Well we are back from the MOTHERHOUSE, and I have to tell you, re-entry into society has been tough. It was all so lovely there. We hung out with an elder sister who was so spunky and so full of great stories, and so warm, it made me want to hang out with her on a regular basis. She is on her final round of chemo and feeling good, and asked for prayers so that next summer she can go to Japan and teach English for a summer. Every time we entered a room, be it the dining room or the chapel, she was there waving us over to the table or pew that she'd saved for us, and she was hooking us up with dinner in the dining room or extra cookies for the road.
Scott and I agreed that any young woman who were to go and visit these women would want to make a life of it. The possibilities and options for a School Sister seem to be endless (outside of getting rich, or... married...) and each one gets to use her gifts, and did I mention the JOY? These women were so happy. It was infectious, and I left there inspired to do better at my own vocation, to do better at my job, to do all things well and to show my joy in being a Catholic Christian.
Back at home I caught wind of the underground blogs that are peeking deep into the workings of the Archdiocese of Boston, and reading through them made my chest hurt. It made the idea of living a life like the sisters, soooo much closer to that Acts 2:42-47 model, and able to do Christ's work without all the bureaucracy and politics and, well... crap. I will try to keep in touch with my inspirational sisters and rely that joy to keep me on mission. But someday, I'd like to go back there...
Showing posts with label sisters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sisters. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Amen Sister!
I'm just home from a trip to the homeland, an annual trip with my sisters for earl Christmas shopping and crafting. We eat great food, follow each other on errands, we gossip and laugh a lot. We tell lots of stories. We check our impressions of how things are with each other, and reckon our memories against each other's.
Last week at HoFo, someone with only one sibling asked me what it was like to grow up in a large family. She said "did you never get lonely, did you always have someone to talk to?" I remember that there was always at least someone at home, and if there wasn't always someone to talk to, there were always tales to listen to. I told my HoFo group how much I loved to get hand-me-downs from my sister, because they had cool clothes that I would never be able to buy for myself. Getting a pile (or garbage bag) of clothes from them meant I was getting older, coming closer to who they were, closer to a time when I could wear colors and styles beyond what seemed like constant brown nylon.
Now that we're all older, I can see more and more how alike we are, the way our DNA is distributed among us, and how being children of our parents has formed us into the people we are today. We're different from each other, too- but you can't miss that we're related. Together with honorary sister, we have a lot of fun and share a lot of memories. I look forward to this trip every year.
Now I'm home again (jiggety-jig) and waiting for Scott to gt home from his junior-senior retreat and tomorrow morning we launch into another crazy week. Suddenly now it's almost Thanksgiving and almost time for snow and almost time for Advent and Christmas. The leaves are all off the trees lining the highway and now I can see all the orange bittersweet that has been hidden underneath. I love Bittersweet, and love the idea of it growing in amongst the green leaves all Summer, and then showing itself in big orange clouds in the trees and brush when this time of year rolls around. It's a bittersweet time of year.
Last week at HoFo, someone with only one sibling asked me what it was like to grow up in a large family. She said "did you never get lonely, did you always have someone to talk to?" I remember that there was always at least someone at home, and if there wasn't always someone to talk to, there were always tales to listen to. I told my HoFo group how much I loved to get hand-me-downs from my sister, because they had cool clothes that I would never be able to buy for myself. Getting a pile (or garbage bag) of clothes from them meant I was getting older, coming closer to who they were, closer to a time when I could wear colors and styles beyond what seemed like constant brown nylon.
Now that we're all older, I can see more and more how alike we are, the way our DNA is distributed among us, and how being children of our parents has formed us into the people we are today. We're different from each other, too- but you can't miss that we're related. Together with honorary sister, we have a lot of fun and share a lot of memories. I look forward to this trip every year.
Now I'm home again (jiggety-jig) and waiting for Scott to gt home from his junior-senior retreat and tomorrow morning we launch into another crazy week. Suddenly now it's almost Thanksgiving and almost time for snow and almost time for Advent and Christmas. The leaves are all off the trees lining the highway and now I can see all the orange bittersweet that has been hidden underneath. I love Bittersweet, and love the idea of it growing in amongst the green leaves all Summer, and then showing itself in big orange clouds in the trees and brush when this time of year rolls around. It's a bittersweet time of year.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Long time gone
Last week I had a sort of out-of-nowhere vacation. I've only been at my new job about a month, so by rights I shouldn't have had a vaca, but that I'd already committed to this week long before I switched jobs. The week was Sister Camping Trip week, and I joined my sisters (minus one honorary-sister, who just wouldn't come) on a trip to Camden, ME (the way life should be).
By the time we'd got to Augusta, it had started to pour, and it kept on raining right up to the point when we finally got our tarp up over our site. (We had excitedly pulled out the screen tent my sister brought, thinking we'd put that up over the table and lounge and wait out the rain- but although we did have the screen tent, for some reason we didn't have the poles.)
This was kind of half-camping, with the fire mostly for show and most of our cooking tools went unused... but in our defense, it rained about half the time we were there.
We visited a lot of fun shops, ocean-side-town-kind of shops, and ate out at some pretty great spots, crested mount Battie (by car), picnicked with my brother and his family, and visited my nephew at Summer camp. The trip topped off with a deeeeelish dinner at my sisters' house, with most of my family there, and a little birthday celebration for several of us.
I am the youngest of five, and there's a big gap in between kids 3 and 4, effectively slicing us into two little sub-sets of kids. My brother and I are a year and 2 days apart. And growing up, my oldest sister and I were WORLDS apart (a whopping 10 years- doesn't seem like that much now, but then, it was big). My middle sister is the hub of the family; all of us connect to her and through her. It's funny how alike we are, after all, and how different.
It was fun hanging out with my sisters last week, and I hope we'll do it again.
By the time we'd got to Augusta, it had started to pour, and it kept on raining right up to the point when we finally got our tarp up over our site. (We had excitedly pulled out the screen tent my sister brought, thinking we'd put that up over the table and lounge and wait out the rain- but although we did have the screen tent, for some reason we didn't have the poles.)
This was kind of half-camping, with the fire mostly for show and most of our cooking tools went unused... but in our defense, it rained about half the time we were there.
We visited a lot of fun shops, ocean-side-town-kind of shops, and ate out at some pretty great spots, crested mount Battie (by car), picnicked with my brother and his family, and visited my nephew at Summer camp. The trip topped off with a deeeeelish dinner at my sisters' house, with most of my family there, and a little birthday celebration for several of us.
I am the youngest of five, and there's a big gap in between kids 3 and 4, effectively slicing us into two little sub-sets of kids. My brother and I are a year and 2 days apart. And growing up, my oldest sister and I were WORLDS apart (a whopping 10 years- doesn't seem like that much now, but then, it was big). My middle sister is the hub of the family; all of us connect to her and through her. It's funny how alike we are, after all, and how different.
It was fun hanging out with my sisters last week, and I hope we'll do it again.
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