The House – 1

My mother in her nineties told me again about a vision she had when she was my age. She went on a tour with the local churches, to a site in the far south of Ireland, where it was reported the Virgin Mary was appearing to people.

Her group of pilgrims from the Carmelite/Rosemount churches found themselves on a hill some distance from the Church where the Virgin was reported to appear, with a good view of a statue of the Virgin outside the church. Big crowds were there, as the phenomenon of the appearing Virgin had made its way into the National Newspapers. Sonnie Hegarty was there too, one of her next door neighbors.

She was in her parlor, turned bedroom, when I asked her again about it, as I had become interested in such reports. She sat up in bed and said, “A house came down over me” and not sure what she meant I questioned her and she repeated, “A house came down over me.” She went on to explain that everything “ fell away” and the Virgin Mary was in this space with her, all white light, and this being smiled at her from a beautiful face and my mother felt profoundly moved and loved. The feeling of being loved lasted at least a year by her account. She tried to tell Sonnie about her vision experience, but he said “Ah now Mrs. Longworth, your are just imagining things.” She did not have the courage to tell her confessor, the Carmelite priest. She had read enough about visionaries to know they often had difficulty reporting their visions to clergy.

She initially told me about this event about ten years later. When my nephew, Mark Longworth, heard about it he said he would feel he “had it made” if this happened to him.

My Vision – 2

My own visitation of a being, which was in monk’s robes, came in the night in Ireland the year my middle daughter was born. Again it felt like the walls of the bedroom fell away as this being appeared. It was an irish night when the sun forgets to set totally, in late June, due to our northerly latitude. The sky was reddish and brightish. A feeling of total acceptance and love emanated toward me, as if that being wanted nothing what so ever from me. It inspired these collages strung together with glue and a watercolor cut up and regrouped in a new way. I think now it was telling me what agape love feels like, that I could aspire to, that I would need to cut myself up and glue myself to as I raised my family and faced a divorce in ten years.

I did not think to promise then what would have been a wonderful promise, what I should have promised all along, to abandon what had brought me to this now and to become part of another promise, to love without wanting anything in return, to keep a new buzz going in me that is inclusive, that accepts, that no longer misses the mark of love in everything.

Blue Spring in Dayton – photo by Rose

Poetry – The Cardinal Love Bird

Love stored even in tiny grey feathers, born into my sight in the morning breeze, spinning prayer wheels, color blotted out by the light, against a dark hedge, floating up on down over the warming black top. Are they “midges” tiny flies, or dandelion seeds in the moving air, or holding all the terror of the end of a red cardinal as well as the DNA of flight? Holding all the mysteries.

Go into this good day carrying and accepting all this,  in love with the Beauty all around me,

in this Club of beauty,  called the Earth.