We at Mercy by the Sea have so much we want to share with you:
You'll find seasonal photos of the grounds — vegetation, trees and winged and four-legged creatures that make their homes here. We'll capture changes in the light and colors as the seasons change. So bookmark this page and come back regularly. Or subscribe to receive an email each time a new blog posts. Just scroll down and type your email address in the field provided then click the SIGN UP button.
I am admittedly hesitant about sharing this blog, because I feel voices of people of color need to stay front and center during the current moral social movement for justice and equality. Still I feel deep in my heart that we are witnessing an incredible convergence of so many justice issues which hopefully will move us toward a more just society in which everyone can freely breathe.
Everything in creation becomes a catalyst for my deepened self-understanding. The forest asks me to embrace my truth once again. The hummingbird invites me to sip holy nectar, the egret to stretch out my wings, the sparrows to remember my flock.
My eyes open to the early morning sun blazing across our little lake. “A new day,” my mind registers, “… and what will this day bring?” Then, the thought returns, as it does every morning, “Oh, I remember … all of it.” COVID-19 – the unimaginable losses and the ongoing heartache. Our country’s systemic racism and the decades of denial, broken open. The respite of sleep is over, and my personal (and our collective) experience of loss and grief returns.
It’s the silken threads of care woven through the brutal storms of time that hold everything together. A loved one’s picture carried through a war and delivered to a grandchild thirty years later. The seed that isn’t washed away that takes root, arriving in the world as an orchid whose beauty makes a young girl become a painter. The memory of the moment we met twenty-five years ago overwhelming me as I watch you sleep this morning. The laughter of my father while planing a piece of mahogany, which kept me believing in the love of work and the work of love while going through cancer. These silken threads are everywhere—a web of barely visible connections that infuse us with resilience when we’re forced or loved to find our way through what we’re given.