Resurrection Clothes

Prayer to Our Lady Untier of Knots (For those unfamiliar with this practice or its history, see notes and link below.) Dear Mother Mary, Mother of God, given at the foot of the Cross by your son Jesus to John and thus to me and to all the world, I come to you today in trustful love because you are my Mother [and the Mother of                                            for whom I pray]. You see how tangled and tied in knots are the ribbons of our lives. Please untie these knots:      state your intention      , so we can live more fully in the peace and joy of Christ. Holy Mother of God and our Mother, teach us and lead us to do our part, and to wait in patient trust, while these knots are untied in the right way and time, for the good of all concerned. With you, dear Mother, And with all the angels and saints, We glorify and praise our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever.

A Letter From a Friend Who’s Dead The other day I got a letter from a friend who’s dead. She wrote it first, of course, to tell me things she wanted said about our friendship, all the fun we’d had, the talks about things near our hearts, things happy and things sad. And now I’m thinking how so many dearest friends are gone: the Judy who died years ago, my nearly-sister Gayle, Patricia, Mrs. Faulk, Mary Ann and Sally, Bernie and the Judy I received the letter from…. Then it occurs to me how all the people at the breakfast table of my childhood left and left and left and left, and I alone am here, recalling dimly or with unexpected clarity those ancient times. But then I think how life has multiplied the friends, the family—never to replace the ones now gone, of course, but filling in some empty spaces, holes left gaping when they went. How many more will go before I join the great collection on the other side? I cannot know, of course, and th