Summer Varia

Susan Stabile over at Creos en Dios has a podcast series draw from her retreat: Embracing Mary. Looks very good.
Have a listen.

I apologize for my blogging absence. We are all working furiously here trying to prepare now all our special talks and presentations for a fall full of travel. Fr. Mike is working on a presentation on Catholic moral teaching and voting, which he will be offering at Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle next week.

I'm slugging away on incorporating the Pew Landscape Survey findings, part II, into Making Disciples, which we will be offering in Spokane in August. Putting all together is simply stunning but it does require sustained thought! For both of us, what we working on now is simply the first in a long line of fall presentations that we need to prepare NOW!

Meanwhile, the interesting e-mails inquiries don't stop! I still haven't responded to the ones I got over the weekend! I will, I will. But I have to finish MD first!

Our Australian team is in the last throes of gearing up for Days in the Dioceses (Melbourne) where they will be giving their presentation on discernment (Thursday, July 10) prior to giving it at World Youth Day. So I don't expect to hear from Clara.

So Joe, Intentional Disciples needs you and your brilliant thoughts today.

Help me, Ob Wan!

Oh, and I do glance at my e-mail as it comes it. So if other readers wants me to link to good stuff, just let me know and I'll try to do so.

Now must go out and water the garden, which is flourishing. The wildflower berm that I blogged about back on Memorial Day weekend is transformed - a 400 sf unruly green sea of lupine and California poppies and innumerable other leggy mysteries that are big and bold but haven't flowered yet. I'l try to post more pictures later.

The neighbors are constantly commenting as they walk by in the part behind. As one man put it yesterday, "It is a totally different place than it was two years ago." It better be. The amount of labor involved so far, by many hands, is incalculable. And then there is the money part. You can file this one under "a woman's reach should always exceed her grasp . .

Speaking of a woman's reach, Bev, a friend and sometime CSI staffer, is planning to run the Pike's Peak Marathon which is coming up soon (August 16,17). Third oldest marathon in the country. Run 13 miles up and then 13 miles down. 7,815 feet up, 7,815 feet down. But you do get to sing America the Beautiful before the gun goes off.

Here is a fun video of the Ascent half of the marathon to give you a taste.



To the oxygen deprived mind, it all makes sense.