By Bridget Bearss, RSCJ
When I made final vows as a Religious of the Sacred Heart, I received my grandfather's wedding ring as the symbol of my religious profession. Bill Mailand died before I was born. He was a great friend of the Mayo Brothers who founded the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. A farm kid who couldn't wait to get off the Minnesota farm, he became a bank president...and so in my mother's memory and in his journal is the experience of closing the bank on Black Tuesday when the great depression began. They lost everything that day...except his ability to dream, work hard, imagine and love three things -- God, his family, and the land of South Dakota. I know that my receiving his wedding ring as my symbol of profession was prophetic, for he was a dreamer and one who knew that it takes money to make dreams real. He and a group of his South Dakota Survivors (what he called himself in his own journal in the years of resurrection from the depression) had this dream about Rushmore...carving a memory into the side of the Black Hills so that no one would forget what it takes to rise above because you believe. And so, along with starting all over again as a bank teller and climbing back up the proverbial ladder, he also became the primary fundraiser for Mount Rushmore. Lots of people thought it couldn't ever happen (or shouldn't ever happen) and no one really believed that this old German sculptor could do it and lots of people wondered what difference it could make. About three weeks ago, I got this picture through the mail from my cousin (a retired public school superintendent who flatly refuses to use email) with an inscription, "Don't forget to climb the mountain in winter. Dreams become resurrection." Every now and again, it's good to remember that resurrection is where we are headed and winter at Rushmore will fade into the shadows of faces that will hold the next generation of dreams. Today, let's just remember to climb the mountain in winter and to keep hope alive.... Take Two... (while you are remembering about fasting, giving and praying) 1. Take two things out of your closet that you either don't wear (or can't wear) or don't like and put them in the "out" box 2. Get a stop watch. Take Two minutes to sit still enough that you can hear your heart beat...and give thanks that it does without your noticing. 3. Take Two dollars out of your wallet and put them in your pocket and find some way to use them to make someone else's day better...just two (not ten or twenty)
(Each day during Lent, Bridget Bearss, RSCJ, sends an email to the faculty and staff of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills, where she serves as Head of School. This was her message for March 13, 2014.)
