The blood machine

By Caroline

I don’t remember the official medical name of the blood machine, but it was softly ticking like a clock keeping time for an event no one wants to be a part of.

This was the fourth time I’d seen Mr J on my pastoral care visits to the hospital this year and he is a very special person; always willing to share a smile despite the cancer that is eating away at his body and blood. He never fails to invite me to sit down and I always do because he teaches me about suffering with joy, he teaches me to take my eyes off myself, he teaches me to trust Jesus more and I never fail to tear up as soon as my feet touch the threshold of the doorway on my way to the next patient.

I’m so happy to see you Mr J, only….not here. We both smiled as I took his hand.

Yes, he said, here I am again. They blew out my veins on my last visit which started this whole latest trauma…water in my blood.

Pull up that darn chair, he quipped.

As I did, he defied the pain I’m sure he felt as he lifted his right arm black and blue from many attempts to access his veins bound by embedded tubes so impeccably taped in place, it’s hard to imagine they could ever come out; he took from his bed-table…a beautiful boxed cross. It had a ruby red jewel at the top.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

A time of Visitation

By Caroline

The Good Shepherd, Ravenna Mausoleums (Wikimedia Commons)

Besides you know the time has come; the moment is here for you to stop sleeping and wake up,
because by now our salvation is nearer than when we first began to believe.
–Romans 13:11

Maybe it’s the season for angels. I don’t know.

I usually don’t have time to stop in the hospital chapel after my visits, but today was different. Today I sensed something in my spirit, something palpable, but hard to put in words; that still small voice gnawing at my soul, vying for my my attention, which for several hours had been preoccupied with the stories of God’s dear people. They, who are worn down with the afflictions of physical suffering are many times over my greatest teachers.

But today, I somehow knew I was not to pass up a visit to the chapel.

With each passing week, I’ve noticed in many patients another sort of fatigue has set in and it has nothing to do with their bodies..It’s as if through them, the Lord is trying to tell me something; they whose suffering leaves nothing to the imagination, yet whose smiles make room for me to sit– though their hospital gowns barely cover them– and nurses intrude on their tears as they bare to me the spiritual wounds of their heart. In almost every patient I’ve recently seen they are crying as if in imitation of Christ, not for themselves, but for us as a country and people who are turning away from the day of the Lord’s visitation.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

Be a people of the Word

By Caroline

Light of the World by William Holman
Hunt (Wikimedia Commons).

I’m on a short three-week break in between classes so I’ve had some time to catch up on news and things around the cultural landscape… Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. What an assault on the senses, what a challenge for anyone in this modern day to continue on the path of living in the world, but not being of it. It’s difficult seeking a life where one is,

like sheep among the wolves…as cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.

—Matthew 10:16

Quite an exercise in discernment and yet, if I don’t do it, my class of 6th graders tell me about it nonetheless and then some; at least this way I’m prepared.

When they do tell me, they expect me to react as the world does, in anger and bitterness. They expect me to give in to the inevitability that, whatever I may teach them about God’s ways, it just isn’t going to cut it in the world where they’re growing up .

And the children are really in survival mode. The stories I hear about what goes on daily in school, it’s heartbreaking. But, bless their hearts they carry on and they have the energy to because they’re young.

 Who can overcome the world?

—1 John 5:5

 Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

The man with the black fedora

 By Caroline

Cross in a Blizzard by Chelmonski
(Wikimedia Commons)

And Uncle Sal’s Donuts.

No, I haven’t lost it..not yet anyways. Actually, I was on my rosary walk when the enemy tempted me with my old foe…

fear

Down that spiral I started, asking the Lord how He planned on dealing with a few issues for which I can’t seem to see any resolution.
I got distracted in prayer and then quiet before the Lord when that still small voice broke into my silent anxiety.

Do you remember the man with the black fedora and Uncle Sal’s donuts?
Of course I remember, Lord.

Slowly, I recounted the adventure from long ago. It was a high school ski weekend with the local recreation center–before the days of Doppler radar and cell phones. My best friend Kate and I were were seated at the back of the old school bus without a care in the world talking about boys, the nuns, oblivious to how long the trip upstate would take. We’d done this together before, but we’d never had an adventure like the one we were about to have that weekend.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

I met Jesus, Mary, and Joseph yesterday

By Caroline

Joseph and Mary at the Inn by Rahl (photo credit:
Wikimedia Commons).

Homeless and Pregnant.

That was the sign she held in her hands; her blond hair blowing in the wind as if waving to me from the sidewalk of the busy neighborhood crossroad. Maybe I didn’t read it right, I thought..Maybe she’s advertising for the fast food place behind her. However, a second look as I waited at the light, confirmed what I’d first read.  The light turned green, but as I drove off I asked the Lord,

Now what? What do you want me to do?

Instantly, the grace came; probably fueled from thoughts of what I knew could happen to her if the wrong person stopped to help. As I changed lanes to make the U turn and head back around, I had two thoughts: if a report came on the news that night of a young pregnant girl kidnapped and harmed, I would be devastated and ..my law enforcement son is going to have a fit if he finds out.

My arrow prayer as I drove was,

Lord, if she’s still there, please help me to help her in Your name,

Taking only my phone, I parked the car behind the restaurant and walked over to where she stood.

Do you have a minute to chat? 
Sure, she answered.

Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

Lessons in spiritual warfare from a bougainvillea

By Caroline



One day I decided this needed to go:

It’s pretty, I know. But this beauty has an evil side; it has mad thorns that will rip your flesh with one wrong move. It grows like wildfire and you can’t kill it. What began as a small potted gift from a friend had turned into a fiend that was destroying my fence, yard and innocent flowers.

My husband doesn’t let me use electrical tools in the garden because…well, because I’ve given him good reason not to. So– I have been relegated to do whatever I’d like in the garden as long as I don’t sever electrical wires or send myself to the emergency room.

Every summer in the unrelenting Florida heat, I’d trim it back in tiny increments, but the more I trimmed the faster and thicker it grew… until it took over half of the backyard fence.

It was so intricately entwined and out of control that as I stood with my clippers in hand I was at a loss for where to begin. One thing about me …  If I have enough determination to begin something, I will finish it… The job will get done, come what may. That’s my mother’s DNA.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

How to stay relevant

By Caroline

In the Cloister Library by Alessandro Sani (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

rel·e·vant [ rélləvənt ]
1- connected: having some sensible or logical connection with something else such as a matter being discussed or investigated
2- having social significance: having some bearing on or importance for real-world issues, present-day events, or the current state of society


The older you get the easier it is to think you’re becoming, ‘not relevant.’
If you’re in ‘that bracket’ maybe, like me, you occasionally sense that a technology tsunami has dragged you out to sea and like trying to tread water in a rip current, you can’t get back to shore. It’s not that I don’t see the value of all the latest click enhancers, or use some of them;

but truth be told, I put up with them, learning only what I have to in order to function… Generally, I find they really cramp my style. I deleted my Facebook three months after I got an account..and for me, Twitter is a hot mess. Too many people thinking out loud, saying too many things that should probably be whispered and, well– taken out to sea in the tsunami and forgotten. I’d really just like to talk to somebody instead of texting all the time and for goodness sake, does anybody remember when a picture wasn’t virtual and stored on your smart phone, but actually something you kept in an album?

Yet, this is how the message travels today; with hash-tags, FB updates, blog posts and apps– that’s what I was recently telling the Lord in prayer;

I’m not relevant anymore. I don’t speak the language of the culture.
I feel young…but, I’m ‘old school.’
I’m washed up, Lord…and…I’m not going to Twitter.

Continue reading at Caroline's blog  Bell of the Wanderer.

Keep singing in the cellar

by Caroline

The Golden Stairs by Edward Burne-Jones (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

I will sing of thy steadfast love, O LORD, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations.

—Psalm 89:1

These uncertain times we live in feel like when my dad asked me to go down in the basement alone to do chores. It was always a dark descent even when the lights were on …even in the daytime. I’d fight him and pitch a fit..but he’d still ask me to go. My memory plays back the hollow sound of the wooden steps with each click of my shoes on the way down. I can still hear it and feel the fear.

It’s almost as if the Lord has resuscitated this memory to help me remember the faith of a child and how He strengthened me to do what I was asked even though I was afraid.

We need to know how to courageously continue on in our faith even when it appears the bottom is falling our of our country and the Church.

Dad…I can’t go down there.
How will you know if something happens to me?

He would say,

I’ll be right here in the kitchen.

But, I can’t see you.

Yes…but—-

I know where you are.
And if you’d like…you can sing.
When you stop singing, I’ll know something’s wrong.

So. I’d go down the steps…singing all the way and don’t you know, I never tried to test him by stopping. I just trusted he could hear me.

I’d do the laundry, soak the codfish, put the games away…..


Continue reading at Caroline's blog  Bell of the Wanderer.

Helen Keller and my spiritual idiolect

 by Caroline

This post begins an occasional series in which CSBN members explore their spiritual idiolects.

Helen Keller (photo in Public Domain).

"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content."

 Helen Keller

Here’s a question I never thought about until  Connie Rossini at Catholics Spirituality Blogs Network asked, “What is your spiritual idiolect and how did you discover or develop it?”

She defined it for us:

“Everyone has an idiolect–a collection of personal speech habits that is different from anyone else’s. Have you ever thought about your spiritual idiolect? Since your soul is unique, you have a personal way of speaking to God that no one else completely shares. Today I am announcing the creation of a new blog that will help you find and fine-tune your spiritual idiolect.”

Though it took me a few days in prayer and waiting to hear from the Lord, I think I finally understand the question.

In the spiritual life, discovery is often a very slow and painful process. I don’t know why; it just is. I came to understand mine when the Lord reminded me of one of my childhood heroes.

As a young girl, the first time I saw the movie, The Miracle Worker, I remember being captivated by several things:

• the terrible tragedy of being born able to see and hear, then struck at 19 months with a disease that left her deaf and blind
• the desperation that set in because she was isolated and cut off from any understanding of language
• the miracle of Annie Sullivan who finally taught her to communicate by spelling words into her hands

In a small way, like Helen, I understand what it is to feel isolated and alone, trapped in a spiritual internal darkness and silence generated by tragedies in my life over which I had no control. There’s a scene in the movie where in an attempt to teach Helen that every object has a word to identify it, Annie begins spelling the word “m-u-g”, into her hand, but in utter frustration, when Helen can’t make the connection, she throws the doll Annie had given her as a present… against the wall.

Yes, there were many years as a young Christian I felt just such exasperation, because I didn’t know how to translate the spiritual language of my heart.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog  Bell of the Wanderer

I met Him in a foxhole

by Caroline

 

Religious Services by Paul Rickert (National Museum of the U.S. Army)

Yesterday, before I left for my pastoral care day at the hospital, I started grumbling to my husband; fatigued and bearing a list of things that needed to get done, I was looking for an excuse not to go. Of course he saw right through me and gave me this challenge:

They’ll be one person there today, whom you’ll least expect to be the one the Lord wants to encourage—
Look for him and text me later.

Off I went…still grumbling of course, while recalling a portion of the Rule of St Benedict which says that grumbling and faint heartedness are a failure to remember the goodness of God. I prayed, "Lord forgive me and

…prepare my heart and body for the battle of holy obedience to Your instructions. What is not possible to me by nature, let me ask the Lord to supply by the help of his grace."

        —The Rule of St Benedict, Prologue 40-41

Halfway through the morning rounds, I was in the moment, but still plagued with the mental background noise of all I needed to get done.until I entered a room on the fourth floor.

The patient by the window on my list was asleep, so I prayed softly by his bedside and turned to leave, smiling as I passed his roommate. But, before I made it to the door’s threshold, he spewed a litany of complaints with fervor, frustration and an assortment of colorful expletives.

"Nobody gives a bleep about me in this bleeping place."

Read more about Caroline's experience with this patient at  Bell of the Wanderer. 

Note: Early this morning (June 6), Caroline's site was down. It's back up now. If you tried to go there and couldn't, please try again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The orchid resurrection

by Caroline

An orchid in Costa Rica (Photo Credit, Jose Manuel Lopez Pinto, Wikipedia).

There’s an orchid that sits on a green table on my porch. It was a Mother’s Day present from my son several years ago, which he has no memory of.

When he first gave it to me, the purple and white striped blooms had this delicate magical beauty, but unsure of my limited green thumb skills, I was concerned. Could I mother such a delicate plant? I put it on the porch and followed some basic orchid care instructions for dummies I found on the internet.

Next to the green table is the chair where I often sit to pray the evening office; where day after day, week after week, the orchid blossomed and thrived and gave me such joy. While praying there, I offered up the many concerns I had about my son; prayed when there were days I didn’t hear from him, prayed when I knew with that motherly instinct that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.

Then one day, I could see the blooms dying off. One by one they dropped away, until all that was left of those purple veined beauties was a plant with thick green leaves.  The flowers were gone mirroring almost simultaneously a dark time in my relationship with my son.

Read the rest of this special Mother's Day post at Bell of the Wanderer.