The Unusual Weekend

Yes, this weekend had three unusual things about it, one small and the other two rather large. The small one is that we hosted yet another faith group, but they are not your standard brand Christians, though they are Christian. They are from all over the country, about 20 or so of them, and they are the Community of Light and Love or something close to that. Very nice people and happy to be in our facilities for their gathering. This type of hospitality, to various faith groups, is one of the greatest "gifts" that we can offer, I believe.

The two larger oddities, well not really oddities just not your run-of-the-mill weekly events, are these:

1) Courtesy of one of the oblates, we received Flowers of Maui for our chapel environment. Now there can't be any more dissimilar places at this time of year than the Great Lakes plains and Maui, Hawaii. But, here they are in our chapel looking very out of place, yet very beautiful.

Click on pictures to enlarge.

The accompanying brochure tells us that they are:
The duster-looking long red ones are a type of ginger;
The orange horizontal spikes are Birds of Paradise;
The large leaf-like ones are Anthurium;
The wispy round ones are Pincushion;
and the long yellow spikes are another type of ginger.

2) We have three lovely women visiting us these days. One is looking into our Benedicta Riepp one-year program and the other two into our community as postulants. They are all here for a 4-5 day visit and their times overlapped over the weekend. This group does not include another gal who was here two weeks ago for her second or third visit and is considering entering also. What is going on here? What are they seeing, wondering, praying about, considering? Truly I love it here, for sure, but it's always still a bit amazing to me when women are drawn here and come, see and consider "turning their life upside down" toward what they are seeking. I say this because I don't think that in another time 18-year-olds felt that their life was turned inside-out when they entered the community right after high school. But, if you're 40 or 50--my goodness--that is quite a different decision. Either way, it's very, very nice to have visitors such as these gals among us.