October is a special month for our monastery as we celebrate two big feasts this month. That means two white mantle days in choir. The first pictured here is the feast of Therese of Lisieux, known as the "Little Flower." Saint Therese is the patron of our Carmelite province. The second big Carmelite feast of October is celebrated on the 15th and that is the solemnity of our holy Mother, Teresa de Jesus, or Teresa of Avila. We are currently preparing for the 500th anniversery of her birth in 1515 by studying her writings. This is the saint who had a strange devotion to the "sacred humanity" of Jesus, who treated Jesus as her "friend" and was supposed to have prayed, "If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few."