Inspiration That Never Ends

Sr. Anne Shepard told me that she recently visited a friend and her four-year-old grandson, who enjoyed looking at the pictures in the most recent Mount magazine and made up stories about them as he went along. When he came to the photos of the (mostly) elderly sisters in the obituaries at the end of the magazine, he said, “And these are the grandmothers who wrote the stories that go with the pictures!”

As I approach my 60th birthday, I’ve been thinking a lot about family and friends who have died and yet continue to help me write my story. How would I know how to live in community without the example of my grandmothers, who did their daily chores without complaint for years on end and kept their counsel in the midst of life in a large family? How would I know how to find peace in nature without watching my mom tend her flowers and my dad his vegetable garden? How would I know how to enhance my life with poetry without listening to Sisters Celine Carrigan, Jeremy Dempsey, and Mary Faith Schuster quoting lines from their favorite poems?

An oblate of the Mount, Dick Brummel, died unexpectedly last week at the age of 71. His social justice advocacy won’t come to an end, however, because through his efforts he has shown others how to become advocates themselves. Just so, we need to give ourselves wholeheartedly to our calling, whatever it may be — parent, teacher, environmentalist, advocate — because (a) we don’t know when death will come calling and (b) we don’t know how our daily faithfulness to our vocation will help others write their own story for generations to come.

I’m deeply grateful for all those who continue to help me write my story, and I hope that in my remaining years (however long that may be), I can follow their example and do the same for others.