God does indeed work in strange and mysterious ways.
When we were building what we thought was a toolshed and then became the core of our home, we were Protestants attending a Presbyterian church in New Jersey.
One Sunday our pastor gave a sermon in which he told the story of how he become lost one night while traveling and, feeling desperate, spotted a Benedictine monastery sign. Seeing a light still on, he turned into the monastery to ask for directions, but ended up–since hospitality is one of the pillars of Benedictine life–spending the night, enjoying conversation with the monks, and also admiring a sign proclaiming the Benedictine motto: “Ora et Labora,” prayer and work.
The moment we heard this motto, both Buzz and I thought it would be the perfect name for our new home. Others on our road had names for their homes, such as “Arkwood Farm,” “Joseph’s Table,” and “Littlemore.”
Of course they were Catholics and we were Protestants, but we saw no discrepancy in our using the Benedictine motto. Some years later, as I’ve already related here, we became Catholics ourselves, although when we named our place “Ora et Labora” we had no idea this would happen.
Fast forward nearly 20 years. At the end of last November, I was asked to write two scripts about saints for The Merry Beggars, the new entertainment division of Relevant Radio, a national Catholic radio station. The saints I was assigned were St. Francis of Assisi and St. Benedict.
Unknown to the person who assigned them, both St. Francis and St. Benedict have been instrumental in our life here. When we first came to New Hampshire, we were surrounded by Catholics of the Franciscan persuasion, many of whom had attended Franciscan University or had children who were attending. One of them gave me a small cardboard facsimile of the San Damiano cross, which I’ve had pinned up on a bulletin board over my computer for years.
So for the last two months I’ve been immersed in researching and writing a dramatic script for both the saint who gazed upon that cross and heard God speak to him–St. Francis
–and the saint who became the father of Western monasticism and whose Benedictine followers adopted the motto “Ora et Labora”–St. Benedict.
These saints have been the subjects for me throughout this last Christmas season and into the New Year of intensive research and writing, taking over my life and also changing me in unexpected ways.
They’ve also interrupted the flow of my New Hampshire narrative, but I’ll forgive them for that if they’ll forgive me for the ways I unintentionally misinterpreted them.
Editing on these scripts is still in process, and the Adventures with the Saints series won’t premiere on Relevant Radio until next September (final editing, the casting of actors, and producing the scripts will continue through the summer, as there are ten 50 to 60 page scripts to produce), but most of my work has been completed.
So now I have time to return here to my story, which began with How We Got Here and continued with How We Got Here Part 2, Broken Oar Outpost, Mended Oar Outpost, The Adventure Begins, and Building Thoreau’s Cabin.
I’ve taken a brief “saints’ pause,” but I’ll be back….