Christmas Greetings

If I were Pete, yesterday morning I would have been furiously downloading photos, the perfect Christmas song, and would have written and reread the text for the perfect Smilebox card at least five times.  It would drive me crazy, his perfection, his procrastination, his propensity for taking a shower ten minutes before we were supposed to leave for Christmas Eve Mass.  Instead after all the festivities are over, the kids are asleep, and here I am attempting to send out some sort of Christmas greeting.  If you are reading this there is no need to update you on our past year as one does in a Christmas card.  

I do feel the need to let you know that I appreciate all the kindness, messages of concern and love you have been sending to our family.  In general I know I have remained out of touch to preserve my energy, allow time to think and feel.  I know everyone understands these needs.  

Today was, of course, a hard day but I couldn't help but be grateful for the love that we had and the love that remains.  

Be who you are, Be present to those who you are with and Love the best way you can.

In peace and deep seeded joy.

Words of Rememberance

Many have asked for the beautiful words that Pete's brother and sister shared at the funeral. I was shocked at the poise they had as they shared their reflections. It added so much to the beautiful celebration we had for Pete's life. Thank you Jeremy and Katie for your words and for taking me in as a sister. Pete continues to bless me with the family he welcomed me into.

Katie's reflection

Before he was a father, before he was a formal educator, before he was a physical therapist, before he was a husband, EVEN before he was a runner, Pete has always been a baseball player. Growing up baseball was his thing. There were daily pick-up games in our yard, weekly allowances spent on baseball cards, dinner conversations about batting averages, he even went as far as discussing the game while sleep walking.

In typical Pete fashion, he didn’t just play the game; he put his all into it. I can attest to this because being five years his minor, I was given the ‘gift’ of witnessing hundreds of games and the hours he spent at the batting cage, practicing switch hitting and mastering his knuckleball.

While I had the opportunity to perfect my friendship bracelet making skills on the bleachers, Pete's hard work paid off in a much more notable way. His focus, drive and determination led him to pitch a perfect game. An achievement many pitchers never accomplish let alone at a young age.

Years of pitching resulted in an elbow injury that shifted his focus to cross country and cultivated his interest in sports medicine and then physical therapy. Despite this shift in direction, his passion for the game remained consistent over the years. He continued to listen to Reds games on the radio and instilled his love of baseball in both Adah and Eamon.

I cherish the family vacations we attended minor league baseball games and cheering on the Reds at Great American Ballpark this past summer. While I have so many wonderful memories with Pete, the baseball ones will always be special.

Our left-hander has rounded third and is home.

Jeremy's reflection

The great thing about having a brother is they give you your first friend and your first rival.

Pete and I rode bikes and raced matchbox cars as friends. And there was also that time in middle school when fate smiled on me and my ping pong paddle and I somehow beat Pete twelve straight times. Beating him once was usually hard enough, so I would have been content with three or four in a row… but Pete refused to let me go upstairs until he finally won one.

But besides being my first friend and rival, Pete was also my hero.

He taught me how to choke up on a baseball bat, and never to give up walks to the bottom of the batting order.

He coached me in eighth-grade track and told me I would find that I could run harder, even if I was already hurting.

He showed me that high school was more rewarding when you also wrote for the school paper, joined the student diversity club, performed in musicals, and went on a mission trip to Mexico… all past-times that, in true little brother fashion, I eagerly took up right behind him.

As we got older, his example became more challenging to follow.

When he visited Boston University before his senior year, we went running and he lit into me for training only a couple days a week for the coming cross country season. “If you’re going to do something, he said, do it. Don’t sort of do it.”

A couple years later, I was having just an ugly, ugly cry in my bedroom, and he challenged me to describe why I was so heartbroken over this particular girl. You may be shocked to learn that at fifteen years old, I didn’t have much more than, Well, she’s cute. She was nice, too.

Pete put on his big brother pants and told me, wise and direct: No. Look at me and Eileen, he said. Family and faith are important to her. She shares my passion for social justice. We love sports, being active. If I wanted a special kind of happiness, he said, I had to be discerning. He was about to turn 19 as he said all this. Pete was my hero, because at no point in his life did he ever settle for anything less than exceptional.

Recently, as his lungs got weaker and his life got harder, he was able to do less than he wanted. He had to let some things go, as crazy as it surely made him.

But he never complained, at least not publicly. He didn’t pity himself. Or show any fear.

Even as he was forced to do less, he demonstrated resolve, grit. Grace. Only Peter Mosher could take doing less and find a way to somehow do more.

I witnessed his passion to demand more out of oneself… and the best out of life.

I know I’m still a work in progress… how could one not be, when Pete Mosher’s your big brother?

And the best out of life? Well, Pete Mosher’s my big brother.

Obituary

Peter Mosher took his final breath December 7th, 2013 – 32 years of age. He left behind his beloved wife and partner of 15 years, Eileen (nee McGrath) and two beautiful children Adah and Eamon. He was cherished by his parents Kevin and Peggy, his brother Jeremy and sister Katie (Andrew Wright) and grandparents Mary and Roger Pierson. He will be so missed by the numerous members of his Pierson, Mosher, and McGrath-Seiffert families. Pete was a remarkable human who left this world a much better place and touched the lives of so many across this country and world in such a short time. His impression was left on so many in the St. Xavier, Saint Louis University, St. Clare, Mount St. Joseph, and College Hill communities. His students and colleagues admired and respected him. He excelled in all he did and the world will not be the same without him. The most important remembrance of Pete, though, is to register as a Organ Donor! Visitation will be at St. Clare Church (1443 Cedar Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45224) on Friday, December 13th from 4:00pm until 8:00pm. Mass of Christian Burial Saturday 10:30am location is pending. Neidhard-Minges Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.

He fought a good fight but his lungs could do no more.

For those who haven't heard Pete lost his battle yesterday.  Initially when we got to the hospital on Friday he was doing well on the vent and they thought they would be able to get him weaned off.  After my last post he really started struggling to breath even on the vent.  They sedated him and let the vent do more work but he wasn't able to get enough carbon dioxide out.  I knew things weren't looking good but the docs assured me they had it under control, it wasn't that bad.

Then around 12:45 pm he suddenly crashed, they tried for an hour to revive him but couldn't.  He had a bilateral pneumothorax, in layman term both of his lungs collapsed, which caused his heart to stop.  The docs tried so hard to revive him and we knew this was always a possibility with the disease he had.

Everyone did what we should have done, Pete's lungs were just done. They couldn't do it any more.

I had a very dear friend with me through the trauma, probably the best person to stand by me while my heart was ripped opened.  There aren't words to describe this pain.

Pete and I said everything we needed to say to each other along time ago and we just kept saying those things over and over.  He loved me more than I will ever know and will be with me as I continue to live my life as I promised I would.  I told him I would go on but I would be so sad, he said that was ok.

So I challenge all of you to be sad, yes, our hearts are breaking, but he wants us to go on, be bold, enjoy life, live each breath to the fullest.  Please continue to spread the word of organ donation.

I know you are all wrapping me up with a big blanket of love.  We need it right now.  We don't need much else right now but will be asking for everything I need.

Fighter

Have I ever mentioned how amazing Pete Mosher is?  Well this guy is a fighter.  Last night he fought for each breath for three hours, trying to suck down enough oxygen to avoid being intubated.  He was so tired that he needed a break, so after being told by me and the ER doctor that it was ok to take a break, he chose to be intubated.  So as I write this Pete is on the vent (breathing machine) but is already being slowly weaned after just eight hours. 

This most recent crash was preceded by four days of low grade fevers, a really bad cough, and shear exhaustion.  So the transplant team and ICU docs are hard at work to find out what is the cause of this infection.  After getting into the ICU this morning I am totally confident in the team here at Barnes.  They are checking every specific medicine and have a special box of approved medicine that is milk and lactose free.  I feel so relieved to be here. 

So as always keep Pete in your thoughts and prayers.  I am sure Pete will have some deep thoughts about this most recent event and will present those thoughts with his usual elegance.  Until then, just the facts here.  Thanks for all the love and support being showered on our little family, we are not alone on this journey.

Gratitudes

A wife who remains ever-faithful and strong in sickness instead of health.

Children who can't wait to ride bikes, climb trees and run around with their Daddy.

58 birthday cards (and five dozen holy cookies) awaiting our daughter on her birthday.

Family driving six hours to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.

140 financial donors giving over $27,000 to support our family.

A second city that we know like home.

Reconnecting with dear friends and their growing families that time and distance had nudged away.

Texts, emails, phone calls or Facebook PMs just to say "Hi" (even if they aren't always returned).

Two faith communities where we belong and are supported. 

A reading group (Russian literature, Dostoevsky) that is stretching me cognitively, emotionally and spiritually.

A career and an employer that allow me the dignity of meaningful work away from home.

Insurance that covers quite a bit of my care and (so far) has treated me like a person and a patient more than a number and an actuarial statistic.

Skilled and caring professions making medical miracles every day.

14,013 organ donors and families that gave the gift of life last year.

A generous person and family who may be making that decision right now.

One breath,

then another,

another,

and another.

Happy Birthday, Dear Adah!

Congratulations, Good Luck & Thank You, St. Xavier XC

Congratulations to the St. Xavier cross country team who won their second straight Ohio state championship on November 2nd.

Two weeks later they competed at the Midwest regional meet and finished runners up against the best competition from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Missouri.  Senior Evan Stifel broke away from a pack filled with individual state champions to capture one of his very first individual victories!

Apart from their exploits on the cross country course, the St. Xavier runners, coaches, alumni and parents have been very generous in their support for us.  Between several fund-raisers and numerous individual gifts, St. Xavier cross country has supported us with almost $1600.  They even outfitted me with some new work-out gear.

All the best to the team as they head to Portland next weekend and try to best last year's ninth place finish at Nationals.  

Look who’s turning FIVE on November 24th!

This girl is strong, funny, precocious, intelligent and generally a sweet girl.  Adah was born with a strong personality and knows what she wants.  We are so proud of the little person she is becoming and are confident that she is going to be a very successful adult.
 

She has been a trooper throughout this process and in many ways has had to deal with more change than the rest of our family.  We have asked her to grow up a little quicker, be a little bit more patient, and be open to LOTS of different people swooping in to take care of her and her brother.  When we decided we needed to make the move to St. Louis we took her from a preschool she loved and where she had already made close friends - a place where she would be in school for three, half-days and home with mom and grandparents the rest of the week. 

Then we moved here and started her in a new school with new rules, new kids, uniforms, and five full days!  She struggled the first month: each day upset, refusing to get dressed, refusing to eat breakfast and I had to physically peel her off of me when I dropped her off.  However, for the past few weeks she has had a real turn around, enjoys school, knows LOTS of the students from all different grades and classes.  We got a great report from her teacher. She seems to be doing REALLY well and one day even requested to stay at school instead of coming home at the end of the day.  Now if we could just see that angelic behavior at home!

So in short Adah has had to deal with so much more than many people have had to deal with in their first two decades of life.  I know that she will continue to be strong and will triumph through more trials in her life.  I also know that she and I will have to be good buddies as we get through this life that we share.  As she grows I continue to reflect on that and work hard to keep all of this in perspective, especially when she struggles with her “listening skills.” 

So as she nears her fifth birthday away from home I would love for our mail box to be flooded with birthday cards so she feels all that love that we know you have for her.  

Here is our address if you don’t already have it - if you have a few minutes to send JUST a card for her birthday. 

4401 Chouteau Ave. #2110

St. Louis MO 63110

Thank you all in advance. 
 

Cucullus non facit monachum

Whenever we find ourselves on or around a college campus, Eileen and I like to ask each other if we could still pass for traditional undergrads - or at least for graduate students.  (Admittedly the game works best when we don't have children in tow). 

Lately, I've been spending a lot time around Washington University's Medical Campus as it adjoins Barnes Jewish Hospital.  A few weeks ago, a gaggle of young female students passed me, and a couple of them offered a brief, deflected glance and smile in my direction.  Whether med students, DPTs, or future pharmacists, I thought to myself "Yes! I still have 'it.'"

Tonight I pulled into a handicapped parking space at the grocery store and walked towards the entrance without my oxygen on.  Although my tank had run out earlier in the day, going sans-cannula is not unusual when I shop because a) I prefer not to draw attention and b) between a slow pace and the shopping cart to lean on, my oxygen levels stay pretty high.

As I walked toward the automatic doors I noticed a woman sitting in a motorized cart shaking her head in my direction.  I guess my label "End-stage, Obstructive Lung Disease; FEV1 18%; Lung Transplant Waiting List" wasn't big enough for her to read.  I just looked the other way, but even if I had looked long enough, I wouldn't have been able to see her label either (Congestive Heart Failure, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type I Diabetes, or something else).

Before moving to St. Louis I had the chance to be interviewed by the local news about the issue of limited handicapped parking spaces, abuse of those spaces, looks and appearances.  You can watch it here:


Bringing three bags of groceries in to the apartment tonight took me 20 minutes - changing my oxygen tank, grabbing our little blue wagon, carting it back and forth, and resting a few times in between.  Sometimes I wear the hood of my illness pretty well, but when I don't have to, I try not to.

After the chance encounter with those students on Euclid Avenue near Wash U., my ego spent a few minutes absorbed in itself (and my boyish good looks).  As I passed into the glass-lined  Barnes North Garage elevator I caught my reflection and realized it was just as likely the oxygen tube that had drawn devotion's visage.
  

Katie Mosher Wright Update

Thanks for all those who offered up their prayers. My sister Katie's thyroid surgery was successful and she is healing well. She begins radioactive iodine treatments in a couple of weeks, but the prognosis is for a full, cancer-free recovery.

Katie with her favorite niece and nephew visiting in St. Louis the day before surgery.

 

Born to Run

I have had a lot of running on my mind lately. Here is a glimpse into that stream of consciousness.
 
Two weeks ago Eileen won the St. Louis Second Wind Women’s 5k - her second top-two finish since moving to St. Louis!
 
The St. Louis Rock n’ Roll Marathon was on Sunday and we enjoyed dining with and cheering on some friends from Cincinnati.
 
St. Xavier’s ever-supportive Cross Country team aims for its second consecutive and fifth Ohio State Championship this Saturday. (Exactly fifteen years since the St. Xavier Harriers’ first state title – my senior season).
 
Driving through Forest Park this afternoon, Eileen and I were admiring the very same resplendent sugar maples, sweet gums and gingkoes that used to carpet and cushion our SLU season-end stride-outs in crimsons, auburns and golds.

Last Sunday’s scriptures even came from the second letter to Timothy 4:7 “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.”
 
As someone who ran and trained competitively for nearly a third of my life, running was part of my identity, my philosophy, my worldview, my faith. And in some ways it still is.
 
Running was one of the first ways this lung disease manifested itself, first in slower times, then diminished endurance, then a realization that something about my running was just not right or fun anymore. Losing my competitive edge, preferred stress reliever and even my identity as “a runner” was a cyclical unwinding that still isn’t fair.
 
But even as I can’t justify calling myself “a runner” there are aspects of that identity that I still maintain.
 
I have long found that my rate of perceived exertion or RPE (a subjective measure of one’s workload and breathlessness) is an unusually unreliable surrogate for objective measures of my oxygen saturation - a pattern I attribute to a long-trained “comfort” with and tolerance to shortness of breath.
 
After several weeks of pulmonary rehab I keep pushing the envelope as far as my heart and lungs will allow. So far my PR is 1.91 miles in 30 minutes on the treadmill. I hope to eclipse two miles soon, even though I’m quite the sight to see motoring through 15.5-minute miles with seven or eight liters of oxygen flooding my lungs and irritating my nasal passages every minute.

In some ways it feels like I just may have been training for this transplant all my life.
 
Last Fall, laying on a stretcher at our curb, fading out of consciousness, my last recollection is telling Eileen I loved her and hearing her tell me not to give up as the ambulance doors slammed shut. Like the cross-country runner who crosses the line not quite remembering the last quarter-mile of his race and whether it was his legs or his mind that willed him to the finish, I “came to” in an emergency room bay, gasping, cursing, and exhausted like I had never known, but relieved and satisfied that I had successfully finished that leg of this race for my life.
 
The Mount St. Joseph newspaper, Dateline, wrote a nice story about me a few weeks ago. The student author asked me about the role and strength of my faith through this transplant process. Paradoxically, the more one leans on their faith the harder it seems (to me) to answer such a question in a mere sound bite, quote, or even a single blog post.

While I didn’t think about it until after the article was published, I decided that the clothes bin under my bed could serve as a metaphor for my faith. That bin is stuffed full of my old running gear – racing jerseys, dry-fit shorts, racing flats, even some old track spikes. While I’ve thinned out other clothes for style, fit, or space, I haven’t been able to bring myself to get rid of that running gear. Something in the back of my mind tells me that I’m not quite done with it, I’ll want it, need it later.
 
Timothy Sweeney is a New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University double-lung recipient who ran the 2010 New York City Marathon with his transplant surgeon less than one year after his transplant. (The 43rd NYC Marathon takes place on Sunday after a year-long hiatus following Sandy).



Maybe I’ll run the 44th NYC, the 17th Flying Pig or next year’s St. Louis Rock n’ Roll marathon.

Maybe it is more accurate to say that this transplant process is just training for the rest of my life.

A Day to Walk, Walk

 

This Saturday, October 19th there are two walks in two different parks supporting two causes important in our St. Louis lives.  We plan to attend and participate in both and welcome others to join in whatever way they can.

10th Annual St. Louis Second Wind Lung Walk

Second Wind is an organization that supports lung transplant patients and recipients throughout the transplant process.

Registration begins at 8am at the Forest Park Visitors Center. 
5k Walk and Race begin at 9am.
Register and learn more online at www.secondwindstl.org.

St. Margaret of Scotland School Walk-A-Thon

St. Margaret is the parish and school that have graciously welcomed us and Adah into her Pre-K classroom.

 

The walk-a-thon goes from 9am to 2pm at Tower Grove Park.  Adah will be seeking sponsors per ½ mile laps (or 10,000 steps in her case) or in total.  Please email us if you would like to support the church and school that have supported and welcomed us!

 

In sickness and (very soon in full) health

Last week was a roller coaster week for the extended Mosher family.  (Hence no blog postings).  On Monday of that week my sister Katie was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  That’s not exactly the news our family needed nor the extended honeymoon that she and her husband Andrew were looking for.

Katie Mosher Wright 

Fortunately we learned on Tuesday that the tumor is a papillary carcinoma  one of the slowest growing and easiest to treat forms of cancer.  None the less, Katie will be undergoing surgery to remove her thyroid on Monday, October 21st to be followed with a week of radioactive iodine treatment in November. 

While Katie’s long-term prognosis is excellent, understandably this is an unexpected source of stress and anxiety for her, Andrew, and the whole family.  I know that the TeamMosher’s Born for More community is strong and generous, so I ask that you add Katie, Andrew, the Mosher and Wright families to your prayer lists these coming weeks.   Due to the overwhelming financial generosity of TeamMosher, Eileen and I are in a position to extend our own personal financial gift to support them and ease their medical bills.  Thank you all for allowing us the privilege of “paying it forward” to my sister and brother-in-law.  

Your expressions of generosity, prayer and concern can be sent to Katie and Andrew at katrina.m.mosher@gmail.com and wright.a.andrew@gmail.com.

Calling TeamMosher - St. Louis!

Hey TeamMosher - St. Louis!

Remember when we launched our Caringbridge Calendar and some you bemoaned the lack of volunteer opportunities in St. Louis?  Your time has come!

Now that we are settling into to something of a “normal” St. Louis routine, we have a better idea of how you can help support us in our home away from home.  We’ve added four different repeating volunteer requests to the TeamMosher Caringbridge Calendar.  (See the link to the right to “Join Team Mosher.”) Here are the sorts of things we are looking for:

What: Family-friendly homes willing to host us for dinner (we’ll even make or bring it, our treat!) and a play date.  (Our apartment can only contain so much by way of children, toys, fun and energy).
When: Once every couple of weeks

What: Childcare (for Eileen & Pete Dates)
When: Once every couple of weeks

What: Morning Childcare (for Eileen to have a morning for herself)
When: Once a week

 

What: Late Afternoon Childcare (for Eileen & Adah to have some special mother-daughter after school time)
When: Once a week
 

(Please note that the dates and times listed on the calendar only serve as placeholders. We can work out a specific date and time between our schedules and your own).

Thanks to all of those who have already lent a hand and welcomed us back to St. Louis in one way or another.  We look forward to spending more quality time with you and yours in our weeks and months of waiting yet to come.

Go Billikens!

Adah and Eamon found the Billiken during SLU's homecoming soccer game.

 

While driving up to campus, Eamon identified familiar landmarks like "church," "water fountain," and "airplane."  Upon dropping Eileen and Adah off behind Griesedieck Hall to register for Homecoming, Adah's very first words were the exclamation, "Wow Mommy, the grass is all cut so well!"  (Fellow SLU alums know I couldn't make this stuff up!).

 



THANKS

Fair warning, I am not as eloquent, deep, or polished as my husband.  Words have never been my thing (just ask my High School AP English teacher, God rest her soul) but I feel like I need to say some things. 

The last 5 years have slowly gotten harder and harder.  For a long time Pete and I struggled to maintain our “normal” life by ourselves by altering our expectations and roles in our family.  It was hard for Pete to admit he had to change the way he lived his life and he hated to see how that in turn affected the rest of our little, growing family.  Slowly we allowed close family and a few friends in on those struggles, allowing them to help a little more here and there.  Each month and year got harder and we asked more and more of family and friends.  As our needs grew so did our support system.

When I looked around the church last Saturday I saw the many faces of friends and family from all our different circles.  I saw a church full of people who have been praying for us non-stop.  It was overwhelming to say the least. 

Pete’s reflection was beautiful, thoughtful, and did not have one hint of self-pity.  He addressed the crowd as he does best, using his brain.

I don’t live in my head.  Most of my actions and words are not that well thought out, which has gotten me in more than one pickle, they come straight from my heart.  Some would say I need a better filter.  But right now I need to say what has been pouring out of me: THANKS. 

I cannot say that enough.  THANKS.  I have so much gratitude in my heart.  There have been SO MANY people who have helped us get through each day.  I would have gone completely crazy by now if it hadn’t been for all the people who made us meals, watched our kids, picked up a weekend work shift, cut our grass, cut me some slack when my brain wasn’t working, sent me a Facebook message just to say hey, made or wore bracelets, traveled in for our send-off, sent gift cards or checks, and supported us in so many other ways. 

Now that we have transitioned out to St. Louis life has gotten easier in some ways and harder in others.  Our apartment has proven to be much easier for Pete to live in, no stairs, handicap parking, etc.  I have finally had a moment to stop and think, do a few things to take care of myself, eat three meals a day, and reflect on all the gifts that God has given.  Eamon is just going with the flow.  Adah is struggling to adjust to long school days without Mom and Dad around.  This has been hard on all of us but I am confident we will figure out how to make this new schedule work. 

As we live our advent life, be confident that each day as I am walking in the park, playing with the kids, taking care of Pete, I know that each of you is standing there with me, giving me strength and courage to get through each day.  Someone said recently “Each family has a story.  Theirs is an inspiration.” Well if it is, it is only because of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people supporting us through prayer, gifts, time, and unending love.  You are all the inspiration, the amazing gift from God that gets us through each day.  I look forward to the day we return to Cincinnati and being able to give back to others who find themselves in times of need. 

From my whole being, Thank You.

Introducing a new blogger

While I don't like to admit it, there will come a time when I am unable to write the Born for More blog. (Like when I'm heavily sedated, on a ventilator, in the ICU and recovering from the transplant operation). 

Easier for me to conceive of, there may be a time when my reading audience is just plain tired of my writing.  For those of you thinking to yourselves, "Yeah, Pete that was about three weeks ago," you are in luck!

I'm pleased to present the first entry by the lovely and talented Eileen McGrath Mosher - the super-glue wife, mother and companion who holds TeamMosher together.  Enjoy!

Send-off Blessing

Many who attended our Send-off Celebration at St. Clare asked for the text from the blessing that was prayed over our family.  It was written by my sister-in-law Carrie Meyer who recently finished her dual Masters in Divinity and Spirituality offered jointly from Bellarmine University and the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.  The inner and outer beauty that Carrie and her words eminate are especially powerful given her experience from the tragic and selfless perspective as an organ donor's sibling. 

God of All Creation - who is Three in One as a speaker, word, and breath are three in one.

Loving Creator who hovered over the waters of primordial chaos and spoke words of creation;

Word Incarnate who spoke to the winds and calmed them;
Eternal Spirit rushing in at gale forces, touching our faces with gentle breezes.
You are the very Breath of Life.
It is you who animate every creature on earth with a steady inhale and exhale.
 

You breathed the Breath of Life into Pete on the day of his birth and you have sustained him in life to this day through your own Breath and your own Hands. We are thankful for the hands that have healed him and lungs – human or machine – that have supported his own. Strengthen the lungs you knit together for him in his mother’s womb that he may continue speak words of Truth to the world of You, words of Love to Eileen for You, and words of Care to Adah and Eamon about You. And if it be You Will – heal those same lungs.

 

We know you do not abandon the work of your hands. We ask you to sustain Pete in this time of waiting. Strengthen his heart and mind, calm his anxieties remind him that in all times and places we belong to you. Prepare him to receive a gift from you – a gift of healing, a gift of breath.

 

God you walked on the Earth as Jesus Christ. You wept over the death of loved ones. You coughed in the dusty streets of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, and on the road to the cross. Jesus who is the ultimate healer, if it is not your will to mend what is broken, we ask for a more human miracle. We ask for a miracle both beautiful and brutal. Do what you have done over and again: bring life out of tragedy and death. Move the heart of a family in pain to choose life that Pete might have breath.

 

We pray now in advance for the death that might bring Pete breath. We pray in advance that you pour your comfort on the family who will make a selfless choice for another. Pull them to you even as the will think you far away. We pray earnestly out of our love and deep gratitude for them. Let our prayers create a space for them – this family known only to you. Let our prayers create a space of comfort in your Holy Heart, a space of stillness and peace when their hearts are wild and at war. In this space their gift of love to us will not ‘make sense’ of their loss or purport to assuage their pain, but in this space let their comfort be in You, let their consolation be in the love and relationship they still share with the one who has been taken from them.

You are a God of Good Friday and of Easter Sunday. Hold in tender care each person involved on the day when our Easter Sunday is the Good Friday of another.

 

You are the very Breath of Life.

It is you who animate every creature on earth with a steady inhale and exhale, do not abandon the work of your hands.

Send-off Reflection

Thanks to the hundreds of you who attended our Send-off Celebration at St. Clare on Saturday (and hundreds that attended in spirit). We'll post some photos soon. In the meantime here is the reflection I shared on John 20:19-22 as some of you have requested it.

I want to take just a few moments to reflect on the presence of the Divine in relationship to the Gospel of St. John that Drew just proclaimed for us. In particular, how is it that we come to recognize God in our midst?

No doubt the Sisters of Charity, Franciscan Sisters of the Poor and other women religious would remind us that a few verses ahead this passage, the risen Christ is revealed first to a woman – Mary of Magdala. Yet even this exemplar of womankind is herself slow to recognize Jesus; mistaking Him first for a grave-robber then for a gardener. It isn’t until Jesus calls her by name that Mary sees Him for who He is.

Then there are the disciples cowering in fear. Jesus offers them a simple greeting, blessing of peace and the wounds of His hands and His side as visual proof that it is indeed Him, risen to new life. A few verses following our reading, Thomas, ever-the-cynic, requires even tactile, palpable evidence that Jesus is precisely who He says, with the opportunity to touch Christ’s still-open wounds.

But even the indisputable, divine presence of the risen Christ standing before them is not enough to assuage their fears and anxieties. It isn’t until Jesus breathes upon the disciples that they are animated by the Holy Spirit to unlock their physical and metaphorical doors and to re-engage with the world around them.

Here is the paradox of this passage – that the most impressive and persuasive case for Christ’s divinity, His resurrection from the dead, is revealed to and recognized by the disciples in the most familiar and human of ways. His first-name embrace and simple greetings among friends. His vulnerability to admit, expose, share, and be touched in His broken, wounded, and scarred places. A deep, diaphragmatic breath in… and slow, purse-lipped expiration out - empowering the disciples to be born for a life more fully lived.

Instead of well-tuned trumpet blasts, the tightly choreographed descent of cherubs, lightning strikes or bellowing voices from on high, God reveals the risen Son with a first-name called, a friendly blessing shared, a wound to be tended to, and a breath exhaled.

Where are you looking to encounter the Divine Creator, the Transcendent Truth and the Life-animating Spirit? Do you find these in a friendly embrace, a simple blessing, a vulnerable imperfection, a single, life-sustaining breath? I hope this would be so.

And so until our next embrace, we ask for your blessing over our wounded and vulnerable family, as we seek the gift of new, life-giving breath.

Peace be with you.


Peace, be with you.