Chapel of the Sisters of the Redeemer

For decades I treasured a signed copy of a small booklet titled There Is a Season: A Countryman’s Almanac of an Orderly World, illustrated by my friend, the late Constantine Kermes. Inspired by Ecclesiastes 3:18, it was published and printed in 1968 at Landis Valley, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I occasionally visited Mr. Kermes and his wife at their rural home there, which was within walking distance from the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum where, as a high school student, I attended the annual Institute of Pennsylvania Life and Culture. In retrospect, 1968 was a tumultuous time in my adolescence. I, maybe like many others, was looking for a more orderly world. When the time finally came to downsize my life before taking Solemn Vows forty years later, I gave Cousin Sue that booklet, along with other artworks by Mr. Kermes, since she and her partner live only five miles from Landis Valley where the artist and his wife are buried in the Mennonite Cemetery, in the heart of Lancaster County.

All of this came to mind last weekend, the first weekend of November, as I drove through that part of the Keystone State. I made the trip to attend the “Fall Back” Retreat Day for Young Adults in Huntingdon Valley PA, organized by the Delaware Valley Member Area of the National Religious Vocation Conference (NRVC), and held at the Redeemer Valley Farm and Transformation Center. It was the weekend of the time change, to gain an hour, to ‘fall back’ and, despite the tree colors being past their peak, a time to enjoy a gorgeous autumn day and to make some new vocations friends on retreat. As a member of NRVC, Portsmouth is also part of the New England Member Area which doubles our opportunities for learning new outreach methods, for networking among other Directors of Vocation, and for offering hospitality to men still discerning ways in which they might respond to the call of a life as a consecrated religious.