Home Sweet Home

I'm home for the first time since August, and it feels great! As I write this, my dog is curled up next to me, so I'm pretty happy :)

Christmas at the Mount was absolutely wonderful, I can't begin to put it into words. The celebrations at Liturgy, singing in Schola, dancing around the tree, giving and receiving such wonderful gifts, it was all pretty amazing. A couple Sisters asked me on Saturday and Sunday if it was hard being away from my family. I said yes, to an extent- I would see them in the evening Christmas day, which made it easier. Plus, I didn't feel like I was entirely away from family, being there with the Sisters feels pretty darn home-like to me. But it is nice to be spending a few days back in New York, seeing some family and friends that I haven't seen in months.

I probably won't update again until next week when I'm back at the Mount. But in the meantime I'll leave you with this prayer I found last year, and stumbled upon again today while looking around on my computer. Enjoy!

Dear God,
When the day is too busy and the voices too loud, when there is too much on my mind and too little in my heart, when I plan too much for tomorrow and explain too much about yesterday, when I have hidden my true feelings inside and then complained of being lonely and misunderstood, be my good shepherd and my friend.

Gather up my jangled nerves, my tensed muscles, my anxious and fluttering heart.  Send life pulsing through me like an irresistible flood.

But show me how to be quiet, too.  Teach me to be still.  In deep stillness let me rest.  Let silence surround me like a friend, calming me and instructing me with deeper wisdom from within.

When my day is too busy and the voices are all too loud, be my good shepherd and my friend.

Amen

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"

I know I said Christmas was in the air in my last post, but now I really mean it. 'Tis that time of year once again, and Christmas is almost in full swing at the Mount.

Wednesday night I helped in making pizzelle cookies for the first time, and I had a wonderful teacher. They were really fun to make, and we made a ton.

Last night was the trimming of the tree. We have an absolutely mammoth tree in the community room. It's super tall and really thick and full. It's so tall, in fact, it required Alyssa and I up on scaffolding to decorate the top half of it. Quite the experience, let me just say. After the tree was all decorated, we had prayer in the community room, blessed the tree, and sang plenty of carols.

Following the tree celebration, we then frosted and sprinkled dozens and dozens of cut-out cookies, and got to sample any casualties that broke in half in the process. They were really yummy. But even after all that, the decorating was nowhere near done.

Alyssa and I then helped put up another tree and a few decorations in the tv room down one of the halls. And even then, we weren't done. Our director requested our assistance in decorating the lounge down here hallway, which we were more than happy to help with. We put up another tree, strung up some purple lights and hung purple bulbs from the ceiling. It's a really cute set-up. After all that, we relaxed for a bit to admire our handiwork and chat for awhile.

So, in total, I helped with 3 separate trees and spent about 4 hours decorating, celebrating, and getting into the Christmas spirit. I just love this time of year :)

And I'm getting absolutely giddy because I'll be heading home and seeing my family in just 2 more days. I haven't been home since I moved here back in August, so I'm super excited. It'll be good spending a week seeing my family, some friends, and snuggling with my dog. Pray the weather cooperates for me on Sunday so I can make it home!!

I hope everyone has a very blessed Christmas, enjoy!!

(sorry the photos are a little blurry, they're from my phone!)

Alyssa with our mammoth tree to show you how huge it really is

Tree #2

 

 

 

 

 

Tree #3 :)

The huge manger set up in the community room

Christmas is in the Air

And on the ground in the form of snow- at least for the moment being. It finally snowed a decent amount this weekend and stuck! Nothing like snow to put you in the mood for Christmas, except for the fact that it's supposed to jump back up into the 40's and rain this week. But whatever, I'm basking in it while I can.

Another thing guaranteed to put you into the Christmas spirit would be the Christmas store at the Kid's Cafe which we had on Saturday. The Christmas store is put on every year so that the kids in our program can come and shop for themselves and for their families. All the presents are donated to us, and we had everything you could think of. We had nice, big presents for our kids to pick out one for themselves, and then they had 6 more presents they could chose for anyone in their family. We had gifts for mom, dad, grandparents, older sibling, younger siblings. You name it, we had it there at some point. I was in absolute awe of the number of gifts we had laid out on all the tables, and it was all really good, quality stuff that was donated.

My job was to help the kids around the store to pick out gifts for everyone on their list. They were so excited to pick out their own gift, but even more excited once I started to ask who else they wanted to shop for. They were so proud to shop for gifts for their family members. After they were done with me they were taken to another room where volunteers were writing up gift tags and then wrapping everything up for the kids before they left.

It was an amazing experience, and not half as chaotic as I was expecting. Having 70+ kids shop for Christmas sounds like it would be a fiasco, but we were very organized, and the kids were better behaved than I've ever witnessed on a normal day. Nothing like Christmas to put everyone into a great mood  :)

I wish I had some pictures to post! If I happen to get any in the near future from anyone, I'll be sure to put some up!

Advent Reflections

Christmas is coming, and I can't believe how fast! I feel like I just got here, there is no way the time is flying this fast. When the temperatures feel more like October than mid-December, it makes it extra hard to believe Christmas is only 9 days away.

I really love Advent and I've never really appreciated it so much until this year. I'm appreciating it so much thanks in part to a little book of daily Advent readings and reflections that we were all given a few weeks ago. Everyday has a little reading and reflection on Scripture and then poses a question or topic for you to reflect on. It's been really nice sitting with this book and actually writing out my reflections in my journal.

These little reflections have really been so insightful for me, I wanted to share a few of them here. I'll do one of my favorites today, and maybe a couple more next week.

• What issues and concerns most test your patience? Reconsider how you respond and how you view the situation in question.

I have been struggling with my ministries recently, in different ways. I'm not a teacher, that's not what I studied in school, so I've found it really hard to hit a rhythm as a teacher with the refugees. I find myself really losing patience some days and getting frustrated.

But then I have moments where I can see them getting it. Or I have a situation like I did on Tuesday this week when I asked my class "How are you today?" I had one woman say, with the biggest smile "I am happy today, I am learning english, and I am reading a book, this makes me happy."

How's that for popping my perspective back into place? Thanks God, message received: be patient and understand how much of a struggle this is for them, way more than it is for you. I'm gifting them with an increased ability to read, speak and understand English. They are gifting me with a complete change on my perspective and a new level of understanding and patience.

At the Kid's Cafe I've found the last couple of weeks to be a real struggle. It's a lot to do with this time of year, that the kids are more amped up and mouthier than ever. My patience has been tested day after day  usually by the same handful of kids. They know how to push people's buttons, and man are they experts at it.

When I find myself ready to snap, I try to stop and remember what these kids are coming from, and it brings my frustation way down. They aren't mad at me, they don't hate me, I'm just the one they are taking their anger and frustration out on. What they are dealing with is bigger than them being upset with me because I asked them to stop running.

Many of them only know attention as negative, so who cares if I'm yelling or putting them on the time-out bench for the millionth time, I'm paying attention to them. I rejoice in every positive interaction I have with them, because they far outweigh the bad moments. The goal is to turn every would be blow up into a postive moment, we disarm them with kindness. They have no idea how to react. It disfuses their anger and builds on our positive relationship. Again, they are teaching me how to be more patient, and how to analyze the greater picture before I take anything to heart. They remind me that there is always a positive moment to be found in any situation, and each day is a new start.

If I hadn't sat with the reflection book, I really doubt I would have pulled so much positive energy out of the things I've been struggling with. It's a reminder to always think before I respond to any situation, good or bad, and to look at these struggles through the eyes of the other person.

"We do not live in the moment, we live in the next moment...we are in a constant hurry, yet we do not get very far...we are defeated by what is not rather than inspired by what could be."

"The Lord be with you."

Quiz time! The proper response is:

a) "and also with you."
b) "and with your spirit."
c) "and also......oh shoot!- withyourspirit"


If you said b, you'd be correct. If you said c, you've attended liturgy at the Mount sometime in the last 3 weeks :)

I'm sure the adjustments to the new Roman Missal translations are a struggle for Catholics everywhere. As one Sister put it to me today, the responses have been the same for an eternity, it's a hard adjustment when you're so used to just responding from the heart and now you're expected to read it from a paper.

I get it, I get it. It's a big adjustment. I've only been doing this stuff for a couple of years now, and I'm finding it difficult to adjust. I've caught myself starting with the old responses if I'm not thinking really hard about it before my mouth opens.

It's extra comical when our congregation here gets a friendly reminder from our liturgist every Sunday "Please note, the new responses are printed here for you. Read them." And wouldn't you know it, as soon as she compliments the class on doing a decent job with it last week, we revert back about 5 steps this morning. I'll give an "A" for effort though.

But everyone is in good spirits about it, we're only human after all, mistakes happen. You can catch most of the chapel giggling every time we all collectively flub our response. Old habits are hard to break.

A little more studying, a bit more practice, and we'll get our responses right. Maybe even by Easter :)

Green Thumb

I've never really kept plants. I've had bamboo plants off and on since I was a kid, but those barely count. They're really low maintenance and seem to be able to last forever even when you put them up on a high shelf and forget to water them for weeks on end (ummm...not that I've done that or anything.)

I've always been really impressed with people who garden and/or keep their own personal jungle of plants, indoor trees and flowers alive and thriving in their homes. I've always wanted a few plants of my own, but aside from the bamboo, I've never really gotten into it.

Until now, anyway.

I bought myself a bamboo plant a few weeks before I moved down here. Why not start with the ol' tried and true? A couple of weeks after moving in I decided I wouldn't mind another one to brighten up the room a little bit. So the next time I found myself at the store, I was moseying through the garden area looking for a friend for the bamboo. I found a cute little plant  but I have no idea what it's called, the little tag in the dirt didn't say anything besides "easy to care for house plant!" -- perfect for me. A few weeks later I bought one more plant, I had a spot on the table next to the armchair in my room, so I picked out a snake plant which is decently easy to care for.

The night of our commitment ceremony Alyssa and I were each given a beautiful, flowering, thriving African Violet. It came with a care sheet that proved not to be entirely helpful because both of us managed to bring these poor little violets to the brink of death before checking them into the African Violet ER managed by one of the Sisters here at the Mount (no, I'm not kidding). She's a miracle worker, and after a few weeks of care, our violets were ready for discharge (at which time we received an email stating they were ready to come home, good as new, and had been asking for us-- how cute?)

Since the violets were released, Alyssa and I have taken turns keeping both in our rooms as we were informed they really like having a friend around and do a little better that way. We joke that we each get custody every other week. We were taught how to properly water them, which was the ultimate diagnosis of why they almost died in the first place. They were getting watered too much and we weren't watering them from the bottom in a dish like they need.

Now, I'm getting into this whole tangent because 1- it's been a slow news week and I've had a hard time coming up with something worth posting about (that would be why there was no post Monday) and 2- Alyssa's violet has three little flowers beginning to bud, and mine appears to have one tiny bud making it's way out of the dirt.

Success!!! I don't think I've been so happy to see little flower buds in my life....except maybe after a particularly brutal winter. But these are extra exciting, because we worked hard carefully caring for these plants, waiting patiently for the flowers to return. And both of the plants look better than ever, even though they are still lacking flowers for the moment.

How appropriate that this is happening in Advent, the season of patiently waiting, tending to the needs of our world, preparing to welcome a source of great joy. The birth of Jesus is barely comparable to our little violets finally sprouting new life in terms of magnitude, but a metaphor is a metaphor. It's kind of amazing how sitting here on a reflection day, spending a couple of hours of reading, writing and reflecting on this season can turn something as simple as a flower blooming into a profound moment.

Watch, wait, listen, find God in the moment. Happen Advent everyone :)

My trusty bamboo plant

The mystery plant

My fussy snake plant

The violet twins, with Alyssa's with it's little pink bud on the right

December?

Last I checked, November was just beginning. What's the deal?

It's been an average week for me, which I'm coming to learn means that I'm under the weather yet again. I woke up Tuesday with just a tickle in my throat, sometime in the middle of the night. By the time I got out of bed to get ready, it was definitely something more than a tickle. By lunch time I was ready to drop. Headache, raging sore throat, an earache, everything ached and I had that feeling like my head was submerged in a fish bowl.

Seriously? Where does this junk keep coming from?

I made it through my work day, feeling like a bit of a space cadet the whole time. When I got home from work, I got right into a pair of comfy pants and crawled into bed. Alyssa proceeded to give me some nyquil, and I was out like a light. I slept from 5:30pm on Tuesday until 10 the next morning, waking up every 2 hours or so to roll over, look at the clock, and groggily question my sanity (it was the germs talking). I did actually get out of bed somewhere around 7am Wednesday to call my mentor and tell her work was sadly not about to happen. Upon hearing my voice she agreed, and told me to call in to my jobs, and get the heck back in bed.

It's Friday, and I'm feeling quite a bit better. Two days straight in bed sleeping as much as possible helped, but my throat and ears are still giving me a hard time. We'll see how long this one decides to hang on for.

And I hate missing work, and prayer, and being quarantined in my room for a couple of days everytime I'm sick. It drives me absolutely bonkers. I've never gotten sick like this in my life. I'll usually get a couple of bad colds a year, but this is crazy.

I better have the best immune system on the planet when this is all said and done, or I'm going to be so ticked.