To be awake

A little play on words here as I want to tell you of an interesting-sounding conference that our Sister Joan C. is attending in Florence and Rome, Italy this week: Awakened World 2012. She is there as a member of the newly re-organized Peace Council, an international interfaith group of spiritual leaders. I'm sure she'll be writing about it when she returns, probably in the National Catholic Reporter. That's one extremely nice thing she consistently does when she has a unique, international experience--she shares it. She has written about all of her trips and gathering of the GPIW, Global Peace Initiative of Women and they make fascinating, first-hand sharings of people and places that most of us won't personally experience in that way.

And my second "To be awake" continues to be autumn. This past weekend some of our sisters traveled about 20 miles south of Erie to a large annual Fall Festival in a small ski resort town. The festival was good but the leaves of the surrounding hills were well past their prime. Ours seemed to have peeked overnight this weekend placing us in a kind of red and gold valley. Here are a couple attempts to share it with you--just from our own grounds.

Two trees in our side yard that are every one's favorites.

Our backyard yesterday in the late afternoon sun.