There's No Place Like Home

Ruby Slippers belong to my niece Kayli

As Dorothy once stated "There's no place like home!" After a month of traveling around the country for various reasons, it is wonderful to finally be home, settled and caught up on life.

October was an unusually busy month. After Louisville, Kentucky, I traveled to Erie, Pennsylvania for a meeting. Erie was beautiful! The leaves were changing, the air was crisp and clear and we were in walking distance of the lake. The meetings I attended were very productive and the 5 of us at the meeting were able to fit in a bit of social time as well. What a great group of Benedictine women they are!

Upon returning from Erie, I repacked my suitcase and headed out the next morning for Denver, Colorado. In Denver, I was invited to participate in Focus 11. This is a gathering of Catholic students who are in 11th grade (the first day) and 11 years old (the 2nd and 3rd days). There were about 30 religious communities represented and I was blessed to give the keynote and to MC the event. I stayed with some wonderful Dominican women and it was truly a blessing to have such wonderful hospitality but also to pray Evening Prayer with them. We used their new Liturgy of the Hours book and while it has some similarities to ours, it also has some differences. The main difference was the psalm tones they use. But it was nice praying with a community when I was away from home. I was also blessed to be able to share the evening meal with them. It was nice having the time to talk and get to know a bit about them and their community as all of us were in the kitchen preparing supper together.

After Denver, I was home for a couple of days and had 3 women who came to visit our community. They were able to spend some time meeting the sisters, praying with the community and sharing in our common life. What a blessing they were.

My final trip of the month was to drive Srs. Presentatia and Susanna's prioress Sr. Assanta (who was visiting from Tanzania) up to Schuyler, Nebraska. Sr. Assanta was staying with the Schuyler community for the night and then heading back to Africa in the morning. It was a beautiful drive with the hills in full color and the sun shining brightly. Susanna and Presentatia came along to see the retreat center and to meet the monks from that community. It made for a very long day but was a wonderful trip.

So now I am back home with no major travel in sight. I am very glad to be able to re-enter into our wonderful monastic rhythm of life. As I said in the beginning "There's no place like home!"