The Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes seems, by all accounts, to have been a great success. Both parishioners and clergy were full of praise. Bishop Stephen was singled out for special praise and seems to exude a friendliness and ease with people that bodes well for the future. A particular praise goes to parishioners who journeyed to Lourdes as helpers. Some exhausting preparation had to be done beforehand and demanded hours and efforts whilst there. You have returned tired but fulfilled. Well done. “So the small things that came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could”; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?” Alexander McCall Smith, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.
“Help from a stranger is better than sympathy from a relative.” Matshona Dhliwayo My sympathies to all who ventured away for much awaited holidays, only to be drenched almost daily. Please God, the slow emergence of sunshine will give some comfort, and well-earned rest. A final reflection now on the crisis of our time. “The new migrants from the dust bowl are here to stay. They are the best American stock, intelligent, resourceful; and, if given the chance, socially responsible. To attempt to force them into a peonage of starvation and intimidated despair will be unsuccessful. They can be citizens of the highest type, or they can be an army driven by suffering to take what they need. On their future treatment will depend the course they will be forced to take.” John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to The Grapes of Wrath