Now and Then

So…after about two months in my new role as a Community Coordinator for aging Roman Catholic religious communities I find myself lying awake on a Friday night navigating so many unexpected gifts from my day.

Consider this first posting a status update by someone who supports others and is learning what may be ahead for herself …and hopefully I will sustain the blog with a posting every few weeks sharing the gifts of my new ministry in the richness of its mutuality.

So much beauty in this day…so many gifts…

I tend to ask people when I see them in the hallway how they are doing, and making sure I stop and actually listen to their reply. Wow, do I love the honesty I encounter especially from those whose memory is crumbling. I asked this older gentleman who reminds me of my Dad, small in stature but large in personality, “How are you?” and I got the honest answer of , ” I am frustrated!”, followed by a story of a container catching water I think and not being able to find it and ??? He walks with me to the end of the hall way, and sits down in what I call the snoopervisory chair as you can see a lot of action. I affirm him in how it really does suck to be frustrated and not get done what you wanted to (without even knowing really what he was talking about). Then he says: “but I will learn and fix things for next time” …WOW! Even in his confusion he owns a potential learning. In his honest declaration of frustration it led him to “but I can learn from this”, WOW!

Then down the same hallway ( I have sisters on 4+ different wings and floors) I encounter another man, who also sits in the snoopervisory chair zone and helps me to remember where I need to turn because of being such a faithful landmark. He has such a warm accepting spirit but at this moment was looking for his wife and in angst (not in the home with him and not sure what family he does have), yet when I listened to him I could feel his loss shifting a bit and a bit of his spark returning as I walked down the hall changed by him and feeling such loss for him at the same time …again such honesty…

Moving down another hallway I hear someone yelling for help in his room so I take the sister I am visiting with to find out where the yell is coming from. We find a man in extreme agony from Parkinson’s begging for help as he couldn’t reach the call button. After we pressed the call button he asked if we could stay with him until help came. Such vulnerability, accompanied by such an honest seeking of support … and such gratitude when I saw him later and we had never met before today…

What a day, and these are not even “my” people LOL…such gifts they offered me the weekend we celebrate “labour”. I am not always clear on how I arrived here but grateful…Blessed are we who have labour that fills the soul…how blessed are those with a vulnerable and open spirit…

This image I “harvested” from the river bank this morning reminds me of the beauty and possibility of all stages of our journey…Happy Labour Day weekend!