During the past few days, we’ve heard a great deal about the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. Today we heard that there might be another cyclone heading towards Myanmar.

For most people, it is difficult to imagine 15,000 individuals, never mind 15,000 bodies, as there are in China, or the 40,000 who are missing. It is even more difficult to ‘see’ the 100,000 who have probably died in Myanmar.

For my part, I use St. Peter’s Square as a convenient measure. When the crowds gather to hear the pope for his weekly General Audience on a Wednesday, or for his Angelus Message on a Sunday, there are usually approximately 50,000 people packed into the Square.

If we add the figures for China and Myanmar, however crude an estimate they might be, then we are speaking of a minimum of 115,000 people who have died during the past few days, or roughly three times the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. There are, roughly, ten times that sized crowd who are missing.

Some of the major Vatican Radio broadcasts, such as at Christmas or Easter, might have as many as 40 million potential listeners, so there must be way in excess of that number who listen to, or watch, the news on radio and television at any one time across the world. I am not a mathematician, but that means that the number of people who have been touched by the suffering in Asia at this present time is in excess of 800 times the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, or ten times the massive crowds who gathered for the funeral of Pope John Paul and for the Inauguration of Pope Benedict. That is a vast mass of humanity, far more than the majority of us can possibly imagine. It is an incredible force of prayer, sympathy, compassion and solidarity for the people of China and Myanmar.

There must have been so many prayers during the past few days, offered silently and also publicly for those who have been caught up in such catastrophic circumstances, circumstances far beyond anything they could ever have imagined would become their own experiences. I am sure that those who died must also be praying for those who survived and for those working to alleviate the suffering.

The world really is a global village if we consider ‘the numbers game’. It is a community in spite of differences of ‘tribe and tongue and people and nation’.

May God grant eternal rest to all those who have died and courage, strength, perseverance and hope to those who remain.

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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Girl: How is your little sister?
Ashley: She is 11 now and she is already smoking.
Girl: 11 and already smoking?
Ashley (laughing): Yes. She went out with some friends last night and only came home at 2 o’clock this morning.

Pause for a few moments and some inconsequential chat.

Girl: Every time I hear of you, you have been fighting again.
Ashley: Oh yes, it happens all the time.
Girl: What has happened to your hair? It used to look different.
Ashley (pulling her hair to one side): Look at what it looks like underneath.
Girl: It is missing!
Ashley: Yeah. I was in a fight with a boy and he grabbed a whole clump and pulled it out.
Girl: Wow!
Ashley: Yeah. We were over there (pointing)…. a group of us. We started to fight and he knocked me to the ground and kicked me in the face. My face was all swollen. It was out here (indicating an improbably massive degree of swelling).
Girl: So what did you do?
Ashley: It was okay. One of my friends caught him and pulled him to the ground. I stood on his face because he had trodden on mine…

That was the moment at which the bus arrived, so I heard no more.

Compare this conversation with another that I had recently with a young woman who, with the help of her partner, had found my lost purse containing about £60 which actually was not my money. After a complicated process of locating me, they returned the purse and its contents intact. When I rang her to express my gratitude, she seemed surprised. “But that was the way we were brought up by our parents,” she said. “I know what it is like to lose a purse and so I am just glad that we were able to return it to you.”

Parents would seem to have very different values to pass on to their children. In all probability, most people would prefer to have a daughter or son known for their honesty rather than an ability to stay out at night or to kick someone in the face.

Perhaps some youngsters have not had a chance in life. It is one thing to have a pocket full of money for drink and cigarettes and an entirely different matter to have, perhaps, little money, but an abundance of a love that knows how, on occasion, to be tough.

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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The first vehicle was fascinating. It sucked up the tarmac as though it were a starving beast, spewing out the road surface into the truck immediately ahead (and successfully dodging a tree in the process).

Then a second contraption, this time with a large bucket affair to the fore, scraped up any tarmac that had missed its massive predecessor.

Four men, each wearing a luminous yellow jacket marked ‘safety inspector’, performed their inspections. Were they the dreaded Health and Safety Executive? I have no idea, but their eventual departure to the side of the road made it possible for the pneumatic drills to begin working.

The sequence continued with a motorised vacuum cleaner winding backwards and forwards, ahead of a truck laden with rolls of blue-something…

…and then the process began all over again as a second strip of tarmac was removed from the previously intact and innocuous road.

The whole business would be fascinating were it not already quite late at night.

Why is it that some people’s work is never convenient to others? There would be complaints were the road to be closed and resurfaced during the day. There are different complaints when it happens at night. There are some battles that are never won even though they must be fought.

It is all rather like the chiselling away that God does. He does not always mould me into the person he wants me to be at a time that is convenient to my own schedule. He works according to his own timetable, which seems interminable on some occasions and then rather too rapid at others. The trouble is that he is dealing with eternity, which is rather different from our concepts, which are limited to time.

Yet, just as surely as the noisy contraptions outside my window will have, presumably, laid a new road surface by tomorrow morning, even at a measure of cost to those of us who are trapped in its immediate vicinity, so God will work steadily and unendingly until I have become exactly who he knew me to be from all eternity. He does not sleep either!

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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Unknown to me at the time, I had just spotted a piece of work of the famous and never-seen artist, Banksy.

This weekend, graffiti artists from several countries and, yes, Banksy himself, (or herself??) have exercised their skills on the walls of a short tunnel near Waterloo Station. Cans of spray paint have given birth to the name ‘Cans Festival’ (with no apologies to Cannes!)

Graffiti can be unsightly, but it can also be beautiful.

It was amazing to see a lengthening line of people waiting to see the graffiti for themselves. Some of them would never dream of visiting an art gallery, and yet, there they were, standing patiently and happily for their turn to enter the tunnel. There must have been thousands of photographs taken of images that would otherwise perhaps been dismissed in a different context.

Everybody, in the right context, is an artist capable of creating something beautiful for others to enjoy.

Each and every one of us is God’s own work of art.

That is definitely worth celebrating!

God bless,
Sr. Janet

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