A Poem

Mary-Win

Frail, tiny, and still,

She voices no sound

nor moves her rigid limbs.

Unseeing eyes are half-closed.

Does she hear our speech

or feel the hands of those who

turn, move, lift, or cleanse her unresisting body?

She slowly consumes food and water dispensed one spoonful at a time.

Some question the purpose of her altered state of being alive.

Does she suffer?

Is her choice, this shadowed life?

Is MaryWin simply a burden?

Yet in the glow emanating from her face, we are graced with the

glimmer of a different reality.

We glimpse beauty and truth not measured by mere human understanding.

A tree gives praise and glory to the Creator with the voice of a tree.

Mary-Win, in being Mary-Win,

voices praise to God,

and beckons us

to grasp the Love and Truth we yet cannot see.

-Sister Patricia McKeon, csj