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A Week in the Life
By Carole | October 23, 2008
Shortage of posts lately–I seem to have lost my muse for blogposting, even while I am (sorta) finding it for dissertation writing. Yes, folks, she started writing. She even turned some stuff in to her supervisor, and he liked what he saw.
Meanwhile, the wheels of ministry keep turning. So if you are wondering what I’ve been up to….
Twice a year, I meet with a mixed group of Catholic and Evangelical leaders for an overnight, to converse, discuss, debate, and build bridges. We had a meeting last week, and among other things, we discussed the Joint Declaration on Justification that was signed some years ago. If anything, we were frustrated by the lack of time to really discuss some of these issues, and agreed that we must make more time for our time together in the future.
In the Born of the Spirit Seminar, we had prayer on Tuesday night for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit provided some nice effects, by producing a power outage in the Church. We lit a few candlabras and began praise and worship in quasi-darkness. After about ten minutes, the lights came back on. It was a peaceful evening, thank goodness. The seminar has been an interesting occassion for discussion of the issue of dabbling in the occult–particularly Reiki, which is commonly practiced in Ireland. You can hardly find a retreat house in Ireland without it. We named such dabbling in the talk on healing, when ‘blockages’ in the spiritual life were discussed. This has become a source of some consternation for some people in the seminar.
The next morning I awakened with a migraine–the throwing up kind. For some reason I often struggle with headaches in October in Ireland–someone told me once that it could be barometric pressure changes with the seasons and living so close to the sea. Anyway, surviving that, I went with my Youth 2000 colleagues to Newbridge last night to investigate the location of our Christmas retreat. There is a picture of the place on the Youth 2000 website which you can visit here.
Tonight, I have a board meeting for the radio. We are in the thick of working on fundraising to get on the air. Please keep the radio in your prayers as there are always a variety of challenges, not the least of which are spiritual in nature.
Tomorrow, believe it or not, I’m going to teach some Protestants how to pray with Scripture. Taylor University students have a semester-abroad program here in Ireland, and I am friends with the woman who is the chaplain there. I’m learning that Protestants are often rather good at thinking about Scripture, but encountering Christ there by engaging with the imagination isn’t encouraged that much. I’ve taught the Ignatian method of praying with Scripture a couple of times to Protestant groups, and they seemed to be quite taken with it.
In and amongst all these things, the Lord continually brings people into my life who need a little direction or advice or prayer. I would have many interesting stories to tell along those lines, but many involve a degree of confidentiality that wouldn’t be appropriate for the Internet.
In about three weeks I leave for India. I have a travel companion for the trip, thank goodness!
A wonderful opportunity has come my way to have the free use of a thatch roof cottage in the country for a few months. It is a wonderful opportunity to go away and get some momentum on the writing of my thesis. I am considering taking a leave of absence from my work for a couple months to do this, but I need someone to hold my spot down in Dublin for those two months. If anyone knows of a female looking for a short-term rent in Dublin, January and February (or so), please let me know.
And that’s the news!
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October 23rd, 2008 at 9:08 am
Congrats on beginning to write! Thanks be to God for your travel companion to India! (What are the dates of your trip again?) I will continue to pray for the thesis.