This year is a strange and rich one... as I sort of learn German in the beautiful city of Munich. The other day as I wandered to mass in pensive mood without the daffodils, I was stopped by this elderly woman at the pedestrian crossing (here they wait at the red light), and enthusiastically told in a German I just about understood that life was schön [wonderful]... as she pointed up and down LeopoldStraße...
that although she was old, she could love and enjoy life...and wasn't it wonderful? I was moved.
And then last week, I found myself in various places in Madrid, the city I contend made me a missionary; the first place I ever worked in seriously and experienced the incomparable joy of seeing someone come to know Christ through you.And I stood in front of the Palacio Arzobispal of Alcalá de Henares, where I lived for my first two years of theology (philosophy really).
In truth, it felt surreal: another woman in another life ... and yet familiar. It had been so hard. And yet, it took me a while to drag myself away... and as I tried to ask Jesus what that time meant, why I was drawn. I begin to sense that in the midst of it all, those years had been the ones during which my roots sunk deep. I laid the foundations, and they are, despite myself, firm. Many other things have had to and will have to shift (to be perfect, a la Newman, often and ever-changing...), but that one is deep. The first cut is the deepest...
No comments:
Post a Comment