Child,
how to see you
better?
More to love –
fret less!
Fearless
open heart
Gazing,
pondering your intentions
make and unmake
the mess,
my expectations
Slimmed down
self
shame less, ready
to receive my due –
drops to fill
overflowing spill of You.
As a wife of 10 years and stay-at-home mother to three young children, only now can I begin to appreciate why my parents’ wedding song (married 46 years now) is “My Cup Runneth Over.” The vocation of marriage and children brings such abundant, overflowing infusions of God’s love on a daily basis. If only I can see through the overwhelming parts – a mix of manual labor and hostage negotiation, emotions sometimes running wild on all sides. God loves each of us generously. “This is my body given up for you.” And so it is when two become one, when you labor to carry and bring children into the world, when every day you are stretched body and soul to love them as Christ loves you, yourself a beloved Child of God. Our families and the world at large need our faith: “Receive me with maternal love.”
My education in the life of the Soul took root at Williams and I am forever grateful. It was a fruitful time of questioning and choosing Love over other gods and conditional substitutes. “Yes, there are two paths you can go by/ But in the long run/ There’s still time to change the road you’re on. And it makes me wonder…” (Led Zeppelin). May your heart, mind, soul, everything within you be reawakened to the reality of God’s merciful love for you at Williams. May it overflow into your vocation, beyond.
-Erin Palazzolo Loparo ’01
Quo Vadimus? 