A Home For All......

Becoming a Franciscan led to my discovery of my natural relationship with Nature.  I was 39 years old  and on the third day of prayer before my entry as a pre-novice,  I was asked by my spiritual guide Sr Mary Peter to simply choose to look at an object of nature , a flower or leaf or stone and gaze at it with complete attention. I chose a little white chrysanthemum in the chapel. Guess what? As it came close to  the end of the hour a wave of energy I can only describe as love , entered into me.  After 3 weeks  my new community left for Camerons  where I experienced my first retreat. We were encouraged by our retreat master to go out into the neighbouring forest parks and enjoy the beauty of the waterfalls rocks and wild  vegetation; guess what? I would come back filled with exhilaration! I was high  and drugged with joy!
​On the serious side of gospel living, I mean community living, I had to struggle with my limitations and the limitations of my dear sisters. As Francis said  “The lord led me among sisters/brothers” and I would resolve the tension and find healing in soil, shrubs and flowers. Not for me the exotic blooms just simple ordinary  flowers like the hardy periwinkle ixora and snap dragon. Nature could heal  and  revive my passion for mission.
We are now celebrating the Care of Creation month after a year of forest fires floods landslides volcanic eruptions. What’s happened to my Mother and Sister Earth? She has become a stranger. I cannot deny my share in humanity’s indifference carelessness and ingratitude . I want to bring  about  reconciliation in my own small way-- Help Her to  be a Home to All. I turn to Francis blind and sick when he wrote the Canticle of the Creatures:

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​Blind Man,
Sitting in your tiny garden
Staring  into your infinity of velvet black
Where every flower is a flame on taper
Every tree a torch………..
You walk between the buds and the leaves
Never ceasing to discover
And to wonder
And recognizing all the time
New brothers and new sisters.
(Poem by OFM Christopher Coelho)

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