The Procession Continues

Yesterday's dawn was memorable but the camera was not at hand. With the clock change of last weekend, dawn is now just about 6am here. Today I took the camera to the breakfast table and ran out into the frosty air just at the right moment.

Later I came to the computer to view the photos and found among my e-mail messages the following prayer poem from Elizabeth Goral Makowski, Associate Director of the Redemptorist Office for Mission Advancement (ROMA). She has been watching the procession of the season in Esopus documented here. How serendipitous!

A Morning Prayer     

God of goodness and new life,
each day, your plentiful grace
pours a generous libation
upon a thirsty world.


You plant abundant
fields of colorful grace
whose wild array
greets my senses and my soul.


Encourage me
to recognize
your extravagant gift, and
to drink deeply
of the wisdom of
groans and joys
planted within grace.


Stir me to see, touch,
taste, smell, hear and proclaim --
and yes! -- to be a stream,
flowing Love from your side,
watering the earth


Give me fortitude
so I may give myself,
confidently, unreservedly,
and be a place of you
where souls may come
to rest a while,
to drink your sweetness,
and to grow
in you.                   Elizabeth Goral Makowski c2009

Procession of the Fall Season

One Picture at a Time

Perhaps this is the time of the year when I most appreciate our location in the Hudson River Valley. When I was a kid I did not believe the teachers in my elementary school who spoke of leaves turning red and gold in this season of the year. I never saw a red or gold leaf in Brooklyn! A perk of my religious vocation has been to live it out in this place, to view daily the procession of nature's annual round in this blessed territory. I will be posting new photos of the same view from a monastery window in the masthead of this blog every few days. I hope you will enjoy this representation of the movement of God's creating hand over the land and waters. By the way, the bit of blue seen top left in the masthead photograph is the mighty Hudson River. Gradually more and more of it will be revealed. 

The Big Freeze

This the view from my bedroom window looking northwest across the Hudson River. Yes, what you see beyond the tree tops is the river, frozen solid. These days, a Coast Guard vessel ploughs through the ice to keep the shipping channel open. Yes, again! The shipping channel is used by tankers hauling oil to depots in Albany. The Hudson River, celebrating the 400th anniversary of its discovery by Henry Hudson in 1609 is navigable well beyond Albany, the state capital (150 miles north of New York City). It is a tidal river, an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, so we have high tide and low tide and the water contains salt up to Poughkeepsie, just south of us. When the ice thaws in the spring I will be able to tell just by looking at the way the ice is moving whether the tide is coming in or going out.

Needless to say, the frozen river is both beautiful and treacherous. Ice was harvested from this river well into the 20th century. Ice, stored in huge barn like wooden buildings at river's side, was shipped throughout the year to New York city hotels and businesses via the river, super highway of its time. My Dad tells of Sunday afternoon rides aboard the Hudson River Line's huge passenger vessels during the 1930s.

Our monastery was built in 2001. Its large picture windows afford breath-taking views of the river and countryside. When we cannot stand the cold outdoors we can still commune with God in the wonder of all creation, a mystery of life and love.

The path down to the river's edge, an easy walk one way and not so easy on the way back up, has not been ploughed so getting there is out of the question for me. But when things begin to thaw (a welcome prospect since yesterday's 6am temperature was minus 3 degrees) and the sun is doing its bright early springtime thing, it is worth the walk to see the ice fighting its way down the river, bumping and crunching as example of the force of nature.

Stay warm and cozy.