Christmas on Papa Stronsay

This photo was posted on the Papa Stronsay site (www.papastronsay.blogspot.com) and gave us great peace during our first Christmas without Dave with us - look at his smile!
- I'll post a few of the photos from the Papa Stronsay site

We received an email just before we fled the snow to head south to Florida.
Now that we are here in Florida, we have a little time to make a post.

From Dave:

I imagine you probably saw some Christmas photos on the blog,
(Bob note: www.papastronsay.blogspot.com)

Christmas was a beautiful day!

and so you probably have a good idea of how we decorated. It was very simple, but nice. We've been celebrating Christmas for 12 days now. I've learned a whole lot of new Christmas Hymns, and discovered something called "Christmas cake." It seems to be mostly just a very heavy raisin bread, but Christmas cake does sound much more festive.

This has been an amazing month.
It was a good time for the community to do a 10 day retreat. What a blessing!
We're supposed to have a 1 day retreat every month, and a 10 day retreat every year...all in total silence. It went really well.
Since I did a month-long retreat when I visited in March/April of last year, my schedule was a little different from everyone else's: I assumed some of the duties such as cooking, making trips over to Stronsay in the boat, and other odds and ends.
I was told my cooking was very good - and very monastic.
Some said they felt those two terms are contradictory.
We all had a good laugh.
They haven't asked me to cook again since the retreat ended...ha.
They did say I was okay at making mashed potatoes...hmmmmm

We had some really good insights during the retreat. One of my favorites was an explanation of the "Glory be." Of course the first part (Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost) is pretty self-explanatory...and is believed to date back to the Apostles. They differentiated their prayers in the temple from those of the Jews by adding the doxology after their psalms.
The second part (As it was...) started around the time of Nicaea, and is a reaction to the Arian heresy. It affirms that the Glory being described here is the Glory that the Trinity has always had, does have, and always will have. Not a created or limited glory, but the Eternal and Infinite Glory which God has within Himself, and which we hope to enter into one day. I'm not doing it justice - it was pretty amazing.

The "Imitation of Christ" (by Thomas Kempis) was used quite a bit during their retreat.
One of the brothers has committed the entire work to memory!

After everyone else finished their retreat, I had a couple of days' retreat, and then it was time for Christmas!
It's been truly wonderful.
The rest of the world seems to celebrates Christmas during Advent, and then stops celebrating Christmas before Christmas is even getting started.
Not here!
Starting Christmas Eve, after the Midnight Mass, we came back and had some snacks in the refectory (which had been turned into a stable, complete with 5 bales of hay on the floor, and manger with infant Jesus in the middle of the floor).


Someone said it's good that I don't REALLY have "hay" fever...they've done the hay on the floor for 20 years now, and they're not about to stop.
The last 12 days have been one long holy-day for us, and we've been celebrating pretty much nonstop.
Only essential work is done, and every day has been a "recreation day," where we have talking at table, with none of the normal times of silence. We've also been singing Christmas Hymns during our meals...we'll stop eating every few minutes and sing a Hymn, then go back to eating. It's been wonderful.
The holy-day schedule continues until the end of what would have been the Octave of the Epiphany, January 14. Then things will settle back down to normal a little.

I've helped out a little with some of the chores lately. I've helped with the milking a few times. We have a milking machine - so it's much easier than trying to milk by hand. Anyway, there's only one milking cow right now, but she usually gives enough for our community. No skim milk here!

The other day we had to rescue one of the highland cows (they have HUGE horns) who had gotten tangled in a fish-net. She wasn't too happy about the whole thing. It was very interesting trying to help this frightened and jumpy 1000+ lb cow with 18" long horns. (Did I mention they have HUGE horns?)
Fortunately we had technology on our side: we set up a few steel gates around her, and then grabbed hold of the end of the net with the bucket of the tractor. After we had lifted her head high enough that she couldn't move it much (If cows had tip-toes, she would've been on them), we were able to grab the horns and hold her steady while someone cut the net off with a pair of scissors.

Thank you so much for your prayers, and please continue to pray for me and the community.

David <><