View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

If you read my articles, you know I travel to Europe often. This is mainly to visit family; my siblings and cousins. Also, as a former German teacher, I used to take my students to Germany every second year and my son lived in Belgium; so yes, I am used to jet lag. Going to Europe means you lose six or seven hours. Going from Europe, means you gain those hours back.

As I wrote last week, Grant and I just celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary in Ireland. I also wrote about the house we rented for the celebration. With its huge dining room with windows on three sides with views of the Atlantic Ocean and also, across the bay, Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holy mountain, where the patron saint of Ireland began his ministry in the year 441.

The morning after we arrived, mind befuddled by jet lag, I got up early and sat and wrote the following meditation. My family and some friends have read it and thought I could publish it, even though it is highly personal:

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I sit here, staring at the mountain. Mount Patrick – so aptly named. Its peak is covered in fog. We do not know, do we, what is up there on that mountain right now, or do we ever as we look up and see a mountain. A mountaintop covered in mist. Invisible to the eye – but my heart is filled with the wonder of it. The wonder. The majesty. The power. And the mystery. Of this mountain. That has been there for ages and ages and ages; silently witnessing the struggles, the tragedies, small triumphs and joys experienced by the creatures below. Us humans.

We look up at that mountain and we wonder. What is up there? And up and up and up and up until you are at the very up of ups –heaven…because it is up, right? And not down? God and his angels. All his angels. All his saints. All the people. Who like us loved and lost. And now they are no longer here. But we can feel them sometimes. They are beside us, aren’t they?  How can they not be? We, who so loved and yes, very much love and love them still. It is true that we can love what we cannot see, cannot touch; but there is a memory, so many memories and so much love. To love, but not to be able to touch or see. No hand to hold. No person to hug. Just the memory. And the love. The warmth between us. Mother and son. Mother-in-law and son-in-law. Honor them. Love them and never, never forget. But go on living. Despite the pain. Because of those who are left. And the mystery. The mystery of God. And of love. That endures. That can only be endured because of the mystery of the mountaintop. Of the unseen. But believed.

And I, an old woman sitting here, at the foot of the mountain, staring up and feeling so filled with love and loss and also with wonder, I know I must have faith. Faith in the future and also in the mystery of heaven.