Happy to be Home Again and Catching Up

It is good to be home again! However, it was a great 12 days for me. I arrived at the San Francisco airport on April 24th and one of my RSCJ friends met me at the airport. We went to Mass that afternoon and then had a lovely dinner about ten o'clock my time so I finally went to bed deciding to do nothing on Sunday and be prepared to leave on Monday for my retreat at Villa Maria del Mar. I went with two other RSCJs and we had lunch on the water in Santa Cruz before going to the retreat house; my room was on the third floor looking directly over the Pacific Ocean! We were almost the only ones making a retreat that week; I spent a great deal of time in the little meditation chapel that is the corner room overlooking the ocean; we had a real storm at sea the second day there and the waves covered the beach. I went back to the first stanza of John of the Cross' "Living Flame of Love" and found that was all I needed; I really spent most of my time just contemplating the ocean as a symbol of God's immense and deep love.
After Santa Cruz I returned to our community in Redwood City. It is a very hospitable community that prays together every evening and often lights a fire in their fireplace that delighted me and recalled the "Living Flame of Love". I spent the days at Oakwood, our lovely retirement home that now has included Westwood, Rosewood, and a small compound that holds two community houses and three or four single apartments. I visited the cemetery where so many of my friends are as well as two RSCJ cousins. Then, after an inspiring Mass and excellent homily by Archbishop Quinn on Sunday and a Reception in honor of the new administrative team (more about these two wonderful people at some later date), we began the gathering of six of us who had made our final profession fifty years ago. We shared and prayed together and had a Mass on Tuesday for all our probation sisters, living and dead, and then we prepared a special gouter for the Oakwood Community which now numbers fifty-two, I think. Anyway, it was a good time and I am happy we did this and have written a short summary to send to some of those who could not come.
"Let not your heart be troubled" is a real command of Jesus so let us rejoice as we approach his Ascension into Heaven and Pentecost. It is a time of joy!