Twelve pots of honey

Today is Candlemas, the great feast of light, and Jesus' first entry, as a tiny, anonymous baby, into the temple. It is also the World Day for Consecrated Life, when the Church is encouraged to pray with and for all religious. It's a day for reflecting on those two great contemplatives, Anna and Simeon, who recognised God in the most ordinary and unlikeliest of incarnations, and went forth to proclaim him, and a day for pondering on my own vocation as a religious woman. And only a week after being present as eleven sisters made their perpetual vows in Rome, and with lively and spiritual social media feeds, there has been plenty of inspiration with which to nourish my thoughts. But - rather like the insignificant infant deity in the temple - inspiration can also come from the unlikeliest of sources; in this case, a tweet from A.A. Milne...

"Do you know the way home, Pooh?" cried Piglet. "No," said Pooh. "But there are twelve pots of honey in my cupboard, and they've been calling to me for hours. If nobody says anything except those pots, I should know where they're coming from." 

~A A Milne

Twelve pots of honey in my cupboard... calling to me... letting me know where my home is...
And I heard Jesus saying: where your treasure is, there will your heart be too (Mt 6.21)

What, I wondered, are my twelve pots of honey...? What is the treasure that I keep in my home, in my heart, in the deepest part of myself? The treasure which calls to me and assures me that this is where my home is? And so I started to count: my relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Heart of Jesus... the fidelity of God, his overwhelming, unmeasured love, his unearned grace... prayer, mission, the call to love... my sisters, our charism, our local and global community and Cor Unum...

I've stopped at twelve, though there are undoubtedly more. But twelve feels enough for now, echoing the twelve baskets of leftovers; the surplus from the time when Jesus accepted a few loaves and fishes and transformed them into food for more than five thousand. We aren't told what happened to those leftovers, but I like to think they were taken and shared, so that even more people could be nourished, and be part of God's generous abundance. And that, of course, is what I am called to do with my precious pots of honey: they are my treasure, my assurance of home, most definitely, but only in the measure in which I share them, or at least their fruits, enabling others to enjoy both Giver and gift.

Twelve pots of honey in my cupboard... calling, guiding, assuring me of my home... reminding me of who and what I am and Who and what I was made for... best heard in stillness and silence... freely given, to be freely shared...

And you; what and where are your pots of honey...?