Good Sunday morning dear gentle readers. This week has been extremely personal. There is no looking out here, only looking in. I went with a few ladies to the home of Liz who just lost her son. She held a memorial at morning Mass and invited her friends back for coffee. To lose your child is so hard and Liz is bravely bearing up under the blow. We talked of others and of the friend who is currently in the hospital doing diagnostics with complications. She’s supposed to have surgery, but her body filled with fluid. The email came to pray for her as it’s cancer and … probably spread out. There is a tqble in the lobby of the church where up coming funerals are honored. A photograph of the beloved, a note with their name on it, and a white vase with a white rose. People stop and talk there…. It’s a relatively small community. Only new people like me don’t know everybody. This is the "age" when we begin to lose our fellows. The prayer list is long. I’m one of the young ones but I stand with them and pray for me too. "Lord let me live to speak in church, to serve, to paint at the 2 art galleries! and … to finish the mural on the shed!!!"
I opened with the personal nature of this week. We don’t look "out." It’s almost if that is for the younger people and our role here at our age is to pray. When my mother retired from teaching, I said she shouldn’t retire yet; to me she was so vital! But she said, "Leave it to the young ones." My sister once said, "I am now a crone." Yes, I understand now… our role is advice, giving hugs, giving love and acceptance! i look around and hope the "young ones" will come to carry the load! Not only to carry the tables and chairs that are set up for the St Vincent de Paul collections, but for all the heavy lifting that "we used to do!" I will roll the little table around the church and set up the altar and the communion tables, and clean up after Mass as long as I can, and I will climb the steps and read the Word as long as my voice holds out ( I hear a lot of raspy voices here… I think that comes too when our voices go.) Let us do as much as we can… my gentle readers: get out the vote if you can! Get out there and speak, hug, and do the heavy lifting! God bless you. Angels with us.