Her name is Alice. She took as her baptismal name Alice St. Hilaire – cheerful, happy. It is perfect. Sister Alice is a feisty, deeply intelligent, and yes, happy, nun. She has been my spiritual director for four years now. And she is my friend. This dear soul has walked some pretty mucky spiritual back roads with me. If anyone can see through the blind spots in my OCD faith, it is she. I have come to depend on her valuable insight. There are always questions – so many questions, all of which become annoyingly absent the moment I sit down to sip tea and share God-talk with her. Above all else, she has taught me to laugh at adversity and make uneasy peace with even the laughable parts of my psyche.
Every time I step into sister’s quaint living room, the presence of God is thick in the place, literally dripping from the walls and windows and oozing out of the carpet. Where more stereotypical elderly ladies might serve up of an overwhelming eau de chat, her home smells faintly of whatever modest breakfast was consumed earlier. It bears the years of humble struggle to survive in Yakima’s tough downtown. There, she stabs the dark with shards of light. She bears the frowns of pain inside her smiles of gratitude.
Sister is fond of saying that the ways by which God has revealed Godself to me become who I am and pave the way for whatever I will be next. Her life bears witness to the ramifications of this statement. It is why I have needed to make the short journey to her home so often.
I met with her last week for the final time; not because she finally threw in the towel with me – an understandable act under any circumstances. No, at 86 years old, she is tired. Her limping legs have difficulty simply bringing my tea during our direction times, an act of service for which she continually turns down my offers of help, let alone the many grueling tasks to which she has set herself for so long. The Sisters of Providence, the order to which she has belonged for decades, along with her local diocese, have determined that she needs to rest. The Catholic home in which she is being placed will offer access to better care in her waning years. I dare say it might also provide a few more ladies of her spiritual ilk, the kind who joke or hide the remote as easy as they pray. St. Hilaire indeed.
It seems right somehow that I face the loss of my dear friend right before Ash Wednesday. Death is an emptiness best seen as fire dies to embers, and ashes leave behind the memory of truth and talk and what once was. Too many have jumped on the ashes metaphor bandwagon for me to offer much that is new. But, I suppose that’s my point.
It’s always new. In the gospel, ashes are not a death, but a dare. God’s happy tale is of life and hope that lives in the smoke from the fire. Sister Alice will be gone in less than a week. But, I pray the warm fires of her presence and wisdom will live on in the person I am becoming. Ash Wednesday reminds me that, in spite of one empty fireplace, a new in-breaking of God is never far away and brings with it the smoky goodness of love. Eternal love.
A love Sister Alice St. Hilaire knows well.
Spring on Ash Wednesday
Begins again this springward journey;
rebirthing all that once lived.
Trickle again once fickle brook and stream
sickle sighs yet in repose, sleeping still.
Earth, sore and winter-stiff, seeks, sighs
stretches out skinny arms of want.
Her cold, hard bosom births not what soon will come
e’er the Sun’s hungry mouth suckles,
fills his lusty gut on hopeful barrenness
feasting on milk of timeworn, weary passage.
She forgets not the suddenness of late
and sooner dark, splayed upon a fine, greenness
come for to spite the buds of transforming light
bidding death where life has yet to emerge.
Warmly insistent she speaks, sharing her story
poured out over the long-shadowed land.
Bring such bothersome beauty to branchier speech,
fall around us, spilling, foaming such fury
and fermenting our soon-drunk wine of promise;
earthen spirit’s Eucharistic prayer.
Hush now, silence yourself bold coldness and spare not
freedom’s great gift only taken this once year’s-life.
Steep instead in warmness, worried not for lack
but bubbling and birthing bold words lightly spoken.
Remind us, refresh and reframe what is still rooting,
routing sad night-hood to don the new, the now, the never again;
only to return, restored and restoring,
regenerated, reborn.
Give us again your beauty for our ashes.
Wednesday speaks your secrets.
Robert Alan Rife, ©February 22, 2012
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Laughing Mona found here
Rob, as I read this pungent post, I was struck by the reality of the many paschal mysteries in our lives- and perhaps this IS all of life. We tend to breath our sighs too soon after one episode when life is more like a series that never ends of “reframing what is still rooting”. I need to chew on that. For me, its waking up to the reality that giving beauty for ashes, will continue to happen until alas, we see that there is really only beauty. It paves a new set of eyes for me to ponder the idea of eternal life. Thank you! I want to be open to this invitation of beauty more. More than living in the plateau of sighed relief. For that, is when things can become stagnant.
Val, it’s a funny thing in a way that we often think we’re at one place in the over-arching Paschal mystery of our lives when in fact we may be somewhere else entirely from God’s perspective. We may think ourselves in a time of ascension while God is wondering when we’ll notice we’ve left humility at the door and are simply being either blind or self-congratulatory. Or, perhaps, like Job we think God has left the building when in fact God has never been more immanent. There seem to be mini-cycles within the big picture. Almost like a helix, life takes little twists and turns that we think to be part of our own Paschal cycles when they may just be “random” acts/activities that are contributing to our formation in ways almost imperceptible at times but still significant in themselves. The ground has no idea that it has a Year of Jubilee coming when all it sees is another year of planting. The small in this case is the big, until the big reveals just how broad, spacious but intentional, the work of God is in our souls.
I hear you and that should (and does) take the pressure off of me trying to change myself. Your image of a Helix is interesting. I love the spiral idea- and as our lives do seem to coil up and down, it is with the hope that we will see. Sometimes I think the Christian communities (like me) get this mixed up. We think its more about “So, am I like Jesus yet”? When really it’s more like we are just needed to awaken to what already is true within and without. On most days, I just wish someone would write a paraphrase on Scripture noting the Helix points of being awake and being asleep.
Indeed. And we really have little idea of the immensity of the question, “am I like Jesus yet?” since we are only dealing primarily with what we see or believe to be true on the basis of scriptural record. There are mysteries at work here well beyond our ken!
Yet again, another one of your many good and true points.