Friday, December 5, 2008

It's hard for me to believe that 2 weeks from today will be my last day of working at the school. I am looking forward to it. I think I have been trying to do too much lately. Last night I was looking forward to a relaxing night off. I stopped off to see Clay and Claire - which means I read them a book. Claire was very snuggly because she wasn't feeling very well, and Clay was making me one of his very cool pictures. I stayed a while, went home, poured some candles, and had just come back upstairs when my cell phone rang. It was 6:58. This was the message:

"Hey Mary, it's Bea. I'm at St Mary's and we're wondering if you're stuck someplace or are you gonna be here for the 7:00 pm Mass . . ."

There was more, but by then my heart had dropped into my stomach and my brain was racing a mile a minute. Mass? Mass? What Mass?

Now here's the deal. If you have a planner, you would be well advised to look at it every day. If I had looked at my planner yesterday morning, I would have seen that the Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe begins on December 4. Now I knew that we were hosting it at St. Mary's this year, but for some reason, I was thinking it started on Monday the 8th. A zillion things were running through my head. Uppermost was that I had to be there, late or not. I had no music planned. We would have to go with the music I had planned for the upcoming Sunday. (Sheesh, I just realized that those poor people were looking at last week's numbers on the number board, while I was playing totally different music.) Anyway, I booked it to the church. There were some mighty slick patches on the way - thank God for guardian angels.

I rushed into the church and everyone was so nice. Teresa Cervantes whispered, "Now you're part Mexican. You're operating on Mexican time." The ironic thing is that all of the Mexican people were there on time. I was the only one who was late. To add insult to injury, there was not one Spanish song in the whole mass. They all hugged me after mass and insisted that I come to the parish center and have cookies and coffee with them. I learned an important lesson last night on graciousness and kindness.

The point to this whole story is that this is not something that should have slipped my mind - with or without the planner. When things like this happen I begin to doubt myself. I now have a sticky note on my bathroom mirror telling me to check my planner every day. I could blame this on the fact that I am trying to do too much, and that may or may not be true; I guess I will find out in a couple of weeks.

Word of the day:
Friday of the First Week of Advent
Gospel
Mt 9:27-31

As Jesus passed by, two blind men followed him, crying out,
“Son of David, have pity on us!”
When he entered the house,
the blind men approached him and Jesus said to them,
“Do you believe that I can do this?”
“Yes, Lord,” they said to him.
Then he touched their eyes and said,
“Let it be done for you according to your faith.”
And their eyes were opened.
Jesus warned them sternly,
“See that no one knows about this.”
But they went out and spread word of him through all that land.

Thoughts from the cornfield:
When I read passage where Jesus is warning people to keep silent about the miracles he performs, I have to wonder if he did it with a twinkle in his eye. I mean if you had a friend or two who were blind, and suddenly they could see, wouldn't you think something miraculous had happened? And wouldn't you press these people for information. And if you were the blind person, wouldn't you be bursting to tell people? Word of mouth is the fastest way for news to travel. I think Jesus knew that.


God bless our troops!