Friday, October 17, 2014
Mary Lou was a real soul sister. I suspect many in this room could claim her as such, for she connected immediately with everyone, especially the ordinary person – the bagger at the grocery store, the UPS deliveryman, the “wine guy” at Harris Teeter, the waitress at the Silver Diner. Fittingly, it was in church that I met Mary Lou, although it was her husband Gene’s booming voice raised in song that turned my head. Her paintings on display that day piqued my curiosity, of course. She signed her books for me in a way which suggested she knew me, though, of course, we had never met before. That immediate offer of intimacy was one of Mary Lou’s gifts. It was a few months after her husband died that Mary Lou and I giggled our way through the hills of West Virginia en route to Kentucky to visit the abbey at Gethsemane, where Thomas Merton had lived. At the Loretto motherhouse, she was delighted to hold the hand of Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, who had been an observer at the Second Vatican Council. Even though that courageous nun could no longer speak, I noted that some message passed between those two “Spirited” women. En route and back home, engrossed in conversation, Mary Lou and I turned down many byways and were tickled with what we discovered – new associations, a different perspective, a surprise around every corner. We gloried in the ability to put the car in reverse and take another look or make a sharp left to marvel at the beauty of creation. That trip was an apt metaphor for our journey through the next decade. We became part of a small group of women called the Sisters of Sophia, whose goal was to explore and celebrate the divine feminine. Explore and celebrate, we five women did. Thank you, Mary Lou, for sharing my pilgrimage to Mother God.
