Angel Marks

Today is a day of visits of angels.

Francis of Assisi was visited 800 years ago, and was imprinted with the marks of the suffering Christ by the saraph.

His side, pierced by a sword, his hands and feet pierced by the nails of the cross, just as all of Francis' life, a witness to the depth of God's Love for us.

Some wounds do not heal.  Some wounds are as upraised hands giving witness to the greatness of our Father, God and King.

Today I commemorate the death of one of my great guides, mentor and friend, my grandmother Lottie Kravitz, 20 years ago today. I pray she is in the company of angels, reunited with her husband, brother and sisters.  When the angels took her they left a great millstone of grief tied to my heart.

She suffered her share of life's tragedies, having lost her husband almost 25 years before her own death by cancer. She was a custom made godsend to her siblings, spouse, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  She was my biggest support when I was working through life's problems, and was with me on much of my spiritual journey.  Granny is a witness to the depth of God's Love for us.

I miss you Granny.   Some wounds do not heal.  Some wounds are as upraised hands giving witness to the greatness of our Father, God and King.

And how great, loving, and forgiving He is!

A Psalm of Thomas Merton

Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you.

The delicate green and orange flowers of the tulip poplar tree praise you.

The distant blue hills praise you,

together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light.

The bickering flycatchers praise you

with the lowing cattle and the quails that whistle over there.

I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers,

and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence.

We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices.

You have made us together,

you have made us one and many,

you have placed me here in the midst

as witness, as awareness, and as joy.

Here I am.

In me the world is present,

and you are present.

I am a link in the chain of light and of presence.

You have made me a kind of center,

but a center that is nowhere.

And yet also I am "here."

-Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, pp. 131-132