Dance with abandon.💃

Today first catch-up in St. Anne’s Day room today after many months, eager reunion for both of us. Marina vaccinated so we are now free to meet up every week. I wear my mask, have my temperature checked and sit a distance away. For the longest time it looked like it might never come to pass, and while we don’t know what the future holds, all is well with the world today.

As I waited at St.Anne’s door, I spied Mary reading ‘The Kerryman’ newspaper looking so peaceful and content. The sun, beaming in the huge window of the Dayroom enhanced the picture perfect setting and I got to pondering how content some folk are even in lockdown time, their own interior world providing the sustenance required. Others feel loneliness acutely and subsequently regress. QThis is true not just in Nursing Homes, it can be stated for the world at large, life is tragicomic, one size does not fit everyone.

What a privilege for us then to do what we can, in all the ways that we can, to lighten another’s burden whenever possible. ‘Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ’. (Galatians 6:2)

Returning home full of the joys of spring, a little boy in a pushchair says ‘hi’ grinning from ear to ear, his preoccupied mammy staring at her phone, missing the beautiful moment from God. Further on Christy declares, startling me; ‘Always that oul smile on your face. Rogaire’, laughing loudly. (Rogaire: Kerry slang for ‘mischievous’). Vignettes from Heaven above. ‘People who come into our lives are as pieces of canvas on which we must paint the image of Jesus’. (Blessed conchita)

I invite Margaret to join me as I pray a ‘Hail Mary’ at Our Lady’s grotto in the middle of town. She accepts hesitatingly, she doesn’t pray aloud, tad embarrassed perhaps. It is one thing to pray at Dear Mother Mary’s grotto in Lourdes, Fatima, Medugorje and our own Knock Shrine, but quite another thing altogether in our small town in a cold March afternoon. People might see us praying!  What on earth might they think........John on the other hand happily stood as we prayed together. When I told him that he was the first ever to accept my invitation, he simply said, surprised: ‘It is a positive thing to do’. John has supped with suffering all his life, in the end, when all is said and done, life is easier when we have nothing to lose.

‘So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in Heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in Heaven’. (Matthew; 10-32)

If my dear friends in St.Anne’s had the option today, they would pray with abandon at Our Lady’s Grotto amongst their many other endeavours, they would waste no minute. Like they are now, my time will come too for sitting still and reading the Kerryman newspaper, but for now and until that time, my purpose, goal and objective is to dance like there’s no one watching me, even when the music has stopped. Live like there’s no tomorrow even when the effort is great. Love like I’ve never been hurt even when the pain is piercing. 

Not always easy but eternally enriching.

‘Lord, help me to forget myself for others, that in giving myself I may teach myself to love’.            (Micheál Quoist)

‘Every moment of our life has a purpose, every action of ours no matter how dull or routine or trivial it may seem in itself, has a dignity and a worth beyond human understanding’.

(Father Ciszek spent 23 years in Soviet prison.)