Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Building the Civilization of Love



Yuck! What an awful night. I couldn't sleep. The free Starbucks coffee I downed after my free Ben & Jerry's Ice cream cone at 8 PM didn't help. (There were lots of free treats for those with a voting sticker in D.C. yesterday.) I woke up feeling more grouchy than both my exhausted daughters.

Yet the Lord is good. Father Avelino gave a rousing homily that our job is ever the same, to build a "civilization of love." During communion I received this comforting image, a snow drop struggling to bloom in the snow.

I am a small, fragile, anxious voice for the church. Yet I am also an undeniable sign of the Springtime of the faith.

Today, I cheerfully cleaned out a gross children's bathtub for my Lord. Meanwhile, my 5 year old wrote her first letter to the President-Elect.

"Dear President-Elect AMABO,

(we're stilling working on that consistent left to right thing)

You were once a baby. Did you forget? Should we kill the babies? NO!

(Well, actually she said "I can do this part myself Mom and proceeded to write ON in giant letters. We decided to fix that by making a huge arrow which indicated to turn the letter upside down.)

Hannah cheerfully stuck on the stamp (her favorite part of the writing letters job) and said a prayer while I looked up the zip code for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Don't worry Mom, he'll change his mind" she said as she galloped out to our apartment mailbox.

Will our President-elect, get the message to go from "On" to "No"? We've cast our ballot. The results are in. Now our job is to pray, pray, pray for our President-Elect to have a change of heart.

Many blessings.