Often in my life when I have had both my eyes and ears closed, God has had to hit me over the head in order to get my attention. When He does get through, it is usually an amazing experience and that is what happened this last weekend.

I have a whole side of my mother’s family that over the years I have lost touch with and there has been sadness in me because of it. And yet, for whatever reason, I have done nothing about it. I have 3 first cousins who at one time were an important part of my life. My mother and I would go every other summer to Pennsylvania and spend a month or more visiting everyone and spending time at my grandpap’s old house in the middle of the woods surrounded by coal mines long ago closed down. After my mother and my aunt died, my cousins and I would talk every Christmas Eve – it was a family tradition started by our mothers years before – a tradition which for whatever reason just stopped in the early 90’s and I have not done my part to reach out to my cousins in 16 years.

Now, I am fast approaching my 60th birthday, and I have been experiencing for want of a better term – a mid life crisis (or perhaps its just menopause run amok). It has something to do with realizing that I am closer to the end of my days than the beginning and this realization has had a philosophical effect on me. I have been searching for a way to fill up small holes in my heart and soul by beginning to write again, and making other changes in my life, but still finding something missing. There has been an uneasy feeling in me as if I am being told that something gigantic is going to happen and I need to prepare for it.

For the last month with the attention of our country focused on the Pennsylvania primary those feelings have only grown stronger. Seeing and hearing about places I have been to and that were a part of my youth, opened a flood gate of emotions that I was not sure how to deal with or even what was really causing all this unrest.

Then this past week, Pope Benedict came to the US on what some were calling his Tour of Reconciliation. After hearing His Holiness speak on the value of being part of a family, I knew that I had to find every one of the cousins that I spent summers with and I needed to do it now.