During these mid-summer days, for example, the people of Israel and Lebanon are especially in our hearts and prayers.

As I write this, summer is at its peak—and an especially hot and rainy summer it is so far. This is, of course, the sort of summer that plants love. The wetlands around the island chapel are bursting with life, the grass is thick everywhere, and the flowers seem to be singing alleluias. At the farm, the vegetables are growing, growing, growing. I don’t ever remember this land being more green and lush.

And while everything is growing all around us, much other life is happening.

Take Cana Colony, for example. Every summer for each of six weeks, several families come to our small cabins on a lake for a week of retreat and vacation. With them are a host family and three MH staff (a layman, a woman and a priest). This year the staff team are Joanne Weisbeck, Malcolm Delaney (for the first three weeks), and a different MH priest every week.

Who can explain what happens at Cana? As with our working guests, God somehow graces their time here.

Then there’s the farm whose life is described throughout this issue of the paper. Summer is mainly its time of growing, and every workday, besides the farmers who live there (several miles away) crews of men and women, staff and guests both, go up to do whatever needs to be done as the season progresses.

Factually, most of us have at least a finger in the farm—those of us who are physically able to. Once a week, throughout the summer, we go to the farm for an evening work bee to plant or thin or weed or harvest the vegetables.

Since we last wrote this column, the rhubarb, strawberries, and snow peas have been harvested and the sheep have been sheared. And the haying of a bumper crop is continuing.

And whatever has been harvested must be put away for the winter. That’s the job of the food processors and they, including numerous women guests, have been chopping, canning, and freezing.

The work of building, repairing, and maintaining our buildings and the other material necessities of our life is constant for the men staff. Patrick McConville repaired the concrete stairs to the basement of the main house. Doug Guss, Tom White, and Paul Mitchell upgraded two of our wells to bring them up to code for the new Ontario regulations. (We have our own water supply.)

Then the septic system at the main house backed up, and fixing it has been a major, ongoing job. So much excavation is required to deal with it that the yard next to the main house looks like a construction site.

Then there is the summer program for guests. The word "program," though we call it that, doesn’t really fit the life of our guests in summer. Basically, they live our life—praying, eating, working, and recreating with us. This is the essence of our "program," and this goes on all year. (Any of you want to come any time during the year?)

In the summer, we simply add some events and activities. So far these have included teachings and witness talks by members of Madonna House including priests, Saturday evening seminars in which guests can ask questions of our directors general, Sunday afternoon crafts exhibitions, evenings of music and dancing, and a picnic.

The craft afternoons, new this year, are being organized by Jeanne Guillemette as a way of introducing people to and encouraging them to do various crafts. The first one was needlework and on display were a number of pieces done by staff. A few staff demonstrated different kinds of needlework, and whoever wished to could embroider a bookmark.

We are having more music and dancing this summer. The music, for the most part, has been provided by the Exalt Band, composed of staff worker Trudy Moessner and a few local musicians—plus Martha Culshaw, one of our long-term working guests, who is quite an accomplished fiddler.

Then there is the gift shop. There are many summer cottages in the area, and cottagers, other vacationers, local people, and those who travel specifically for the shop, keep the shop busy.

A few more news items:

We combined with our parish for a Corpus Christi procession, Benediction, and tea afterwards. Jocko d’Ursel attended a mini-Mariapolis put on by Focolare, a fellow-lay community, in Quebec.

Fr. Bob Wild traveled to Papua New Guinea, where he gave a retreat to junior seminarians and was thrilled to experience the Church in this faraway place and to introduce people there to Madonna House spirituality.

Two longtime friends, Bill and Eileen Velicky, lay missionaries, gave us a slide presentation about their work in East Timor. Among the other things they do, Bill makes custom-designed, hand-peddled tricycles for adults and children who have lost legs in land mines. Their visit was one more concrete reminder of our need to pray and offer everything we do for those suffering everywhere.

Yes, though we are physically far from the trouble spots of the world, the people suffering in them or from the effects of war, are never far from our minds and hearts.

Sometimes we have ties to people in these trouble spots. Archbishop Raya, a Lebanese, was bishop of Galilee including Haifa. We had a house in Haifa which closed in 1974, and have close friends there who have continued Archbishop Raya’s work and suffering for peace and reconciliation between Jews and Arabs.

But whether we have direct ties with them or not, every person on this earth is our brother or sister. As each tragedy has unfolded in the recent past—the war in Iraq, the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the hurricanes in the Gulf states of the U.S., the bomb in Mumbai, etc., etc., etc.—we have carried these brothers and sisters in prayer.

Yes, in Christ, we are all one, whoever we happen to be, and wherever we happen to be living.