The annual Art Show for Women's History Month is up. It is just lovely as usual. Congrats and thanks to Peggy P. and Jo C. for their work on making Chapter 57 and this show just beautiful.
Here are a few pieces.
The annual Art Show for Women's History Month is up. It is just lovely as usual. Congrats and thanks to Peggy P. and Jo C. for their work on making Chapter 57 and this show just beautiful.
Here are a few pieces.
Very fond memories last Friday on the anniversary of the deaths of two quite special women/community members. One was Benedicta Riepp herself, the young German woman who led the first group of Benedictine women to the USA in the 1850s. She only lived 10 years in the "new world." Her gravesite is well worth visiting---it's at St. Benedict Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota, about 60 or so miles west of Minneapolis.
The other is Mary David Callahan, musician extraordinaire, whose songs and hymns are with us daily in the form of the opening hymn or the Benedictus or the Magnificate every day. She died on March 15, 2005.
Here she is caught at rehearsal with one of her many choirs.
Once again the Appalachian Mountains, that follow the diagonal from SW to NE through Pennsylvania, have put us out of the path of a storm. On your phone's weather channel radar, these storm paths seem to start in the SW USA or near the Gulf of Mexico and travel as a long green "slash" to the Northeast. So many of them lately have come up the east coast, hitting all those major cities along the Atlantic, but sparing all of us on the other side of the "slash"...or Appalachian Mountains.
Admittedly some of the towns in central PA get more of these storms' effects either as rain or more than 3" of snow! State College, home of Penn State, is a shining example.
For the storm that was all over the news this weekend...here is a photo of our predicted 1-3" of snow---instead, bringing spring rain (albeit a bit cold) to our first primroses.
This weekend I sent in my February snow report to the NWS in Cleveland. The total for the month that I recorded was 0.8" And this is in an area where the average February snow is 20". A second anomaly this week was the emergence of flowers on our Lenten Rose plant in the backyard.
Also last week we set an all time high for one day: 68 degrees. Tomorow it is forecast to reach 63! So, as you can tell from these events, we are having very unusual late winter days.
Through all of this Lent continues on, with its rather serious nature. But I will admit that the readings and songs lose some of their somber meaning when the sun is brightly gleaming and we can venture outside with only a jacket--distracted by the 6" high daffodil shoots everywhere.
However, even amidst this "strange" Lenten weather we have much to pray for during this time: way too many civil wars in our world and enough pain and suffering of its own closer to home, as well. Let us pray for peace--tolerance--and mutal care and compassion among all peoples--beginning with ourselves.
Back on November 19th I posted a photo of the woods across Troupe Rd. from us, where, we think, an Events Center is being built. Things there have been quiet for most of the time since, but in the last two weeks clearing of the woods has picked up.
We walked in there today and here is what we found: four or five huge mounds of trees and brush formed by a large bulldozer that has been working there for a couple weeks. Some burning was taking place Friday, which makes more sense as we saw the cleared areas. They seem, gratefully, to be keeping a kind of buffer of trees and brush for 20-30' from the road into the clearing. That would be nice, not just for us, but for traffic noise and to have the place totally surrounded by woods/nature. We shall see as things progress.
Most years I re-read Mary Oliver's marvelous book Thirst during Lent.
As the inside flap describes it: "...she strives to experience sorrow as a path to spiritual progress, grief as part of loving and not its end....she chronicles for the first time her discovery of faith..." Thus, even more apropos this year living under the little cloud of grief that has settled over us from the weeks preceding Lent.
Here's the an excerpt from the first poem, perhaps one of the most well-known of this collection.
"Messenger"
My work is loving the world...
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished...."
On my daily route into Erie for ministry, I drive pass this area that has a clear view of the morning sunrise--no houses, electrical wires or other buildings. This week I was able to get my first clear shot of the sunrise in about 4 months---at about 7:35 am. Welcome early pre-spring!
Equally not seen this close to the house for quite a while, this young doe came right up
to the row of bushes that line the short sidewalk at the east end of our building. She was munching away for 5-10 minutes when we caught sight of her outside our laundry room window.
Such wonders can be seen when we have more than 9 hours of sunlight a day!