Tranquil Reflections on Beauty and Renewal
By Brother Marc After a day of shopping early last May I returned to the monastery feeling more than the usual muscle aches. I had spent a hectic day searching for items currently unavailable or hard to find because of the pandemic. Then unpacking and sanitizing a week’s supply of groceries and bulk necessities demanded a lot of additional work. I recall another time I felt unusually tired. Nadya Goldsmith, a member of our Chapel Community, had asked whether we might plant some white lilacs and spirea at the monks’ monastery. We both thought these are attractive and uplifting in springtime, although plain but inoffensive the rest of the year. They are like the old-fashioned yellow forsythia bushes that used to flank the entrance to our smaller chapel and the lavender lilacs we have. It was around the year 2005. Nadya, an expert gardener, brought a dozen saplings she had harvested from around her home in Cambridge. We chose a spot at the far edge of our monastery c