Imagine my surprise when I received these photos and reflection this morning from Holly Knight, our IHM Communications Director . Talk about synergy! Considering yesterday’s post I couldn’t resist posting Holly’s reflection today.
This summer a violent storm uprooted the most beautiful Elm tree on the sisters’ grounds. The great Elm, an enormous vision of green grandeur, stood tall with its long, muscular branches casting a broad blanket of shade over a grassy patch beside the organic garden, its sanctuary offering rest and replenishment to the garden’s caretakers, pilgrims and passersby. Like a center of spiritual gravity, the Elm gathered us – sisters, friends and neighbors—to potluck feasts and blessings, to prayer and quiet pondering under its gracious, gentle shelter.
When the storm took it down, everyone mourned. We felt like we lost a close friend, a member of the family. This afternoon, a balmy mid-October day, I took a walk out to the garden and discovered the old Elm’s newest incarnation.
There lay the same circumference of the once shady blanket, now a circular carpet of mulch on which its arms, neatly trimmed and carved, offer long sitting benches, overlooking tall ornamental grasses, a double stone marker, clusters of yellow and purple flowers and a sign that reads “Love blooms where kindness is planted.”
The heart of the old Elm still lives. The heart of the old Elm still invites us to take rest and replenishment in its shadow. The heart of the old Elm beckons us to live likewise: to use our own gifts of life as a source of rest and replenishment for all manner of creatures and wanderers, friends, neighbors, the holy and needy alike. – Holly Knight, IHM Associate Candidate
