Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 December 2006 17:57:59
It's only once I stop that I realise just how tired I normally am. Here I am, with three more days to go before returning to w*** and I've only just managed to even begin to unwind. Isn't that always the way?!
One little snippet which I'd not got round to blogging about happened a few weeks back. I'd got to thinking (as I do) about this ongoing 'seabird' business. Now, I've often remarked that I had very little contact with relgious orders of any sort during child and early adulthood. I'm not Roman Catholic - I'm Anglican, and despite attending a C of E Independent school, folk like nuns, monks, friars and the like simply didn't register on my radar. Hence - unlike some of my contemporaries - I have no preconceived ideas or hangups about religious.
So as I mused about this, I got to thinking about the one group I do have vague memories of: a missionary order which ran a local hospital. Over the years most members of my family had spent some time there with various ailments. My mother used to tell us that the sisters working there were returning missionaries on 'holiday,' (which may not have been far from the truth). I can remember spending a short time there myself for a minor op about 25 years ago. The sisters (such as remained ) seemed very kindly, as Mr M himself can recall. Not that I can recall that much, as I was ever so slightly woozy at the time.
Anyway, back to the present. In one of those idle moments (hah!) it occurred to me that I'd no idea what order they belonged to. Well, Google is my friend, and a quick search showed a couple of interesting facts. Firstly, and sadly, a link to one of the RC journals confirmed that the order had sold on the hospital some years ago and moved back to the motherhouse several miles away. But secondly, and here comes the 'well I never did!' moment - a quick jump to their website revealed them to be... yes... Franciscan! Not that I should really be that surprised; they are a missionary order, after all. Still, not a little co-incidence maybe, that here I am, moving towards tertiary membership of another Franciscan group, and now it turns out that all those years ago, the only contact I had with any religious order was with Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood
It's a funny old life, isn't it?
And if that HTML code works properly it'll be even funnier!