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Ah, spring! Well, not yet, but it will be by the time you read this newspaper, and just bringing that to mind on this cold mid-March day is a cheer-up. It’s been a long, cold, snowy, and icy winter.
Every year, we have a contest to guess when the snow will be gone from the apple orchard. We make our guesses in February, and this year for the first time, nobody guessed a date in March!
But there are signs that spring is on the way. The days are, of course, growing longer, more of them are sunny, and temperatures are rising above freezing more and more often.
Today the men are having a work bee to put the taps in the sugar maple trees in preparation for collecting the sap that will be boiled down to make maple syrup. And the gift shop is making displays in anticipation of its summer customers.
Lent has begun. We had our Lenten house music practice, and daily we are singing the haunting Lenten hymns. Some Fridays we are making the Stations of the Cross, and Saturdays we are eating soft homemade pretzels. (Did you know that pretzels, made as they are out of flour and water, were created to be a Lenten food?)
Speaking of food, Martin McDonald, our bread baker, has begun the koolitch and applicant Flora Hye Jin Jeon is making paska—our two wonderful Russian Easter foods.
One big event of this time-frame was the 25th anniversary of St. Mary’s*, one of the two communities that make up Madonna House Combermere.
The celebration was simple. At the intercessions of the evening Mass, the names of all who had ever been assigned to St. Mary’s were read out—176 staff and 2 applicants.
For supper, the dining room was transformed into a pizza parlour, and people also ate the chocolate cake that the main house had made for them.
After supper, people called out what they were grateful for, covering a blackboard with 35 items. The diary of the first day of St. Mary’s was also read.
Then the following Sunday St. Mary’s hosted a come and go tea in the afternoon. Even though the weather—wind, rain, and ice—made the 1/3 mile walk from the main house problematic, most of us managed to get there to enjoy visiting over tea and cookies and looking at the photo albums.
As always, we had our annual “Pre-Lent Event,” the Madonna House version of Mardi Gras—a variety show mainly composed of funny skits—some about some aspect of life in Madonna House, some not. As always, it was an evening filled with laughter.
This year, Fr. Kieran Kilcommons and Andorra Howard were the MCs, and between skits, they did a take-off on the Hollywood Academy Awards, giving “awards” to people who had put on the best skits from the past.
Current skits? How to describe them? In one of them, Fr. David May was eaten by a boa constrictor as Trina Stitak recited a children’s poem titled “I’m Being Eaten by a Boa Constrictor.” The boa constrictor was a navy blue sleeping bag with a long red tongue.
Steve Héroux played a narcissistic opera singer singing a song called, “Me, Me, Me.”
The applicants, those in formation to become staff workers, sang of the dangers of not listening to their elders—dangers ranging from wet laundry that could spontaneously combust to a “propane dryer that will surely catch fire” and chain saws.
Two poems were read and acted out. One, read by Cynthia Donnelly, was a children’s poem about the “tragic” consequences to a little girl—Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout—who refused to take the garbage out. The other, presented by the library staff, was a Phyllis McGinley poem about St. Bridget, who gave her family’s possessions to two scruffy people, one of them wearing a sign that said, in the words of the poem, “Cold and Hungry Sinner.”
And then there was a skit about a “brilliant” answer to all our clothing needs—a bright blue coverall that “could be worn!!!” for everything from chopping trees to Easter Sunday supper.
Yes, there were some fun events before Lent, another such being our Family Skate Night on our homemade rink.
Couldn’t skate or too old to? No problem. It was fun watching.
There were a few games on skates and time to skate as you wished. Some people skate-danced; others played mini-hockey in one section, and others just skated around or were helped to do so by good skaters.
Were you feeling cold? There was hot chocolate and a steel barrel with a fire to stand around.
This is also the time of year of Friday afternoon staff study groups. This year we are studying various writings of Catherine Doherty or subjects related to her.
Among other things, groups are reading Catherine’s diaries and poems, apostolic farming, and the book Molchanie (silence); listening to tapes of her talks; and learning about Russian spirituality or history.
These study groups are a wonderful opportunity not only to deepen our knowledge of Catherine and her spirituality but also to discuss what we are learning with a small group of people.
We also learned or re-learned about Catherine and the history of our apostolate and of African-Americans. Before she founded Madonna House, Catherine founded a few houses she called “Friendship House,” four of which were located in African-American neighbourhoods and worked for interracial justice.
We always do something to celebrate the founding of the first of these African-American houses, the one in Harlem, in New York City.
This year, the applicants put on a skit written by one of them, Amy Barnes, about life in the Harlem House.
At St. Mary’s, Andorra Howard and Sara Matthews did presentations on aspects of African-American history.
A number of us attended The Pirates of Penzance, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College. They do a great job, and besides being good entertainment, the college’s yearly productions are good opportunities for us to visit with friends and neighbors.
The Asians among us—staff, applicants, and guests—celebrated Lunar New Year with a simple and beautiful ceremony which they perform in their families.
The young people—in our case Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese—bowed before our directors, wishing them blessings for the New Year. The directors, in turn, as is the custom, gave them small gifts and a blessing.
Our directors general made a visitation at St. Joseph’s House, our mission house which serves the area we live in.
Our bishop, Bishop Michael Mulhall, gave a talk to our applicants about the Church today in light of history, about the importance of being informed about current events, and about serving in our own area.
Fr. Robert Johnson and Cynthia Donnelly gave the second of the two diocesan women’s retreats, and Gloria Lawton had a book table there.
Carol Ann Gieske, Helen Porthouse and Joo Eun Lee put on puppet shows at local grade schools. Andorra Howard, our bee keeper, gave a talk on bees at the local horticultural society.
Alex Do, assisted by our friend, Lynn Leuschen, did a book table at the Lift Jesus Higher rally in Toronto.
I wish each of you a blessed, joyous Easter and Easter Season. Isn’t it great that the Church gives us fifty days in which to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection!
*See “Combermere Diary” in our March issue for more info. about St. Mary’s—new.madonnahouse.org/restoration
