Mtr Mary Trainor

As every flower fades, and as all youth departs…*

Dear friend,

Moving on, moving beyond.

An early experience of this is often found in high school, and in the immediate years after. Within two years of graduation, my two best friends since third grade each got married. I was a bridesmaid at each, waving at each wedding party as their car pulled down the drive. Left behind. Or that’s how it felt. Seeing the start of their future, while feeling a little lost as to what lay ahead for me.

When we move, something gets left behind. It’s the nature of moving. We change addresses, former neighbors are left behind. We move jobs, and we have new co-workers while leaving formers ones behind. We move on the time continuum (we age) and youth is left behind, so slowly at first we barely notice.

When we are the movers, our energy is devoted to the move itself. When we are the left behind, it can hurt, or disappoint, or offend. Such seems to be the case in today’s Gospel lesson from Mark.

...so life at every stage, so every virtue, so our grasp of truth, blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Jesus has been caught up in a whirlwind since Chapter 1, when the arrest of John the Baptist kickstarted his ministry into public view. He has taught, preached, healed, named disciples--even including Judas Iscariot.

Here in Chapter 3, he has come home. If he expects a respite, it is not there waiting for him.

Instead, more healing is there to do. The needy crowds create such a ruckus that Jesus’ family cannot have dinner peacefully. Then we are told, “...they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’”

As Jesus’ ministry calls forth an obligation beyond family, beyond home town, beyond this world, he is no longer the Jesus they had known for thirty-something years. He has moved on, moved beyond.

Since life may summon us at every age be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor…

When the first of my two best high school friends got married, I had just finished a first year of college. I later cried on the day of the second one’s wedding. Somehow it took two weddings to convince me their lives, my life, our relationship, would be different. Things we once held in common were gone, giving way to new life, new experiences for them that I could not fully understand.

What I did not notice at the time is that I had moved on, too, into new experiences they could not fully understand. Life calls forth our response, one of acknowledging--either regrettably or happily--the way we have chosen.

...be ready bravely and without remorse to find new light that old ties cannot give.

Mtr Mary

*Stages, by Hermann Hesse