Taken from
\nCommunion Reflection for the Final Mass
\nIn Our Lady of Mercy Chapel
\nUniversity of Detroit Mercy,\u00a0 March 7, 2004
\nSr. Gretchen Elliot, RSM (d. October 3, 2010)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are incarnate beings and therefore exist in time and space.\u00a0 We are always someplace.\u00a0 We cannot be no place!\u00a0 Depending on one\u2019s perspective we are each occupying a few square feet of ground in a shelter or outside, in the country or a city, in a particular continent, on this planet, Earth, in our solar system, in the cosmos.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we move around, as Abraham did in response to God\u2019s call, from the Land of Ur to the land between the Wadi of Egypt and the Great River, Euphrates.\u00a0\u00a0 Usually we station ourselves somewhere. . . .\u00a0\u00a0 We put down roots in one or a few places, figuratively and literally. . . .\u00a0 The places and spaces in which we live shape us profoundly \u2013 and it is reciprocal, we shape those places.\u00a0 They give us a sense of the shape of the world and we plant trees, build bridges and wear down paths and stairways in them. . . .<\/p>\n
Many years ago, in the sixties and seventies, the Sisters of Mercy and the Society of Jesus and their institutions of higher education reaffirmed their stance in a bigger place than is marked by these walls.\u00a0 Their choice to stay in the city in solidarity with its people was more primary than decisions about buildings.\u00a0 The consequences of that stance were that Detroit\u2019s needs \u2013and strengths \u2014 challenged them to change.\u00a0 They \u2014 we \u2014 joined energies and resources and rearranged places in order to continue serving in the city and beyond in the ways that were needed.\u00a0 Now we are changing again, making new spaces and leaving some that no longer fit the ministry.<\/p>\n
At one time or another in our lives we, like the three apostles in the Gospel reading, might feel ourselves on the mountain with the radiant Christ, sure that we\u2019ve arrived, that we are in the place where we should be.\u00a0 When we feel like that we might try to \u201cset up a tent\u201d to stay there.\u00a0 But God usually takes us down the mountain into the daily flow of people and the unfinished world.\u00a0 We may not like that change,\u00a0 just as the cabbage farmer may not have liked the encroachments of the city near his land.\u00a0 Nonetheless God calls us and keeps us moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
June 4, 1941 – October 3, 2010<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday, July 24 \u2013 \u201cNevertheless, God calls us and keeps us moving\u201d Sixteen years ago last week, the university gathered\u00a0 in Our Lady of Mercy Chapel on the campus of Mercy College of Detroit which had come to be called … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2020\/07\/Gretchen-Elliot.jpg\")
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