Word in the Hand

We are an impatient people. The Great Vigil Mass, meant to finish with the new day starts around 7.00/8.00pm so we are celebrating the Resurrection and home in time for hot chocolate and Match of the Day. This, of course, is me being flippant - a tone that creeps in when I am bothered by something. The something is the waiting, not a thing I am good at to be honest, I can meditate for hours....but waiting always brings out the 'there must be something I can be doing' in me. But today, there is nothing else. We do not create the Resurrection, the Risen Christ is not for us to conjure up. It is for the Father to give back the life that was surrendered. And really, why should He? Imagine our God, as big as you can imagine, beyond what you can imagine. Imagine our God of Trinity, dancing in love and life since forever, and one of Him is lost, for us. The gyroscope of power unbalanced, winding down, all because we don't know how much we mean to Him. Was three days the limit th...

One thing that has changed in hospitals is that they don't wake you up at dawn for whatever reason they used to. You may get woken up at other times but that's on a medicinal 'need to know' basis. Because of his illness crossed with being a teenager, my son sleeps on and on and on. Unfortunately Catholic guilt stops me from lying in the bed next to him, even if I am reading, even if I am tired too. So when I hear the staff starting their changeover circuit, I get up, fold the bed back into its space and tidy up, as if in readiness for a military inspection; after all this I don't want them to think I am a bad mother. After saying hello and finding out which nurse is 'ours' for the day (they are all lovely but they have their own ways and we have learnt to adapt ours) I head out into the main hospital and down to the restaurant for breakfast. It started off feeling somewhat unnerving, knowing that everyone around you is either staff or other parents sta...