Habemus papam

"Habemus papam", a phrase which caught the imagination even of my daughter, why the excitement? Well I was moved for 4 reasons:

1. A sense of humour; "why did the cardinals search for me so far away" and also before going to the balcony: Are you sure you did make a mistake!
2. Reciting the Our Father  and the Hail Mary in Latin  we need a universal language in this complex mixed world.I am not supplicating for Latin but think we need one, and Latin has been around for a while.
3. Taking the name of St Francis, a saint close to my heart and who should be close to all of us, so powerful is his message of rebuilding and strengthening through love and compassion. And living a life of compassion, humility....
4. Humility; a pope who does not use official cars, but takes the bus and metro, politicians could learn from this.

I pray that this pope will bring all christians alive and realise we have the tools to make our lives and of those of us around us so joyful. long live uncomplicated joy in life, long live sharing, long live humility to realise we are not the best, not the only ones, we need to share and be together

New year and a fresh start

This new year started with a long illness, which forced me to reconsider my life and the positions I had adopted, some through stubbornness and others through false pride. Nothing better than to pass some time in bed with the world around you continuing, to reflect and come across yourself! Where previously I was sure my position was right, I was no longer so sure.
The saying that sometimes you don't see the wood for the trees seemed very apt to reflect my stance. My life was bogged down, atrophied. As I was thinking, I remember praying for God to send me some guidance. Just when everything seemed at its most unmovable  God send me a reminder that life is and can be extremely simple, that human relationships can untie the knots that strangle them. that with patience and love even the most improbably difficult situations can be untangled.
So what is my advice, if someone you love is not able to move and you have seemingly exhausted all possibilities?  Try a sideways move. I am very direct (too direct, perhaps!) in my dealings with people and sometimes a frontal discussion is not the best. If I can contain my natural impatience (and this is best achieved by prayer, which immediately reminds me of my humble self), and let go, astounding things happen and the result is so much better.
Reading the new testament with my daughter, she pointed out to me that Jesus always holds out his hand to reach out to us, we just need to take it.
This is my new year's resolution. happy new year!

Christmas tidings to heal the spirit

I Love the  prayer i copied below, which brings us the tidings of a cleansed peaceful joy. This year has been both sad and joyful,  and I am still trying to make sense of it all. To make sense of the death of those close to you is hard especially when trying to explain it to a child. it brings into question all our beliefs and forces us to look at the essence of our belief. All I can say is that prayer has helped and that fellow Christians have helped. Which is why it is so important for us to be in a community, you cannot go it alone. 


 Prayer for Christmas Morning

by Robert Louis Stevenson

The day of joy returns, Father in Heaven, and crowns another year with peace and good will.
Help us rightly to remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels, the gladness of the shepherds, and the worship of the wise men.
Close the doors of hate and open the doors of love all over the world?
Let kindness come with every gift and good desires with every greeting.
Deliver us from evil, by the blessing that Christ brings, and teach us to be merry with clean hearts.
May the Christmas morning make us happy to be thy children,
And the Christmas evening bring us to our bed with grateful thoughts, forgiving and forgiven, for Jesus sake.
Amen

So this Christmas, for all of us who have suffered a loss and need kindness, reach out to kindred spirits and let the powerful cleansing and wholeness of Christmas heal you.

St Nicholas a children's saint

Today for many children in Europe it is a day of bounty and joy! Sint Nicholas, patron saint of children distributes presents and goodwill galore. Being Dutch, this is my favourite day of all, I well remember the excitement of waiting for Sint Nicholas to arrive on a boat from Spain, together with his helpers called black peters (zwarte pieten!), who dressed as 17th century court pages add to the fun by carrying round a bag with presents, but also mock to punish children who misbehave. When you get older and no longer believe in  Saint Nicholas, riding on his white horse on the roofs of houses, the evening before Sint Nicholas feast, on 5 December is a time when adults will give each other'surprises' or small presents often with a joke attached and accompanied by poems describing, the personality and perhaps faults of the recipient.

Good clean fun and a good occasion to give each other a present. Especially as for me this helps christmas take on a more religious and family meaning, and is not so overrun with commercial present giving. For children it is hard to distinguish the real meaning of Christmas and thus Saint Nicholas provides parents with a good occasion to split the commercial aspects of Christmas from the spiritual one

Adoration;the need to give up control and let Jesus give you all his love and protection

We need to be humble when we want to respond to God's humbleness( dixit Benoit XVI in 2008!).

 

Today our parish is celebrating a day of eucharistic adoration, with times dedicated to the children and their parents, as they come out of school! For children who are used to seeing their parents rush around especially if both work, a time amidst their schoolfriends and parents in which prayer stands at the centre is so important. They and we adults need to realise that it is through prayer that Jesus reaches our souls and can make us part of his presence.To adore the eucharist is to adore the presence of Jesus and his love for all of us. Let us be joyful and thankful for this supreme gift.

 

El Camino (the road to Santiago de Compostella)

"Life must be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" said Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855 philosopher)". The famous pilgrim's route to Santiago de Compostella, is known amongst pilgrims as "el camino" or the road. The starting place if you follow the true pilgrimage ,should be from your own home, but otherwise there are starting places in France and on the Spanish border, in the Pyrenees. There are many who follow this pilgrimage out of religiouos convictions, others do it for the beauty of the road, others for the companionship. Some do it in stages, a part each year, others take time out of their lives and do it for 5 months, all come out of this experience with a renewed look on life and their role in it.
I read a wonderful, witty, thoughtful book by french author, Alix de Saint André, on her experiences on "the road". She travelled it 3 times; the first two times she took the shorter route starting at the Pyrenees. These two pilgrimages, left her feeling unsatisfied, wanting more. The result was that she took some months off from her busy life as a journalist to start from her home town in the region of Brittany in France.She relates her experiences, in a wry manner, she is a practising catholic but the road fills her with anguish at the physical exhaustion and the companions she meets. Sometimes, she feels close to God, sometimes she is assailed by doubts. Her companions include a man and a donkey, 7 older men described by her as her 7 "husbands", because of the protectiveness they develop towards her!

Some of her fellow pilgrims are patently nonchristians, some devout believers. Her conclusions? She is touched by the words of a prior celebrating mass in Leon:"Jesus said: I am the road, 'el camino' is a moment in time to look for a treasure; God, in silence and solitude. Not tourism." The author notes that she had never thought of it that way, that Jesus is the road.Walking on the road we are within God, by walking we open up our arteries. The big bypass, created by the road to Santiago is circulating the blood between the three; the beauty of paternal creation, the sacrifice of the son shared in daily suffrance, and the pure love of the holy spirit that joins us".

Having read her book, I too feel called to join the road.Perhaps not inmediately, but soon.

What is happiness?

Jacob de Backer the Garden of Eden 2nd half of the 16th C

Watched a television interview with french writer and journalist Gonzague de Saint Bris the other day, he was asked what happiness meant for him. His reply: "Il n'y a pas de bonheur mais des bonnes heures" which is a pun on the word happiness in french, which translated literally means the good hours! Indeed happiness is not a state, rather a series of happy moments in our lives. We need to remember that as we face greyer periods. Look around you and savour the good moments, they are nuggets of gold, that can bring back a smile to your face when you most need it! My happy moment this week was watching my daugher and her class dancing to the theme of Pocahontas in the school's fancy fair. I said a Hail Mary to thank God for the joy of my child.