VISITATION

The icon of Mary and Elizabeth hangs on my prayer wall now, no longer in Liz's bedroom. Our mother named us in honor of those woman-prophets of the Word Made Flesh. It was in the convent that my original name, Mary, was changed to Christin. With my own dear Elizabeth's passage into eternity, something significant in my own identity transforms, and as I've done in the past I will do again--allow my name to reflect that. 

Liz died on the vigil of the Feast of the Visitation, the moment of recognition on Prophet Elizabeth's part, that the Christ in Mary had come to visit her. At the sound of Mary's voice Elizabeth felt the quickening of her own son, "leaping for joy." It is what we are, my sister and I--witnesses to divine life in each other. 

Before she died, when her spirit/soul danced on the threshold between this world and the next, she told me clearly, "I will always be with you." We will always be in this embrace, because the worlds are not so far apart after all. If I witness from the perspective of my spirit/soul I see what she called "the small white sphere of [her] body" floating there beside my own. We are so much more expansive and inclusive than we think. This is Elizabeth's prophecy. And to honor what she is, what we are, what all of us are, once again I will change my name, keeping what I've become and adding once more the part I've always been. 

I am Christin Mary.