Getting ready

Mt dear Friends

Slowly, slowly, I am getting ready for the next trip to Canada. Naturally I hope this will be the last before immigration, but I must take each trip as it comes and enjoy its riches. this time a friend has suggested, as I am already quite tired from all my travels, that I plant myself in the Hostel and 'just see what happens.'

Great advice and already my dear Goddaughter, Eleanor, will arrive from the States to spend the first weekend with me. We met in the University library tearoom and I discovered she plays the clarinet. Benigna had many happy hours accompanying her on the piano. And, to my delight, Eleanor was received into the Catholic Church in the beautiful chapel in Grange road. It was there that I lived in the garden house with three other students, to test out my religious vocation in 1991.

It s wonderful to have a Goddaughter and we will have much to share, as it is quite a time since we have seen each other. And I already know my way around the hostel and the environment downtown, having stayed there last March for a month. I now have a map of all the International Hosteling places in North America, and plan to stay for a night or two in Chicago.

Why Chicago? Well, really I will be on my way to South Bend, Indiana, which houses the University of Notre Dame, a famous Catholic University where Elie Wiesel, the French Jewish writer and survivor of the Holcaust, spoke to a group of Catholic priests, telling them that 'we are all waiting for the same thing.'

Gives me hope and the University of Notre Dame apparently houses a replica of the Grotto in Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette. I have never been to Lourdes, and feel it unlikely that I will go now, as I am leaving Europe, so this is the next best thing! And one should never be snobbish...while Lourdes has never been at the top of my personal pilgrimage lists, I would like to see the Grotto in Notre Dame and have even had a kind of 'deja vu' about it.

Lots to think about and lots to plan but its wonderful to have taken up youth hostelling again after 40 years or so...watch this space.

Love and Shalom
Sister Gila

The North of Scotland

My dear Friends
I arrived home safely from the North of Scotland late on Thursday night. Stunning scenery all the way, mountains, lochs, rivers and sunshine, but for the first time I was glad to cross the border and return to England.

I am fortunate in that when I make a major move, I don't look back: perhaps it was all that training in the Bible when I was a child and the story of Lot's wife, which is embedded in my psyche. For those of you who don't know the tale, when the land was divided between Abraham and Lot, his nephew, Lot, is running away from Sodon and Gomorrah and all the fire and brimstone. God tells Lot and his wife not to look back, but Lot's wife caves in, looks over her shoulder, and becomes a pillar of salt. Very different to the pillar of fire, which followed the Children of Israel through all their ways and days, as a guide.

There is a similar episode or injunction in the new Testament: Jesus warns us to put our hand on the plough and not look back, as in this way we are moving forward and looking towards the Kingdom. Very hard to do, but as I have experienced a massive sense of loss with the death of my mother in the last 2 years, and she died around the time of my father and brother in different years, I know how it works, I humbly say-only massive loss can lead to growth, and there has been loss in other areas of my life as well. But the growth has been even more.

On a more mundane level, it was a good holiday, my friend showered me with hospitality and I lazed by rivers and watched the trout leaping. Staying in an independent Youth Hostel in Inverness, I had the chance to meet some wonderful young people, especially a young man called Stephen on the morning I left Inverness, and another young man called Stephen who looked after me as I stepped off the train in Peterborough. If you are out there-thank you!

Plenty to do here and Toronto, Toledo, Ohio and South Bend Indiana to look forward to in about 6 weeks' time. Hooray! Hope you have all been well.

Love and Shalom
Sister Gila

A Little Pause

My dear Friends and bloggers
From now until Monday 7th July, I will be 'off the air' and taking a little holiday in a beautiful place. It will be restful to be away from a mobile, and a computer(although i don't have one at home and do everything from libraries) and to try to do nothing - I used to be good at it, not so much now, but worth another try!
So, until 7th JULY, Be well and
Shalom from
Sister Gila
xxxx

Sainte Anne-de-Beaupre

My dear Friends

In 1988 I was sitting by the river in Cambridge, Ontario. A man, bare-chested and wearing what looked like a St Christopher medal, stepped out of a small boat (another man stayed in the boat) and looked right at me, saying: 'Are you religious?' Taken aback, I stuttered: 'I suppose so.' 'Then you must go to the Shrine of Sainte Anne-de Beaupre.' he continued.



Several days later, having travelled by train, stayed the night in Quebec and taken a bus up the ravishing St Lawrence river, I came to the Shrine.



Not one for large Basilicas, and telling the good Lord as much, I found some small chapels at the back. A light was burning in one of them, and there was a little prayer card, asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I knelt down, said the prayer, and suddenly felt she was with me. I knew she wanted to go somewhere, Where? I asked.



Stumbling out of the Basilica, I ran up the road and came to a convent. 'Would you like to join the service, my dear?' a nice lady at the desk said. ''It's not a Mass.' So I climbed up and came to what seemed like a trapdoorand poked my head into the chapel - it was full of 40 nuns, all dressed in white, praying for vocations!



All this and more is described in The Moving Swan. It was only the beginning of my journey into my new life. And the beginning of my special relationship with the people of Quebec. Last Friday, almost 20 years to the day later, I returned from London on the bus. Behind me two young women were talking animatedly in a language which sounded joyful, lyrical and musical all at the same time. It sounded familiar, French, no a little different, with English interspersed, yes French, of course-Quebecois!

I turned round and we had a three way conversation. They were delighted when I said how much their language pleased me, and I was sad to hear of its frailty, because it is apparently mainly spoken now only in the Province of Quebec.

I realise now, from my experience in the Shrine of Sainte Anne-de Beaupre, and in the Cathedral in Montreal, when I was on my way into the Church, that God was planting something very special in my heart, which will bear much fruit when I finally emigrate to Canada and live in the country of the Beaupre-the Beautiful Pasture.

Shalom from
Sister Gila

The Moving Swan-Book Cover

My dear Friends
With regard to the article below about The Moving Swan, you can view the cover of the book to the right of the Blog, next to my Profile. Many unseen hands contributed to the production of this book, published by The Little Sisters of Joy, and one of them was the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, who hold the original painting by the French artist Degas, which I chose for the cover, from their collection. As the painting was not hanging in the public galleries at the time, I asked for a private view: I was amazed to learn that it is a pastel, not oil, and two-thirds of the way down on the cover is a line: apparently Degas joined two pieces of paper, which the Museum expert called 'glorified toilet paper' because he was so poor!

Because Degas did not allow anyone in to the studio while he was painting, we can never know if the 'backdrop' to the painting was a real outdoor scene, or a stage backcloth for a theatrical production. I leave you to guess the deeper meaning of the title, and just hope you enjoy the book.

Shalom from
Sister Gila

The Moving Swan

The Moving Swan is an account of my life so far from the beginning until 1999, when The Little Sisters of Joy was officially founded. It documents, with photos, my Jewish childhood in London, the move to Glasgow when I was 11 and my adolescence and wild youth. Breakdown followed and I came back to God through music, a gift inherited from my very musical Jewish family. Coming to Cambridge in 1982, I studied music and returned to the practice of my Jewish religion, the Joy of which I never lost.

In East Anglia, Wales and Canada, I received some profound mystical experiences which led me into the Catholic Church in 1989. I also received a religious vocation. But The Moving Swan is not simply about my journey in faith; it tells of my many journeys and especially the people I have loved. That is why I started writing and it mysteriously turned into a book.

The Moving Swan was launched on 8th May 2006 in the lovely Impington Church Hall near Cambridge, under the auspices of the Impington Mothers' Union. I talked and sang, in Hebrew and English, about my life, while the gathering joined in. Afterwards we had tea and I signed copies of the book. To date, over 750 copies have been sold and distributed, in Cambridge and other parts of the world.

If you are interested, and would like a copy, I am offering it for £12 worldwide including postage. Please send a cheque, made payable to 'The Little Sisters of Joy' to:

Sister Gila Margolin
The Little Sisters of Joy
The Haven
61 Edgecombe
Cambridge
CB4 2LW
England, UK
and I will send the book out to you as quickly as I can.

All proceeds go to The Little Sisters of Joy, soon to become a registered charity in the UK, and will be used for travel, publishing, printing, admin. for Concerts and all things required to help us continue to work for Peace and Reconciliation in this troubled world.

Bless you and thank you in advance
Shalom from
Sister Gila

Shalom by David Lord

I had the use of a car over the weekend, as I said in the last Blog entry. As it was the Feast of the Visitation, the meeting of Mary and Elisabeth while pregnant with Jesus and John the Baptist, I decided to get away from Cambridge, and go to mass on the Saturday somewhere further afield. This Feast is particularly important for the joy and reconciliation we hope to achieve in The Little Sisters of Joy. And, for a meeting of the Old and the New.

Having phoned the priest the night before, I jumped in the car at 7.45 am on Saturday morning and drove down to Swaffham in Norfolk, on the road to Walsingham.
Feeling the need for a little rest and a coffee in Brandon, I came to a hotel I had not noticed before. Tea and toast was only a couple of pounds and inside I met the handyman, David Lord, known as 'Lordie.'

Not young, but still handsome, I discovered he was Jewish like me. And sensitive, with a keen talent for writing words to express our human condition. His lyrics, for that is what they are, have not been set to music, so I hope to do that, or get my friend Sue, who writes wonderful peace songs, to set it so that it can be accompanied on the guitar. But in the meantime I wanted to share with you his words, which I find very moving.

Never mind, my sons,

They'll write your names in stone,

They'll remember you once a year

While your mother stands there

with a crown of thorns.

I see your night fighters

flying over the Beirut sky;

I know this night

some innocent child will die.

Some people make love in the night,

And some people make war,

But let my children go free,

Let them climb their ladder to the stars

And be in paradise with me.

Shalom by David Lord

And Shalom from

Sister Gila