My bags are packed, I'm ready to go

Our western area of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace held a Fall Assembly yesterday and today - a grand experience of community as it always is, a time to catch up with each other, and celebrate, and learn, and pray, and grow. Our main subject was vocations to religious life and how we can encourage them; we learned from Sister Charlene Diorka, SSJ, about studies of recent vocations and about some of the ways we can be welcoming and inclusive of seekers.

We also got a first look at a new CSJP website that will be unveiled in May - there's a photo of Jane Kortz, CSJP Associate, checking it out - and we heard about plans for a new home health center at St. Mary-on-the-Lake that will give better care and comfort to our most senior sisters.

We celebrated some of our existing and enduring vocations with a Jubilee dinner honoring this year's 10 Jubilarians, celebrating from 80 years (Sr. Cecilia Marie Gri) to 50 years in religious life as Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. We ate well, we talked a LOT, we joined in the eucharistic liturgy, and we danced. As always, being with my sisters reminds me what fun it is to be part of a group of women that knows how to pray and how to celebrate.

Now it's time to go home, to my other home in Suchitoto. My bags are packed with vitamins and Titebond III glue and new stationery and Apostilles and dictionaries (gifts from Eleanor Gilmore to some Salvadoran friends), the wheelchair is wired together for the journey, and Eleanor is taking me to the airport in a few minutes. Sister Peggy will pick me up on the other end. I'll miss the hot water and sleeping under a quilt and seeing the sisters and at least some of my Seattle friends; I look forward to the heat and the lemon tree and the market and my Salvadoran friends. ¡Hasta pronto!

Peace Day

On Wednesday I led, for the first time, one of our Peace Days for Women - a monthly gathering that has been taking place at St. Mary-on-the-Lake since the 1980s. It was a great group of women - some I know, most I didn't at the beginning. The topic was "Friends and Strangers," and since this was St. Patrick's Day, I began by focusing on his history of being kidnapped and enslaved - and then choosing to return to the place of his captivity, to befriend those enemy strangers.

The part of the day I enjoyed most, probably because it was mostly wordless, was an exercise adapted from Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown's Coming Back to Life - it involved walking through a big room, first fast and frantically with little attention to others. Gradually the group is asked to slow down, begin to notice the others in the room, and then to take someone by the hand. The movement continues through a number of handclasps with different people. We all noticed our sense of connection with each other growing strongly, our pace slowing, our peacefulness increasing. It struck me that there are many ways I can continue this exercise in my daily life, walking slowly and deliberately when I'm feeling a bit frantic, paying attention to who and what is surrounding me.

I'm a bit sad, though, that I didn't have Sister Susan Francois' meditation on friendship in front of me when I led the Peace Day. This is a beautiful reflection by the other blogging CSJP Susan, and I recommend it to you. I'm a bit sad, too, in preparing to return to El Salvador when there are still so many friends I haven't had time to visit with. That's definitely the shadow side of living 3000 miles away and in another country

Things to take back

My stock of things-to-take-back is getting big and complicated. This wheelchair is headed to Comasagua, where it's going to give a little more mobility to a housebound woman. It's a gift from the Bellingham Lions Club, brought here to St. Mary-on-the-Lake by Ken and Janet Henderson as they headed to the airport for a trip to Nicaragua.

It's beginning to sound like one of those terrible counting games where you have to remember a long string of unrelated items: 21 bottles of vitamins, a jar of ginger marmalade (thank you to Sister Joan Holliday!), Titebond III wood glue (for sculptor Miguel Martino), a wheelchair and three apostillated doctor's licenses. And there's more to come! May it all, somehow, fit on the plane come Sunday.

Things to take back

I'm beginning to assemble a mighty pile of things to take back. There are the vitamins, and my refilled prescriptions, and yesterday I added the lightest and most important item: three apostilles. These beautiful documents, produced by the Secretary of State's office in Olympia, certify that the license and curriculum vitae of the three doctors who will be part of our May eye surgery mission have been notarized by an authentic notary in the state of Washington. I drove down to Olympia yesterday with my sister Kathy, and the whole process was cheerfully completed within 20 minutes. Our lack of apostilles for the February mission gave me serious anxiety and a bit of heartburn, but now that I know how this process works, I can see that it will be an easy requirement to fulfill in the future.

It's raining vitamins

On a wonderfully typical rainy spring day in Bellevue I joined the monthly lunch of women from my Queen Anne High School (Seattle) class of '59 and got showered with vitamins they had collected for our medical mission. What a bounty! I figure that on our San Juan Opico mission we gave out over 50,000 vitamins, so our demand is always huge. We'll use these during our follow-up eye clinic in Opico this November. Thanks, dear friends! The photo above is with Kari Black and Jo Wiltse, two of the 16 or so sharing lunch and news.

Padre Oscar

I've been mindful yesterday and today of a grand celebration in Suchitoto - Oscar Alfaro Melgar has been ordained, and, as Padre Oscar, is just now in the middle of celebrating his first Mass. Padre Oscar is the younger brother of Martha who keeps our Suchitoto house in beautiful order, and the whole family has been praying and preparing for this special day for a long time.



Padre Oscar's parish, San Nicolas Lempa, is far from Suchitoto, but he asked to be ordained in his home town, to share the joy of this day with his Suchitotense family and friends. His bishop was agreeable, and Suchitoto is always ready to have a fiesta. The celebration yesterday included an almuerzo (luncheon) for 100 at the Centro Arte para la Paz, chicken for most everybody else in the parish, bucketloads of tamales, and - I can hear them in my mind's ear - plenty of firecrackers.



I wish I could have been there, but Marta has promised to show me photos. Meanwhile, I've been visiting the Tacoma home of my friend Patti Moore and getting an advance tour of the house in rural Pierce County that she and her husband are fixing up. I'm about to go to church with Patti, and will be praying in thanksgiving for the gift of Padre Oscar to the people of El Salvador. May the spirit and courage of Monsenor Oscar Romero be his.

Springtime

Springtime in Seattle is glorious, a four-month-long extravaganza in which each week has its specialty and each bush and tree and flower finds its moment to unfold in splendor. A pleasure to be back for three weeks of this long season: we're in daffodil and forsythia and cherry blossom season, shortly to be followed by the tulips, magnolias, rhodedendrons. Lenten festivities of the warming earth.

Springtime and fall aren't part of the seasons of El Salvador. We go from the rainy season, winter (May through October) to the dry season, summer (November through April). I haven't figured out the rhythms of the plants yet, when different plants lose their leaves or put on new growth. The nance tree in our patio seems to lose leaves all the time, and puts out flowers and new leaves while it's losing the old ones.

Here, I understand the rhythms, and I can name the trees and I know which flowers to look for next. What a gift at this time in my life to be learning a new rhythm and order of this planet. And what a gift to come home to the familiar beauty of the cherry trees.