A friend of mine was ordained yesterday. Last Sunday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of my own ordination. Pictured above is the letter my mother wrote me two months before the momentous occasion. It's the kind of letter a daughter dreams of getting from her mother-- full of love and pride. "Number two daughter-- Number three child -- NUMBER ONE PRIESTESS!" it says. I smile--and cry--every time I read it.
Beside Mom's letter is a quote from Shakespeare which my sister hand painted and gave to me one Christmas. . .
Be not afraid; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight
and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine
ears; and sometime voices that, if I then had waked after long sleep, will make
me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, the clouds methought would green and show
riches ready to drop upon me that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.
[Caliban, The Tempest]
Leslie's reassurance in a world that often seemed--and seems--perilous to me.
Just above my ordination letter is a framed poster of a woman who looks Indian. She is holding the sun. Its light creates a prism of color around her. "Healing Woman" reads the caption. My friend Margaret gave me the poster for my fiftieth birthday. Hard to believe that was almost ten years ago.
Looking up from the poster, I see a picture of a fleur-de-lis, the symbol of the home and land in Haiti where my mother spent her childhood. I painted that picture for her the summer I turned thirteen, during the two weeks I spent with my grandmother. I can still see my grandmother looking over my shoulder as I painstakingly printed the Haitian words she taught me for "I love you": "Je Vous Aime". There is three generations of women's love for each other in that painting.
To my left as I face my mother's letter are two of her paintings of the New Mexico landscape. "It's the only place I really want to go," I had told her when she expressed a longing for me to travel, so she and my father surprised me with a trip there in 1994. I remember them pulling me in my wheelchair through barely accessible dirt and rocks to view ancient drawings etched in stone, or to gaze at the beauty of rock formations standing against the wide open clear blue sky. I remember our joy at sharing that experience together. I see again what an incredibly gifted artist my mother was. I feel how much my parents loved me.
Behind me is a picture of late twenty something me sitting on a bench outside the common area of the seminary I went to. My six million dollar friend Steve Austin took that picture. Steve, if you happen to read this, you should know I've gotten more compliments on that picture than I have on anything else in my apartment.
To the right is a black and white photograph of an aged man, his body stooped to an almost ninety degree angle, standing on sun-dappled grass framed on either side by trees. My sister took that picture; of my grandfather walking on the farm he loved.
Somewhere on that wall is a painting of a delicate lavender wild flower sandwiched between two boulders. The artist was a friend of my mother's. Mom bought the painting from him, and gave it to me because "It reminds me of you," she said.
There is my mother's water color rendering of a sisal plant, the plant my grandfather grew while they were in Haiti, and a picture of what looks like some deity hovering over an island in the ocean. "The Goddess watching over you," said Mom as I opened her birthday present.
Last but not least, there is the silver-framed picture of the five of us--my sister, me, my brother, my mother, and my father, taken on Mom's ninetieth birthday--the last time we were all together.
These are the pictures which surround me every night and greet me every morning. The love which emanates from them cradles me as I sleep and supports me as I move through my day. And it is that love which my ordination calls me to share with the world.
