My visit was good, with many opportunities to visit with
friends, talk about my ministry here, and to eat at least 13 meals with
friends. (The Indian and Thai meals were memorable.)
The visit was marred a bit by the damage that had been done
to St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Ames, due to a fire. But I still saw many signs
of life in the parish – even amidst this and other crises affecting the parish.
I left Ames on Tuesday and spent the night with Enrique who
had spent about seven months living in my house while he was studying English
at Iowa State about 2002. He’s now working in Des Moines and happily married with Edy, expecting a baby.
I didn’t get much sleep that night because we spent more than four
hours talking. It was one of the most stimulating conversations I’ve had in a
long time, much like the conversation I had with my friends Omar and Elizabeth
earlier in the visit.
I got up at 3:15 am and left on a 6:20 am flight from Des Moines
to Dallas, the first leg of my journey home to Honduras. Behind me was a couple with a young daughter who was experiencing her
first airline flight.
I overheard her oohs and ahs as she saw the world from the
airplane window. “Awesome” was a word I heard several times.
Hearing this child, I was called to see the world, once
again, with awe, with wonder. God’s world is filled with wonder – but so often
I forget to see it or hear it.
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” wrote
Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.
In the midst of all the pain and conflict, I am called to
see the grandeur of God in each and every person and in all that God created. Seeing
this, I am called to help others see this and to live in the love that God has
for all of us.
Visits to friends are important if we are open to wonder.
Sometimes it takes a child in an airplane to remind us.
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