Celtic knots have always been important to me. My grandmother was ten years old when she emigrated here from Ireland. She was the eldest of three children. After her father died of pneumonia, her mother, the eldest of twelve, had tried to return to her family home with the three children. They lived in County Sligo, where it is written the poorest of the poor lived in the Ireland of her day. Regrettably, her family could not support them so my great grandmother walked with her three children from Sligo in the north to Cork in the south. It took her untold days and months of labor to save enough to book steerage for her and her children to set sail for America. Hers is a story of courage and hope – one lived out every day by the immigrants who still come to these shores seeking the promise emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty; “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As I sat at my machine for many days creating the knot seen on this frontal it was a sacred meditation. This particular knot is made of one single strand that is woven over and under, over and under, countless times. There is no beginning and no end, only an interconnectedness and beauty that comes from seeing the whole image before your eyes. As a great-granddaughter, a granddaughter and a daughter, it reminded me that I am inextricably connected to my past. As a mother and grandmother, it reminded me I am responsible to be fully present in the now. As a public health nurse, it reminded me that the many people I encounter in my work life who manage to fall through the cracks of care within this great nation of ours are an essential and beautiful part of the whole. As a woman of faith, it reminded me I need to stand firm for the Beatitudes that call us every day to always remember that:

I hope you will be moved by the beauty of this Celtic knot as it proclaims we are all connected, we are all part of a greater whole, together we form great beauty, our strength comes from our interconnectedness. I find I must and will speak for those who mourn, who are hungry, who are peacemakers, who are persecuted. Will you? I pray it may be so.