The Weight of Doing Everything Today
Alas, blogging has given way to the weight of outlining my book, reviewing the new covers (very cool!) of many of the formation items that we publish, conferring about future gigs, answering e-mails, gearing up for another trip this weekend, etc.
I'll be giving three talks at the Corpus Christi Ministries Day conference this Saturday. They misspelled my name, but oh well. Two talks will be on the basics of discerning charisms and a third on how to discern personal vocation. Both are designed to spread the word about the upcoming Corpus Christi Called & Gifted workshop in April.
And I am hardly the only one busy as a bee here:
Tomorrow evening, our Called & Gifted teaching team at St. Brendan's in Bothell, WA (just north of Seattle) will begin the small group version of the Called & Gifted process.
And this coming weekend, one of our Chicagoland teams will be offering the Called & Gifted at St. Joseph's, LIbertyville, IL.
Meanwhile, the unstoppable Fr. Mike in preparing to return to Blessed Sacrament in Seattle to preach this coming weekend as well as next weekend and to speak on How to Talk About Your Faith with Others" on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, January 20 & 21. In his spare time, Fr. Mike will also be training some new Called & Gifted teachers at the Newman Center at the University of Washington.
Oh, and our server died again this morning but, praise God, we were due to have a new server installed this afternoon! And our Discerning Charisms workbook has sold out again (they went like hotcakes in Kansas City last weekend) and we got another order for 100 this morning. So Istvan will be printing more. It take constant monitoring to keep up with the demand.
Our motto around here is "no rest for the wicked"
So just for fun and to remind myself what all this activity is really about, I thought I'd post this e-mail we received from one of last weekend's Kansas City workshop participants
"I was at The Called & Gifted Workshop presented this past weekend. I can honestly say that this workshop was profoundly life changing for me. I'm sure I am not the first one to say, it was as though you were speaking directly to me. I welled up many times with hope in my heart that God can use me. For many years now, and especially the past few years, I have been anxiously asking our Lord what His Will is for me, what is my purpose, why doesn't He use me, etc.... In seven hours the doors were open to exploration."
God is with us and at work among us in surprising ways today!
posted by Sherry W @ 11:07 AM
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3 Comments:
And here I was *SO* worried . . .
Sherry (or anyone),
What to do when a parish doesn't 'take off' with the formation that a Called & Gifted seminar offers?
Our parish had 100 people (many from other parishes, as well) come to a C&G that CSI offered over a year ago. About 50 people signed up for small groups. I was in a group of 5-6 people, myself, and we covered 3-4 weeks of the follow-on workbook.
But I don't see a greater use of charisms occuring at our parish, nor have I heard anything saying as much from the pulpit. Indeed, the HS is certainly at work, and the investment of all involved was NOT wasted! But I didn't expect the momentum/involvement to fizzle out. So I'm scratching my head, and thinking, "Huh. How did other parishes roar to life after these seminars, and we...haven't yet?"
One thing that seemed to work against us (I and those in my small group) was that we had only the parish in common. I never saw the other women except maybe at Mass, and occassionally at a few other parish events. I didn't know them well to start with, so even though I listened to them share about discerning their charisms, I had nothing personal (i.e., related to them beyond what they were telling me that moment) to offer them.
How do other parishes overcome that? Or -- how do their small groups move forward...without it? --i.e., I wonder what temporal things are 'greasing the skids' for other parishes -- while of course remembering that God does what He wants wherever and whenever He wants to do it; His will, His timeline. Got that. But on the human side, we can set ourselves up to respond better or not set ourselves up so well for that...true?
V. curious!
The presentation at Blessed Sacrament is two nights, Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Monday night, I'll be giving an introduction to Making Disciples at St. Joseph Catholic Church, Issaquah, WA, where our own Fr. Bryan Dolejsi is priest administrator.
Lest Sherry think I have a moment to goof off.
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