24/52 – Jesus is the Gardener of Our Souls

22/52 – June

June does not feel like June.

I’ve always remembered this last month of school as hot and sticky. I’m freezing. I’ve been wearing long sleeves all weekend. Plus a sweater. I hate taking a shower on days like this. The water stays cold for so much longer. The heat is off, but I like sleeping with the windows open, so I’m cold all the time.

I want a nice bowl of soup.

It feels more like March or November.

My lilacs are gone.

School’s crescendo is building, adding more things to the end of year calendar. I’m not ready for summer recess. So much to do around the house. So many expectations of a good vacation with the kids home, but also the anticipation of too many people under one roof all of the time without respite.

There is no time in June, but I must take the time to take a breath.

Make a list.

Gather and locate supplies.

Manage time.

Fill out forms for summer school and VBS. Get in the end of school year paperwork. Red Hats, writing group that I’m in charge of, Gishwhes is coming, planning our trip.

Some of it will pass very slowly, but some will be very fast. Too fast.

When June ends, I will have no kids in elementary school. It’s kind of sad. I’m coping.

June bugs and full moons.

21/52 – Moms

Finishing out Mary’s month of May with my other mothers. We celebrated Mother’s Day. I’m the only one now. This was our first without my mother-in-law, a wonderful mother and in-law. I never understood all of those stereotypical mother in law jokes. My mother in law was no joke. Always supportive, always kind, always welcoming. Probably would have lived another decade or more if not for the car accident. We’ll be traveling to Northern Ireland to visit her home, see where she come from, where she grew up, got her values and her skills, her independence, her enthusiasm for life.

My Mom’s birthday was yeserday. She would have been seventy-four. It’s hard to believe that she’s gone twelve years now. We used to talk every day, especially after the grandkids were born. She was an advice giver, whether wanted or needed or not. But still, taken in stride. For the most part, she stayed away from “helping” us name our second son, but was secretly pleased that we chose to name him after my father. She would like that my baby girl is named for her. I remembered her mentioning that she liked the name when we were deciding.

Kind and generous and I learned that from her. Inherited. As well has how to make a good roast beef and pot roast, and of course, her lasagna, what most poeple would call baked ziti. Still awesome, though. Sunday bagels, too much mayo in my tuna fish, and overplanning on the little things and under planning on the big ones.

Learning as much as teaching. But always trying to do the best, and moving forward. Being mom and remembering moms.

20/52 – St. Elen, my patron saint

There is very little information on St. Elen, the saint I chose for my confirmation. She is the patron of road builders and travellers. She is coincidentally from the place I visited in 2009 without knowing it as well as one of her holy wells being in the town I visited in 1987, also unbeknownst to me. I’m hoping to pilgrimage there this summer if at all possible.

Here is some insight into some of the reasons I chose her.

This is copied from my original post about St. Elen.

Initially, I was seeking out a Welsh saint because of my long spiritual connection to Wales and the Celtic peoples, but upon discovering St. Elen, I discovered that there were several other reasons why I connected to her.

First and foremost, Ellen was my mother’s middle name and it gives me a connection to her as I join the church. My first teacher, who taught me lessons of generosity and the importance of family.

Secondly, Elen is from Caernarfon, the town in which I stayed for three nights in 2009. It hadn’t been on my list of places to visit until a Welsh friend randomly suggested it that I should go there and see the castle.

Her daughter is said to have married Vortigern, the only source for their marriage being carved on the Eliseg Pillar which is very near Valle Crucis Abbey, another Welsh place I gravitated to.

Ellen is also one of my favorite television characters: mother, business owner, independent, smart, how could I go wrong?

19/52 – Mary

As May soon comes to a close, I am reflective on something I heard at the beginning of the month: May is Mary’s month. There are so many other months that involve Mary: March for the Annunciation; December for the Nativity and the Immaculate Conception; October for the Rosary; August for the Assumption. I’m sure there are others.

Maybe it has something to do with her visit to Fatima or Mother’s Day, during the same weekend this year or nearby in other years.

I never looked for a connection with Mary, but it was still somehow there. I don’t pray all of the devotions; in fact, I don’t think I know them all. After three years, it’s still all new to me. Every day is a learning experience. I am drawn to Mary as mother and model; I pray the rosary, and as soon as I saw it, I became attached to Her as Untier of Knots. I think it’s the idea that problems can be solved if you just take the time to work them out. Untie the knots. Of course, there is the knot connection to Celtic spirituality that I lean towards.

May 13th was the centennial of Mary’s first appearance at Fatima in Portugal. October will commemorate the last appearance. It’s not my lifetime, but it’s still hard to believe that anything Mary related happened in the twentieth century. I think of Biblical and Mary and Jesus as being two thousand years old, not during my grandfathers’ lifetimes.

i think what I find so fascinating is the universality and timelessness of Mary’s intercession and influence. She is the epitome of faithfulness and free will. We all have our free will to make choices, to struggle through our beliefs, to form our psyche and our values. Looking towards Mary, her life wasn’t terribly easy. She was a mother like I am, making day to day decisions on things that affect her family and its future. How much she must have wondered about her son, and his well being when he began his public ministry. Was he eating right? Was he warm at night? Was he staying one step ahead of harm?

She didn’t have any special revelation or insight into Jesus’ future; only that he had a path to follow and whatever that was, wherever that ended, she was his mother and his support.

Maybe that’s what I like.

Being single-minded and open-minded when it comes to our kids. Being the best at what we do, whatever that is. And still, being Mom, like at Cana as well as at the foot of the Cross.

Motherhood is a continuum, a spectrum of every emotion, every decision, every moment that involves our kids, even the adult ones.

We watch, we wait, we love.

So, maybe May is Mary’s month, the same month we celebrate our mothers and our kids celebrate us. Mother’s Day is every day that comes with a hug or a giggle or a tearful exchange. It’s all there, and it’s all always been there.

Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Blessed is all of our Jesus’, our own sons and daughters, within our hearts, and they in ours, forever.

18/52 – My May

17/52 – May

May.

May Day, my mother’s birthday, Mother’s Day, visits to Grandma’s, Cinco de Mayo, Free Comic Book Day, my name saint’s feast day, retreats and writing, and the April showers have brought the May flowers.

As I get ready in the mornings, I look out the window. I like to check the sky and the breeze, and smell the fresh spring air. On many of these mornings, I’m reminded of one of the reasons that we bought our house, and that I do love many parts of it despite our buying and maintaining experience.

The beautiful garden.

Parts of it really come alive in May. May is when we looked at the house, before the lies and the problems that lie ahead. Our first view was of the forsythia trees in front of the house, the bread and butter hostas, the lilac tree in the expansive back yard. The smell of spring was everywhere. All the natural aspects of the house, the ones you can’t fake, you can’t improve other than weeding, what will remain indefinitely after the sellers leave and we stay in our new home.

The row of forsythia trees that line one side of our property in particular. The bloom opposite the pine trees on the street border. Along the upper garden are three other forsythia trees, not to mention the four in the front of the house. I call it the upper garden because it is a two tiered planting space that comes alive every year, hiding the broken pots and decaying fall leaves. We always mean to get rid of them, but fall turns into late fall, and the first snow envelops them in a pile of white fluff. The garden is separated by a small stone and slate boundary wall making it one of the more unusual gardens in our neighborhood.

We really do have a beautiful backyard.

The forsythias are blooming their bright yellow petals, and shine in the sunlight.

Adjacent to one of them is a lilac tree. It may be a bush, but it seems too tall to be a bush, and so I call it a tree.

At the moment, it is barely budding; the green poking out of the bare sticks of branches that will soon be weighed down heavily with the purple petals that gather themselves into natural bouquets.

It is the one time a year that I grab my chair and sit out in the backyard, close enough to smell the fragrance that is overpowering in its appeal.

I would estimate the purple, lilac color to begin in about two weeks.

May is most colorful and bright.

It will fill out the tree, and brighten the yard, but unfortunately will only be present for the month of May, maybe the first week of June.

I’ll go out with my camera, and post to Facebook and Instagram. I’ll look out of the window and smile every time my eye catches the hint of lilac color, and even though I’m far away from the tree itself, I can almost smell it.

So many senses alive, and to think it’s one little tree at the top of a two tier garden.

But it’s also May.

15/52 – Chosen

Lent is over. The Easter fire is lit. In just about seven or so hours, it will be blessed, we will light our candles and illuminate the church. And so begins the Easter Vigil; practically the same way across the world in their own time zones. It begins so late because we wait until dark.

Every year from Ash Wednesday until tonight, I am asked if it brings back memories of my own first Easter Vigil. I never know what to say. Of course, it does, in many ways, but in others it fosters new memories that blend with the old ones. It is also hard to explain that my Easter Vigil is often somehow with me more often than not. Every time, I cross myself at the holy water font. Every time, I receive the Eucharist, I think back to that very first one. Each one feels like the first time, and each subsequent one is a crumb on the path I have chosen.

For many, Christ is chosen for them, through their families and traditions, through their spouses or wanting to give something to our children to connect them to “their people”, but as we get older and understand more and hear more, and even listen more, we make choices along the way, every step of the path we follow. Turn left? Or right? Confirmation? Or not? Weekly communion? Or is that first one enough? Is it all that I need?

I didn’t know what was being offered when I chose Christ. I had only intended to choose a ritual, a place of being that make me feel…something; feel better about my life. In staying, I chose a new path, a dim path until one day, just like that, it was lit, brighter than the sun, all encompassing, my eyes rising to meet the glow. Despite the glow of suns and brightness unimaginable, my eyes stayed. I didn’t hear words or sounds, but my heart heard the words. Not words, but something translated, engraved on my soul, that while giving me many choices really gave me none.

Once it was there, it can not be taken away. My only choice is to accept what I’ve been gifted and continue my direction, my directing, my learning, my new way.

Every day that I have not been on retreat, I have attended the daily mass during Lent. For the past two weeks, I have remained in the church to recite the rosary. Those two commitments have given me a steadiness to carry me through this time in the desert.

Easter begins and Passover is ending, and they both celebrate the release from bondage, the exiting from the desert, the wilderness, our yearly exodus.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Griffins and Ginger Snaps

-I write, and I have a blog because of course I do-

the new 52