Retreat!

Long time, no blog.  We've been working like crazy to put on our Regional Lay Dominican Retreat.

It happened the weekend before last, and it went really well!  We had our long time friend (and Zorg and Mxyl's godfather), Fr. John Paul Walker, OP as our retreat master. 

He talked about rekindling our first fervor, often by telling us beautiful, moving, and funny stories from St. Dominic and early Dominicans.

There's something special that happens in any family when you start telling old family stories, and the older, the better.  These stories are 800 years old!

It was a good reminder of why we became Dominicans, of how we love God, love each other, and love souls.

Zorg came along and recorded the talks, so we'll be making CDs in a little while.

And now that it's over, I have been scrambling to pick up the pieces of the new school year!

Feasts

We've celebrated a few feast days in August.

St. Dominic was August 8th, and we made white cupcakes with chocolate "cappas"  in honor of the Dominican habit. 

Although, admittedly, I've never seen a friar with sprinkles!

 August 15th was the Assumption.  I wore my Assumption shawl to Mass!

It was a gift from beloved friends who visited us from Spain when Mxyl was a baby.  The shawl is embroidered silk with elegant long tassels and is really a beautiful work of art!

Every Feast of the Assumption I wear it to Mass and pray for my friends, Tia and Tio.



Also for this feast, Klenda made an angel food cake and I made blue, raspberry flavored whipped cream.

We garnished it with fresh raspberries - yum!!

Dominican Fun for You!

 Our little chapter of St. Pius V is getting bigger!  In fact, this year, we were large enough to host the regional meeting of Lay Dominicans from Virginia, DC, Maryland and Delaware!

We decided to combine it with our semiannual lecture series.  We had about 45 people at the meeting and 65 at the talk (some of the Dominicans had to leave to make the long trip home, and members of the public came to the talk).

 We had the always delightful (and funny) Fr. John Corbett, O.P. again, this time talking about "Faith and Reason on Same Sex Marriage."  A member of our chapter taped it and put it on You Tube starting at the link in the title.

He did a great job, first discussing Biblical objections, and then highlighting the philosophical objections, all in a humorous but respectful way.

 We also had  Julie Vidmar of the Maryland Marriage Alliance on hand to help collect signatures to put the same sex marriage law on the ballot this November.


We got more than 30 signatures!  Not bad considering that many in the audience were not from Maryland and therefore could not sign.


Incidentally, we also have the last talk he did for us on You Tube: The Problem of Moral Action, as well as Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P.'s talk on Humanae Vitae.  The Emperor is introducing Fr. Corbett, and I am introducing Fr. Ku. 

In Fr. Corbett's most recent talk, we had microphone troubles at the beginning, which is why everyone is laughing, and he has no introduction!

UPDATE:  It turns out we have one more talk on line:  Doing Good and Wanting To: St Thomas, Natural Law, and Moral Issues by Fr. Elias Henritzey, O.P.

Dominican Fun

This past weekend, our group of Lay Dominicans hosted another talk. This time we got our good friend, Fr. John Corbett OP to give a talk on how our choice of words influences our moral decisions.
You wouldn't think that would be a funny subject, but Fr. John is the funniest moral theologian I know.

Hmmm. That doesn't sound great, but, trust me, he's hilarious! Who else would use Plan 9 From Outer Space to explain the existence of God?
Anyway, it was a great talk, I'll have to remember to post the next time we have a talk coming up instead of telling you about it after the fact!