Mtr Mary Trainor

I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows...*

Dear friend,

Sometimes people don’t believe us, even when we can offer an eyewitness account. One clear memory of mine is like that.

It was years ago in Southern California. We were getting ready to barbecue on the patio, and I was left in charge of watching the coals. My mother popped out for just a moment to put several condiments on the table where we would eat.

Just as she bounded the two steps to the house door, we both realized something fell from the sky. It landed between the stoop on which she stood, and an adjacent partition. The space was not even three inches wide. We got really close and looked down, only to see a fledgling mockingbird, jostling about.

We had no idea what to do. Not how to get the baby out of there, nor what to do with it if we did.

We didn’t need to know. Two adult mockingbirds swooped into the patio making all sorts of commotion, and squawking. We eased out of their way, and they hopped over to the stoop. More squawking. In response to the call, the baby bird hops out of his abyss, just as the parents position themselves side by side. They each dipped forward a bit, and then--here comes the unbelievable part--stretching out their interior wings to overlap, they squawked again, and the fledgling hopped upon their joined wings.The three took off.

I believe that somewhere in the darkest night, a candle glows.

Believing is a primary matter in today’s Daily Office passage from John’s Gospel. Jesus opens with, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life.” We’re told “the Pharisees”** said Jesus’ testimony is not valid because it lacks a second source. Nor were they satisfied with Jesus citing his second source as “the Father who sent me…” His claims, they believe, are outrageous. Make no mistake. Jesus has spoken “arrest-able words.”

What the Pharisees are up against, what we are up against, is this question: On the basis of what do we believe? A backup source, without which nothing is believable?

For everyone who goes astray, someone will come to show the way...

My own faith is based on belief in the power of God in Christ, the love of God, the mercy of God, the hope of God--because something in me was able to throw down the gates of this world’s conventions and believe, I mean BELIEVE, that God was calling me. I can’t prove it to you, and you can’t disprove it. It just is. Which is the point the Pharisees miss over and over.

So back to the baby mockingbird. I had a second witness to this miraculous occurrence, but she is now many-years gone. So, in this case, the story must stand on my telling.

Every time I hear a new born baby cry, or touch a leaf, or see the sky, then I know why I believe.

Mtr Mary

*From I Believe, a song made popular by Frankie Laine.
** “The Pharisees, and “the Jews”” are common references in the Gospels, especially in John, and are sometimes cited as causal agents for anti-semitism. I always feel the need to point out that these phrases do not refer to all Pharisees, nor all Jews. Jesus and the twelve were Jews and, most likely, Pharisees, that being the dominant source of Jewish formation at the time.