Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”

A colleague has had a recurring arm infection, for over a decade at least. Expressing out loud what I have often thought, I said to him recently: “I can’t imagine how much patience you have had to show.” Knowing myself, I realize that even a lesser irritation would make me whine. He replied: “Well, as I go to see the doctor and leave the clinic, I see all these people in the waiting room who deal with much more serious things day after day, week after week. My trials seem minor.”

Concurrently, another challenge gains from perspective. Major renovation of a building where I have lived for over 20 years requires that all the denizens move out. This is certainly a disruption. But in my case, it’s only up one floor and down a few doors, a short distance. Too, five confreres where I’ve lived for years effect most of the move within three hours. 

This ‘disruption” is far from registering on the Richter scale, nothing like the dislocations that my married peers go through. The spouse of many years -- 40, 50, 60 and more -- dies and the surviving partner so often must move from the well-worn house the two of them have shared with their children for decades to a facility in another neighborhood, with entirely new neighbors.

E.g., a specific case, that of Jan and Ben, illustrates this. They had lived for 50 or 60 years on what became a hobby farm and reared seven children. After Ben died, Jan moved from the family’s large farmhouse to a one-bedroom senior living apartment in Green Valley. Some years later, Jan moved to a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living home in Brookvale.

Having fallen several times while there, she had to be moved by her family to a nursing home in Fairville. Each move involved giving up more friends, more independence and treasured possessions. Now, bereft of many loved objects and familiar faces of the past, she uses a wheelchair. -- Let’s not waste time and tears on some displaced Benedictine monk. 

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

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