Hello All. If the Olympics gave medals for blogging the least number of times each year, I'd probably win the gold. Why? Because I took several weeks off in December and early January. Now, it’s Thursday again and I find myself unable to find the three hours I
generally spend crafting the memoir story that serves as my posting. This
week’s been hectic with the illness of a friend who needed help and with my own
problems with Meniere’s. So I also haven’t been able to read any of your blogs.
I’m
hoping that next week life will permit me to get back to a routine that
includes reading/commenting on blogs and writing a story for this blog. For
now, I simply want to share two things.
1) As
you know, Time magazine chose Pope
Francis as their person of the year. Below is a poem about the pope. A friend
of mine, whom I’ve known for sixty years, wrote it. The two of us attended
college together and we both entered Mount Saint Scholastica Monastery. I left;
she stayed and I’m so thankful that she’s been able to pursue her love of
writing there.
Pope Francis
He looked out at our world
and saw that it was good,
not wicked or lurking in alleys,
waiting to pounce on prey,
but wounded and scarred from battlefields
of controversy, dissention, and mistrust.
He calls for the Church to be
a “field hospital” doing triage
to stop the hemorrhaging, to bandage
the broken, to comfort the mournful,
not condemning or alienating.
Open-armed and open-hearted
Francis embraces those teetering
on the brink of poverty, trampled
by war and greed, lost
in disillusionment and darkness.
Throwing off the ermine and silk
and red shoes, abandoning
the papal palace, he reaches out
to ordinary folk with candor
and common language.
He makes the gospel speak
again to all those hungering
and understanding, yearning
for a place to call home.
Barbara Mayer, OSB
October 2013
This is the
second poem of Barb’s that I’ve shared with you. The first was one about the
return of a number of ex-nuns, myself included, to the Mount in May 2013 to
celebrate the monastery’s sesquicentennial. Click here if you’d like to read
that poem.
2) On
January 26, I posted for the first time in fourteen weeks on my Sunday writing
blog: Word-Crafting: a Writer’s Blog. For that posting, I reviewed Return to Canterbury, written by a
fellow blogger. It is a sequel to her first book, The Christmas Village. If you have time, I hope you’ll visit my
Sunday blog and read the review. Melissa Goodwin’s novel for 10-to-14-year-olds
is so well written that it appeals not only to young readers, but also to those
of us who’ve enjoyed a lengthy number of years!
If
all goes well with the weather and the barometer and my friend, whose health is
not so good right now, I’ll return next Monday to reading blogs and next
Thursday to sharing with you another convent story. Peace.