At last weekend’s Women’s Retreat held by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church near the City of San Juan Bautista in California, we admired spectacular oaks, cactus, and chickens. I think the trees were California Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii), the cactus were prickly pears (Opuntia), but I have no idea what kind of chickens we saw wandering around the little town.
Images Copyright 2010 by Katy Dickinson
Last weekend, I joined over fifty women from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church at the peaceful St. Francis Retreat near the City of San Juan Bautista in California. We laughed, prayed, learned about each other and ourselves, played games, drank wine, danced, and went on long walks around the beautiful grounds and on the portable labyrinth on the floor of the chapel.
Leslie Butler and the Rev. Maryellen Garnier worked with a team to create this event, the first women’s retreat for our parish in about five years. We were honored to spend part of an afternoon with our own Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves in open conversation. Maryellen presented Bishop Mary with a token of our regard, the first Bishop Barbie doll. Maryellen had the doll’s custom robes created because of a story she had heard. Recently, a little girl who was much taken with Bishop Mary, asked her why there was no Bishop Barbie. Well, now there is one.
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Images Copyright 2010 by Katy Dickinson
A friend of ours dropped by yesterday with a good bottle of wine to cheer us up after my being laid off by Sun-Oracle last week. During lunch, I was very surprised to receive a phone call on my cell phone from my daughter Jessica who is at school at CMU-Q in Qatar until May 2010. I ran out of the restaurant trying to find a quiet place to hear why Jessica had called. I was only slightly hyperventilating, really.
Jessica is having fun in Doha, Qatar. (Qatar is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran.) Our busy girl is in a musical, a choir, and on the basketball team as well as taking classes at CMU-Q and Georgetown University in Doha’s Education City. We have been talking with her by way of Skype on a regular schedule. Doha is 11 hours off Pacific Time, so we need to be organized to stay in contact. Yesterday’s call was the first unexpected communication.
It turned out that all is well. Jessica called to say she had found a cheap ticket and would be visiting her fiance Matt in Washington DC over Spring Break instead of traveling around the Middle East as she had planned. It was good to hear her voice. It always amazes me that I can be standing on the street in Willow Glen, California talking with my daughter who is sitting in her dorm room in Qatar talking to her laptop. I love technology.
Image Copyright Katy Dickinson 2010
