A Lark

    This is the view from the cozy motel-style housing at the Redemptorist Retreat Center about twenty minutes from downtown Tucson, Arizona but it might as well be several hours!  The quiet grace of the desert is instantly felt.  The subtle colors of spring in this dry landscape emerge as one learns to see with soft eyes.
    I had planned a longer stay but was only able to rest here for a weekend.  The Redemptorists have a large presence in my hometown, St. Louis.  The order is devoted to preaching but my stay was dedicated to blessed silence.
    The order was founded by St. Alphonsus Liguori in Scala, Italy  in 1732. 

  

  This photo was taken by Laura T., another lovely Italian import!

    "Up the Irish," cries this swimmer emerging from the frigid waters of the Atlantic on this St. Patrick's Day morning in Portland, Maine.  It looks to me like he is on fire and I can testify that a cold plunge really makes you feel alive, on fire with life.
    Tingling and embodied, life is a vivid experience.  I am living  a life aware of the needs of others, perhaps even before the need is given voice...one thing I've learned for certain in the past three years, since I lost my dad on St. Pat's 2006, is that I need to empower my mother with dignity.  I admire her courage to live alone, forge a life without a man she had known since childhood, but of course, she's Irish too...and full of courage.

 

    Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities released pictures of an ancient Egyptian  burial chamber containing the inscribed sarcophagus of a "noble woman", a rare title in the 19th Dynasty.  I wonder who she was?