Eleanor Rigby

   
     Where do they all come from? 


Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream,  
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who was it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?




     I went south for the solitude. In my solitude was a loneliness.  My loneliness held an immense desire to be healed.  I wore a face that I thought said all was well with my world.
     I am home now. For a minute. Where all the loneliness came from.  My face is my own now. Free from sorrow and sadness and sad songs.  Friends are telling me I look younger, prettier, more rested. They think the length or color of my hair makes me seem this way.  But I know different.  I know something they don't.
     I am at peace.  Healed.  No heartache. No angst. Purely and simply at peace.
My time in Costa Rica gave me that.  Long quiet walks. People with goodness and
kindness and joy in their hearts.  Helpful people. Smiling people. Content. 
Wanting nothing but needing everything.   
     Now in this Lenten season I am reminded of the solitude that Christ experienced 
in the wilderness.  I wonder if He was lonely. Perhaps He maintained such a prayer life that He never felt it. Perhaps the beauty of Capernaum was enough.  
     Enough to provide the peace He would need to endure the thorns. The thirst.
The excruciating pain.  

     While I would never put myself in the same boat as Christ, I will share with you my thorn story. This is the path from my first house to the river that Lucy loved to swim in. One hot hot morning, Lucy finished playing catch with me early and made a 
B-Line for the river.  I grabbed up Gizmo and followed Lucy down the path.
Unfortunately, I tripped on a big rock, and not wanting to drop Gizmo, put my hand 

on this tree. Like the new photo on the first page, this tree is  the joke of all children in Costa Rica.  Evidently, when you fall into it as I did, you never do it a second time!  Boy, do I understand that!  The smaller thorns went deep into my hand, leaving a painful poison that lasted for several days.  They were impossible to dislodge and I was instantly reminded of what Christ went through. Those thorns on His head must have been tortuous. Yet He endured. He exampled how to be alone without being lonely. How to wander around town making new friends. Why endurance, even with a thorn in our side, is a virtue. And how to be grateful for all life gives us.