were good.
There was something really delightful about having an impromptu lunch with my Sweetie, then surprising someone with promised donuts. The look of delight on this person’s face is a treasure. “You remembered!” I did indeed.
As I sat down to pray and read this morning I realized that I left my journal and several books I’m currently reading in the car overnight. Because it’s 33 degrees right now I’m not keen on making the dash outside to get said books and journal. Often when I journal it’s prayer, remembering those who have asked me to pray for them. Or for vocations to the Priesthood, Consecrated Life, Marriage or Single Life, that those discerning would hear God’s voice with clarity and the delightful uncertainty of a new toddler taking their first steps. Because oh the JOY of those giving witness to those first steps. And Oh the beauty of whatever comes next.
Here we are on the Eve of Lent. In the Abiding Together podcast Sr Miriam James describes Lent as a time of renewal, and so it is. In 1992 one of the people in my RCIA group gave me a copy of Pope St John Paul II’s On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman, which was for her pivotal in her coming to the Church. For me when I finally read it in 1994 or 1995 it completely shifted how I experienced so much of what I *thought* the Church believed about women. This is once again my Lenten reading with a couple of friends and I’m looking forward to learning how I read this now, thirty years later. I can tell you already that this will be so good in part because it brings up so sweetly my very first memory of JPII, on the day of his election in October 1978, as an almost ten year old, giddy with excitement, somehow knowing how importance of his election. Not knowing then how his words, his teaching in this document would influence me, my marriage and life.
God bless,
Teri
A Quilter's Heart 