I love the spring-the lengthening days, new growth on the trees, flowers starting to poke their heads above ground-bunny rabbits hanging out in the garden that is my special project, trying to figure out what particular flower they will eat once they bud. But this spring was difficult, with my dad's decline and the now realized threat of illness facing another family member. In an email I sent out a couple of weeks ago I asked for prayer-but no phone calls. I am blessed to have a few friends with a genius for practical help-which is what is needed, and will be increasingly needed in our little family as time goes on. Having received my most recent email naming the illness and asking, again for prayer, a friend wrote back inquiring whether he should put our name son the prayer list at my old parish.

Yikes, please don't, I wrote him. Even after five years, the thought of having sympathy mixed with curiosity from parishioners who remember me is troublesome, like an unhealed wound. And yet...last night I dreamed I was invited back to work on the staff, reconciled with my boss, a welcome presence in pulpit and parish house. I felt such peace-and belonging. I haven't felt I have really had a church home since we left. Waking up and realizing nothing had changed was disappointing. But perhaps this is a taste of what it might be like in that other realm, where reconciliation is the only way in-or the only way one gets to stay.

Meanwhile, I posted our family member's name on a very neat website I found:


http://www.24-7prayer.com/


Read that chapter on the "Punk Monk"-guaranteed to at least get you thinking!