Turning 57

This week, our Br. Randy is on vacation visiting family and friends in Texas. While he's away, I get to sign the checks issued in payment of our invoices (Br. Randy is our Bursar). It's always a good reminder to see all the businesses and ministries that the monastery supports financially thanks to its own economic activity. On the receiving side, it's a wonderful feeling to know how many people support us by their donations. Economically too, we are in a web of connectedness.

While Randy is away, various Brothers go get the mail and distribute it in the pigeon holes we each have in our mailroom. Each time one of us leaves for a length of time, there is a hole in our connectedness the shape of the absent brother. We get to become even more grateful for all the services and ministries that brother brings to our common life.

I'm bellringer this coming week. I get to enjoy the quiet of the chapel before everyone files in.
As a good Anglican, I love my candles and how they focus prayer. From left, clockwise, in front of an icon of St Benedict,
next to the statue of Our Lady and Baby Jesus, the Paschal Candle.

Thank you, Randy.

*****

On Tuesday mornings, after daily chapter, the community has a choir rehearsal. Br. Josép, our choirmaster comes to them well-prepared and leads us into singing exercises before addressing the music of the coming week. Josép is a trained opera singer and a voice teacher. He gives us both communal and personal feedback on our singing to help us improve the quality and beauty of our singing. Several of you have remarked on how better our choir sounds (most of the time...) these last few years. The better we sing, the more motivated we are to make that happen. It's a virtuous spiral.

Thanks for keeping us spinning, Br. Josép!

*****

As you know, our community is conducting a Capital Campaign. The Open Doors, Open Hearts campaign hit an encouraging milestone this past week. We reached a total of pledges a smidgeon above two and half million dollars. That is well within sight of our original goal of $ 2.55 MM. Now we are only $500,000 away from our stretch goal of $3 MM. Our campaign solicitations will continue until October. That gives us six months to achieve our stretch goal.

Brick-and-mortar capital projects are already in advanced planning stages. One is completed already; the partition of the church hallway with glassed panels and a double-door to the main body of the church.

Thank you to all those who have already pledged their support to our campaign. If you can, consider adding to your original pledge. If you haven't had a chance yet to join this successful campaign, consider making your first gift to the campaign soon to help us above the $2.55 MM goal. All donations above that fund-raising level will go towards the Monastery's Endowment Fund to support the long-term financial resiliency of our life of worship, prayer, and ministries.

You can find out campaign updates, information and an online donation service at:
www.GivingSites.com/HolyCross

Thank you to all my brothers for their continuing support and involvement in this successful campaign. With God's help, together we can do it!

*****

Thursday was my 57th birthday. I received the good wishes and prayers of my monastic community and enjoyed the online tsunami of good wishes from friends and family. It is such a supportive experience to see in one day the width of the web of connectedness we belong to.

What do you give "the monk who has it all" for his birthday? I decided to appeal to friends on Facebook to make a donation to the monastery for my birthday. I was wowed by how successful that was. The funds will go towards our Open Doors, Open Hearts Capital Campaign which I am coordinating.

*****

I told Vance Greenway that he was arriving in our community on an auspicious day (also on Thursday ;-). Vance is known as  Swami Chidbrahmananda in the Vedanta Ramakrishna order. He will live with our community in the enclosure for three months to explore his deepening connection to Christianity. We are delighted to undertake this bit of journeying with him.

Please hold Vance and our community in prayer as this interfaith endeavor unfolds.

*****

On Friday, the community of monks had its monthly group therapy session. This helpful process applies to the dozen monks who are not in Assisted Living. We get together in our Common Room overlooking the Hudson with a psychotherapist. We work hard at being honest and forthcoming in discussing issues that have affected us emotionally, physically or spiritually. Everyone is encouraged to speak his heart and mind. In a round-the-clock community of fifteen monks, there is always a lot going on that benefits from stopping and looking at as a group.

Our community has done this for decades now. In my fourteen years in the community, I am glad to say that it seems to me this process has deepened in emotional intelligence and faithfulness. It is a marker of how far we've come, that on the rare occasions when the therapist could not participate at the last minute, we decided to go ahead on our own and had good rich sessions then too.

Please pray that we may continue to grow in love and emotional intelligence as individuals and as a community.

*****

By the generosity of a friend of our monastery, three of us got to go out Saturday for a matinee Met Live HD transmission of Verdi's "Luisa Miller" at Poughkeepsie's Bardavon theater. It was a beautiful event with an amazing cast (including Placido Domingo).

Singing is an important part of our lives and we love to see other singers using their art to express beauty. No, I am not kidding myself that I could sing Bel Canto; chanting is not opera singing, but still... Brothers Josép, John and I had a grand time.

Thank you, Chris Silva for being such a good friend of our community and a talented Executive Director of Bardavon/UPAC.

*****

And I'll leave you with a picture of my favorite three Juniors (Brothers in initial vows). They were all three on the altar party for our Sunday Eucharist. If you know guys like them who are intrigued by the monastic life, send them our way. Br. Aidan happens to be our Vocations Minister and will gladly receive and promptly respond to their inquiry.

Before Sunday Eucharist. From left to right, Br. Joseph Wallace-Williams, Br. Aidan Owen
and Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero vested and ready to worship our Beloved Lord.

Eastertide blessings to you!