“By now, it should go without saying that what the oven is to the baker and the berry stained blouse is to the dry cleaner, so the window is to the poet”
– Billy Collins, Poet Laureate


Seeing in Winter

-Sr. Joanna O’Meara, VHM

I know by seeing that we wait in due reverence.

Etched into the once green earth

layers of ice & snow heaped in rhapsody.

Gathering momentum as days & weeks pass,

the human will of shoveling, salting, heaving

and manipulating demands triumph.


Nature sees its own time.

The blade of grass holding its breath

waiting to return,

the once soft pleasing dirt,

cement like in its determination

waiting for the signal to emerge.


Forget trespassing this season,

learn to look with astonishment

at the slow, gravitational

movements earthwards.

For all that we are called to,

it just may be this winter seeing.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Sr. Joanna O'Meara, Contemplative, Poet, Woman of Prayer

Sr. Joanna O'Meara, Contemplative, Poet, Woman of Prayer

With this blog entry comes the first of many entries from the Visitation Sisters themselves. We are delighted to feature their voices here. Sr. Joanna O’Meara is the youngest and most recent member of the Visitation Monastery of North Minneapolis.  Her poem exemplifies the contemplative, prayerful approach to seeing and being in the world; this approach is at the heart of the Salesian charism.

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