Relationship with All
Can you imagine the giftedness of the person, most likely a woman, who created this exquisite work of art? She used fine stitches and very narrow, rolled pieces of cloth to create this beauty.
What is her culture, her nation, her original language? Who taught her to do such fine work?
This fabric art-piece was sold in Spain to one of our sisters, and, when gifted, arrived in the United States.
Do you not feel a depth of gratitude to the woman who stitched this square, undoubtedly to earn some money, but also, unconsciously perhaps, so that its color, design and beauty could enhance your life? Do you not feel a connectedness to her, a relationship with her? Do we not owe her gratitude?
In her acceptance speech, when awarded the Leadership Conference of Women Religious Outstanding Leadership Award in 2017, Constance FitzGerald, ODC said, “Relationality, mutuality, interconnectedness, communion, union with God: these are the facets of contemplative prayer that claim my attention now.” She went on to say, that we are “united with every human person, every living creature, the earth itself, the cosmos, precisely because we are in Jesus webbed into this Trinitarian dance of life and communion.”
The invitation of this Winter Gem is to allow the image and Constance FitzGerald’s words to sink deep into our being so that we can, through union with God, live into profound faith in our interconnectedness, our relationality with every other human being, every living creature on Earth, each a gift of our creative, living, and loving Trinitarian God.
Veronica Blake, smr