Lost – Found – And

I’m sure you, like me, can tell by the change in the air, the amount of sunlight, that summer is leaving us again.  This ease into autumn is a gift that triggers reflection on change, on time, on journeys ended and begun.  I’m reading a memoir by Kathryn Schulz entitled Lost & Found.  She divides her small book into three sections: “Lost” – “Found” – “And.”  I relish those divisions, especially the last one.  How much of our lives is filled with “and” – we think we are headed one way and then we realize we need to rethink; we are absolutely sure we are right about an issue or a plan and then something reaches our mindset and we realize we need to rethink.  I hear echoes of the Gospels in these three words…how many encounters of Jesus embrace “lost, found, and” – choices laid out before cured lepers and rich young people and sophisticated Pharisees and those possessed by the evils of their day.  We face these same choices as we search for deeper meaning, as we struggle to love better and more inclusively, as we break out of our comfortable routines for the good of something greater.  In loss, what have you found?  In finding, what is the “and” that you discovered?   

 

Priscilla Wood OP

Dubuque, IA