Sometimes it’s hard to remember back that far, but if you recall, this year, for the first time in a long time, we actually managed to have somewhat of a spring, with warmer temperatures and brighter days than usual here in New England. With Easter arriving in April, not March, it seemed like a good idea to plant a few pansies along our front walk. The vibrant colors and smiling faces of those cheerful flowers provided a perfect way to celebrate the season of rebirth.

A far more knowledgeable gardener than I, my sister Alane advised me that pansies don’t do well in the heat and wouldn’t last through the summer. Usually I plant impatiens in that spot, and I assumed that I’d be doing that in about a month or so, after the pansies had wilted. Amazingly, they flourished instead, not only through the spring, but also through the summer. Undoubtedly their survival had something to do with the fact that we were living under monsoon conditions through much of June and even into July, with rainy wet days the norm, not the exception.

As the weeks went on, I didn’t have the heart to tear out the pansies in order to replant the bed. They were too vibrant to merit such a cruel execution. So, they remained and though a tad leggy, they are still blooming, even now, in September.

I missed my impatiens, but again amazingly, not for long. We have a brick walk leading to our door. If you’re familiar with brick walkways, you know that they are constructed without cement, by placing the bricks on top of a base of pure sand. All good gardeners know that if you want plants to grow well, you use loam, not sand. Over the years, hardy weeds have occasionally managed to poke their way up through the bricks. This year though, a crop of beautiful pink impatiens did just that. They must have seeded themselves from the plants that had occupied the flowerbed the prior summer.

Despite conditions that weren’t the best, the pansies and the impatiens had grown and thrived, proving that nature is resilient and that its flowers do somehow manage to bloom wherever they land. We should be able to do that too. Sometimes that is precisely what we are called to do.

Recently my sister and I visited an especially sacred place to me, the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, the Trappist monastery whose most famous monk was Thomas Merton. As we entered the monastery’s visitors’ center, Brother Seamus, was speaking to a group of tourists about monastic life in general and his own life in particular. The conversation took the form of a question-and-answer period. Deeply philosophical and spiritual, his off-the-cuff conversation was incredibly enlightening.

As part of his remarks, Brother Seamus spoke about one of their elderly monks, a trained farmer, who had come to Gethsemani at the tender age of eighteen, and worked in its fields for many years. One day, he found himself limping and thought he must have injured his foot somehow. When the condition didn’t improve, further tests were done. They showed that he had multiple sclerosis (“MS”), a progressively debilitating disease.

Now 73, he is confined to a wheelchair and has very little ability to move. Brother Seamus told us that on his latest visit to his friend, it was lunchtime. Wanting to remain independent, when he found that he could not pick up the sandwich from the tray, he asked Seamus to place it into his hand. Then when he could not raise his hand to lift the sandwich to his mouth, he asked him to hold it while he took bites from it. Still in control of his mental faculties, this dear man carries on long conversations about life, God, and the world. MS is pretty sandy soil in which to find oneself planted, yet Brother Seamus informed us that through all of this, his friend has never once complained about his condition. Adapting totally to it, he accepts it and praises God for each day of life.

“Every one of us carries a cross, yet God never makes that cross too heavy for us to bear,” Brother Seamus assured us. As an illustration of that point, he repeated the often told story of a person who complained so loudly about his misfortune that he attracted the attention of God. To end the complaining, God brought the person into a room filled with crosses and instructed him to choose any one of them that he would rather have. Suddenly silent and penitent, he once again picked up his own cross because he realized that of all of them, it was in fact the easiest one for him to carry.

Brother Seamus also told us of his own initial misgivings upon entering monastic life. Looking around at his fellow monks, he realized that he would be spending the rest of his life in this closed community and feared that he had nothing at all in common with any of these men. Confiding in an elderly monk, he asked him how he would be able to live with this group when there was not even one of them that he would have chosen as a friend in the outside world. He received the sage reply, “You say that you would not choose any of these men as a friend, but think, you did not get to choose your brothers or your sisters either.” There are some things that are chosen for us. It is up to us to look at those things in such a way that we create beauty from them and find in them the meaning that brings joy to our lives.

Another example of that was found in a third story that Brother Seamus shared with us. He spoke of another monk whose mother had tuberculosis. She was so severely ill when he was born that she was not even allowed to hold him, and she died shortly afterwards. His Dad had told him the story, and it had always haunted him. As a young man, he knew that he had a vocation to the priesthood and, with his father’s blessing, he joined the monastery at the even younger age of fifteen.

Throughout his life he had remained upset by the thought that his mother had never held him in her arms. One day, he mentioned that concern to a group visiting Gethsemani. One of the visitors, a nun, spoke up, saying, “Think, Father, your mother held you for nine months.” Her simple and true words dispelled his many years of sadness. Sometimes, it is indeed in the way we look at things that we find hope and courage.

Like Brother Seamus, I too find hope and courage in the lives of those around whom I have been planted. On this same trip, we visited our relatives in New York. Our cousin Maria did not have an easy life, growing up in World War II Italy, her father already dead, her mother also dying young, raised by her grandmother, and coming to America as a war bride, leaving behind her sister and brother, and so many others whom she loved.

An extremely religious woman, Maria’s faith shines over her life. The aftereffects from a recent fall, osteoporosis, and rheumatoid arthritis keep her in continual pain, yet she continues to smile, to praise God, to love life and her family. She personally cooked Sunday dinner for us, making from scratch, the time-consuming treasured specialties passed on through the generations, tomato sauce, meatballs, and eggplant parmesan. My husband Dana quipped that we had gone out for two expensive meals in the Hamptons’ finest, highly-recommended restaurants, only to find that the best meal was the one that Maria made. She hadn’t slept well the night before, yet she cooked for us. She was tired, yet she visited with us, staying up late to tell us the tales of our roots that we love to hear, stories of faith and courage, of miraculous appearances of Our Lady, of pilgrimages and prayers throughout the decades, of triumphing over tragedy. That kind of resilience too is nothing short of amazing.

As you continue to journey through your own life this autumn, may you too bloom wherever you are planted; may you find the courage to carry whatever cross is yours to bear, the faith to know that God walks always with you, the hope to persevere, and the love to embrace others in peace. Happy Fall to All!

– Carole Anne Scott