One place I have seen this lately is in the kitchen, where the cooks are trying out all sorts of dishes and seasonings and ways of cooking.

One of the cooks, Jocko d’Ursel, to give just one example, recently got together with Lisa Diniz, an applicant from India, to produce an East Indian Sunday dinner.

There is also a sense of play in the kitchen. At our All Saints Day celebration, a couple of the kitchen crew and friends put up a sign "Bethany," wore some appropriate costumes, and "Martha" served us some cookies while the others continued to bake more of them.

Then one of the guests, Kate Arbuckle, decided that she wanted to make pirogies, a delicious Polish and Ukrainian food, consisting of meat, potato, onion, sauerkraut, or something similar, wrapped in dough. But (1) Kate isn’t Polish or Ukrainian, and (2) she doesn’t know how to cook.

But not to worry. Someone in the kitchen taught her how to make them and how to mass produce them.

Others, mostly guests, helped her with the rolling and stuffing. They worked on it for two or three evenings, and, behold,: we had some delicious pirogies for another Sunday dinner.

Most exciting of all, after many years of not doing so, the kitchen staff is planning, with the help of non-kitchen volunteers, to revive our old Christmas custom of making Christmas foods from other lands. Fr. Tom Talentino, Peter Gravelle, and Renée Sylvain, have already begun by making Italian pan forte and sorbet.

Other recent examples of creativity were inspired, as creativity so often is in a Catholic culture, by a feast day: this time, All Saints Day.

This is one feast we celebrate differently and to different degrees every year. This year we made things to portray or symbolize our favorite saint.

It was a last-minute affair, and we basically had two afternoons to produce something. The handicraft center put out all sorts of material—paper, fabric, wire, wood, paint, etc., etc., etc.—and Jeanne Guillemette was available with ideas and help.

The results were put on display on All Saints Day evening, and they were varied and imaginative.

One person drew small footprints on a piece of paper—footprints that ended with one print missing. It symbolized the Old Testament figure, Enoch, being suddenly carried off to heaven.

Someone else, who had never worked with clay before, made a statue of St. Francis. Two people wrote poems. Another person put out a calculator and ledger to symbolize St. Matthew, the tax collector. Still another put Catherine Doherty’s slipper next to a paper hand picking up a cigarette butt to symbolize Catherine doing little things well.

People, of course, made lots more than I am able to mention in this short article. Everything was put on display, and what a delight it was to go around and look at it all!

At St. Mary’s, the staff each portrayed a saint in any way they wished, and so, of course, the ways were varied. Some gave testimonies about their relationship with a saint, and some acted out a skit which Helen Porthouse wrote. (Joe Walker brought down the house with his portrayal of the mean husband of Blessed Dorothy of Montau).

At least one person read from the writings of a saint, and Toni Austin told the story of St. Herman of Alaska from the point of view of one of his native converts.

All Saints Day brought out the creativity of our neighbors as well. As they have been doing for a number of years, on the Eve of All Saints, instead of celebrating Halloween, some of the families have their children dress as saints. Madonna House is one of the places they visit. Their costumes are wonderfully imaginative, and after they have paraded around our dining room, each child tells about his or her saint, and we try to guess who they are. What a joy to us those beautiful children are!

Well, what else has been going on around here? Miriam Stulberg has given a couple of talks to the applicants about different aspects of twentieth century history.

Our young applicants were born late in that century, and we are discovering that they need some knowledge of what happened then in order to begin to understand the life of Catherine Doherty and the apostolate they are joining as well as what is happening in the present world.

Last week, Miriam gave a talk about the sixties, that time that laid the basis of so much of the subsequent cultural and moral changes in the Western world.

That evening as the applicants were eating supper (they have supper together every Friday evening), several staff (some of whom had come of age during the sixties) dressed as hippies, singing songs from that era—"If I Had a Hammer," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Eve of Destruction." Ah, more creativity.

Anyhow, the class was so good, that, due to popular request, it was decided that Miriam give it to the whole house—minus the guest appearance.

What else is going on? Our ordinary Nazareth life, our life of work and prayer, our life spent trying to love one another and each person we meet is, of course, continuing. It is, in fact, from the soil of the ordinary steeped in God that joy, creativity, and family spirit spring forth.

What other news is there? Well, on All Souls’ Day, as is becoming a tradition, we said the rosary at the cemeteries where our staff are buried.

Deacon Bob Birch renewed his promises as an associate deacon.

Dr. Breda McKenna gave the first talk of our Winter Lecture Series for the people of the area. The topic, "The Gift: A Reflection on the Human Person as Gift, in Marriage and in Celibacy," was based on Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body.

One of Donna Surprenant’s paintings was recently chosen as one of fifteen finalists in a portrait competition sponsored by the Canadian Guild of Portrait Artists. This painting of Sue Perreca, called "Preparation," will have been on display in the Art Gallery of Ontario December 7th through 10th.

The three historians working on Catherine’s cause for canonization—Fr. Terry Fay, Vickie Bennett, and Elizabeth Smyth—visited MH archives to continue their research. These people are professionals, and our archivists said they learned a lot from working with them.

Our three directors general went on visitation to MH Windsor.

We received word of the death of Dom Nivaldo Monte, the bishop who invited Madonna House to open a house in Natal, Brazil, a house which was in existence from 1989 till 2005.

Dom Nivaldo really grasped the vision of Madonna House, especially the incarnational aspect of it, loving the fact that we till the soil and wash the dishes. And he was a true father to MH Brazil, visiting almost every day.

Steve Héroux, who spent a number of years at that house, said that he loved to sit next to Dom Nivaldo, and that words poured forth from him that set his heart on fire. In fact, everyone who had ever been in MH Brazil loved him.

May all our hearts be set on fire whatever month it is.