Butterflies and Giraffes

On our final morning at Our Lady of Grace, each of the fellows said a brief goodbye to the school-body following Mass. This was no easy task. That morning, after about an hour of sleep, I had put on a special pair of butterfly earrings that I figured the little ones would like. While walking to Mass through the darkness to which we had become accustomed, I thought more about butterflies. I decided that butterflies were like our time at Our Lady of Grace.

In my fair-well to the students I explained that our time together was a bit like an encounter with a butterfly- brief, yet beautiful. Usually when you see a butterfly, you catch a glimpse of a bit of its intricate pattern, and even if you follow it down the road for a while trying to notice each aspect of its wings, you undoubtedly fail to appreciate every detail. My time with the students gave me  many opportunities to notice a bit of the detail on the butterfly’s wings, but there is surely more to each of the students’ personalities which I don’t yet know, but love anyway. They seemed to understand this analogy as nature is more than a backdrop to their lives, it is an integral part of their existence.

The tear-filled goodbyes, the reluctant releases from hugs and the looseleaf letters which filled our last day at OLG will not be forgotten. Since I have returned to the U.S. I’ve had a challenging time processing all of the aspects of our time in Kenya. I will probably post a few more times when I’ve sorted through more of the stories, but two things I have taken from this experience are the Rosary and the universal peace and unity of the Eucharist. During Mass this past Sunday with my family, I started crying. Perhaps it was a bit of the jet lag, but I think there was something more to it. My mom turned to me and asked if I was homesick for Kenya and I cried more. I surely looked a bit crazy to the parishioners surrounding me, but that didn’t stop me either. In that moment I felt the unity and peace which the Eucharist provides throughout the world. Here I was, sitting in a beautiful church in the suburbs of New York City, saying the same prayers, taking part in the same sacrament which I did merely 6 days ago in a room about 1/4 the size of our church in rural Africa two days away by airplane. It was an incredible realization: Jesus came for all of us. Not just the rich, not just the poor, but for all and everyone in between.

I intended to write about giraffes and more about the Rosary in this post, but that will have to come tomorrow seeing as exhaustion is rapidly setting in.

Amani (peace) for now.