She starts the day the same way she has started every day for years. For decades. Lowering her knees to the compacted dirt of her simple quarters, she sits back on her heels and bows her head toward the ground. In the quiet stillness surrounding her, she quiets the racing echoes of her mind. She wants to be ready for this moment—ready to speak and listen, to offer and receive.
Ready to pray.
It’s 5:00 a.m. and she has much to accomplish. In an hour she will join the other members of her order for morning mass. That will be a respite. A chance to sit unknown and unrecognized among the rows of worshipers in blue and white habits. A chance to worship. A chance to be filled.
Then it will be time to serve. To give of herself. When mass concludes, she will connect with each visitor in attendance, clasping every offered hand in both of her own, wrinkled fingers squeezing warmly. Next, she will walk the streets of her city to visit the sick and the needy. There is food and medicine to be offered. Comfort as well. Along the way, she will search for those cast aside by the rushing world: the sick, the unstable, the unwanted. She will especially seek out those children whose only shelter is the dusty streets and whose only comfort is the occasional scrap of food from pitying pedestrians.
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