... heart of my heart ...

can i tell you where i’ve been? what i’ve done and failed to do? can i tell you whom i have loved? the risks involved … the costs which have been paid … the shame and the ecstasy? can you sit with me awhile? can you hold me ‘til I can feel you? can you love me as I have loved another? can you teach me how to love you? can you rock me in your arms? can you satiate my desires? can you remind me who I have been? who I am and will become? can you take my hand in yours? guide me to a brand new day? tell me that you love me now more than yesterday? just as I am? no matter where I have been? because … right now … i cannot.

A Tribute To Mary

23 August 2008 Farmington Hills, Michigan My Dear Mary Helene, As Isaiah pronounced, “We do indeed sing this day for you. We observe this feast in your honor, as you march with your flute toward the mountain of the Lord.” What a glorious song your life has composed! Yet, even as I write these words I can hear you saying “I didn’t compose it, I just tried to sing the score God set before me.” In that case, Mary, you certainly have assembled a sizeable choir. It spans the generations … beginning with the young at IHM, “the merest children” as Matthew calls them, and ending with, well, the mature at McAuley. To young and old alike, the Master Teacher’s voice, resounding in your musical ear, was indeed revealed through you. Your harmony was exquisite; your ability, unending; and yet your robe remained simple ~ usually plain ~ and unassuming. I remember very vividly those first few weeks after entrance. While our three classmates strategized over who could get through candidacy the fastest, you and I retreated to the showers, questioning what we were doing with our lives, and singing our own rendition of Swing Lo in two-part harmony. Years later, when we found ourselves to be the only remaining members of the class of ’82, we smiled, continued to question what we were doing with our lives, and tried to figure out how to fit Swing Lo into a final vow Liturgy.

Music was a passion we shared. We could hum the Michigan fight song in every-other-note duet style, and play trios for the recorder with three instruments and two mouths. We played and sang together often, and talked about the beauty and creativity of the musical word, poetry in motion, and its vast capacity - to heal, to teach, to bring one to tears or to laughter, to leave one speechless with a musical experience. Perhaps the most powerful musical experience we shared happened in 2005. Amidst chemo treatments, fatigue and nausea, you managed to join me in San Antonio for a weekend of music and work. We scribbled and crossed out, and scribbled again on a pile of paper scraps, which eventually became musical scores and a lovely collection of songs on CD. Best of all, Mar, you finally met Anita face-to-face. And there you shared, two women Religious, teachers, musicians, highly educated and successful, battling the same illness with dignity and determination, comadres in this life, and now in the next. These past six years, Mary, have certainly been a most challenging rendition of Amazing Grace. You walked courageously and gracefully through many dangers, toils and snares, and in the end, Grace indeed led you quickly and gently home. If I had to choose just one song to describe your journey through this earthly life, I would choose the traditional Shaker tune, Simple Gifts. For amidst the numerous and prestigious accomplishments you made ~ many of which remain unknown to most ~ you never ceased to be Mary Helene: the fourth of five children, born into a Catholic, Italian (and Irish!) family, who proudly hailed from Motown. Daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, student, musician, teacher … you never lost sight of who you were – ‘Twas your gift to be simple; or from where you had come – ‘Twas your gift to be free; and nothing and no one ever fell below you - To bow and to bend you shan't be ashamed. Spending this time with you, as you journeyed with and toward the Divine, has been nothing less than Sacred Grace; an enfleshed Eucharistic Moment of bread, blessed, broken, and shared. Your continued concern for the comfort of those around you often reminded me of the stories of the death of Catherine McAuley, foundress of our Mercy congregation. When she was close to death and the Sisters had traveled to gather around her bedside, she whispered “Make sure the Sisters have a comfortable cup of tea when I am gone.”

As I sat next to you these days, I found myself praying Catherine’s Suscipe over and over again. I’m not sure who I was praying for, Mar, you or me, but I figured it didn’t matter. So once more, Mary, I pray with you the Suscipe of Catherine McAuley: My God, I am yours for time and eternity.

Teach me to cast myself entirely

into the arms of your loving Providence

with a lively, unlimited confidence in your compassionate, tender pity.

Grant, O most merciful Redeemer,

that whatever you ordain or permit

may be acceptable to me. Take from my heart all painful anxiety; let nothing sadden me but sin, nothing delight me but the hope of coming

to the possession of You

my God and my all, in your everlasting kingdom. Amen. Until always, Mar … Sar, ttss

Three Friends

Kim made these darling little friends for me to give to my friend, Mary, who was struggling through the final days of her earthly life.* The first lil' pixie is Sarah. She is needle felted of hand painted roving. She carries a little nature journal in one hand and a tiny quill. In the other hand she carries a tiny piece of fabric to quilt, in Mary's blue, with tiny stars and pine cones, and has a needle felted little bird nest for a hat. Mary's fairy is in a beautiful forget-me-not blue roving with her slippers strapped to her side, a tiny yellow glass seed bead on each ~ she has taken them off now that she has begun to sprout wings. She carries a journal with three friends on the cover, along with her flute. She has a Swarovski crystal butterfly in her hair. Karen's lil' pixie has tiny green glasses to match her dress and shoes. The bottom of her dress is decorated with hand painted mohair locks and a needle felted heart is on the skirt. A little acorn cap adorns her head. She carries a wooden heart button and a miniature Harry Potter, The Goblet of Fire. Karen and Sarah have no wings and their shoes are still firmly in place. As such they can walk with Mary along her journey, but only until her wings take flight. Mary's wings did indeed take flight early this morning. The earth-angel of the little group has transitioned into the next life and is being deeply missed by Karen and Sarah.

*Unfortunately, the three friends did not arrive in time to meet Mary on this plane, so I will gift them to Karen in hopes that they might help to bring a smile to her face once more.

It's coming ... a new school year ...

and along with that ... fire drills!

fire drills

i hate them so

we have to line-up

in a row ...

it is so loud

it hurts my ears

please, don't let anyone

see my tears ...

they say it is fake

but i think it's real

and James Jerome

always steps on my heel ...

but that's o.k.

cuz then i can cry

and nobody ever

has to know why.

This is my grandneice ~ a future kindergardener!

"Within this barrio" ...

In January of 1996, I moved to Argentina to live and work with the Sisters of Mercy among the materially poor. The next 3 years proved to contain the most challenging and richest learning experiences I've ever received. The following is a journal entry written a couple of months after I arrived in the south of Argentina. Within this barrio [neighborhood] I am living and learning a life of which I have never experienced. Sweeping frogs from underneath the bed at sundown before retiring for the evening, and chasing cats from the kitchen at sun-up having entered through the window, looking for a bite to eat. Embracing children with lice-ridden heads, and filth encrusted noses and bodies from weeks without a bath. Houses with no running water and little more than bundled cardboard for walls and a ceiling; dusty, dirty, pebble and mud roads whose rising clouds of dry earth never seem to dissipate. Last evening Marcela and I went to visit a family of the parish living in the next barrio. There were 12 children ranging in age from 9 months to 20 years. The mother is 33 years old. The father works in the chakras [fruit orchards] collecting fruit, but has not been paid for three months. If he does not continue to work, he will lose his job to one of the men who line-up each morning hoping to replace an absent or ill worker from the prior day. So he continues to work each day without pay. The family lives in a two-room home, very crudely put together with a hard dirt-packed floor. We sat in the kitchen taking maté [a strong herbal tea drunk from a dried gourd and sucked from a metal straw] with 10 of the 12 children wide-eyed and hanging on every word. I spoke as much Spanish as I could possibly muster and drank enough maté, made from water taken from an old plastic bucket set on the floor beside the mother, until I thought my bladder would burst. I knew I could not ask to use the bathroom because there wasn’t one, and they would have been ashamed to show me the hole dug outside. I tried to pretend like I had been in houses like theirs all of my life; that the hoards of flies encircling the room and covering the sweetbread dough being fried and served us were of no bother to me whatsoever. I tried to maintain eye contact with the children instead of noticing the far from eye-pleasing physical conditions around me. I felt ashamed at my dis-ease and hoped it was not showing. Never had I experienced a poverty so cold and so obvious; nor had I ever experienced a welcome so warm and filled with such peace and gratitude. That evening I cried myself to sleep and prayed for a day when I would be able to notice the people so intensely that the physical surroundings would melt somewhere in the background of my unconsciousness.