Is there not poetry in silence?

     

Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind --
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested --
the snow
is covered with broken
seed husks
and the wind tempered
with a shrill
piping of plenty. 

…"To Waken an Old Lady" by William Carlos Williams, Rutherford

      

      MOTHER MARY JORDAN Mother Mary Jordan of the Holy Face, O.P., Prioress for many years at Union City's Blue Chapel, died on February 24, 2015 at St. Catherine's Infirmary in Caldwell. Mother Jordan was 96. Baptized Johanna Christie in Astoria, New York, Mother came from a large and loving family. It was from there that Mother entered the cloister of the Blue Chapel on the Feast of the Assumption in 1942 and faithfully remained enclosed until her transfer to the infirmary at St. Catherine's Convent in Caldwell in 2004. 

     Mother Jordan was a self-taught artist who worked in a variety of media during her lifetime. An expert seamstress, she designed and made a number of vestments for the support of the Community. She loved to paint, and in her early years painted the Mass cards that were one of the mainstays of the Community's income. Mother loved music, enjoyed singing, and appreciated opera. In addition to her artistic talent, she was often called upon to fix the boilers or air conditioning, supervise a financial transaction, or discuss baseball.
     A little known fact about Mother was that before entering religious life, Mother Jordan was one of the first female sports reporters on Long Island  Her love of games and sportsmanship made Mother an avid board game enthusiast, a hobby she continued to enjoy with the Caldwell Sisters at St. Catherine's. 
     Here is an excerpt from the homily given at Mother Mary's Solemn Profession: 

     I think it is that our happiness today, one we share with Sister, is based on a deeper mystery that includes everything else I’ve already suggested. And it is this: Sister Mary Jordan and her companions have befriended the solitary nature of the soul. They have befriended the solitary nature of the soul. I put it to you that each of us is, at the deepest level, alone. And that aloneness manifests itself to us most immediately as loneliness. And this is a surprising and disturbing thing, because it never goes away. Even in intimacies such as marriage and family, close friendship and religious life, we are aware, deeply, that we are not ever completely understood, nor do we understand our companions.

     And somehow in most cases this loneliness offends. We face the fact that no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we open ourselves to others, our connection with them is never complete. And this bothers. My own experience is that the majority of sins I hear confessed stem from the fact that people cannot bear their loneliness. They cannot bear their loneliness. And here is where we meet the mystery of the life of the Sisters, because in fact they are not locked away from us nor have the escaped from us, they are in fact ahead of us, because what they have discovered by God’s grace is that this solitude, this aloneness, inscribed deeply in the soul, is in fact a gift of God. That the Creator of the human person has built that in as part of us, and for a reason. For it is there, in the incompleteness of human life, that He desires to meet us. 

     Goodbye, Jersey Writer Mother Jordan.  For 64 years you lived in Union City and quietly prayed for us through Hitler, and the Atomic Age, and the Space Program, and Vietnam, and 9/11.   Perhaps we all survived those things in some way because of you.

Today's Writing Prompt…

Be quiet.  No TV, no phone, no conversations.  Be quiet for a few hours.  You may be able to write something afterwards.

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen