The gathering begins
Our youngest partner
Meeting for the first time
Reconnecting with partners from last year
Gathering in the dining room for introductions
Prayer begins
A moment of silence
Many are chanting for the first time
Prayers are offered for a blessed year
Final blessing of all the partners
Today and tomorrow I am spending all day and night at the Kansas State Fair in Hutchinson. Several communities are co-sponsoring a booth "The Catholic Sisters of Kansas". It is always a wonderful chance to meet a wide variety of people, pass out some pencils and holy cards and offer a book for people to write prayer requests that are passed on to all the different communities. Each community has two full days that they are in charge of the booth. Sr. Rosann and I have gone together the past several years and have a really lovely time. Above is a photo of me standing next to the wheel that people spin for a holy card or pencil.
This is a live owl that was at one of the booths in a nearby building.
This is a sculpture made completely out of butter. The theme this year was
"Check Out the Stud"
Finally, I thought I would attach a couple little video clips of the pig races I attended - who would have thought those little guys could run so fast! The winner received an oreo cookie so I guess that was great motivation.
This weekend I spent some time out at our lake house. The house is about 7 miles outside of Atchison and has a wonderful picture window that overlooks a very little lake . While it is always wonderful to have a relaxing weekend and enjoy the nature that wanders by, this weekend was particularly wonderful in that there was a flock of about 40 pelicans that were hanging out on the lake.Now for those of you who may be confused (as I was my first fall in Atchison) apparently American white pelicans spend their summers in wet prairies and marshes and Atchison is right on the migration path of a group of pelicans as they head to their winter lodgings. Every year they stop on by for a rest on our little lake. They were quite a wonder to behold.
This morning at prayers, the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, I started thinking about what an appropriate weekend for the pelicans to show up. The pelican, for those of you who don't know, is a common Christian symbol. Legend has it that, in times of famine, a mother pelican will pluck her own breast and feed her young with her blood, resulting in her death. The pelican is thus an apt symbol for the crucifixion of Christ, which he suffered willingly for the sake of the church.
How interesting that on this Feast Day the pelican should show up to remind us the beauty in giving of ourselves for others. A great reminder for us all.
Over the weekend, our community had the opportunity to preview a documentary that will be shown on September 13 on ABC (this may vary according to your location). The documentary is called "Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism"
It was a powerful documentary on the situation faced by many women religious after WWII in the Communist occupied countries. Here is a description taken from their website:
Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism is a one-hour TV documentary that explores the oppression of Catholic Sisters in Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. This period began in 1948 after World War 2 ended and lasted roughly until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
During this 40-year period, the Catholic Church as well as other religions were harassed, suppressed and driven underground by the atheistic Soviet regimes across various European countries. However, this documentary will focus specifically on the plight of Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Sisters whose schools, hospitals and motherhouses were seized; who were forbidden to meet publicly or privately and accept new members; who were forced to work on farms or factories when they were no longer allowed to serve as teachers or nurses for fear of “contaminating” others with their beliefs; who were imprisoned or sent in exile to Siberia and other camps as political punishment for resistance; who were forbidden to wear their community habits and veils; whose convents were seized by the state; who were forced to live secretly in ones and twos in apartments as laywomen; and who were kept segregated in “concentration convents” with limited access to family and friends. Many Sisters suffered imprisonment, exile, torture, deportations and surveillance during this period.
The program will make extensive use of interviews with the Sisters who endured this treatment for over 40 years. Many of these “Sisters Survivors” (now in their 80s and 90s) offer amazing stories of courage and fidelity in the face of this bleak political repression. The producers have made two trips to Eastern Europe, visiting Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to conduct interviews and shoot video footage at the convents, monasteries, schools, motherhouses, prisons and concentration convents where the experiences took place.
Concordia, Kansas Sisters of St. Joseph Margaret Nacke, CSJ and Mary Savoie, CSJ, who have been collecting testimonies and researching the experiences of Eastern European Sisters for about 5 years, serve as executive producers of the program. Sylvania, OH Franciscan Sister Judy Zielinski, a documentary filmmaker on staff at NewGroup Media in South Bend, IN, is writing and producing the program.
Interrupted Lives has been selected by the US Catholic Bishops’ Communications Department as one of its 2009 programs for the Interfaith Broadcast Commission TV series and is slated to air on ABC affiliates in the fall. Dates and air times have not yet been announced.
It is a difficult subject to watch but the story is one I am sure many people are completely unfamiliar with.
Well I am not one who usually likes spiders. OK to be perfectly honest I really don't like spiders at all. They are the one thing that really creeps me out. But one morning early this summer, I walked into my office to find this really cool spider web between my screen and my window. If you can not tell from the photos, it is this wonderfully beautiful tunnel that is in an interesting "V" shape.
Since I really admired the beauty of the web, I had a little chat with the spider (through the glass of course) that if it stayed in that designated location, I would allow it to stay. Well throughout the summer the web has changed and grown in many different ways and it is always one of the first things I notice as I walk into my office. I believe the spider has enjoyed the location as well for there seems to be quite a few bugs that fly outside my second story window.
But as we all know time moves on and with fall creeping into our weather in Atchison, I am to the point of opening up my windows to let the cool breeze in my office, which means my little office companion will have to find a new home. So this afternoon, Sr. Elizabeth is going to relocate my office companion to a new location. (She is good at things involving spiders and other creepy crawly things). So in tribute to my spider and the unique beauty it has brought to my world, I have returned to the world of the blog with a new determination to blog weekly. Feel free to remind me if I forget.
How good God is to bring beauty into our lives in many unexpected ways!
