Last Thursday evening, five of us met at Stephan Locke's home, Echo Run. Before our Evening Prayers and the delicious nibbles afterwards, we spend a good bit of time talking over what we think will be best for us as we leave the early months of this year and head toward our Eastertide days and beyond. We all sensed rather strongly that in our homes, as individuals and families, we are fairly well committed to daily prayer. Our weekly meetings since late January have truly been a blessing to us, helping us enter regular morning and evening prayer, knowing that others, not too distant from each of us, are praying with us. With this awareness, we also sensed that it is probably not necessary for us to continue meeting weekly as a group; most of us have family and parish obligations that make it quite difficult to absent ourselves from our homes every Thursday evening. That said, however, we also decided that it would be good for us to do three things in the future.

First, we wish to meet several times during the year--most likely during the late summer, Advent, next year's Lent--for several weeks in a row in order to join our hearts, hands, and heads for renewal, refreshment, and re-creation in prayer.

Second, for those who wish to do so, we'd to explore the possibility of entering some sort of oblate program so that we might additional resources to support our commitment to daily prayer. To that end, Leslie, Jim, June, and Andy plan to visit The Dwelling Place Monastery in Martin, Kentucky. Andy has previously been in contact with the Oblate Director, and he will see if we can make arrangements for a visit in the next week or so. We'll also explore other oblate programs and come up with a recommendation.

Third, June and Andy want to invite everyone--and everyone's family and children!--to their home some early summer evening, the date of which is to be announced. So be appraised that you'll get an invitation sometime soon (most likely in middle May) for a sunset potluck supper. Because we'll have some children, we'll do our best to be sure that the kids have a good time and comfortably enter Evening Prayer with us.


Please be sure to remember Grace Gutekunst is your prayers and intercessions. On Thursday Grace wrote this note to us all:

I am staying close to home for the next several days in preparation for surgery
on April 19th to correct the heart defect I had had since birth. Hopefully, it won't be long before I can see your faces once again. My sister is coming in from the Chicago area and will stay with me for a week or so. I'm told there is minimal hospital incareration, so I should be home within a day or two and will have some restrictions but should be able to get back into the swing of things soon. Know that you all are in my thoughts and prayers. Blessings to all. -- Grace

If you'd like to be in touch with Grace, her phone number is 624-2090, and her address is 230 Burnam Court, Richmond, KY, 40475.

O, yes, one more thing. We'd like to encourage more use of our blog so that we let one another know what happening in our lives and parishes. Meeting less than weekly doesn't mean that we can't chat with one another! So that everyone knows how and feels comfortable doing so, Andy will soon send out a note to each of you that will give you information about posting and commenting on this blog. We'd really like to more of us to visit www.prayingdaily.blogspot.com and share our thoughts, especially those that will deepen our prayer lives.