For many years, Kerry Hardie suffered from chronic fatigue. In a poem of hers entitled, ‘She Replies to Carmel’s Letter’, she describes going out for a walk with some friends and finding she has not the energy to continue. She sits down ‘like a duck in a puddle’ and begins to see things ‘from down where the hare sits’. Rather than feel sorry for herself, as she might sitting in the mud, she remarks, ‘then I would want to praise the ease of low wet things, the song of them, like a child’s low drone.’
When a slower pace of life is forced on us by illness, accident or redundancy, the hard questions arise; What value have I now that I can no longer contribute the way I did before? Will people still think well of me? Am I still somebody? And we sigh for those days when we felt in control and had boundless energy.
A young Mary of Mornese (later, foundress of the Salesian Sisters), recovered slowly after a bout of typhoid had taken her to death’s door. Her former life of working in the fields was over. In a moment of inspiration she decided with her best friend, Petronilla, to learn how to sew. It came to her that if every stitch were a stitch of love, her whole being could blossom; she could live in the presence of Love.
Kerry Hardie concludes her poem observing that ‘sometimes even sickness is generous and takes you by the hand and sits you beside things you would otherwise have passed over.’ Like the importance of a stitch made in love to a world unravelling: or the song of each different thing.
Photos by Fr Hugh and Ann O’Dea