Christmas day was filled with family, friends, food and gifts.  The very best gift this year though arrived a few days after Christmas when we received good news regarding my mother's health.  Working with children whose mother's have died, or in a few cases abandoned them, certainly helps to deepen my appreciation for my own  mother and all of my family.  It was a gift that I could be here with my own family (both immediate and extended) and connect with some friends during these days.  

As the calendar year draws to a close, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been supportive and encouraging of me and of my ministry during this year.                

Happy New Year! Many blessings!                  

Lakay (home)

 The suitcase that contained very little during the flight I took last week, is now filled with pants that my congregation has purchased for children at the orphanage.  My days in New Orleans have filled me with a sense of joy, and a deep appreciation for the sisters in my congregation and for many friends that I have here.

In reflecting upon the Christmas story, I think about Mary and Joseph being so far from home, essentially homeless when Jesus was born.  On Saturday I had the opportunity to attend a rally here in the New Orleans in support of welcoming Syrian refugees into the state and country.  Very moving stories were told.  Leaders of various faith traditions spoke using different words to express the same message of compassion and love, and our call to welcome the stranger.

I found myself again reflecting on the concept of "home."  There are many different places I refer to as home, sometimes even in the same sentence.  I might say something like, I need to go home and pack so that I will be ready for my flight home.  One minute I refer to New Orleans as home, the next I might be thinking of Haiti, or Rhode Island.  There are so many places where I am welcomed, where I am comfortable, where there are people I love, where I am at home.  I think of Mary having to give birth in a place that could not have felt at all like home, and was not intended to house humans.  I think of the children at the orphanage, some were happy to go to visit their relatives, but a few did not appear to me to be.  I think of the refugees around the world, no longer feeling safe or unwanted in their original homes, and feared and unwelcome by so many.  I am privileged to have so many homes.  This is not a privilege that I have earned; I am no more deserving of it than the child whose relatives only reluctantly allow him into their house for school vacation, the homeless people I see wandering though the New Orleans'French Quarter or of the refugees staying in my previous congregation's mother house in Germany.  My my desire that everyone everywhere have at least one safe adequate place to live deepens as does my gratitude for the various places that I consider home.      

There is a paradox in this for me though too, which is the reality that when one has multiple homes, when one has been influenced and formed by various cultures, places and peoples while one can have many homes, at a different level no place is really a prefect fit, no place is perfectly home. At times I feel this, but ultimately my sense of gratitude is much stronger than fleeting feelings of loneliness.  Perhaps this should be a separate blog entry for another day, because right now I need to finish packing so I can say my farewells to the sisters who are home, before I begin the next part of my journey to another place I call home.  

Merry Christmas!  Many blessings!          

Brief Update

Today we celebrated Christmas at the orphanage.  The party included music, singing, dancing, delicious food, and Christmas gifts for the children and employees.  Everyone seemed to have a great time.

Tomorrow the children leave for vacation.  They will go to visit their relatives and return early in the New Year.  Although I had to make my travel plans before I knew exactly when the children would leave and return, it worked out that I am leaving the same day as the children and returning to Haiti the same day they return to the orphanage.

I will see some of you soon.        

Year of Mercy

Last week, during English class one of my students, a Holy Cross novice, asked me what I was going to do for the Year of Mercy.  While I was impressed by his willingness to start a conversation in English (as I had of course encouraged him to do) I was momentarily taken aback.  I had to admit to myself and to my students I had not given any thought at all as to what I was going to do to mark the year of Mercy.  Of course I had heard that Pope Francis had declared this a Jubilee Year of Mercy.  Certainly that seemed like a good idea to me, after all the world desperately needs to be more merciful and forgiving.

This morning during the lively liturgy I attended at a parish at Immaculate Conception Parish Church in a nearby neighborhood to celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception we were reminded that today marks the beginning of the Year of Mercy.  Yes, I thought again how this is a good idea, because that is what the world needs right now.      

Later in the morning I opened my email to find my friend, Petra's latest blog entry.  https://mercypelago.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/the-poem/  Her poem led me to reflect on the reality of mercy, the gift of mercy, the need for mercy.  Mercy is not just some abstract idea; it lives in concrete realities, in relationships, in choices and in specific actions.

How easy it is for me to say that the world needs to be more merciful and more forgiving.  How easy it is for me to read the headlines of world news reports and decided that certain people (like Donald Trump for example) need to be more loving, forgiving, and merciful.  It is easier to see the need for mercy in our trouble world than to admit that it is very much needed in my own life.  Can I allow God's loving mercy to penetrate the dark sinful places in my own heart?  Can I be more merciful, more forgiving more patient, with the child who tries to steal the play dough?, with the sister who has ideas about child development that differ from my own?, with strangers who ask me for money?,  in my everyday interactions with those with whom I live and work?  in my correspondences and conversations with community, family and friends near and far?  

Wow, I have a lot to do during this Year of Mercy!  
This is not even what I had expected to write about this week.  
Take care.  Many blessings!            

Thanksgiving and Advent

Thanksgiving

After morning prayer and breakfast last Thursday I decided to start my Thanksgiving meal preparations with the pumpkin pie.  Even though I was using canned pumpkin and a Jiffy brand mix for the pie crust, preparing the pie was not really "as easy as pie." (Where does that expression come from anyway?)  I found myself struggling to open the cans because the hand held can openers that we have are not especially sharp.  Eventually I had cut around enough of the can that I figured I could use a knife and my hand to ply the rest open; and I did but not without cutting my left index finger.  The cut was not terrible by any means, but required cleaning and searching for a band-aid  as well as wiping a trail of blood from the tile floor, which required searching for a rag, while trying to to create more trails of blood.  The convent cook  was kind enough to light the oven for me.  The directions on the back of the pumpkin can said to bake the pie at a specific higher temperature for 15 minutes and then decrease the temperature also to a specific temperature.  The knob for the oven did not have numbers on it.  The employee told me I should leave the knob in a certain place, there was no oven thermometer, so I had no way of knowing the temperature.  I also did not know that you need to close the over door very gently or the gas flame underneath would be extinguished.  The second time the oven needed to be lit for the pumpkin pies, I watched as the cook used a lit candle, got here whole body on the floor to reignite the pilot light for the gas stove, actually believing that I would then be able to do it myself later if needed.  The package said that pumpkin pies would take an hour to bake; they took over two and one of them was not perfectly set when I decided to remove them because I wanted to put the turkey in the oven, having no idea how long it would take to cook a medium size turkey at an unknown temperature.

In addition to the food provided by Agape Airlines, I decided to supplement the meal with carrots and mashed potatoes that were fresh.  Actually in my opinion, the carrots here are often even more flavorful than the "fresh" carrots you can buy in most American grocery stores.  I would have loved to have mashed parsnips in with the carrots as my Irish grandmother always did, but I have yet to see a parsnip in Haiti, when I have prepared this in American Convents some sisters found it odd, and I don't even know the Creole word for parsnip, so decided not to even try.  Even though mashed potatoes may not be my most favorite food, for a large holiday meal they seemed essential.  While cooking the potatoes and carrots on the stove, one of the employees came by to show me how to turn the burner off; I was starting to wonder if I was seeming as incompetent a cook as I was feeling, but then I realized that the knobs on the stove are in English and she probably does not have a modern oven with a stove-top like ours at her home; this was in fact a very thoughtful gesture because I am sure someone had to show her how to turn it off.

When I took the turkey out to check it I must not have closed the oven door gently enough because the oven stopped working again.  By this time the employees who work in the house had left for the day and it just so happened that none of the sisters were home, which is unusual.  By some miracle the turkey was finished; I was sure that once we cut it I would discover that it was either too dry or that there would be parts that were under-cooked, but thanks be God this was not the case.  While the turkey was cooking I was preparing bread to go into the oven.  It was rising nicely and I was looking forward to freshly baked warm bread.  My several attempts at lighting the oven all proved fruitless; the knob did not turn the way I expected it to, so it seems no gas was going into the oven.  When sisters started to arrive for the meal, I asked both those who live here and those coming for the food,  to help me light the oven.  Despite several attempts, by a few people the oven remained cold.  Perhaps only the cook who works here knows how light it.  The bread dough had risen and then fallen and would become a flat bread at the orphanage convent for the following morning's breakfast.  There was no butter for the bread anyway, because when I requested real butter (expecting a pound), someone went to four stores in Cap Haitian in search of real butter with no luck, they purchased a single stick of Parkay (despite what the television commercials that I unfortunately still remember from my early childhood said, they are really not the same thing.)  When I think of how I found preparing this meal to be so challenging that I was beginning to question my cooking competence, I am also aware that here at this convent we  have  more modern appliances and conveniences than the vast majority of people in this country.  Last Thursday too, thanks be to God the electricity and running water were cooperative for most of the day.  I was also supposed to set up for 5:00 pm liturgy here at the convent, but while trying to start the oven, open the can of cranberry and prepare the stove top stuffing in the microwave, quickly bathe and change out of my clothes that by that time were sprinkled with various foods, I had neglected to prepare the chapel for the mass, but the sisters who came assisted.

Some people were late for the meal because they had to attend a class or had ministry responsibilities followed by car troubles.  The postulants and their director were out of town for a inter-congregational program in the capital, and another sister who lives here was doing business in the Dominican Republic.  We were three Haitian sisters, two French Canadian sisters, two American sisters, a young Haitian women who is doing in an internship at the orphanage discerning entering the Sisters of Holy Cross, the orphanage driver, and one of the oldest children who lives at the orphanage since she had needed a ride from school that evening.

During the meal, people were telling stories. We all laughed a lot. Everyone appeared to be enjoying the food and more importantly truly enjoying one another.  There was a moment where I experienced a sense of consolation and realized that this meal was in fact well worth the effort.  Fortunately there are many moments like that here in Haiti, moments of connecting with a child, joking with a co-worker or sister, seeing even the slightest hint of possible progress, healing or growth in grieving or traumatized child, moments that make the unexpected challenges all worth while.  Like cooking, sometimes there are things I have done well in the past , things I could say easily in English, things that are as "easy as pie" at home, that are terribly difficult or at least a bit more challenging here, but then always the moments come, the moments that make it all worth while.  Moments when I sense that God is actively in our midst.  I am especially grateful for those moments.

Advent
The liturgical season of Advent is already upon us. I love the Advent themes of hope, anticipation, waiting, darkness/light.  It is a little easier to enter into the season of Advent here, since there is less of the commercial Christmas craziness.  In fact the closest thing to a Christmas decoration I have seen are the beautiful poinsettia plants that recently began blooming in our yard.  May you find time and space to enter into this sacred season of Advent.  

        

When I was taking pictures of the plant a beautiful butterfly came by.  I really think of the butterfly as a symbol of Eater/Resurrection, not Advent, but in reality in each day of each of our lives we probably experience the themes of the entire liturgical calendar.   Blessed Advent!