Free Over the Boundaries by Marie Barrett

The Dress
    Friends are leaving for New Zealand, to visit the North and South Island. Others, as is seasonal, have gone to the French Alps, and a family is returning from Dubai where they tasted of affluence and the sun. And some of us find ourselves, yet once again, in a place we would not trade for all the ’hot’ spots on the planet — by a cosy log fire, stretched out on a thick pile rug, contemplating the warm glow and the shadows of the leaping flames on the wall as the evening light outside fades to darkness. Our lives are gently caving in. We wish our departed friends well and we miss their faces already at the table. A feeling of bereftness, of mourning, is close to the surface, triggered perhaps by absent ones but, more than just this, it is a mourning that encompasses all the mourning we have ever known or been touched by. ’Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused …….Celebration and mourning, so far apart in the range of emotions of the heart, and yet so close at these Christmas and New Year’s festivities.
    We sense that we are being divested of this old dress, life. We give it up willingly, surrendering without regret, emotion even since the only true sacrifice was his. He alone did not have to die. He alone was without sin.
    Come and meet me with the dress for which you gave up your life, that I might live…words of greeting on our lips at dawn. Our collaborating with God’s grace is a positive act and not a passive one. We give, we enter, because we are received. We go, we love, because we are called. Few perceive this active force at work in our lives — a life outside our own lives that cannot be measured with the human eye or ear. We are coming from the desert where we have emptied ourselves dry. Our hearts are become dried as old bones left to dry in the desert sun. The only love we know and can be sure of is the love that comes shining through our tiny form. Dimly, at first, we see his kingdom come into view and then shining as a million suns as he comes out to meet us on the way, investing us with life that is light and love and warmth, just like he had never gone away. This risen Jesus is our friend, he clothes us with the dress we thought was reserved for resurrection day but is ours today, everyday and forever. Amen.

The Statue
    I had never taken much notice of it before. It stood on a plinth to the left of the altar railing — a plaster-cast madonna figure that looked like countless others that decorated churches all over the country. But on this early autumn day in August 1980, it was to feature in my life in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I was attending mass for the first time in about six weeks after the birth of our third daughter, Louise.
    I came in late and took my place somewhere to the right in the back pews. It was where the men, young and old had gathered. Some of the older men had rosary beads in their hands and, with their eyes closed, were fingering the beads and their moving lips bore witness to their silent prayer. They could not hear the celebrant anymore than I could due to the general hum of conversation that floated about. Young men discussing their plans for the day’s football match, the weather, last night’s pub happenings. I closed my eyes to focus my own heart and mind. But I could not ignore the feeling of regret that these young men could not be brought to engage in the act of remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. But better they, I thought, than the Pharisee-type who held the front pews. His prayer was already ignored. I mourned the demise of the charismatic movement that had helped open up people’s lives to the Holy Spirit. But another, more urgent, feeling was demanding my attention — a feeling of weakness that was threatening to engulf me the