Silence, Knitting, and Sunshine

It has been 2 weeks since I arrived at St. Placid's!  In some ways, I feel like I've been here forever, but in others I feel like I've just arrived.  Here's what I've been up to:

This weekend was pretty calm.  I watched a movie, got S. Monika addicted to Bananagrams (in English, and I didn't win every time!), took some walks, did some homework help, read Mrs. Dalloway (by Virginia Woolf, almost finished), and just took life slowly.

Monday was a day of silence at the monastery.  The community has one Monday a month where everyone is silent all day - at meals, in the hallways, for 24 hours.  The only time we talked was at prayers.  I was a little worried about what I was going to do with myself for a whole entire day - as my cousin Michael once said, I think God would get bored if I talked to him all day!  It turned out to be a really wonderful day of rest, though.  I did a lot of reflective writing, took a walk on the Sacred Path of Enchantment, took a nap, and was just content to be.  I'm really trying to adjust to having nothing I really have to do.  Of course I have my work with S. Redempta and S. Anamaria, but I don't really have any deadlines for things I myself must accomplish.  It's so different than school mode!  My friend Carolyn told me just after we started college that such intense study makes us selfish - we only do things for ourselves.  But this not having anything I HAVE to do for myself... Sometimes it makes me nervous - I always feel like I should be doing something, there must be something I'm forgetting to do.  But I'm getting better at accepting it and relaxing a little...gradually.

Yesterday, S. Redempta made the first outline of her master's thesis, entitled (very appropriately, I thought) Possible Direction of the Whole Project.  She is very verbal and auditory while I am very visual, so we make a good team.  Her project is going to be so amazing and is really going to make a difference in the Tanzanian school system - I'm so excited to see it come to fruition!  And, after evening praise last night, S. Monika taught me how to answer the priory phone AND how to knit, all in one night!  I'm starting with a very simple, blue scarf.  Hopefully it goes farther than the doll blanket I attempted to make when I was 10...

And I am beginning to think that my background is a little inappropriate.  I chose it before I came out to the Pacific Northwest, and I am discovering that it is not nearly as rainy as everyone told me it would be.  Yesterday, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and this morning I sat in a puddle of sunshine for at least 2 hours.  It is cloudy most of the time, but not too rainy.  S. Mary keeps telling me to wait til winter, though.

This week, I've learned that it's really important to remember how to learn when your main job is teaching/helping others learn.  I keep paying attention to how the sisters teach me things about the community (how to drive the priory cars, how to throw things in the proper recycling/compost/trash bins, how to knit, how to be silent) and trying to use how I feel when other people teach me to make me a better teacher/helper for Ss. Anamaria and Redempta.  For example, S. Monika absolutely loves to knit, she's been knitting beautiful things for many years, and she was so happy to share her knowledge with me - this is how I feel about reading and writing in English (I've read a lot of beautiful things; I don't know if I've written many...).  So when I was learning, stumbling and fumbling with the yarn, untangling it before I could start knitting, starting to get the rhythm of it, totally messing up, and asking S. Monika how to correct it, I tried to put myself in the African sisters' place.  I hope I will always be both a learner and a teacher.

Peace and love!