You are outstanding!

This morning I received the following email from the university in Leuven, It came in response to the handouts I sent for some presentations I'll be doing there in early March:

Dear Amy,
You are outstanding! I am very glad you are interested to enroll into our program!

So I'm feeling pretty good just now, I can ride on this for days!!!

In addition, I'm working on the back porch at Magnolia and there is a bright red cardinal that has been flying around outside entertaining me. Perhaps that's part of the outstandingness of the materials I sent over.

I'm prepared for my annual tax seminar over the web - Basic Taxation for Religious. I have 12 people, which is pretty good I think. I just finished (more or less) the presentations I have for Leuven. I'll be presenting some work that I've done in the past, but it's all new for these folks, and apparently it's outstanding!

My Shreveport trip finished well - I think I gained as much as can be expected. I've never worked in the diocesan world, so this was a great opportunity to get a feel for the people and the operations in one local church. I'm sure that will stand me in good stead as I move forward.

I enjoyed my Wisconsin trip. I was speaking on consecrated life at the parish masses at St. Therese. Dr. Alexandra Guliano is a CSJ associate and she invited me there to speak. I normally give fairly technical presentations that have a clear outline (I hope). This was completely different. I was not entirely certain what was going to come out when I got up to speak. But I had three focal points that I was working with:

1. The readings of the day: Call of Isaiah, Paul and Peter - put out into deep water....
2. The section of my thesis where I reflected on the nature of vocation and of religious vocation.
3. My own experience in religious life and my experience serving religious institutes.

Each talk was slightly different, but I really believe in the value of religious life for myself and for the church and the world today. I hope that came across. I enjoy the legal ministry I do because I'm able to help religious institutes maximize their service of others, teaching, healing, reaching out, etc. Of course, consecrated life is in many respects not so different from other forms of Christian life. People living the Gospel, and reaching out in love and service to others in little and big ways. But the vowed life attempts to set up a society in which we can live gospel values more deliberately. E.g. through the vow of poverty we throw everything in common - and set up an alternate economy where all are cared for, and where wealth is found in giving, not in having, and where the whole orientation is to serve the other. It's an experiment that shows that the gospel works if we let it.

Now I'm preparing for my trip to Belgium. I leave Feb 17 (Ash Wednesday) and I have a few days to acclimate before I start the first program on the following Monday. That runs all week, but we have some free slots. Then Sunday we start the second program, which is two programs running interspersed. I only have to do one of them. Sometime they run 10-12 hours of presentation a day, so it will be good that I can skip parts. There is another program the second part of that week - I like the presenter, and depending on how she handles her topic I may sit in on part of that - but it's not required.

I fly to Barcelona on March 7 (sunday afternoon). I'll fly out of there on Thursday. That will give me three days of sun and practicing Spanish and seeing the sites there. I'm going there because it was about $250 cheaper to fly there than to fly to Brussels. The in Europe tickets are cheap. Also, they were taking till mid January to finalize the dates for the program. So this allowed me to get the ticket to Europe early and cheap. Then pick up the local flight once I knew the details.

Pray for thesis defense: March 4, and also for other presentations March 1-3. I don't expect problems. And The guy who thinks I'm outstanding should be able to help if any snags come up.

Peace,
Amy