Easter Chatter

Greetings,


If you've been following the events and activities of our elder sisters, we shared their Lenten Nesting.  They incubated a few dozen eggs from our Novice's farming family in the hopes of the sounds of a new clutch of chicks peeping on Easter morning.

Well, there is good news and bad news over our hopes for a CHATTERING of chicks for the Easter Octave.  The good news is that the sisters were all prepared with a warm enclosure for the chicks first weeks.  Our Gardening Sister was also prepared the the clutch to be moved to their newly finished coop near the gardens when the chicks were ready.  

The bad news is that only two of the three dozen eggs hatched.  The sister in guiding the incubating has years of sharing this experience with students and has some guesses as to why the hatching failed.

Undaunted by the first round and encouraged by the peeps coming from the activity room, Sister has started a new chattering of three dozen eggs due to hatch around the feast of St. Isadore.  May St. Isadore, patron saint of farmers, pray for us!

Blessings,

Welcoming the Guest to Retreat

Greetings,

The Peace Center at our monastery seeks to: "Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say, "I came as a guest, and you received Me". And to all let due honor be shown, especially to the domestics of the faith and to pilgrims (Rule of Benedict 53: 1-2).

As the Liturgical season of Lent approaches, the sisters of our Peace Center are reaching out through Scripture studies, theology institutes, and Holy Week retreats.

The sisters are offering two series of Lenten Scripture studies for all those seeking prepare for Christ's Paschal Mystery at Easter.  Study of the Prophet Isaiah will take place on Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 8:30 PM beginning on February 26 and continuing throughout the Lenten season.  Study of the Passion and Resurrection Narratives will take place on Wednesday mornings from 10:15 to 11:45 AM beginning on March 5 and continuing throughout the Lenten season.

Our spring Theology Institute will be held on Saturday, March 15th beginning at 9 AM.  Father Leslie Hoppe, OFM  will be speaking about "Religion and Modernity: The Fundamentalist Response".   He will address how the terms "fundamentalism" and "fundamentalist" were first coined to describe conservative American Protestants who rejected the tenets of early 20th century liberal Protestant theology.  The presentation will begin with a description of the basic beliefs of Protestant fundamentalism before describing the fundamentalist impulse in Roman Catholicism and other world religions such as Judaism and Islam.

The Benedictine Peace Center will also be preparing for Holy Easter with one of our Catholic mystics.  Guests are welcome to join us for "Reflections with Julian of Norwich: A Lenten Retreat" on Saturday March 29th.

The final welcome to guests is a Holy Week Retreat over Triduum for women who are discerning a religious vocation.  The retreat begins the afternoon of Holy Thursday and continues through Easter Sunday afternoon and includes celebrating Liturgy of the Hours and Eucharistic liturgies with the monastic community, sacred silence, and reflection on sacred symbols of Triduum and God's call.

We welcome you as a guest in our retreat center...come to pray, to listen, and continue to deepen your faith in Jesus Christ.

Blessings,

Winter Gardening...

Greetings,

Since the groundhog has predicted an early spring, it is time to begin considering the monastery garden on this wintery February day.  We asked Sister Gardener to share some reflections about our summer bounty while the earth is still blanketed with winter's ice and snow and she has some time to spare.

Monastery gardens have been part of Benedictine tradition since the time of Benedict when he called for his communities to be self-sustaining.

Therefore the sisters should be occupied at certain times in manual labor...From Easter until the end of October, when they come out from Prime in the morning let them labor at whatever is necessary until about the fourth hour...they themselves do the work of gathering the harvest, let them not be discontented; for then are they truly monastics when they live by the labor of their hands, as did our Fathers and the Apostles. Let all things be done with moderation, however, for the sake of the faint-hearted. RB 48

Our monastery's current garden is short of an acre but includes a wide variety of vegetables, herbs, tubers, and gourds. Sister Gardener has nurtured the gardens, orchard, and grounds for 27 years. During that time, she has come to understand that "...true gardeners never cease to garden, not even in their sleep, because gardening is not just something they do. It is how they live" (Guroian). she leads a merry group of summer sister gardeners (school teachers home for the summer) through seasons of planting, watering, weeding, and praying that God makes the garden grow.  The work calls us to humility, for all we do cannot change mother nature's gifts or God's blessings.

The summer of 2012 was very dry, windy, and downright temper-mental. Sister Gardener reported that the total produce from the gardens to the sisters' table was 4,362 pounds, down over 5,300 pounds from the previous year. However, in the midst of the dust and bugs the fruits from garden brought many sweet treats to the monastery.

The garden sisters picked 107 pounds of cherries, 293 pounds of apricots, and 134 boxes of apples! These were then lovingly pitted, trimmed, and pared by other sisters for pies, sauces, and breakfast breads! The most anticipated produce in the monastery is the long awaited tomato. This year the gardeners brought in almost 1,700 pounds of herloom, purple, green zebra, and traditional bright red tomatoes for salads, sauces, and BLT's. Sister Gardener's personal favorite among her carefully tended greens are the cucumbers she often nibbles right from the vines and brines into lightly pickled bread and butter pickles; however, turnips are not likely to grace our garden again.

Called by God to care for the Earth and tend it, Sister Gardener offers this poem and prayer from Dame Julian of Norwish as we wait for this next season of growing...

Be a gardener.

Dig and ditch,

toil and sweat,

and turn the earth upside down

and water the plants in time.

Continue this labor

and make sweet floods to run

and noble and abundant fruits to spring.

Take this food and drink

and carry it to God

as your true worship.

Blessings,

Feast of Saint Benedict

Happy Feast!

Today, we celebrate the feast of Benedict's death. This feast is a bit more subdued since it is in the midst of Lent; our solemnity is celebrated with the Church feast on July 11th. However, we do remember his passing with story and song. My boys at school were a bit unsure of creating a feastday for someone's death, but I did try to point out it could been seen as his birth to new life...they didn't buy it. So I added this story from St. Gregory the Great to illustrate.

"In that same year when he was to leave this life, he foretold the day of his most holy death to some disciples living with him and to others living some distance away. He told the former to keep silent about what they heard and explained to the later what kind of sign would be seen when his soul would leave his body.

Six days before his death, he ordered his tomb to be opened. Soon he was attacked by fever and was weakened with severe suffereing. As the illness grew worse every day, he asked his disciples to carry him into the oratory. there he strengthened himself for his departure by receiving the Body and Blood of the Lord. While the hands of his disciples held up his weak limbs, he stood with his hands raised to heaven and breathed his last breath amidst words of prayer."

We will be commemorating the feast a bit simply here at our apartment convent. Prayer for the feast with special Psalms and responsory, steak on the electric grill, and maybe a game or two of Bannanagrams or Perquacky! I think Benedict would approve of the balance between prayer and play within community.

Blessings,