This week has found my mind returning over and over and over again to the same place. And today, with Jeff Davis' funeral and a blog post from someone who is important to me as well as a couple of messages received from friends, I find that I must get some thoughts down on paper. I have had a life filled with friends and acquaintances and it has been a rich life. But I have not really known what it means to have "best friends" in my life until very recently. Now I know. I do not know how I ever lived without having a very select group of people that I can trust with anything, up to and including my life and soul. Today I had some time to think and ponder what it would mean to me if I were to lose one of these people, through death or through misunderstandings or just me being stupid. Just considering this loss was overwhelming. It nearly made me want to sever ties with these people right now just to be in control of that pain. Tonight I am living in fear of loss and that is not productive, but that is where I am sitting. I preach connection and relationship constantly but tonight I fear just those things. I fear those things because I realize that there is opposition in all things and there is corresponding pain to all the powerful strength that is mine through my close relationships. Am I willing to chance the pain to have the strength and love and power that comes from my best friends? There are conflicting answers to this question in my mind and heart right now, but mostly I realize that I am willing to chance the pain. I need these people and others beyond this select group. I need people. Am I one of "the luckiest people in the world" because of this newly discovered need for people? Tonight I do not see it that way because I can see that I am close to losing a couple of those friends and just the thought of this loss is sending such pain coursing through me that I feel as though I am dying myself. So just for tonight I am going to wish that I could go back, that I could remove the ties that bind me so deeply to a few souls. But I cannot go back, I must face the pain and the strength and everything in between that comes with forming deep relationships of love, trust and respect. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

My Easter thoughts

My time spent Saturday among the icons at the Greek Orthodox Shrine in St. Augustine was a powerful experience. This caused me to take my Easter studies in an iconic direction. (Yes, pun very much intended!) So today I began by focusing my thoughts on Mary. Some of you know that I have a collection of art (mostly by Michelangelo) depicting Mary and that the Pieta is likely my favorite work of art ever. Those pieces were haunting me as I went to sleep last night so I got up this morning and pulled out my Gospel of Mary, or as most scholars call it, the Protevangelium of James. While this work is apocryphal, it moves me and I love it. As I was reading this short work, I was struck by these women of scripture that make up the story of Christ. My prayer as I began this day was for help to find myself and to solidify my role in this life and what I need to do to really fulfill my mission and purpose. I received powerful answers from the women in these words of James. First Anna. I relate so deeply with Anna (as well as a number of other women in scripture) as she anguishes over her inability to have children. And she begs and she pleads and she goes into a mourning process until she is finally blessed with a beautiful baby girl whom she names Mary and turns over to the Lord to be his servant. As I read, I remembered my own struggle to conceive and my own anguish and subsequent gratitude when children finally came into our home. And then there is Mary. I can make no comparisons or connections with Mary, aside from wanting to be like her one day. Her purity, obedience, fortitude, stillness and elegance are all that I strive for. Next we come to Salome. I cannot relate to Mary, but I can relate to Salome. I am so often too quick to judge and always too quick to open my mouth. Now I just need to strive to respond when I realize my mistakes as Salome did and fall to my knees quickly and apologize for my big mouth and the foot hanging out of said mouth. Finally there is Elizabeth. She comes earlier in the story but I saved her for last because today, as I studied, I received a beautiful reassurance as I studied about Elizabeth. She had the faith to bear John the Baptist and to understand his role as well as the role of Mary and her child. And when Harod's soldiers came to kill her son, she snatched him up and she ran. She obeyed Zacharius and did not reveal to him to where she was running and he gave up his life in innocence swearing that he knew not where is son was to be found. But she was old and she was tired and she could not run as far or as fast as she wanted, with all of her mother's heart to run. So she stopped and she turned it over to God and told God that she had reached the end of what she could do and looked for a hiding place and there was none, she gasped out the words, "O mountain of God, receive a mother and her child." And that mountain became translucent to them, and an angel of the Lord was with them and protected them. (Chapter 22, verse 3).

I want to be like all of these women, but I was given to understand today that I must be like Elizabeth. I may be old and fat and tired, but there is a way for me to carry each of my children and to demand, from the Lord, the protection that each of them need. It is my responsibility as their mother to make the proper request of the Lord and then move forward with them in my arms to take full advantage of that protection and guide them towards the mission and purpose that is theirs during this existence. For each child it will be different. Just as Mary fled to Egypt while Elizaeth took to the hills, both to protect from the same danger, I must find the path of protection for each of my children and they will all be different. And now I end writing to go and beg for the strength and ability to live up to such a task.