312/365 End of the year random thoughts

Today is the last Sunday of the year. Starting next week, it is, liturgically speaking, 2011. Advent begins, a briefest of brief Christmas season, and then we're back to ordinary time looking towards Lent and Easter.

I raked up leaves today and thought about Benedictine values. We didn't go to mass this morning because it would have been a disaster (Mike is deer hunting), but we're also not doing anything else. No errands, no trips out and about. Just here at home on an unseasonably warm November day. I raked leaves and thought about tools: there's a passage in the rule about care of tools and how ordinary tools should be treated with the same dignity and respect as vessels for the altar. How our homes (monastery) should be cleaned with the same care. I don't own a rake at the moment--some alley clean up day it disappeared into someone else's care, but I was using Valerie's and made sure it was litter free before I had Maeve return it. When I was done--I rarely rake, too lazy to be bothered by leaves--I looked at the yard. Our front garden is ramshackle and does not age into autumn well. But with the leaves cleared away, the porch swept up, and everything momentarily tidy, I was glad. The house seemed to sigh. Time for bed, time to sleep away the winter. And I understood what Benedict wanted fir his monks and the place where they lived. They weren't obsessive about neatness. It didn't become an end to itself. But having everything away and clean, they could be ready for the next thing. Ready for pruning back the butterfly bush and pulling up the volunteer weed trees. Ready, too, for Thanksgiving and then Advent just around the next bend. Advent is busy in my life. But at least the yard is raked.