April 22, 1994

"What is life? It is the flash on a firefly at night. It is a breath of  buffalo in wintertime.  It is a little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
                                                                   Chief Crowfoot  -  Blackfoot Indian Chief

Either ten or twelve years ago while visiting the Knock Shrine, I bought an Our Lady of Knock medal which I kept in my pocket.  Two years later I lost it. Last week when I stopped at Knock on my way to Donegal, I bought a new medal. This morning I noticed it was missing. I wonder if there is any meaning in the lost medal? Am I a lost soul beyond protection, beyond redemption? Has Mother Mary abandoned her prodigal son?

When I was in Saint Augustine I wrote about the B.C. cartoon and prayer waiting. Every day I try to go to Mass and pray as sincere as I can for help, for hope and for relief from the mental pain and anguish. Yet every day I feel worse than the day before. I am a lonely voice crying in a desolate wilderness. I wonder if God hears or cares?

Yesterday, in a small gift shop, I bought a poster of Chief Seattle and it contains the words of a letter he wrote to President Franklin Pierce in 1854. The letter was in response to the government's offer to buy his land. Chief Seattle's words are often described as the most beautiful and profound statement on the environment ever made.  The letter begins, "How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?" In his letter Chief Seattle states that the white man thinks that his God is a more powerful God - but as all people share the same sky, so, too, do we all share the same God. And that God made the earth and we are to treat it as a living creature for it is what gives us life - and our destiny is a mystery to all.

Chief Seattle was right. Sometimes we do think our God is different, more powerful and always on our side. But like the sky there is but one God. And we will never know why some people are blessed, some prayers are answered and others are not? Why three young children die in a fire in Tralee or why a hospital is bombed in Bosnia? Nor why a woman who once loved me, now hates me?

Life is a mystery, as is love. Chief Crowfoot and Chief Seattle had a better understanding of these mysteries than I ever will. As Chief Seattle wrote, "The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh...all things in nature are connected like the blood which unites one family. We are all connected. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it."

If only I had loved life as he did and understood how really precious it is - if only?

12:30pm   Dingle Library   -   County Kerry, Ireland

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