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