I write, speak, invest, network, and question to stimulate fruitful conversation. Let's talk about human flourishing! It begins with freedom. Holy leisure is the key to human being, freedom and generativity. Please join me in the adventure of realizing Christ!
Talks for Spiritual Retreats
Three Part Retreats
I enjoy crafting retreats with groups that take on that longer, deeper format. Here, I recommend a few possibilities, and am available, of course, to work with you on a design that meets your particular needs.
Three-Dimensional Transcendentals
We need the arts for a full human formation that enables Christians to communicate Christ. The original talk, was given for the Symposium for Advancing the New Evangelization at Benedictine College, and I can tailor this topic for your group’s needs.
The Holy Spirit Wants YOU!
For a Day of Reflection, Women of St. Ignatius, Leavenworth, KS in 2011: The Holy Spirit wants you BEAUTIFUL, EFFECTIVE, and POWERFUL. Find out why, and how He helps you become YOU, fully realized.
Sabbath – Easy as ABC
For the Daughters of Isabella, Kansas City in 2012: a retreat in three parts. Desiring His Sabbath, Designing Your Sabbath, and Dwelling in the Eucharistic Sabbath. I love helping others discover the 7+ weeks of vacation God has made possible for us!
A Prayer, A Poem, A Person, A Place
For an interdenominational women’s prayer retreat: What does it meant that a person is God’s ‘poema’, His workmanship? We looked deeply into a poem’s capacity to be a place of encounter. Where ‘poem’ and ‘place’ intersect, we find the human person in his fullness.
How Can I Be Loved?
For an Apostles of the Interior Life women’s retreat: Four ways of being loved and, for each, two opposite ways of avoiding that love.
The Veiled Self
For an interdenominational women’s retreat: Coming to grips with the tension of paradox; integration of rationality and imagination; the imagery and power of the veil; the dimensionality of the human person – in the context of C. S. Lewis’ book Till We Have Faces.
Faces of Unity
For the annual conference of all the Collaborators of Your Joy with the Apostles of the Interior Life: What unity is, why seek it out, and how. Four faces of unity – with unbelievers, with taskmasters, with spouses, and with self, through the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians.
Putting Down Sabbath Roots
Keynote address for the 25th Annual Mass of Celebration for Women in Wamego, KS: Practical ways to dip into the kind of leisure that brings us interior equanimity and leaves us more whole, more human, more able to balance all the demands of life.
Living Poems
For many different events, as small meditations, and as formal presentations, I have discussed the importance of the poetic imagination, and used works of my own poetry as lenses through which to view aspects of the spiritual life.
Grow Up In All Things
A four-part, day-long RCIA retreat for Most Pure Heart of Mary parish in Topeka, KS: growing up into freedom by way of a simple, 1-2-3 model based on the writings of St. Teresa of Avila. (Contact me to request the recording.)
You Are A Triangle
A beginner’s guide to the interior life. This is a simplified approach I often use in spiritual direction and mentorship. It gives us a very easy-to-use ‘language’ for communication about very serious spiritual realities. It began as a way of demonstrating how to balance the pressures of life without violating the self, or others, and has expanded to become a road map to interior freedom.
Convivenza – Insights from Italy About Life in Community
This talk is based upon my book-in-progess about my unique experiences with Focolare, Communion and Liberation, and the Apostles of the Interior Life – lay movements all begun in Italy. I am currently a Family member with the Apostle’s Collaborators of Your Joy. The Apostles are in all things faithful to the Catholic Church and her leadership, devoted to Mary, and habited in authentic joy!
Spiritual Dialogue
Spiritual friendship begins with unity, and unity begins at the Cross of Christ. How to approach and enter into dialogue with people of other faiths, lesser faith, no faith without denying your own strong, Catholic beliefs. Pope John Paul II believed this kind of communication is the key to evangelization in our day.
Logs On Fire
How to pray, from the methodology of St. Teresa of Avila: How to turn prayer time into a conversation with God; How to involve the affections in prayer; How to respond to prayer in a way that increases your freedom.
You Are An Icon-Painter!
A discussion of the four types of icon, as taught by St. John Damascene, the champion of icons against iconoclasts. This understanding of icons gives a powerfully affecting insight into the nature of the human person, and his work in the world.
Need a speaker for your next event? Contact me to discuss your needs:
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