“It’s a blessing indeed,” thought Sister Miranda George.
The tall, slender reed of a nun strolled calmly, peacefully through the back meadow gardens of the Champania DellaRosa Mother House, smelling the last dry grass of Summer, enjoying the newly born fragrant breezes of the Fall that was softly approaching. She loved the distinct seasons that living in Michigan supplied her otherwise unchanging life, though Winter was her favorite, as pure as God intended the world to be , all robed in white pristine snow. The icy meadows and surrounding fields bore only the slightest hint of life during those blessed
months, with the tiny bird tracks the only evidence of movement.
Sister Miranda George, known as Sister MG to all, continued her stroll.
“If we were to retain all the thoughts that fly into our wild and crazy brains,
we would die from sheer electric overload, so thankfully we are geared – we human machines-to have these infinite troubling mind creations come, only and gratefully, to pass………THIS TOO SHALL PASS is a benediction to rely on, and rely on it I most certainly do…..I swim toward it like a drowning aquanaut seeks a life raft.”
The Sister smiled, as the gentle breeze of October kissed her thin lips.
The only kisses she had ever gotten in her life were from Nature. Her family, Italian through and through, were huggers, never kissers, so her lips kissed the Fall breeze right back….her lover, the wind, faithful and ever to be relied on.
“ I truly need this walk today, the longer the better”, the crunch of the leaves beneath her slender feet releasing that familiar Autumn smell of old cardboard and ancient tobacco. Her mouth watered at the thought of the warm cider awaiting her back at the House.
“ ……the wonderful thing about this meadow,” she continued in her fertile brain,” is that all the bad and shameful things I feel and think can push their ways through me and all they will harm is the infinite patient air, the fathomless sky, the impervious flesh of her invisible God.”
She felt safe feeling the rage, the red hot anger, the sad pity, the nauseating disgust that seemed to flow through her on far too consistent a schedule.Though she knew that just because you devoted your life to religion and a purity impossible to reach, nuns still were human, and emotions boiled like a stew in a cauldron among her small, intimate community of sisters. They all knew the frailties of each other , accepted them to the best of their blindered abilities, and lived to love each other another day….until day of true Judgement, the day their lives might end. She fervently prayed that Heaven looked like this meadow that lay before her. If it did resemble it, she felt she could bear an Eternity in it, and her daily faith was refreshed. Beauty made it all bearable, even the most frightening memories of Charles, the man who would have married her if only she had been courageous enough to say “yes”.