Happy Thursday :)
I hope all is well with everyone! I am doing fabulously well here. The weather is a bit dreary today, its been drizzling all day and is about 48 degrees, not too bad though. I think I might be getting used to the cold, not completely but to the point where I have stopped shivering every second of every day. So thats good! Quite a few things have happened since that random snow day...
Lets go back to October 12, 2006. The Thursday night that all the JV houses came over. It actually went surprisingly really really well! There were abuot 28 people staying in our 3 bedroom apartment! It was rather cosy, people were sleeping on the floor, on the couches in the dining room, it was great! Community bonding for sure. After that crazy night we headed out to Dubuque, Iowa for our fall retreat. We were the last car to leave from our house and somehow ended up getting lost and being about 3 hours later than we had anticipated but the journey was fun. Stacey and I were crammed in the back of Kevin's Mustang, not a lot of leg room at all. We were practicing our yoga moves all the way there! I learned how to crochet in the car, Stacey taught me so now I have a new hoby which is great and I love it. Christmas gifts are going to be so much easier this year, and way less costly! I did learn more that that on this retreat though.
This was the social justice retreat and father Jim Collins of Chicago came to give the talks about social justice. He introduced me to a new term, FaithJustice. The terms themselves are not new but to put them into one word was something I had not heard before. FaithJustice is a difficult concept to grasp, it dosen't seem like it would be but it is. It was very interesting to learn about though a lot of things that I learned in Sr. Darlene's class at the Mount were replicated in his talk, a lot about Catholic Social Teaching and the 3 prong approach to CST, which are scripture, tradition and lived experience were talked about a lot and we talked a little bit about scripture and tradition but mostly lived experience and out placements and where they fit on the faithjustice scale, if you will. It was fascinating stuff. I not only learned about faithjustice but i learned more about myself. I realized that I needed to let go of any and all expectations that I have/had about community. our community was struggling a bit before retreat but after we had time to talk to other people and had time to think about things we came back as a community and things have been amazing so far. Thisngs just clicked into place. When you leave somewhere and come back to it, it feel more like you are settled in and that is what happened here for sure. It was a great feeling. I still cannot call Chicago home but it feels right to be here.
A lot has also happened at work. I have officially taken over the home delivery program and this saturday will be the first HD by myself. Everything has gone pretty smoothly so far, we'll see on Sat morning though :) I am contacting the people for the holiday food drives and getting those going and organizing the HD program a bit more. I am really enjoying my work still and embrace everything I come accross with an open mind and open heart.
I have been feeling less and less homesick, this is good, I was really down for a while but that seems to have passed by the grace of God.
This past weekend I got to spend some time with Marianne Cabrera, she is one of my Pi Theta Mu sisters who is attending grad school at Loyola of Chicago and that was amazing. We went to downtown chicago and hung out for the day, there was an amazing amount of people there becuase of the Chicago marathon, it was such a great time! I am so grateful that she is here, I love the way God takes care of us! I am officially coming home for Christmas from Dec 23-30, only a week but I am so so excited! come and visit me in SD!! Next week is our area visit so Marybeth, our area diractoe will be staying at our apartment for 5 days and visiting each of our placements and meeting with our supervisors and each of us one on one, it shoudl be a great time, I'm really looking forward to it. This is getting really long and I had better get back to work for a bit. I miss you all greatly and think about you often. Much love and many blessings,
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Shelley
I hope all is well with everyone! I am doing fabulously well here. The weather is a bit dreary today, its been drizzling all day and is about 48 degrees, not too bad though. I think I might be getting used to the cold, not completely but to the point where I have stopped shivering every second of every day. So thats good! Quite a few things have happened since that random snow day...
Lets go back to October 12, 2006. The Thursday night that all the JV houses came over. It actually went surprisingly really really well! There were abuot 28 people staying in our 3 bedroom apartment! It was rather cosy, people were sleeping on the floor, on the couches in the dining room, it was great! Community bonding for sure. After that crazy night we headed out to Dubuque, Iowa for our fall retreat. We were the last car to leave from our house and somehow ended up getting lost and being about 3 hours later than we had anticipated but the journey was fun. Stacey and I were crammed in the back of Kevin's Mustang, not a lot of leg room at all. We were practicing our yoga moves all the way there! I learned how to crochet in the car, Stacey taught me so now I have a new hoby which is great and I love it. Christmas gifts are going to be so much easier this year, and way less costly! I did learn more that that on this retreat though.
This was the social justice retreat and father Jim Collins of Chicago came to give the talks about social justice. He introduced me to a new term, FaithJustice. The terms themselves are not new but to put them into one word was something I had not heard before. FaithJustice is a difficult concept to grasp, it dosen't seem like it would be but it is. It was very interesting to learn about though a lot of things that I learned in Sr. Darlene's class at the Mount were replicated in his talk, a lot about Catholic Social Teaching and the 3 prong approach to CST, which are scripture, tradition and lived experience were talked about a lot and we talked a little bit about scripture and tradition but mostly lived experience and out placements and where they fit on the faithjustice scale, if you will. It was fascinating stuff. I not only learned about faithjustice but i learned more about myself. I realized that I needed to let go of any and all expectations that I have/had about community. our community was struggling a bit before retreat but after we had time to talk to other people and had time to think about things we came back as a community and things have been amazing so far. Thisngs just clicked into place. When you leave somewhere and come back to it, it feel more like you are settled in and that is what happened here for sure. It was a great feeling. I still cannot call Chicago home but it feels right to be here.
A lot has also happened at work. I have officially taken over the home delivery program and this saturday will be the first HD by myself. Everything has gone pretty smoothly so far, we'll see on Sat morning though :) I am contacting the people for the holiday food drives and getting those going and organizing the HD program a bit more. I am really enjoying my work still and embrace everything I come accross with an open mind and open heart.
I have been feeling less and less homesick, this is good, I was really down for a while but that seems to have passed by the grace of God.
This past weekend I got to spend some time with Marianne Cabrera, she is one of my Pi Theta Mu sisters who is attending grad school at Loyola of Chicago and that was amazing. We went to downtown chicago and hung out for the day, there was an amazing amount of people there becuase of the Chicago marathon, it was such a great time! I am so grateful that she is here, I love the way God takes care of us! I am officially coming home for Christmas from Dec 23-30, only a week but I am so so excited! come and visit me in SD!! Next week is our area visit so Marybeth, our area diractoe will be staying at our apartment for 5 days and visiting each of our placements and meeting with our supervisors and each of us one on one, it shoudl be a great time, I'm really looking forward to it. This is getting really long and I had better get back to work for a bit. I miss you all greatly and think about you often. Much love and many blessings,
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
Shelley
posted by Shelley at 1:09 PM
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