The eclipse that happened a few days ago, which stopped the US and gave us pause to consider the magnitude of the universe and the minuscule-ness of our own lives, had a profound effect on many who witnessed it. Misty-eyed newscasters could barely contain their emotions as they described the event.
Eclipses might be viewed as a reset button. One can’t help but reflect on one’s life, how fleeting it really is, and perhaps ask the question, have I done the things I’ve needed to do?
I remember my first eclipse. We didn’t have cool glasses like the ones available these days. Instead, we had a box with a hole in it, and we looked in the box as the moon moved its way in front of the sun. It was not nearly as awe-inspiring as looking at it through cool glasses, but still impressive.
Have you ever been in an eclipse but didn’t realize it was going on? The sky begins to darken, and the birds and animals stop what they’re doing, and an eerie feeling tugs at the edges of your knowing. It’s hard not to look within and observe our failings, or missteps. A chill can accompany it, as well as a feeling of being alone. Just when we feel we couldn’t be more alone, the moon continues its path, the skies begin to brighten, and the sun begins to warm us once again. Maybe it’s God’s way of saying, “I’m here. Even though you can’t see me, even though there is darkness, I am with you. I see you. Trust in me. I am the light that shines within you. There is nothing to fear.”
After my best friend, who was also my next-door neighbor and cousin, died at age nine, I felt the darkness. The entire community felt the darkness. How could one so young be taken back up to God? She had just gotten to earth. She was joy and brightness rolled up in a beautiful package of a brown-haired, blue-eyed, enormous-hearted girl. Our lives would never be the same when she left, almost fifty years ago.
After her death, her mom (another mother to me) gave me a prayer card. The prayer card has sat on my dresser all these years. The card has yellowed, and the edges are torn, but the words hold firm. Those words have given me hope when it seemed as if despair was the only option. Those words have offered me a sense of peace and faith that everything would be okay. Those words have given me strength and courage when most needed. Even though the card is currently in storage, soon enough it will be unpacked and take its place on my dresser. I don’t need to have the card to know what it says. I memorized it and I carry it in my heart along with the precious memories of my friend.
God make me brave. Help me strengthen after pain as a tree strengthens after rain.
God make me brave. As the blown grass lifts, let me rise with quiet eyes, knowing thy way is wise.
God, life brings such blinding things. Help me to keep my sight, help me to see aright, that out of dark comes light.
I’ve heard it said that we die two deaths. The first is when we physically die, and the second is when our name, our life, is no longer remembered. As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of this very special person, may we remember all those who have passed before us. May we recall the light and brightness they brought to our world, and may we be grateful for the moments we shared with them, no matter how brief.
God, may we also remember that you are the true light in our lives, driving away the darkness and seeing us as bright, sparkling souls who are called to make a difference in the world.
The most miraculous thing happened to me this Easter. I have to step back a bit because, during a Lent of wow, twenty years ago, I prayed for my wasband’s heart to turn from stone into flesh. That entire Lent, that was my prayer. It didn’t happen, though another miracle happened in that I discovered that I would be fine, better than fine. A calm came over me, an intense peace overwhelmed me, and I knew that there was a better life for me without that man. The next day, I filed for divorce.
Since then, I have been trying to put more trust in God and His will for my life.
This Holy Week, the pieces started to fit together. It was especially special because I had reconnected with my friends from Colorado Springs, and they invited me to share their Easter meal with their family. I found them on Holy Thursday at a completely random church that is in the neighborhood of my Airbnb.
There is something special about this church. The priest, though somewhat difficult to understand with his thick accent, speaks off the cuff, sometimes stopping himself before saying something he shouldn’t, and is completely authentic and delightful.
My intention was to go to the Easter Vigil because it had been decades since I had been and the priest said that it was truly the beginning of our faith. If you haven’t been, it’s the really long Mass Saturday night before Easter, where they bring in the new catechumens, light the new Easter candle, and bless the oils. As the priest said, it is the birth of the church in the waiting for the Resurrection. It was scheduled for 8:30 pm, with confession from 5-6:00 pm. It had been a few months, so I went to confession.
I walked in and saw the younger priest with the heavy accent, and the older priest sat in a small room to the left.
“Are you here for confession,” the younger priest asked.
“I was thinking about it,” I stammered, as I didn’t expect to see the priest upon entering the church.
“He’ll be easier on you,” the younger priest said, and I walked into the room and took a seat.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to say. Sometimes I made a list, and other times, my sins hung on me so uncomfortably that I had to shed them as quickly as possible. This time, as I reviewed my happenings over the past few months, it was the little sins that nagged at me. They were the hurtful things I experienced from others like judgement and unforgiveness. While talking with this older priest, I realized that I had been judgmental and I needed to offer forgiveness to those who hurt me. Again.
He absolved me of my sins and I said my penance. I looked at the vibrant orchids around the altar and the flowers around the baptismal font and I smiled. Part of me wanted to come back to the Easter Vigil, and the other part wanted to go home.
The Ten Commandments, with Charlton Heston, was on the television (commercials and all) that night, and the pups and I watched it and had dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever truly watched it from beginning to end, and I’ve certainly not watched it since going through the Bible more closely and believing everything in it as truth. The tensions between brothers, the slavery, the unworthiness of Moses, the burning bush and the calling, the plagues, and ultimately leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea. Bible stories, yes. Truth? Yes. Once you watch that movie with eyes of truth, you glimpse God’s almighty power, as interpreted through technocolor.
Easter morning, I went to morning Mass and we were invited to introduce ourselves to our neighbor because there were many CEOs (Christmas and Easter Only). The young priest with the thick accent said he only got an hour’s sleep because it was like knowing you would receive a billion dollar check the next morning, and there was just no sleeping with all the excitement. He said he used to say “a million dollar check”, but because of inflation, etc, he changed it to billion. Instead of saying the, “I confess” part of the Mass, he decided to douse us with holy water as a way to wake us up, as well as himself. He really got us.
During the Homily, he said that through the Resurrection, Christ conquered death. He said, we are all afraid of death in one way or another and therefore live in fear. When Mary arrived at the tomb, the angel said, “Be not afraid.” There literally is nothing to fear because Jesus took it away for us. Living without fear is one of the many things I’ve been working on since the one Lent and the wasband.
What I physically felt during Mass was that my sins were the stone in front of the tomb, my own heart of stone, and with the Resurrection, my heart was opened, was made flesh. I felt, truly felt, that there as nothing to fear. I felt alive and aware, and felt as if I could conquer the world.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday, I relayed my Easter story to one of my sisters. It started raining and the topic turned to logistical things. The pups and I were in the car, waiting for the rain to stop before getting out. I decided to research one of the logistical things so put the car in gear, and set off. I was still chatting with my sister, when in my periferral vision, I saw a homeless man lying on the sidewalk, on his side like he was sleeping. A big German Shepherd kept watch behind him. Was he dead? Was he napping? Should I stop? For a moment, the German Shepherd and I locked eyes. I glanced around, was there a parking spot? There was not.
It all took place in a second. I was on an errand, but was it essential to do that errand right away? Could it wait? Of course it could. It is amazing how quickly our brains can discern a situation. Perhaps this is life in the big city. I knew someone else would walk by and take care of him, or maybe he was napping and would wake up and continue his journey. I thought of the story of the Good Samaritan, and I was no better than the first two passersby, who didn’t stop. I chose not to be inconvenienced.
When I returned home, I took the dogs on a walk, past the place on the sidewalk, to see if the man and the dog were still there. They were not. It started hailing, and we turned toward home.
I believe that that God dog looked at me in that moment as a test to see if I would stop. To see if I would get my hands dirty, or choose to be inconvenienced, to live in fear. On the other hand, the whole thing could have been a ruse to hurt me, but if I truly believed that there was nothing to fear, then it wouldn’t have mattered and I would have stopped. Though I didn’t stop, I sent up a prayer for that man and his dog. Maybe it was my way of justifying my lack of compassion, and washing my hands of the situation, or maybe it was God’s way of saying that I’ve still got a long way to go.
I will try to go to confession again this coming Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, where all sins are forgiven, and begin again.
Thank you Lord, for raising Jesus from the dead and destroying death for us. Thank you for this Easter season where we get to spend these fifty (longer than the forty days of Lent) days reading the Acts of the Apostles, rediscovering Your unconditional love for us, through Your son, and removing all fear from our lives, and trusting You with our whole heart.
When the children were babies, I’d wake at 3:00 am-ish, and instead of tossing and turning, I got up and wrote. I wrote about my feelings, thoughts, and reflections on being a parent. I considered it my special time with God. Oftentimes, I felt as if I were just a conduit and writing down what was downloaded.
This morning was a bit like that time, only this morning I awoke at 3:47 a.m., tossed and turned until four-something-a.m., and sent a text to my daughter in a group text, careful not to wake the pups. I did not immediately start writing as when they were babies, but who knows, maybe this sacred time is back.
Yesterday, I received a text asking for prayers for my ten-week-old granddaughter who was in an Irish hospital with some sort of infection. I forwarded the text to my extended family for added prayer strength and waited.
I looked at more potential places to live in Denver, was cursed at whilst on my way to a job interview, had the interview, and when I felt I had waited long enough sent a text asking how things were going. I hadn’t realized that she had been unresponsive and that she had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. How terrifying. She was put through many tests, including a spinal tap to test for meningitis. As a parent, you feel helpless. As a grandparent, across the pond and time zones, all you can do is pray.
“Our God is an awesome God” is how the song goes, and it’s true. Our God can and will take care of everything if we only ask. The one thing we must remember is that we must accept, trust, and surrender to His way of taking care of everything, and sometimes, that can be difficult.
She was given antibiotics and as of this morning, is responding to them and getting back to her smiley self. God is good.
Yesterday, I also drove by a medical center and noticed the serpent wound around a staff that is the medical logo. The logo comes from the time of Moses in the desert when the Jewish people turned away from God, so the Lord sent poisonous serpents that began biting the people and they died. When the people saw the consequences of their actions, they asked Moses to pray to God for them and he did. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole in the middle of the camp. Anyone who looked upon it was healed.
As we approach Palm Sunday, and Good Friday, we can’t help but see the similaritiy of Jesus on the cross, the ultimate healer, to the serpent on the pole, and the medical logo.
Thank you, Lord for this day, for your healing love extended to all who look upon you.
Wow, are you ever amazed by how quickly time flies? When last I wrote, I was in Ireland and would return to the states the next week. After a heartbreaking departure from my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter, I flew back to Denver, picked up my car and pups the next day, and thought, “What am I doing here? My son is too busy to see me, my nieces and nephew are busy with their own lives. Maybe we should hit the road again and see my mom in Florida.”
I talked to my mom, and she said it would be okay. Sign. I texted my friend in Georgia asking if she’d be open to a visit. Just as I hit send, a text from her appeared. Sign. We hadn’t been in touch for a month. At breakfast in the hotel that morning, a server told a man, “You should definitely stop at Patti’s in western Kentucky.” I looked it up. I like western Kentucky. Sign. The weather outside was beginning to change. Snow was coming. I packed up, checked out early, and hit the road.
I decided to take the southern route since the snow would move along the plains. Also, it gave me a chance to see my sister in Dallas. I made it as far as Amarillo that night, because of the last-minute, late start. Dallas was still five and a half hours away, and my sister had an eleven o’clock appointment. I had forgetten how big Texas is, but it is HUGE! Thank goodness for the jet lag because I awoke at three-thirty, roused the pups, packed up, and shipped out. I queued Amarillo By Morning on my playlist, even though it was far from sunrise.
The stop in Dallas turned out to be very short but worth it. My sister looked great, the pups romped in the backyard, and the coffee and bathroom were welcomed.
On the road again, the route took me through Louisiana and Mississippi, two of three states I’ve never traveled to or through. Check, check. From my vantage point, Louisiana left the impression of a giant floodplain. Mississippi was a little better with a few more trees and hills. I got a little off track and found myself wondering in Livingston, MS, and after backtracking for a bit, I entered Alabama, which is a very pretty state (at least on the way to Geogia). I made it to Savannah, Georgia early Sunday morning, had a quick visit and a short walk with my friend, and then back in the car down to Florida.
No matter the time of year or day, I-95 is hell on wheels, but it led me to Vero Beach in time for supper at six (mostly, I was ten minutes late). I booked a hotel for my time there because of the dogs. Mom hasn’t quite warmed up to them yet, and it didn’t help that when we arrived at her house the next morning with a suitcase full of dirty clothes, Rudy started barking at her as if she were the intruder.
Having Rudy and Lucy experience the beach was one of my priorities of the trip, but all the signs at the beach read “No dogs allowed,” so I took them to the dog park instead. I struck up a conversation with a guy who had a golden doodle and an Aussie doodle, who told me to take them to a couple of beaches nearby. The next morning, I did just that. Even though there was a sign, I played dumb and walked right by, and the pups were both thrilled and terrified (first photo).
The next day, my cousin’s wife and their dog showed me how easy it was to walk the dogs on the beach. On February 29, after a beach romp (second photo), we started our trek back. I wanted to avoid I-95 so I tried heading straight west, but it turned out to be a nightmare. What should have taken an hour and a half on I-95, took three hours in heavy traffic, and I found myself tired and cranky just west of Orlando.
A most beautiful man tracked me down after standing in line at a hotel to inquire about a room, only to find out they were sold out. The woman I spoke to said to try next door. By the time I wound my way around the labyrinth to the next hotel, only to find another wait to talk to someone, I decided to leave. That’s when the beautiful man found me and said there was one room left and that he could offer me a deal. It was perfect and just what we needed to commemorate the pup’s first Leap Year.
Florida is an extremely long state, and I think I chose the longest route possible, but we made it through in time for the rain we encountered in Alabama. That whole Crimson Tide is real when the rains come and the soils flow. We didn’t stay long, preferring a stop in Nashville for a short visit with a long-time friend, where Rudy found a manure pile to roll in. Double yuck because I couldn’t find a dog wash. Then onto Patti’s 1880 Settlement at the northern end of the Land Between the Lakes (which apparently has excellent crappie fishing this time of year). We didn’t have time to fish, and Patti’s was fine. We chose to venture on to Columbia, Missouri. To do that, we went through Marion, IL, where we could have stayed, or put a few more miles under our wheels. We opted for Mt. Vernon, IL. Traveling by car, tends to put me more on God’s schedule than my own.
Columbia was nice, eighty degrees F, but there’s a point in traveling when enough is enough, and you just want to get back wherever that may be. Columbia is not too far from Pittsburg, KS where I still had some things to attend to, like more research on the big coal mine. The last time I was in Pittsburg and inquired about the mine outside of Mulberry, KS, the folks suggested it might have been on the Missouri side, so I decided to take that route to Pittsburg. Later, I found out the state line actually goes through the town of Mulberry, and in fact, the mine was likely in MO, not KS. I felt much closer going through the MO side, but I was still a little south, something I hadn’t realized until I was back in Dodge City, KS. I may have another trip in me to Pittsburg.
One might wonder how I do all this driving. Don’t I get bored? I listen to audiobooks and look at the scenery. The C.J. Box series took me through most, if not all of 2022. Louise Penney’s Gamache series took me through 2023 and a little into 2024. Somewhere along this trip to Florida, I finished the Gamache series (the next one won’t come out until October), started and finished Tom Lake, by Ann Pachett, and read by Meryl Streep. That was a great read/listen.
As I searched through the list of books in my audiobook library, I found The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. Someone must have told me about it, and I must have downloaded in 2022 or ’23. I finished it somewhere between Nashville and Pittsburg, and it too, was a good listen/read. In it, he talks about the distractions of today and then he expounds about the Sabbath and how it is part of the Ten Commandments, how God referred to it as Holy, as God’s Holy Day, a day of rest, as God rested on the seventh day. Comer explained about the walks in nature and long naps, but no electronics, no tv, or binge-watching anything, just studying God’s word and resting in His presence.
Another good book, called Flunking Sainthood by Jana Reiss, in which she explained more about the Sabbath, and how absolutely no work is to be done (which it clearly states in the Bible as well). All meals are made on Friday (Shabbat) and Sabbath to rest, literally do nothing, but rest and read God’s word. All this to say, I’ve been completely misusing the Sabbath, and it took Comer’s and Reiss’ books to make it really sink in.
Before electricity, people would sleep shortly after the sun went down and rise with the sun. After electricity, we can stay up all night if we want, filling our minds with whatever we see. In today’s world, we’re likely not getting enough sleep, which ultimately makes us stressed.
I arrived in Pittsburg late Sunday afternoon (Sunday being Christian Sabbath), found a hotel, and went to an evening Mass at the university. I returned to the hotel and I didn’t turn on the television, didn’t check my phone, and decided to intentionally observe what was left of the Sabbath. I went to bed around eight and slept soundly until five-thirty or six. The morning took on a whole new feel of expectancy, with good coffee, a good dog park, and a tour of the photo plant I’ve used for years and forgot it was located in Pittsburg.
Lord, thank you for keeping me and the pups safe through our travels. Thank you for all with whom I was in contact and/or thought of, and all that I learned along the way. May we, like they sing in Godspell “See Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly, day by day.”
In the days, weeks, and months before I got married, I couldn’t walk. Initially, I thought I had a bruised heel, but that’s not really a thing. It turned out I had a bone spur in my heel, and a few days before I walked up the aisle, I received a cortisone shot. It did the trick. It masked the pain.
The pain came back with each pregnancy and after the birth of my third and last child, it came back with a vengeance. I crawled to the bathroom in the mornings and walked with crutches. According to Louise Hay (who healed herself from cancer by flipping the switch from negative to positive thought patterns), I had a fear of moving forward in life. My affirmation was, “I move forward in life with joy and with ease.” It became my mantra.
At one point, I went to the doctor and asked him to cut the thing out. He didn’t. First, he asked if I could be pregnant. No, though, when I got home, I counted days, and was it twenty-one or twenty-eight days between cycles? Anyway, he instructed me to take anti-inflammatories and to stretch. The combination of the affirmations, anti-inflammatories, and stretching worked and finally, I was able to walk upright, with only a few episodes after the divorce.
This last bout of illness with me and my Lucy, potential schedule changes, and what-if scenarios left such a pain in my neck that I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bend down to put the antibiotics into Lucy’s mouth, and couldn’t turn my head whilst driving. I took anti-inflammatories, tried to stretch, and continued with my morning meditation. I tried to concentrate on my throat chakra, which is all about God’s will, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,” and the intentions of surrendering to God’s will, giving voice to God’s will, the freedom that comes from doing God’s will, and His divine, infinite, and unconditional presence. All the while, my brain whirled through my human habitrail about the logistics of everything in my current predicament of what to do with Lucy if she didn’t get better.
A very wise friend led me to realize that I was not surrendering myself to God’s will. I was going through the motions, even spending extra time on my throat chakra in meditation, but not heeding the intentions around that chakra, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Somehow, I must have switched Thy will with My will. They sound so similar, thy and my. You can see how easy it would be to make such a mistake.
In Louise Hay’s book, You can Heal Your Body, it says that the neck represents flexibility, and the new thought pattern/affirmation is, ” I am peaceful with life.” To be absolutely transparent, I didn’t look at the until just this moment, but it makes me think of the book of Genesis when God referred to his people as “stiff-necked” when they didn’t trust God enough to surrender to His will. Aren’t we all God’s people?
I took a deep breath, then a few more, and I surrendered it all to God, the dogs and Lucy’s illness, the schedules, the what-ifs, the logistics of everything, and while not instantaneous, within a day, the tension released. To seal the deal, and reinforce surrender, today, I will receive a reiki session from another wise friend, who introduced me to chakras decades ago.
Today, may we realize that freedom comes from surrender.
I’m not going to say anything new when I say that we are all working on something; sometimes, it’s even multiple things. Who says we can’t multi-task? We’re all working on how we view the world and our place in it.
Especially during this time of Advent, we are called to look at how Jesus shows up in our lives. Will we recognize Him in the opinionated relative? How about the judgemental neighbor? How about the aggressive driver? How about the drug addict on the corner?
If we are all Divine Beings, then we all carry the Divine within us, do we not? What is it that triggers us not to respond as Jesus would when we encounter said relative, neighbor, driver, or addict? I might venture to say that it all stems from how we see Christ in our own lives/hearts/selves. Is Christ our best friend with whom we have endless conversations or the one we just feel obligated to visit every so often?
For me, my intentions started out great, with great zeal, a little like my New Year’s Resolutions, which I stopped making because they made me too stressed if I did not adhere to them. The disappointment hovered over me like a thick, heavy fog, and it became a reflection of how I viewed myself, as a disappointment, that I couldn’t see something through the year and make a permanent change for the better.
Once I started loving myself a little more by cutting myself some slack, I realized that many of those resolutions were superficial, and what really mattered wasn’t if I lost that pesky ten pounds (twenty), but what and how I saw myself. If I loved myself as Christ does, warts and all, then I am on the right track. If I can simply honor God each day by spending some quality time with Him, then my life will unfold as it is meant to. Only then will I be able to make better choices in my life, and just maybe I’ll become more aware of what I am actually putting into my body and ultimately putting out into the world. Maybe I’ll turn down that second glass of wine because does it really serve me in this moment? If I start looking at just this moment, how I fit into just this moment, I have enough, I am enough.
If I look at money the same way, in this moment, I have enough, then those judgmental folks who say, “You can’t afford it,” go by the wayside. I can see clearly that they are more afraid for themselves than for genuine concern for me. I see that they are coming from a place of fear and scarcity. They haven’t evolved to a place of abundance and enoughness. Unfortunately, they are stuck and want to share their stuckness with others instead of uplifting them. Those are the folks who can’t be alone, who need to have others wallow in their fear.
How would Christ see them? As a famous saint once said, or at least said something to the effect of; for the only eyes Christ has are our eyes, the only hands, our hands. One of Christ’s big topics in the Bible is money (and not to fear). So, if we look at the fear-centered folks through Christ’s eyes, we might see a scared child who doesn’t have two coins to rub together, who doesn’t know where the next meal will come from, who hasn’t fully surrendered their life to Christ. Or maybe Christ sees a child who wants to control everything in their lives because they grew up where things seemed out of control and who hasn’t surrendered anything but a handful of Sundays to God because they don’t trust that anyone, even God, can take care of things the way they can. Regardless, Christ will look on that child/sibling really, co-heir, with compassion, patience, and love, because He has wiped away all our hurt, imperfections, and our sins, so there are no more excuses. We can keep our focus on God, who loves us beyond all understanding, and keep Him our primary focus.
We all have something on which we are working so maybe the next time we encounter that difficult relative, neighbor, driver, or addict, we can look at them with compassion and realize we are all works in progress, and that as of yet, we don’t have all the answers, there are many things out of our control, and that ultimately God has the plan and we just have to surrender everything (including our finances) to Him.
Sasha's Camino 