The waning of winter in Wersnersville

The foot of wet snow on March 22

And a few hundred yards away mom and dad set up their nest in the exact same spot for the third year running, this year just six or seven days after the snow fall.   Vigilant and confident they will usher in a new season with their offspring.   (Papa is getting used to the photographer!)

Easter Vigil 2018

Saturday, March 31, 2018  Easter Vigil

The Blue Moon of March 31, 2018

When the sky cleared last evening and the near-full moon rose, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrated the feast of Passover.  We Christians, of course, had celebrated Jesus’ last Passover on Thursday evening.    There Jesus gives himself as food for our journey into liberation and glory.   Like the Jews freed from Egypt, in our own desert we also may complain about the struggles through which we must live but at the same time Jesus is with us in the Eucharist and sends us the Spirit of encouragement and peace.

A story in Mark’s gospel tells of the women discovering the empty tomb and hearing the message of the angel:  “Jesus of Nazareth has been raised, he is not here.”   Details about what happens next among the women differ.   Mark says that they were afraid to tell anyone.   Luke writes, on the other hand, that they told the men who were disciples but the men refused to believe the women.  

Similar witness from the women occurs in each of the four gospels. Yes, later the men offer testimony but Jesus reveals his resurrection first to the women.  In their patriarchal society none of the gospel writers or male disciples would have thought it helpful to begin with women’s testimony.  Thus such unusual testimony argues for its truth.   And, too, this revelation first to women underlines their role as disciples of Jesus.

I seek some parallels of the resurrection in our own clumsy lives. Even when this possibility is so disrupted by our sins and the evil in this world, rebirth never vanishes.   To be sure, so often the Spirit of God and the hands of human love and care bring about a rebirth as in the change of heart of those ailing with addictions or lives of anger and hatred.   

But still, with each person’s inevitable death, the permanence of risen life hides itself from us.    In our times of sadness and anger over death or over the suffering of children we find ourselves in the same position as the men and women who came to know Jesus, his life and his teaching.   The Spirit opened their eyes to his resurrection so powerfully that his love transformed their lives.   All of our weaknesses and sins, all the evil in the world have not and cannot destroy this Spirit.      

Feb 18 2018 Two parts! SNOW & SNOW GEESE

Sunrise after an overnight snowfall  February 18, 2018

Later in the afternoon

The Canadian geese typically fly over the house in the afternoon on their feeding trips around the county.   They fly no more than a few hundred feet in the air.  But this display must be a migration of snow geese over a thousand feet directly overhead.  

 They may have spent time in Middle Creek, a stopover along the Atlantic Flyway just about twenty miles away.    As many as a hundred thousand geese can be counted using Middle Creek as a stopover on any given day.

Will they be flying all night?

This photo puts me in mind of our former Jesuit Provincial, Jim Devereux, who was an avid bird watcher.   I lived in the community where he died many years ago.  During his last illness when he could no longer read, he asked me to read to him a favorite poem by Anne Porter called "Birds of Passage"

",,,,when the Canada geese are coming down from the north...

They rise up heavily 
To begin their autumn flight.  

You who speak without words 
To your creatures who live without words
Are hiding under their feathers

To give them a delicate certainty
On the long dangerous night journey."

Super Blue Moon Eclipse today at 6:50 AM

Awaiting the signs of an eclipse with clouds covering a full view.

A few minutes later the eclipse appears concealing the upper left of the moonlight.

While in the East the sun prepares to rise.

The occasional smile of 2017

THE OCCASIONAL SMILES OF 2017

Our Jesuit astronomer, Guy Consolmagno, S.J., commented on the beauty and "coincidental" nature of a total eclipse back on August 21 calling it a "divine coincidence" that "brought a smile to his face."

I have been praying with that phrase as I look back on the year.  Yes, things like hurricanes and fires and terror attacks caused so much suffering this year.   And then the long-term prospects of the tax bill, the anxiety of DACA and the school-yard taunts of Trump vs. Kim Jong-un don't bring smiles to most faces.  (Besides all this I get more "pageviews" from Russia on this blog than I do from the United States!)   But still I turn to some personal events of this year:

1. The death of my niece, Lisa, after 23 years in a persistent vegetative state.   Fortunately she went to God ahead of her parents and was not subject to becoming an orphan on this earth.   During her funeral we smiled at her unique way of embracing her life with race horses during those wonderful years she had before her disability.

2.  The confessions of children always bring a smile to my face.  After his confession I questioned a nine or ten-year-old lad  about his life on a farm and his duties of feeding thirteen cats and two dogs...not to mention the pigs and goats that he and his siblings care for.  "Do cats go to heaven?"  I asked.  "Yes."   "Do dogs go to heaven?"   "Yes."   "What about pigs?"   "I don't know."   
Another lad spoke generally of his sisters:\.  I asked, "How many sisters do you have?"  "Six."   "How many brothers?"   His face fell and he joined  his thumb and first finger and held up a big zero!  

3.  I had occasion in recent years to at least be consoled if not register a sad smile when I thought of the two or three men I've known who died young and who also had the experience of a Kairos retreat while in high school.   Retreatants (like men and women from scores of high schools) during such a retreat receive letters from their parents and friends with expressions of pride in them and of love for them.   Such messages both for those who wrote them and for the one who read them provide a tiny strand of consoling memories even in a time of devastating tragedy.

4.  Generally thinking that "living in the now" is overrated, I pray most frequently about a memory or about a concern for the future.   But a retreat master with whom I spoke this year during my retreat strongly advised me to pray with God "in the now."  So I took a seat at the side of a nearby country stream.  Coincidentally God  sent two kingfishers to the site to entertain me while diving for fish and preening their feathers in a nearby tree.   The retreat master was not surprised.   The event brought smiles to both our faces.   Now I get up in the morning and look out the window.  Often just outside are the morning star and a rosy dawn.   (This morning both Jupiter and Mars and a rosy dawn, too!).   Later if I have time to be outdoors the sights very often engage me.   Even the atheist Barbara Ehrenreich had such experiences that led her to puzzle over this thought: amazed as I am perhaps God made me to be a witness of creation.

Light snowscapes Dec 30 Wernersville, PA

Decor

YES, THESE DAYS THERE ARE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS EVERYWHERE BUT NOT ALWAYS SUCH ABUNDANT FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS  LIKE THE MIDDLE PHOTOS HERE.

THE FIRST AND LAST PICTURE HERE ARE FROM THE JESUIT CENTER.

BUT THE OTHER FLORAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE EXAMPLES OF WHAT WE PRIESTS ENJOY EVERY TIME WE GO AND CELEBRATE MASS WITH THE SISTERS OF THE MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD IN SINKING SPRING!