Sixth week of Eastertide

We are still in the glow of enjoying our newly repainted church. Another piece of work that happened concurently to the repainting was the cleaning of icons that had accumulated a lot of smoke deposits. The great icon cross that was painted by John Walsted decades ago has found new freshness. The wall of icons in the side transept of the church benefited from the same gentle cleaning.

The icon cross. From left, clockwise: three of the six scenes of the life of  Christ that line up along his body (the Annunciation, the Baptism of Jesus, the Transfiguration): Christ Judge of All atop the cross; the Finding of the Cross by St Helena; St Helena and St Dominic; the road to Emmaus; the raising of Lazarus; the Annunciation to Mary; the harrowing of hell; Father James Otis Sargent Huntington, our Founder and St Augustine of Hippo, patron of our church.

We  celebrated the feast of the Ascension on Thursday. The Rev. Matthew Wright was our preacher and taught beautifully about the singularity of Christ's crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. As always, you can find the text and listen to the recording of his sermon on our sermons blog. Br. Randy preached a great sermon about the Farewell Discourse we have been following in the gospel of John for these last three Sundays.

The Rev. Cari Pattison led a beautiful online hiking retreat this week. Yes, you read that right. Prayer and reflections were shared in the Zoom sessions and the participants went out on their own hiking and reported about it. You can find out about our next online retreats on our website.

On a cosmetic note, out of necessity, more brothers resort to having a brother giving them a buzzcut. We don't look like a platoon of marines yet. And some are hanging on to their locks in the hope that confinement will be eased soon enough for them to find more expert barbers. It now looks like the Mid-Hudson region of New York State will begin that process this Tuesday after Memorial Day.

The Brothers. From top, clockwise: Bros. Randy and Luc in prayerful waiting before the Eucharist on the feast of the Ascension; Br. Robert James' beautiful arrangement of flowers from our gardens (bearded irises, alliums, phloxes, columbines); a gardeners' conference by the rose garden (Br. Josép, our rose lover, and Br. Aidan exchanging gardening tips and ideas).

And all the while, other improvement projects are going on. We installed an iron handrail on the paved path from the parking lot to the Guest House. And one of our general contractor open the roof of the Guest House's main building to build a dormer large enough to accommodate the technical space needed atop our new elevator shaft. In more normal times, most of the large improvements would have had to wait for normal Guest House closures to proceed. We give thanks for all our workers and pray for their continued safety.

Elevator shaft work. Our contractor pierced the roof this week to construct the cap of the elevator shaft. Good weather allowing this should only take a couple more weeks.

And don't forget, we stream Vespers on our Facebook page every Wednesday and Saturday evening (and sometimes on other days). If you miss the livestream at 5 p.m., a recording of it remains accessible afterwards.

You are in our prayers. Blessings!