Full Circle...

On the weekend of July 4th, 1998, I was in Platteville, Wisconsin for an improv show at a community festival. I was barely out of college and was slated to start two jobs in the week to follow so at that time I was simply having some fun with life. Litlle did I know that that weekend would eventually lead me here to Bull Savannah, Jamaica.

In the course of that weekend I went to Mass and instead of the priest’s homily, there was a presentation by Sr. Connie, a missionary in Jamaica who had brought with her two little girls as an example of the people who benefit from the generosity of people in the U.S. These two girls, who were just the cutest things on Earth, performed a local song called, “Jesus On the Telephone.” It was a cute song that I have heard once since coming here but when these two girls performed it for us, they integrated a hand clapping, sort of patty cake thing into it. It was most impressive and I took an envelope with me with the intention of donating to this foreign diocese once I had a steady income and could set aside money for such things. Two years later, once I was settled into a corporate job, I made good on that personal promise and began donating money to the Diocese of Mandeville. It was not a heap of money by any means, but it was what I could manage with my budget.

Fast forward six years to last summer when I was contemplating what I was going to do next in life. As I sat and gave that topic some thought, I spied my most recent thank you letter from the diocese and the donation envelope they sent with it. “Hmm,” I thought. “I have been curious about checking out something like that since I was 12 and we had that bishop from Montego Bay over at our house for dinner. I wonder if I could check that out now.”

Armed with that curiosity and an ability to utilize Google, I did some digging because for as much as the diocese told me how much they appreciated my donations, they did very little in giving me ways to contact someone to find out more about them. Eventually I came across a web page of a parish in Altoona-Johnston, Pennsylvania that has a long-running relationship with the Diocese of Mandeville. Listed on this page was the contact information of a nun who lived there for nine years but who was now back in the states. And with that, I contacted Sr. Patti Rossi and she and I conversed over the following weeks and months until I ultimately came down here in December.

I had never actually met Sr. Patti until yesterday. There is no way either of us would be able to pick the other out of a lineup so you can imagine my excitement when I she e-mailed me to say she was coming here for a visit with some folks from Pennsylvania. She, Monsignor Michael and I went to lunch and it was a great way for things to come full circle for me. Sr. Patti is this woman who acts younger than she really is. I believe she is in her 60’s but she has the enthusiasm and energy of someone in the prime of their life. What’s more she is a giving and generous soul who always ends her e-mails with, “Sleep warm.” In addition to having spent nine years here, she spent a lengthy time in the Amazon and most recently visited a missionary setup in Haiti. The woman ain’t slowin’ down!

And so it was that my experience came to a sense of completion; or so I thought until we visited Sr. Naomi, another nun who has been her in Jamaica for years but who was preparing to return to the U.S. As you can imagine, she and Sr. Patti are good friends and so it took about a nano-second for them to pick up where they last left off and it was in this part of the day where a true sense of “full circle” came about.

Towards the end of our visit with Sr. Naomi a young Jamaican girl, Meagan, stopped by with her six month old son whose name escapes me but whose bright eyes etched themselves in my memory. While Meagan was there to see Sr. Naomi, she was utterly surprised to see Sr. Patti and as you can imagine, had no idea who I was. Meagan is very sweet and quite lovely and she was more than happy to show off her baby boy who had a penchant for drooling on, well, me. As the conversation progressed Meagan asked about me and where I was living – all the usual questions I get from locals. And then Sr. Naomi asked, “Meagan, didn’t Sr. Connie take you to the states a few times when you were young?”

“Yes, she did.” Meagan replied.

“Did you ever visit Platteville, Wisocons?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you sing a song with another little girl called ‘Jesus On the Telephone?”

“All the time.”

This young girl, who was around 18 years old, was one of the two girls I saw nine years ago at Mass; an event which ultimately led to my being here. Now everything was full circle. In a sense, this adventure had come to a certain end and looking backward, I can completely connect every dot which has led me here and now, with this context, everything looks more familiar and I feel as if I have a deeper understanding of it all.

“The end of our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and to know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot