komisch

its strange to think...it was the last time


                                        the last time to sit around the dinner table
                                        the last time to be just the five of us
                                                                                with our reheated leftovers and
                                                                                our half-priced yogurt.


tonight was our last family dinner.


Fr. Clemens commented--"Wow, it hasn't been often that we have been able to have a meal all of us and only us together!"


Fr. Jacques said--"Yeah, but that's not what is important," as he poured him some more wine.




Its true--you can see from the fact that our "Last Supper" together comes two weeks before Mathilde leaves and three weeks before I make the trip back home and turn the page to the next chapter of my life. Family meals are here and there. Not especially frequent because someone is always working, traveling to other duties in other Heart's Home houses in other countries, sick, invited somewhere else. The time we get to REALLY spend ALL together has become a cherished relic. 


But its also true--its not what is important. What was important was the quality, the family, the friendship, the true communion that was lived around that table, with our leftovers and half-priced yogurt.


It is hard in a life filled with one person getting in a run when the others are enjoying a morning coffee after the mass and morning prayer together. It is hard when two are off at their separate jobs and one is at a meeting and the other is at home to answer the phone, the doorbell, and the emails piling up in the community e-mail box. It is hard to live a communion.


But PHYSICAL communion...that is not what is important (as I have learned from being away from my family and friends--you all--for almost 18 months now). What is important is the communion of spirit. And the beauty of the moments in which that communion of spirit is made flesh incarnate and we can revel in the simple moment of a dinner eaten together as truly a gift from the God who called and sent each one of us, with our individual histories, personalities, and vocations to be as one in family and community together here in Vienna.


Mathilde is leaving first. On May 2nd. Its getting closer.
And the minutes fly by faster. And there is never enough time.
For all the beauty.


"Thats the hardest thing about life-
           to be so touched...
           to be so wounded...
           by so much beauty."
                                                  so said Fr. Jacques as we sat and discussed the ends of missions, the beginnings of new roads, what has been learned, and what comes next.


at that point we all had tears in our eyes... (well, at least, Alina, Fr. Jacques and I)


in every chosen word, Fr. Jacques articulated in such a simple sentence
something. LIVED
something. DEEP
something. HERE


                   ...      something I have lived deeply here.


as I looked up from swirling my half empty wine glass along the wooden rings of the table I saw the salty water brimming over the edges of Fr. Jacques lower eyelids, not emotional enough to be flowing down his cheeks but delicately screaming what he knows the be the truth -- beauty is an arrow that strikes the heart.


I can't explain how strange it is that after 18 months I'll be leaving.
my home.
my life.
my friends.
some of which have become family.


its no different than what I experienced 18 months ago when leaving the US to follow God here...except it is completely different in every way.


and so is life. everything is new and strangely beautiful.


and its the wounds of beauty that give life its true worth.

"Maybe its supposed to be this way--the inexplicable fragility of being, the not knowingness of life, the beauty that can break your heart. Without it we would soon enough make ourselves into Gods."

{Michael O'Brien}