What a week!

It was a busy week for us in many ways...some exciting, some sad, some in between.

Lent started, of course, and with it comes special psalms, readings and songs that liturgical seasons such as this bring. We had a nice Mardi Gras party Tuesday night, with puzzles and prizes. The prizes for the winners were a pack of one dollar bills that we all promptly deposited into a special box we just put out that day to collect money to send to the Benedictine sisters in the Ukraine. The American communities are responding to the sisters' present and near future needs by collecting funds here and sending them to a community in Poland who can get them to the Ukrainian communities when they can.

The first full weekend of Lent found us opening the monastery to our publics--both for prayer/liturgies and overnight guests. The latest closer lasted two months. It was a very happy and excited group that joined us Sunday morning. Erie County entered the "low" rating on the CDC's latest scale this week. Alleluia--oops, Lent...no shouting Alleluia!

And finally, the weather took a turn bringing late winter teasers---not only did we experience 50s and even 60s, but warm sun and the formation of ice floes in the creeks and along the lakeshore. Here's the view along our own Glinodo shore this weekend. These huge blocks of ice that build up every year at this time never cease to amaze me.

See our community website for the prayer card and obituary for our Sister Bernadette Sullivan who died Thursday. She was a true Irish leprechaun in personality, we will miss her.

Erie's Winter Carnival

The fountain in Perry Square is all decked out and

the fish beside it reminds me of the city-wide fish art project of years ago.

A very large bear!

An ice sculpture heart with a heart in it.

 

The pineapple of hospitality.

The universal peace symbol. 

Monday morning we begin reciting the World Peace Prayer at Morning Prayer each day 

that peace may be restored in the country of Ukraine. We have a number of 

Ukrainian immigrants in Erie, along with two of their Christian church congregations.

They're back

 

After many, many weeks have gone by with no sight of our deer population at all, finally, when small areas under the pine trees cleared one day last week, voila, three deer appeared one afternoon and much to my surprise, "settled down" for an hour or so. What a lovely pre-pre-spring sight.

Red Bird Explains Himself

Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves,
but this was only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience:
bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don't stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart,
that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed there,
with all its followers:
gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task,
to be the music of the body.
Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.
And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth
and I am of the inexplicable beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent,
to teach this to your heart.

Mary Oliver

On the other hand, these guys show their best stuff with the snow!

Memorial Super Bowl Party

The 20th Annual Lenore Shaw Memorial Super Pool Contest and Party came off with loads of fun, food and football Sunday night. 

We feasted on Subway sub/wrap trays, Cincinnati chili, salad AND our Super Bowl LVI chocolate and vanilla cupcake football field dessert. Delicious!

Congratulations to Sisters Janet, Peggy and Mary Jane winners of the quarter score contest.

And thanks to you, Lenore, for countless memories of your third-time's-the-charm attempts to join the community. So glad you keep trying and finally made it--for 25 years. We will never forget you and your uniqueness in....well, just about everything!

Winter storm Landon

We joined the working-from-home experience for Thursday and Friday last week as the latest winter storm hit us with a vengeance!

No help from the side entrance sign.

This door to the inner courtyard hasn't been opened in a few weeks.

A couple benches in the backyard.

This is my favorite sculpted drift. It ran along the whole length of the south wall 

of the chapel about 2-3 ft. from its windows.

One of my birds looking at the snow-filled feeder Friday morning!

Whiling away the winter hours

I've got two winter activities for you--whether your winter days are snowy or sunny, both should be good for these. The first is the latest "rage" in word games. If you haven't found it yet, it's called Wordle. Your task is to find the day's five-letter word. You get 6 chances and only can play the one time each day. This is what the board looks like. Your first guess is just anything you want and the color of each letter indicates whether or not it is in the word and, if it is, if it is in the correct position. Lots and lots of fun, especially trying to figure out your strategy! Click the ? in the upper left for directions on the colors. The link is here.

The second idea for your winter/spring/summer, really all year round hobby, is this wonderful app. from the Cornell Ornithology Labs. It's name is Merlin (see logo below) and it offers casual as well as serious bird watchers, assistant in finding what is the bird you're looking at! Part of this app. for your phone is a short download to take a photo of the bird, another to tape its song. I can't wait to try it. 

If you enjoy seeing birds and wish you knew all of them, let alone their songs, this may finally be the answer. The link for the app is https://apps/apple.com/us/app/merlin-bird-id-by-cornell-lab/id77345673

Reading, reading, reading

 If you need to remember our storm last Monday, read the last post! So, the whole week continued in this vein: not much more snow, but the winter cold was something--every morning the temp was something like 10 or 15---cold! My ministry car takes about 3 miles, until I get to the former GE plant, to even begin to give me something warmer than cold air through the heater and fan. 

Things were taking a nice turn until this afternoon. From noon on we got one of those snows that makes us feel as if we are living in a snow globe. It was light and fluffy and absolutely beautiful. Here's my resident male cardinal that I caught right in the middle of the snow eating at my window feeder. We have birds everywhere eating the food we put out. Fun to watch throughout the day.

Of course this brings me to talk about one of our favorite cold, wintery hobbies: everyone is reading. 

My latest was one of those James Patterson mysteries, this one with a clever twist. It takes place in 2080 in a very Hunger Games type New York City. Lamont Cranston soon appears on the scene, the 1930s fictional figure The Shadow, also the name of the book. It got some real panning on amazon reviews, but since I didn't really know the radio show from the era, I enjoyed the light, easy read of it. When people can make themselves invisible to fight the bad guys, that's enough for me on a cold, wintery evening!

On the more literate side, I recommended one of John Hart's magnificent novels to one of my friends this weekend. I told her to get ready to read some really great writing. I think the one she started was Down River.