For the End of the Year

An end of the year thought from Mary Oliver:

"Trying to be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn"

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our lives,

and it's good for the head no doubt
to undertake such meditation; Mystery, after all,
is God's other name, and deserves our
considerations surely.

But, but--excuse me now, please;
it's morning, heavenly bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on
into the next exquisite moment.


Lots of variety when it comes to manger scenes:

Christmas at Our House

Here's a small sampling of Christmas at Our House.

This year we have a unique and lovely tree in chapel--this little wispy, looks-like-it-was-hand-drawn beauty.


And look what it "gave us" Christmas morning--a unique view of the reflection of the stained glass windows on the west chapel wall, seen through the trees branches.

Thank you, Jean, for first noticing this and sending all of us amateur photographers to our cameras to shoot uninterruptedly for five minutes.

Here are two of mine:

Click on any photo to enlarge.

Getting Close

One of our sisters organized an outing last Sunday night to view Christmas house decorations in our nearby neighborhoods. It was a great success, topped off by hot chocolate upon return.

We are in the very middle of the O Antiphons, yet getting closer and closer to the celebratory weekend every second. Here are a few Christmas scenes that you may not see even if you visit us because most of them are in offices or the private hallways of our living areas. I'll post more after official decorating begins tomorrow night.

Our Community Room tree before decorating. Is that someone peeking around from the back...maybe looking for an early present?

Here is a delightful 2-minute Christmas video from the small Yupiq Eskimo Village of Quinhagak, Alaska. Much to the villagers' shock, over a half million people have viewed it.

Sneaking In

Christmas is slowly sneaking into Mount St. Benedict even though we still have the 4th week of Advent to celebrate. The O Antiphons are prevalent everywhere here...not only at Evening Praise where they appear in the Divine Office but one panel of the O Antiphon's banner goes up every day-- by Friday all seven will be hanging in our cloister walk between chapel and the dining room. You can also see them on individual cards on our Pray With Us page here and you can hear us singing them here.

Also there is a new recording--our handbell choir playing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" Advent's #1 hit.

If you haven't visited our site for a couple days you'll enjoy some Smile Boxes on the front page: Benetwood's Christmas dinner and all the SBA Lassies turning out for their annual December event, too.

Here's a collage of Christmas's attempts to "infiltrate" the Mount! (Officially we trim the whole house on Thursday).

O Antiphons begin Saturday

Advent moves along, albeit amidst rain here rather than our typical snowy December, but no one is really complaining! I saw three deer on the east lawn the other day. They certainly know it's winter; their coats were so dark that at that 5:00 pm late afternoon they almost looked black.

Our newly designed website continues to get rave reviews from visitors. If you enjoy the O Antiphons you'll find both the text and our singing of Sister Mary David's musical version of each on the site beginning Saturday the 17th..."O Wisdom."

I attended the annual Christmas dinner/party at Benetwood Apartments this week. What a delightful time. I think every single one of the residents from the 75 apartments was there: all dolled up and ready to enjoy this annual very popular event at Benetwood.

Gifts Galore

For five or six years now I've participated in the Emmaus Children's Christmas Gift extravaganza by purchasing gifts for some of the over 1,000-1,500 children that are in the families they serve. The first year, full of first fervor, I actually traveled up and back to our local JCPenneys three or four times--evenings or after work, to find all the items the children wanted (one special item of clothing per child). My fervor was quickly dampened by holiday traffic, elbowing busy shoppers, out of stock colors and sizes and just plain fatigue.

The second, and all subsequent years, I got smart and ordered online--delivery right to my door, free shipping and all. No more going out at night, getting there only to discover unavailable styles and colors. It worked to perfection!

This year's purchases for 40 children were no exception. I am almost done, with the assistance of my 2011 Sister Santa's helper at the Mount who graciously does all the wrapping for me. I'm ready for next weekend's delivery.

My favorite thing to order? Older boy's sneakers! I'm proud that I realized that boys over age 12 won't wear boots...so I buy the best sneakers we can afford knowing that they will be both sneaker and snow boot and might last all winter. My least favorite thing? girls jeans. Every year I am overwhelmed with the variety of jeans for teenage girls and I cannot imagine choosing jeans for any teenager that they would like and actually wear. But, I do it...grimacing at the thoughts of their faces on Christmas when they open their package and say, "I won't wear these, they are so lame."

Nevertheless, this huge project is a wonderful Christmas endeavor for Emmaus and I am grateful to be a small part of it.

_________________________________

As Mary Oliver's poem last week remarked, our first snow coverage occurred this weekend. Just beautiful.

With the snowfall I made sure my window bird feeder was filled. Ten minutes afterwards lo and behold I spied a bird I had never seen on our grounds, a red-headed woodpecker in the tree right outside our rooms. And, yes, minutes later he came right over to the feeder. What a thrill. He was beautiful. I'll keep trying for a closer shot, should he return.

Miscellany

See our just-released winter issue of The Mount magazine here on our community's new website.

I just love what graphic artists around the world do with the google logo. Most of them are posted on google only in one country but some are posted worldwide. Here's one from November 30 posted here in the US: a tribute to Mark Twain on his birthday.

Google Doodles

And, an inspiration from Mary Oliver on the coming of the winter season, particularly for those of us for whom winter is spelled s-n-o-w!

In the Pasture

On the first day of snow, when the white curtain of winter began to stream down,

the house where I lived grew distant and at first it seemed imperative to hurry home.

But later, not much later, I began to see the soft snowbound house as I would always remember it,

and I would linger a long time in the pasture, turning in circles,

staring at all the crisp, exciting, snow-filled roads that led away.

Between Tuesday & Thursday

Some time between Tuesday and Thursday our community's redesigned website will go online...and are we excited. This past weekend the organizing committee offered a Sneak Preview of the site to the community. Great fun, oohs and aahs, and much anticipation. It won't be perfect all at once (you faithful readers, don't hesitate to report typos or corrections to our webkeeper--she'll be grateful) but the general pattern will be there. Hope you like it---and let us know what your favorite sections are!

Check our current website's front page for three recently posted items: a new e-course on the RB by Sister Joan Chittister, a way to help SBEC receive a $15,000 grant by voting via the web (takes a few minutes the first time and after that only 20 seconds), and a photo from the beginning of Advent here at the Mount.

Visiting Rome

This website is wonderful and quite appropriate for this time of year, I think, as we are awaiting the annual celebration of Jesus and his life among us.

Here is an interactive website that takes you inside the Sistine Chapel and enables you to "look around." If you've been there you can verify that this is exactly what it looks like. In reality it's wall-to-wall people with a United Nations of languages all around the room.

After seeing this site, I dug up my own photos from Rome a couple years ago and want to share my favorite thing about Rome: the Pieta.

Well, we survived November with 0.8" of snow against an average of about 10". But the last two days have brought in rain, cooler temps and these clouds that give new meaning to "ominous." Now to see what December brings---winter, surely.