I was relatively ignorant of the Carmelite tradition and of the lives of their many saints. In particular Edith Stein, the Jewish convert and Carmelite nun who died at Auschwitz interested me. This is in part perhaps because of the central role the Holocaust has played in my mind since I was young.

From the account of a French pilgrim, written about 1231, we know that the oratory in the midst of the cells, prescribed by the Rule, was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin: “On the slope of this same mountain is a very fair place and delicious, where is a little church of our Lady.”

8:30PM on my farm in May means the sun has just dipped behind the mountain. The last of the sleepy golden light has lifted off the tops of the douglas fir and cedars. Soon the spring bullfrogs will begin to cough across the creek and the coyotes will start their game of tag, yelping and howling as they pass unseen from ridge to valley in the shadowy dusk.

Simon Stock, who died in 1265, is a shadowy figure, of whom little is known with any certainty. Tradition holds, however, that he played an important part in the spread of the Carmelite order in western Europe.

Geographically, we take our name from Mount Carmel. A green oasis in Israel surrounded by desert, “Carmel” in Hebrew means “Garden of God.” Metaphorically, Carmel is our spiritual disposition as we climb higher in our journey of faith. We invite you to take a walk through God's Garden. We hope you are nourished by what grows here and invite you to share it with others.

The aisles were choked, every pew taken, and I’m wrapping up one mass and preparing for the next when a man approaches me and asks me to give Last Rites to his dying father. Though this the last thing I want to hear at this moment, I tell him I can be there that afternoon, after the last mass.

For most of the Catholic world May is considered the month of Mary with May Processions and Crownings of the May Queen. But the Carmelite connection to Our Lady has traditionally had a distinctly different feel than the regal pomp generally associated with Mary during May.