Kinship

Kinship

Family ties
Common ground for living
Compassion, sharing, nurturing love
Family

Today is my scheduled day for Spiritual Direction with Sister Dorothy. As part of my Reflections for the Journey, I have been asked to reflect on kinship and those who nurture that kinship.

Family can comes in many forms. There is my biological family. I have a work family. There is my cherished church family. And then there is my dedicated and diligent prayer family. And now as an Associate of the Sisters of Providence, I find I have another family in which I can rely for support and to which I can offer support. In other words, I see kinship as an extension of who I am. I am part of the whole that has many parts.

Along the way there are those who have guided, formed and gently "tweaked" me into being, a progress that continues until I am called home to the Father. I have had loving and assertive mentors who sometimes found my laziness and diligence lacking in zeal and have nudged me firmly along the way. There are those at times who had to temper the zeal because it was out of control. I am a person of two extremes with the middle road sometimes less worn than the gullies on both sides of the road.

To those who have tried to keep me from the ditches I am eternally grateful for without you I would have long ago failed to get up and try again.

Saint Mother Theodore Guerin said:

To write requires time; but to love, to cherish, to pray for, through that desire we have for the happiness of our friends, time is not needed.

~~~^j^~~~
Thanks be to God!!