We have been celebrating the extraordinary value and beauty of ordinary things - the presence of the good, demanding, charming God in our midst; the God of Abraham, Isaac, my grandfather and the unborn baby being blessed. We have found the nourishing care of God in festival and feast, in the changing seasons, in material things like the rising incense and the drooping cornstalks. We have been healed and renewed as we connected with the primal authentic stirrings of the human heart in the gratitude and hope for light, spring-life, food, fruit, and harvest fullness. We have been nourished by the ceremonies and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church, by the rich gifts of the Russian tradition and by our icons from the venerable Theotokos the Thomas Merton, commissioned by our church in 1985. We are being led to justice by the liturgy of our lives.
On the last days of November, the worn-out elements of the harvest are removed, and the church is washed and cleaned. The lean evergreen beauty emerges again on the First Sunday of Advent. The word has gone out to the young mothers, who come in various stages of expectant life. The magnificat is sung, and the great cycle of life begins again.
"I will come this year to see the mothers getting blessed," says Theresa McDyer. I ask her to bring Christopher. He will be almost eight and will have grown in age and grace. And so heve we - Sam and Anne Mackintosh, Helene Conroy, Elenanor Vine, Barbara Dever, Linda Delengowski and many other who have woked on Sacred Heart's liturgy since Christopher firs came as a little bulge of hope inviting us to life.
The end.