I have a confession to make: I’ve never really cared for the stained
glass windows in St. Lucy’s Chapel here at the Mount. To me the design is
jagged and disharmonious, a harlequin-like mishmash of colors that don’t really
go together: pink, orange, purple, yellow, red, and blue. And yet, the other
day, in a pane of clear glass at the top of the chapel, the reflection of the
stained glass formed the image of the wing of a monarch butterfly, and suddenly
it became quite beautiful.
Just so, to many of us, the recent death of our treasured sister, Lou
Whipple, felt harsh, disharmonious, a clash between the desire to continue life
in its present form and the need to die to let new life unfold. And yet, to Sr.
Lou, death became the unfolding of a butterfly wing, or the wing of one of her
beloved bees.
Death can be like a storm we must weather before we can take wing. After I heard that Sr. Lou died (despite the prohibition against use
of the word “Alleluia” during Lent), I
thought of the following refrain from a song by Bob Franke, which is often sung
by John McCutcheon:
Alleluia, the great storm is over,
lift up your wings and fly!
Alleluia, the great storm is over,
lift up your wings and fly!
Lift up your wings and fly, Lou—to that home on God’s celestial shore,
where glad and happy we will meet on the day we too fly away.*
*See the lyrics to I’ll Fly Away by
Alfred E. Brumley.
Beautiful.
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