St. Francis Called

When the sun came up today after that wild little storm the world was all pearl and opal, with a sky the color the streets of Heaven are said to be and I would have felt entirely joyous - if I weren’t worried about the animals. It’s been a hard winter and there's just not much to eat anymore.

For Christmas this year two of our kids gave David and me this amazing motion-activated camera that you mount on a tree to catch the animal-action around your house. So now when I start feeling sorry for myself I call up their images and try to telepathically say to them that Winter is almost over, which now that I think of it they probably know better than I do.

I also have my eye on those neat little slabs of seed-covered suet you can buy and hang outside. They'd be nice for the birds and squirrels anyway, though David always  says they’re a bad idea. “Once you START feeding them you can never STOP and what're you gonna, keep it up til you die?" he says, an argument that seems to me to offer lessons all its own.So yeah think I’m going to buy one or two and hang them this afternoon. I figure I can do something for these little ones even if I can’t think what to do for the raccoon, or the flouncy fox, or that dapper little skunk or these delicate deer here coming as a family to see what they can find.coming all together to see what they can find.

You Think You’re a Saint but You’re Not

An Essay in Pictures 

When we got to Venice we were fresh from a visit to Padua and the cathedral shrine to St. Anthony who met St. Francis and demonstrated ever after in his life the power of that man’s example. There, in ancient glass cases, are St. Anthony’s lower jaw, teeth and tongue, the simple tools he used to spread the message relayed to him by one who heard it from one who heard it from one who heard it from One who, going back a good bit, said He heard it from His Dad.

What I learned about Anythony in Padua I know I will never forget. But it was his mentor St. Francis I was thinking about as I stood in front of St. Mark’s in Venice the other day. They say the birds flocked to him for his loving heart. They flocked to me for my chunk of bread. One minute I was just standing there, looking around at the brave people who would take some bread, hold it aloft and immediately be as covered with pigeons as the statue of General Patton there by the banks of my favorite River Charles.

Maybe I can be brave like that, I thought. So I crouched down and they climbed all over me.

Images of the REAL moment, when I looked like a living aviary, are missing and why? Because the person in this world who knows best how far short of sainthood I fall was laughing so hard the camera shook and the pictures came out blurry.