Waiting

East Brookfield, MA

A country drive this morning with two of my brothers, which included a visit to the nearby Trappist monastery as well as an apple orchard several hills away, occasioned some reflections on the slow return of life and vitality to the more rural landscapes surrounding Worcester. As I've noted, it's been a long winter, in terms of physical weather and my own spiritual climate. With the conclusion of Lent, I've been musing on what has been accomplished by my training in prayer and action. I wish I could be prouder of my accomplishments in this area than I am of my shared achievements on the Boston Marathon course; it seems that I was not entirely successful in attaining my goals. As the Easter Triduum begins this evening with the remembrance of the Last Supper, I feel an affinity with some of the landscapes and scenes I witnessed today– fields still littered with autumnal detritus yet ready for new growth; bright yet still feeble flowers assailed by a blustery wind; the robin's nest outside my window, built delicately with a haphazard tangle of material. What will that future growth look like, and when will it emerge? What wondrous moments along that course are occurring today?

"A Prayer in Spring"

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;

And make us happy in the happy bees,

The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird

That suddenly above the bees is heard,

The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,

The which it is reserved for God above

To sanctify to what far ends He will,

But which it only needs that we fulfill.

– Robert Frost

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA