Holding each other in prayer as sisters tell their stories.

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By Sr. Annette Sullivan, SNDdeN

John Nwodo Close SND community is closed- a message we are imparting to ourselves, outsiders, friends, visitors, etc. However, near the entrance gate we’ve placed the new global sign of welcome – a bucket of water and hand washing soap.

It is not business as usual. Normally four of us have ministry offices within the premises, while the other three commute to their places of work. It’s different now. All work from home. While transport money is less, so money for phone recharge cards has increased as exponentially as the global infection rate.

Visitors do come, but visits are short. Sisters do go out but return as soon as possible to the confines of the compound which is currently being gently transformed by the seasonal and welcome rains. Sap is rising, buds are bursting and a sheen of green covers the central area. We have time to smell the earth, hear the happy chirrup of the birds as well as the clink of hammers of the construction work going on next door.

From the upper room of one of the two houses that accommodate us, we can see the nurses all wearing protective masks and moving about in St Mary’s Hospital next door. Are they getting busier each day? Or, is it we who are slowing down?

We have indeed slowed down: we have each found a new rhythm with more time to spend in prayer, whether in chapel, chamber, or under the sky and stars and Easter moon. At our extended evening community prayer in chapel, a changed arrangement of the chairs has made us conscious of social distancing and at the same time, of our global inter-connectedness and closeness with people of our planet everywhere. We bring to mind our sisters, our family members, our sick, our suffering, our medical experts and the vulnerable poor. From the four walls of our small chapel we look out at life in an ever- widening, inclusive frame, knowing that in the end, this virus shall pass away and ultimately heaven and earth must somehow come together as God’s will is done on heaven and on earth. With God we are safe. With God we are one.