It is time for a little “abbatial imagining,” once again.

                  Let’s imagine that we are in the middle of our fifth month in the abbey. We came in at the start of the year, we learned our way around in the cold of winter, while the days were short and the Divine Office was hyphenated with coughs and sneezes.

                  Now the early spring rains have greened all the trees and shrubs and brought flower stalks to the ready and the first roses into bud. The abbey is at its freshest; the professed nuns are full of after-Easter readiness toward the duties and delights of spring and summer.

                  To the new postulants however, the craving for “down time” is nearly endemic! The Abbess sees and knows, and she prescribes walks around the cloister garden. She schedules extra work details among the rows of new vegetable sprouts. The Choir Mistress introduces a selection of ancient motets to be made ready and performed at the end-of-summer concert.

                  All the while, those who have been inside the Abbey walls for many spring seasons know that nothing “works” as well as the work of devotion; nothing works as well as not leaving. The younger nuns are fitting their hearts to devotion, and after all, that is why they came.

                  We do the same, here In Cor Unum Abbey.  As we “stay,” we begin to see that all things do indeed work together for good for those of us who love Him, and the greater part of that good is that in all things we learn to know Him better and trust Him more implicitly.   Hope leafs out and begins to bud, and the blossoming of hope never disappoints.

                  There is an eternal spring in the souls of those who want nothing more than they want the nearness of God.