Catching up

I do a lot of odds and ends when I come back from a trip, especially if I had to really work  intensely to prepare for the trip, as I did this time. I had to pull so much together for the sisters' retreat (I spent three years gathering input and reflecting on the topic, but hadn't at all put it in any kind of order), so in the month before the retreat anything that wasn't (a) extremely urgent (groceries sometimes got urgent) or (b) retreat work got put on a distinct pile somewhere in my office.
So now I am addressing the piles. And baskets. And stacks of books.
One thing at a time. (Although I did begin praying for a new bookcase.)
I started small: the little scraps of notes of things to do. If you saw me hiking around downtown Chicago today in my sneakers, you know I was polishing off another to-do note. (By the way, I even turned down a free sample that was being offered on Randolph Street by smiling guys in matching polo shirts. "What?!" you say, "Sister Anne didn't accept something free?" Well, I was all ready to, until I realized it was Nicorette gum.)
Tomorrow I hope to remedy the community's refrigerator problem. Its empty state, I mean.
And it's a good thing Sr Lusia is in Samoa right now (visiting her family and helping celebrate Sr Fay's perpetual profession on July 5)... the "Mother Superior" computer decided to take a weird, blue-screen sort of break while its favorite user was away. My modest geekly skills were of no use, so the motherhouse technicians will see what they can do remotely.

Today I was especially struck by the Our Father's insistence on forgiving. I recently remembered an incident from about a year ago for which I truly need to experience God's forgiveness and mercy, and today he told me how to begin to set my heart right for it. In a way, everything we ask for in that prayer depends on that "as we forgive." Why? Because God is a stickler for rules? Or because when we forgive, our hearts are open in the very same place they need to be opened in order to welcome God's kingdom, praise his name and receive daily bread from his hands?