Continuing The Journey

Hi Michael,

Many thanks for ordering a DVD of The Student, The Nun, & The Amazon which I hope you enjoy. I’ll pop one in the post to you next week.

Best regards Sam

This e-mail that I received still has me musing over “pop one in the post”. Words do resonate differently to each of us. Sam is an English lad, a student of film, who I never met, but I heard about his DVD on the martyred Dorothy Stang, SND. (I will let you know more about that when I get it.)

Words no matter how carefully crafted hit their target with different results. Another example of this came this week in a scripture reading from Acts (16:11-15) mentioned Lydia the dye maker. I must of heard the name and the story many times before I visited Turkey as an seminarian and went to a site that was believed to be Lydia’s home. Lydia shared her wealth and home with early disciples. Paul and Silas retired to her home after their release from prison. I visited this site with 26 other seminarians on a cold day in January and on a dervishly fast tour of Turkey, so we were a little giddy and Lydia’s name lent itself to song which we indulged in. So whenever I hear the name, Lydia my brain replays and replays “O Lydia, O Lydia”. The ditty brings a smile as it reminds me that trip and the fountain in the courtyard.

The words I wrote last week resounded in many ways to many people. I wrote about my health issues because I needed to. I needed to face them and in doing that I hoped that others might do the same, knowing just like I said, we will fail miserably to face the inevitable. But we need to try.

Some wrote:

Thoughts on your journey were beautiful and so true.

Insightful, sad but happy…realization we all must face… no burden on our children.

Beautiful, even in struggle.

Concerned.

Plus much medical advise.

And, applause for my plug for the need to change from Latin.

I said we must live each day as if it was our last. That is good news not sad. Good because we are close to seeing our God and we are prepared. We are living our lives in the presence of God. That should allow us to find great peace and enable us to share that peace with others. That is what God asks us to do. Share His peace so we can sing “Lydia, Oh Lydia”… now did it go?