Preoccupied

Already a month has passed since I mentioned on this blog that my writer's block might be due to preoccupation with other problems.  Actually it is only one problem--my transfer back to the SVD Japan Province.  Knowing that I will have to leave Smokey Mountain soon (just in a few days on March 20), I found it painful to write about it and its people.

Even before I came, our Superior General, Fr. Tony Pernia, told me, "Don't fall in love with the Philippines."  He added that the SVD does not usually transfer personnel from the 'chopstick cultures' of Japan, Korea and China because of the time, effort and money to learn the languages.  So I knew that I would have to go back eventually, but even after five years, it just came too soon.

Gradually I am trying to say my farewells to so many people who have touched my life here.  Never in my forty years with the SVD have I found it so difficult to say goodbye.  Leaving Japan was not so hard because I was in school work and the students were always graduating and leaving us after just a few years.  In parish work I have found that I became much more attached to our parishioners than my former students because of the intensity of the interaction on all sorts of levels of life, not just education and the classroom

I am even finding it difficult to pack.  The boxes and suitcase just sit there empty as I sit at a loss of where to begin.