A young man in class today shared about his trips to El Salvador. He didn’t do the homework, which was to write a paragraph in Spanish about a vacation. He didn’t have to. He simply told us about visiting the country he came from. He paused, searching for the right word, and then looked at me with his soft eyes and asked, ”How do you say ‘I miss it?’” I couldn’t remember the Spanish word, extrañar. So, I suggested that maybe he could say, ”Yo espero a visitar El Salvador otra vez pronto.” I hope to visit El Salvador another time soon.
When does missing something become hoping for something? How do we transform the ache and grief into eyes open searching the horizon? It isn’t as simple as substituting a different word. Grief and Hope are not twins. But maybe they are cousins.
This past week we had some warm days and I went for a jog along the Monocacy River. It is still March, but things are beginning to push up green shoots along the river bank. No one told the new growth that snow is coming and it will be 17 degrees this weekend. It seems that the plants are hopeful for Spring. I found myself looking among the early growth for signs of the Bluebells. I think I was hoping to see them, and also I miss them. Grief and hope dancing together in my heart. I miss the gentle carpet of blue flowers that emerge each April to create a mystical fairyland around my ankles. I hope to lay down among the flowers this April to weep and wonder.
A poem from Padriag O’Tuama
What I needed to hear
This is my gift to you
this springtime blooming
this endless moving
from life to deeper life.
I will be your endlessness.
Your journey’s start
and happy welcome home.
Your never ceasing,
always shining moment.
Caught up in the wink of eternity,
you will be like you
have always been before,
never knowing.
A decade of sunset evenings
and the softest mornings dawnings
to bathe your tender brow
with healings of the deepest kind.
