Spring at the Priory

Spring is beautiful here on the St. Placid Priory grounds. The air bathed with fresh rains has a fragrance like no other time of the year. The rhododendrons are in bloom and brighten the otherwise shady places with lush and abundant color. Returning migratory birds sing in our forest in a chorus of sound that brings me outside many times during the day. I just now spotted a pair of Wilson's warblers, bright yellow, chipping away full throated. How can such a small bird make such a BIG sound?

The forest floor, especially on the Sacred Path of Enchantment, is covered with millions of tiny white flowers. What a show!

I hope you find time to step outside in spring days and discover something going on that fills you with hope and renewal.

Inspiration

Two highlights of this past week. Several of us were privileged to hear Greg Mortenson speak - the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. He was as down-to-earth with a clear vision of the importance of educating our daughters as I had imagined. The evening was especially inspiring as it was the vision and work of high schoolers, to bring him to town and to promote what Mortenson does.

Then last evening several of us attended a play, The Thin Place, at Intiman Theater in Seattle. Written by a local playwright based on some interviews with a very diverse group of people about faith, and the place of faith in their lives. A one act play with a Nigerian American, Gbenga Akinnagbe. Ghenga did an excellent job; a gifted presence. He shifted characters with ease.

Truly Living

Life was meant to be lived, with all its joys and struggles and unknowns. I have found the monastic journey to be an invitation - and even a requirement - that I enter fully into the mystery of living life, of the unfolding of a truly HUMAN life. Play is important too!

Anyway, I like the words of poet Dawna Markova:

"I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit."