Sister Golden Hair

Summer is definitely taking its time in getting all the way up to Portland. After a few days of teasing with sun and nice weather, the drizzle came back yesterday and is looking to stick around for the next week. While you hope for better weather this time of year, it could be worse, especially after the incredibly heavy winter we've had.

Loading up after the middle school rummage sale

The Catholic Charities Thrift Store is coming together, slowly but surely! We collected what seems like thousands of pounds of donations for the store just this week - including one enormous pickup at a Middle School rummage sale. By the time we were done there, the truck was completely stuffed - we even had to leave things behind! I had to take a photo of the truck as we were filling it, but it just doesn't do it justice. By this weekend I was pretty sore all over, including my back from that one time I tried to get slick and carry a recliner down some stairs by myself in North Waterboro. Gotta remember to stretch first.

That's the other thing I'm liking about the position - I'm able to see so much of Southern Maine by traveling to different towns, picking up larger items. I've been all over the place on pickups, from Rockland to York Beach. It's really a beautiful state.

I might lose some of you on this, but I have to admit - driving throughout the area going on pickups has a tendency to put me in a 'country' mood. Usually I can't take that kind of music, but it fits the scenery so well when we're on the road. I try to convince my supervisor Bill to put on the country music station when we're driving WAY out in the boonies, and he goes along with it but I can tell he's not a fan - so we settle on the classic rock station, which is even better. 'Sister Golden Hair' by America came on once this week and it's been stuck in my head ever since. Sounds summery, doesn't it? Maybe if I listen to enough of the right music, the sun will come out.

Wild and Precious Life

Our retreat center

This weekend was the silent retreat for all Jesuit Volunteers in the Northeastern US. About forty of us met at a Jesuit Residence and Retreat Center in Walton, Massachusetts for three days of silence, introspection, and listening to God.

It was a great experience - in honesty, I think it went beyond my expectations. It's amazing how much you can learn about a person, not by talking to them, but just being with them and letting them be who they are with you. It's equally amazing how much you can learn about yourself by peeling back the layers of dialogue and self-consciousness and leaving yourself blank and open.

I was connected with a spiritual director who checked in with me for just a few minutes every day to hear my thoughts on how the experience was unfolding for me. She was wonderful at helping me to decipher the messages that God was sending to me in the silence. I am surprised at how connecting with God doesn't have to mean chasing after or 'dialing up' God, but it can also be as simple as making a quiet time and space in your life where God can come to you. It is as though the openness, silence, and deep thought creates an avenue for God to pass through to you.

My spiritual director for the retreat gave me a copy of the poem below to contemplate as I spent time in nature, and navigated the silence. It rang with me, like a bell.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

 

 

In other news, work is going well - things are moving along quickly. I am really excited about the opening of the new Catholic Charities Thrift Store! For more information on what's going on there and what I do every day, become a follower to the official Catholic Charities Thrift Store Blog. And as always, thanks for reading.