This morning, the hugs were for my stepson who is off to Nicaragua to revisit a youth program he helped to establish.

Yesterday, the hugs welcomed my son who staggered off the train after an 18 hour trip.  Pulled by the power of Cupid, he wanted to spend Valentine’s Day with his beloved.  I’ll be hugging him goodbye tonight in order that he clack his way back to college.

My daughter is soon to arrive from Austin, Texas, where she was invited to participate in a conference hosted by Bill Clinton.  She and other passionate souls will lift the vision of an earth well tended and reverenced.  I will pick her up from the airport, provide a meal and an ear, and hug her on her way back to college.

They come and they go, they unfold and explore and the world is their parish, these loves of my life.

I marvel at it, even as I reflect on the teachings of Benedict and the dessert mothers and fathers about the power of place and stability.

My delight in their thirst for experiencing, learning, and giving is real.  It is crucial classroom, the vastness of the world.  They are enthusiastic students.

And my prayer is that they and the hug dispenser (that would be me) learn the power and honesty of finding a place in which to ground;  a place that sustains, challenges, and holds them.  A place where they are graced to learn the lessons of being.

Travelling mercies:  In the whee of doing.  In the sweet grace of being.