Kathy writes (and quite properly), "Where are you?" and I realize that I have allowed three months to speed by without blogging as I resolved to do.  Here I am! ~

Last night I went to the Oakland-East Bay Symphony to hear a concert called "Voices of Persia."  A lot of the music was unfamiliar, because this was a U.S.-Persia outreach concert, one of the marvelous and imaginative programs that Michael Morgan always seems to come up with.  We heard a set of Persian folk songs, a piano concerto and a suite from an opera, whose composer had traveled all the way from Tehran. The young piano soloist also played for us one of my favorite pieces, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Besides preparing and conducting all the music, Maestro Morgan commented that "If only we could all come together as people, rather than letting our governments tell us what to think, then there would be peace!  This evening is one step in the right direction!"  Amen, Michael!

But ... before I could get into the concert, I needed to have a ticket.  And I found I'd lost my tickets (my desk is very cluttered).  No worries, I'm a subscriber, so they will reprint my tickets when these things happened.  Looking around for that ticket, which I never found, I found a whole lot of other interesting little things, tickets that you could imagine might open some door or another.  For instance, there was a bookmark that I got on Cursillo.  It says "Hope" and refers to Ps. 71:14.

Envelopes from worthy causes that encourage me to do a little almsgiving before Lent is over.  Birthday cards from people I'd forgotten.  A baby picture of my friend's daughter Rachel (that tells you just how cluttered that desk is - Rachel is now in college). 

Here's a picture I brought home from a journey to Mexico.  It shows Our Lady of Guadalupe, inside a small brick hut, reaching out to a poor sick man who is lying on a mat in the middle of the otherwise unfurnished room.  She's saying, in Spanish, "Don't worry about this illness or any other trouble.  Am not I here, who am your Mother?  Are you not under the shelter of my shadow?  Am not I your health?"

Look no further - that's the ticket!

God bless you this Easter.