Stay at home=Exercising

Spring is coming so early this year; I honestly can't remember spring bursting out this much in March. And, with the "stay at home" reality nowadays, many of our sisters are taking to a daily walk all around our property,even on our Glinodo property across East Lake Rd. down to the lake. They report on the wildlife they are seeing, the first signs of greenery on the trees, buds on flowers and bushes and anything that catches their eye. The last few days the temps got warm enough (over 50) that I could work in our inner courtyard garden--mostly just raking and clearing up after last fall and winter. Here's what I've found"

The primrose near the foyer door are flourishing.
How they survive under the snow is amazing.

This corner will be a spray of iris in a couple weeks. 

A half dozen daffodils just need a day or two more
of warm sun and they are going to pop.

These are the first to open..
sheltered behind some rose bushes.

And my favorite, bleeding hearts!
At least this is what they look like right now!
A couple weeks and they'll be gorgeous.

P.S. Every day from 5:00 -5:30, the half hour before Evening Prayer, we gather in chapel to spend a half hour in quiet prayer for all of the people of our suffering world.
Hoping you and yours are well.

From the web

A couple things from the web have caught my eye. One is an activity to use six words to describe your life/ideas/thoughts/daily living during this highly unusual worldwide "adventure"!
Here are a couple to get you going:

What day is it? All alike.

Gas two twenty-nine--sure! Low now.

Virus, no visitors, only family virtue.

Living by yourself, is it lonely?

Living with others, is it lonely?


And this wonderful graphic humor from google images.

Looking at the map for some weekend travel ideas:

Hang in there, everyone---stay well---and if you're not writing down or recording your experiences/thoughts--think about it.

Interesting Times

The web is full of live streaming, story sharing and simple interactions, everyone seeming to want to share thoughts or conversation with their friends, colleagues or anyone else out there, to replace the face-to-face interactions that are now missing. In that vein, here are two of Mary's poems that I add to the group. Not sure why I picked these...they say something to me, particularly at this time.

"There Is a Place Beyond Ambition"

When the flute players
couldn't think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,
then they lay down themselves
beside the river

and just listened.
Some of them, after a while,
jumped up
and disappeared back inside the busy town.
But the rest--
so quiet, not even thoughtful--
are still there,

still listening.

"Don't Worry"

Things take the time they take.
Don't worry.

How many roads did St. Augustine follow
before he became St. Augustine?

Back to where we belong

My friend recently told me this story of her daughter and son-in-law taking their 4-year-old to "the city," San Francisco, for the first time.

As they emerged from BART, their rapid transit train system, and came up the escalator, Lucy saw the city for the first time. She looked stunned. She turned and said to her parents, "Where are we and how do we get back to where we belong?"

From our community website:

"We must die to self, through inconvenience and more,

in order to truly love the most vulnerable among us."

America Stays Home

We are as involved in adaptations because of the COVID-19 pandemic, just as you are. In addition to all of the preparations and tough realities that we are hearing from all over the country and the world, there are many beautiful stories that are energizing, also. Here is my favorite so far.
A young 20-something gal was going into a grocery store when she heard someone calling to her. She turned and saw a women gesturing to her from inside a car. She went over and came upon an elderly couple inside their car.
The woman told her that they needed supplies from the store but they were afraid to go in. They had been waiting outside for 45 minutes hoping to see someone who might help them. At that moment she cracked the car window and slipped out a grocery list and a $100 bill. Would she get these groceries for them?
She went into the store, shopped for them and took the groceries out to their car. They were overcome with gratitude.When she went home and told her boyfriend he insisted that she tell others because, he said, all of us need to be aware of others and help our neighbors, especially the most vulnerable. Amen!

Stay well, everybody. Help others. Keep in touch.

New dawnings

A couple of years ago a Sister received an orchid--beautifully in bloom. After the flowers died and she was ready to discard the plant, I asked for it and said I'd give it a try to see if I could get it to bloom again--knowing very little about orchids. So for the past 2-3 years I've watered it faithfully (1 Tablespoon) each week, turned it, talked to it, dusted the leaves when they needed it, and just lived with it in my office. About 3-4 months ago I noticed the light grey stringy roots growing and growing and growing. Amazing! It is, after all, I was told, an air plant! Who knew? And then after another couple months one day it caught my eye and I saw a 3" dark stem! Where did that come from I asked myself? It grew very quickly and then pod-like growths came along the stem and finally, finally--look what arrived: 5 gorgeous flowers. WOW, Oh WOW. Welcome spring!

Earlier this week, two days after the time change on our clocks, we were driving into our ministry at 7:30 am and were treated to a beautiful sunrise--this photo does absolutely no justice to the beauty of that eastern sky. And yet another, WOW. I hope your early spring days are as blessed.

Springing ahead in many ways

The natural world is coming alive around the Mount. As if these two birds alone don't show it, we are hearing birds singing every morning now. And yesterday an actual "herd" of six deer grazed in our backyard as they passed through it at about 5:00 pm. Their coats are still very, very dark, but soon enough they will turn golden and, from the looks of a couple of them, we'll have fawn again this summer. As that great old song by the Byrds says, "To every season turn, turn, turn."

Behind closed door #6

The final closed door of this little winter interlude shows an ordinary laundry. An ordinary laundry with a far from ordinary story.

A number of years ago, in an effort to be more environmentally conscious, we had a speaker who came in to tell us all about this new laundry soap that was more environmentally friendly than the standard brand detergents and could do the same job, even less expensively. We all sat there attentively, listening to her very-practiced marketing pitch. After she was done, she asked for questions. That was her undoing.

In the audience was Sr. Genevieve, Genny to all of us. Genny was kind of like what used to be called a lay sister. She didn't have a college degree, didn't speak too eloquently, but was a happy community member, serving in kitchens and laundries throughout her religious life. Formal education or not, she knew her stuff! So when the laundry lady asked for questions, it was inevitable that Genny's hand eventually went up. When called upon, "Yes, Sister?" she stood up and blurted out the only truth she knew, "You can't beat Tide!"

As you can see, behind this closed door, even though our laundries are equipped with the low suds, environmentally friendly version of today, there is the Tide bottle. Sometimes you just have to, because "You can't beat Tide!"

Behind closed door #5

I've got two more "Behind Closed Doors" entries which will fill this week, before we turn our thoughts to loftier posts!

This "thing" that you see is something that most of our sisters probably haven't even seen. It's downstairs on the ground floor in a nondescript closet---it's our Direct TV system. Each of those vertical black boxes with the white label at the top, is a channel that we get. About 45 of them, I think. We took a survey of our sisters with all the channels that our local service offers and the top ones became our system. That, along with the thousands of DVDs our local library offers and even some streaming services, certainly give us lots of options...especially on those snowy winter housebound days (as we had last week).