An Easter Gift

Happy Easter! We slept late after our Easter Vigil and 11:30 p.m. Krispy Kreme run. :-) Lunch was not a spectacular affair with 5 of the 6 kids here, and everyone helped, so it was lovely, low-key, and just enough. While waiting for the ham to cook, we played in the backyard with Pip's "crossbow" that he modified out of a regular bow. It works extremely well!


Before he returned to the Institute today, just after Katie and Brendan left, son Tom suggested I listen to this poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. It probably had exactly the effect he anticipated---it made me laugh and brought a few tears to my eyes

THE LANYARD

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room

bouncing from typewriter to piano

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

I found myself in the "L" section of the dictionary

where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard. 

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one more suddenly into the past.

A past where I sat at a workbench

at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake 

learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard. 

A gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard. 

Or wear one, if that’s what you did with them. 

But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand 

again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother. 

She gave me life and milk from her breasts, 

and I gave her a lanyard 

She nursed me in many a sick room, 

lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, 

set cold facecloths on my forehead

then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard. 

"Here are thousands of meals" she said, 

"and here is clothing and a good education." 

"And here is your lanyard," I replied,

"which I made with a little help from a counselor." 

"Here is a breathing body and a beating heart, 

strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world." she whispered.

"And here," I said, "is the lanyard I made at camp."

"And here," I wish to say to her now, 

"is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth, 

that you can never repay your mother, 

but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands,

I was as sure as a boy could be 

that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom 

would be enough to make us even."

-- Billy Collins

I recalled all of the little things that children do and make for their parents, especially moms---sometimes they craft them out of their own imaginations and hearts, but, more often, they are probably forced to make them during camps or classes, and then they give their gift lovingly to the one who does so much for them. It's a little thing, probably not worth much on its own, but given with the love of a child it is imbued with greater meaning and worth.

So it is with the insignificant gifts we give to the One who does so much for us. Our little sacrifices that we make as we follow St. Thérèse's Little Way, are received by by Our Lord with an even greater love than our mothers could give. According to another Teresa, St. Teresa of Avila, "It is Love alone which gives worth to all things."

The size of the gift doesn't matter, only the love with which it is given. Today, and the next 50 days, we celebrate the greatest gift ever given. Have you made a lanyard with which to repay it?

What We're Learning

America for Me

by Henry Van Dyke

 'TIS fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
    Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
    To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings,—
    But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.


           So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
           My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
           In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
           Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!


    Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
    And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
    And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
    But when it comes to living there is no place like home.


    I like the German fir-woods, in green battalions drilled;
    I like the gardens of Versailles with flashing fountains filled;
    But, oh, to take your hand, my dear, and ramble for a day
    In the friendly western woodland where Nature has her way!


    I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack:
    The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.
    But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free,—
    We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.


           Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
           I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea,
           To the bléssed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
           Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars

 I love this poem.   Meg has the first 2 stanzas memorized, so far.  She likes it, too---just itching to get to that 3rd stanza!

It always reminds me of Betsy, in Betsy and the Great World, when the Great War is beginning (that's WWI), and she realizes where her heart truly lies.  (sigh!)

I haven't looked, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was in the book.  Do you know?