Gaudete Sunday already!
We just returned from a quick trip to Houston to visit the cousins and watch a track meet. It was a long day in an indoor track building after early Mass. I love track meets, but it was crowded on the aluminum bleachers that had no seatbacks, and I was trying to grade papers on a computer that kept dying. Our daughter's events was one of the last ones, but the coaches want to kids there early, even though few runners stay to watch the events after their own races are over. When the meet ended around 4, we had a 3 hour drive home. No one felt very much like rejoicing, and in fact we all picked at each other before our tomato soup and grilled cheese dinner, which we sat down to at 7:45 pm.
But we lit the pink candle. Then we all went to our corners for some quiet time, the high schooler to study, the grade schooler with her book, my husband and I with our emails and grading. It was not a very joyful Sunday night, but a little quiet time was what we all needed.
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.
