home

Reflecting a lot on "home" today. Feeling homeless. Home, as in "where you came from" and "where you go back to" has always been my parents' house. About 18 years ago they moved from the place where I grew up, and home moved with them to a different New Orleans subdivision, but still in Metairie, south of the Lake that is now reclaiming the city. Well, Mom and Dad aren't "home" now, either. And where they are, in north Louisiana, I have never been. Home has become my mom's voice on the phone at my brother's in-laws' house. They don't know when they will be allowed back "home" to see and salvage what may remain. It is a lost, uncertain feeling, even for me.

I woke up in the middle of the night and had more than a little trouble falling back asleep. I tried to pray, but it was not such a good idea to pray about what is on my mind right now, because it keeps it on my mind! I need to go to the life of Jesus: to receive whatever share he is offering me of his own earthly life, he who had "no place to lay his head." I have a place for my head, but my heart is shaken and I have no place to lay it down. All I can do is give that situation, that inability, to Jesus.

Our sisters from the Metairie convent went to Baton Rouge, but will soon most likely be relocating to another Pauline convent to wait things out until the city is reopened for evaluating losses and making insurance claims. At least the sisters will be able to engage in the mission while they wait; that will help them a lot, I think, to find a place to lay not just their head, but eventually, when the shock subsides, their hearts as well.