Mtr Mary Trainor

All creatures of our God and King…*

Dear friend,

Many people have that one experience, that one place, where it all comes together. The desert night sky. A pine forest. Ocean waves crashing on the shore. The sound of children playing.

And not just once. These experiences, these places, can take us there over and over, to where the unity of all things is clear.

Our Office Gospel today from John (17:20-26) is sprinkled with the language of connection: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.”

Jesus is praying for his disciples: “...so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one...”

Let all things their Creator bless...

Those reliable experiences or places that we can seek out are not the only means to recognizing connections.

Once in awhile, in a single moment, we snatch a quick and brilliant insight to the great truth that all of creation is woven together in a web of relationships.

The day we buried my father was such a moment for me.

We had the funeral service in the town where I grew up, where the family business operated for thirty-two years. Then those of us going to the burial got into our cars and drove the fifty miles to the cemetery.

Vehicles arrived over a period of thirty minutes. My brother was driving one of the cars, and he would be the latest of all. I was restless—and a bit annoyed—so I started wandering around, looking at gravestones.

On a stone not twenty paces from my father’s grave I was shocked to see the name of my uncle, my father’s brother. He had died just two months earlier than my father. The two men had been estranged for decades. Now, here they would lay, as if still sleeping together in a childhood bedroom, whispering away their fears in the dark.

When my brother finally arrived, I couldn’t wait to show him my find. He was as shocked as I. The first words from his mouth were, “Old George, what a jerk.” We stood in silence staring at the stone, marveling at the odd development that these two, so distant in life, should be so close in death.

Then my brother spoke again: “But he was our jerk.”

And in those few words, the truth emerged. “Our jerk.” He was a part of us and we of him, oddly connected—or disconnected—in life, brought together in death, a family. Again. Still. For all time.

Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son
And praise the Spirit, three in one.

Mtr. Mary

*From Hymn 400 in Hymnal 1982, lyrics attributed to St. Francis