Monday, May 24, 2010

A little update

After a long and exhausting semester of academic study at Fordham, I am now back in the Northwest for a little bit--specially in Spokane at Gonzaga University. I will be going out later today to Hayden Lake, ID as I did last year to make my eight day silent retreat, which I am very much looking forward to. My brain feels like it has not stopped working this past month, so the time in silence will be quite welcome. Any of your prayers would be greatly appreciated.

After the eight day retreat, I will be spending a few days in Spokane before I fly out to Los Angeles for the summer. As I mentioned some time ago, I will be spending time at Dolores Mission and Homeboy Industries--simply to witness the work that is going on over there while also having some time to practice Spanish. Like any new experience, I feel a little nervous and apprehensive about it, but I trust, like in the past, that God will be very much present and active in my life during this summer.

Once I am out of retreat, I hope to update my blog a little more often than I have been this semester. Since I devoted all of my creative writing energies to my papers, I felt that I had no energy left to offer to the blog. Hopefully my battery will be recharged so that I can write again outside outside of the academic setting. But, I feel very pleased with my work this semester and hopefully I can share some of what I have learned.

As I mentioned in my last post, I hope to write something about religious vocation in the current climate. Also, I just watched the series finale of LOST yesterday and feel compelled to write something about this as well. I personally found it to be very consoling and an occasion that enriched my own faith--but more on that at a later date.

So, I hope to come back writing within the next week and a half or so once I return from the silence.

Until then, I leave you with a music video done at Ciszek Hall this past semester. I'm sure a number of you have come across it, but if not, here it is. The one playing the piano at the beginning is Mikey Wood, my piano student and also the one who made this excellent video.

Enjoy the Jesuit nerdiness =p


Monday, May 3, 2010

Another Jesuit Blog Advertisement

I recently received an e-mail asking to promote a website sponsored by the Jesuit Community at Regis College in Toronto. Check it out!

The Jesuit community at Regis College (www.regiscollege.ca) in Toronto, Canada, has launched a prayer website ForThisWePray.com. The website has been developed to encourage people to pray online, an avenue for shared prayer across the world . People can submit their prayer requests online (www.forthiswepray.com), prayers are kept confidential and the Regis College community and the Regis Jesuits include all petitions received in their weekly Wednesday community mass at the college on campus.

Also, we have designed a special prayer e-card that can be personalized and sent to Mom with prayers for Mother's Day.

The Regis community also keeps a blog www.friendsinthelord.com, if you'd like to subscribe or add to your blogroll.

On an unrelated note, the recent news with the Catholic Church has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I have some thoughts to share on this matter, but I will probably set this aside until my work load diminishes somewhat amidst this busy academic part of the year.