We had the pleasure to facilitate a confirmation retreat for
St. Mary’s Parish in Nassau who cleaned up in Spirit Jeopardy!!  It was good to reconnect with some great
friends. Thanks for your help Scott and Tom.

]]> http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/11/08/st-marys-nassau/%/feed http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/10/20/spa-christian-living/% http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/10/20/spa-christian-living/%#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:34:37 +0000 ccarlin1 http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/?p=339 We love heading to a new community to share faith.  Not that we don’t deeply appreciate ‘old’ friends, but new friends are very cool too.  So this day, we went to talk with SPA Catholic ninth graders about what living a life of chastity and modeling Christ really means.  We were given six totally awesome peer leaders to work with.  Nick even forgave my oversight in forgetting the KFC bucket.  Fr. Matt spent the day with us and it was really great.  We walked through being made in God’s image and likeness, the need for boundaries in all relationships and the concept that Chastity is not just sexual, but purity of action and intent with all our gifts.  We had a very fun day filled with faith, and laughter and prayer.  We are looking forward to seeing our new friends again in a few months, and to work with those outstanding young people again. ]]> http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/10/20/spa-christian-living/%/feed http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/10/16/building-bridges/% http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/2011/10/16/building-bridges/%#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:42:07 +0000 ccarlin1 http://living-hope-ministries.com/blog/?p=341

What a fantastic day!  A small group of teens gathered to explore God’s abiding love, and their call to be a wave of God’s love and mercy to others.  We were together at Pyramid Lake, a beautiful part of God’s creation not too far from home.  Above, we are meditating on the ‘porch’ over the lake.  As we journeyed with Peter to find we too are given chances to see ‘Yes, of course I love you Lord,” we could truly hear the water, feel the breeze and sense the Presence.

We are looking forward to doing the same next fall.  This was really great.

    Silver Bay was beautiful and a bonfire was a nice addition to the weekend

I think overall, the reflection time was nice. The sharing was heartfelt and wonderful. I appreciate your prayers as we developed this.

Last week was more Amazing God, as we were asked to submit one of our retreats for publication. We shall see. Upon reflecting about how this came about- we asked a friend how to be added in the publication, we get an email back from the editor saying “We need a retreat… yesterday” to find it will be published this fall- can ONLY be our Amazing God at work.

The hard work begins this weekend as we prepare for next weekend’s Christ our Light Retreat. We will certainly keep our blog updated about that.

Prayers on your journey…

While wondering this week how this might impact some of our programming, I receive an email asking us to do a staff retreat on Amazing God and implementing that initiative in the parish.  I am not sure if ‘retreat’ and ’staff implimentation’ really go together, so I am praying about how we would give a staff reflection time AND in-service time.  It has brought me to reflect on past adult programming we have done.

Having attempted ’staff retreat’ in school ministry, I find it a challenge.  It is not really a challenge in presenting, it is more a challenge of participant mindset.  In school ministry, the teachers’ mindset was very resistant for the most part.  Their minds were everywhere but on retreat- papers to grade, classes to plan, programs to learn about.  Often they would come to the retreat with their plan books and grade books.  That is not a mindset easy to shift into prayerful reflection.  I even attempted to write a retreat based on using their plan-books.  If you cannot stop them from bringing them, then show them how to pray with them.  I think it went pretty well.  So, I think the challenge for this parish, to both be renewed and have some ideas to renew their parish with Amazing God will have to have a similar bent.  They are coming with their ‘plan book’ and ‘to do list’  how do we pray our way through that so we don’t lose sight of our Amazing God when we are in the weeds?

Prayers as we develop this further would be greatly appreciated.

Although we did not win the contest, I did have an opportunity to work with a couple of the folks from our music ministry at St. Mary’s in Clinton Heights.  It was a neat experience. 

Thanks for your prayer and support,

Chris.

PS Here’s the song:      we_are_called_5-27

Stamped Labyrinth

Over 70 Jr. High Youth from all over the Albany diocese got together this week to celebrate our Amazing God.  I was on the committee AND sending our children, so it was a labor of love.  Chris also spent the day, lead prayer and praise and presented a workshop on Music/Media as prayer.  In the afternoon, we had service projects.  Above, you will see the Labyrinth we built- using a pattern of a 7 circuit Labyrinth, drawn in blue crayon (not a wise choice) then stamp painted with ragged t-shirts by 15 participants on Wednesday.  Amazing- 1 hour to draw and 20 minutes to paint.  One young man painted his feet to indicate the entrance (in red at the bottom).  We talked about a labyrinth as prayer.  This will be used at the Albany Sr. High Rally this fall.

Now we need to complete ours!  We are also building a labyrinth to bring on retreat with us this coming year.  After borrowing one from RPI regularly, we decided it was time to build our own.