I just found this great site. It looks to be Antiochian Orthodox in origin, but of course, pan-Orthodox in relevance. Anyway, this is not the purpose of this post. I would like to ask for your help. We (Juliana and I) are organizing an Orthodox Women's Retreat for February 2007. Don't laugh! We had to book the speaker early!! (can you guess who this is? have you already heard? are you beside yourself with excitement? I am). The nature of the aid I need from all of you strong, intelligent, thoughtful women is this: what would you like to hear our speaker speak about? What is on your mind? What issues are pressing and relevent to modern Orthodox women? And please nothing on motherhood or marriage. Not that we're all such amazing wives an mothers already, but there are already so many such resources available, and we would like something big and shattering and epiphanal (is that a word?). Whether or not this is possible remains to be seen. All my ideas just sounded so pedantic; I thought I'd throw the challenge out to y'all:) Anyway, if you could, please give it some prayerful thought; this is important. I will keep checking back here periodically to see what jewels you've posted. Thanks ladies!
12 comments:
I'm glad you mentioned "prayerful thought" right at the end. To my mind there is no more important topic than living a prayerful life, and yet I feel that even after being an Orthodox Christian for over twenty years, it's a topic I still know almost nothing about.
(I agree, nothing on marriage and motherhood-- that would not be a universal topic! Not all of us are called to those....)
Epiphanal topics,hum? um, I guess "life and death" is a little too general?;-)But seriously, I think one of the biggest things our culture has wrong and Orthodoxy has right is how we deal with death. However, being such a young parish here, we have very little experience with death and the Orthdox response-- over our entire history, we've had only a handful of funerals, few of which involved anything like the whole community. Would that seem like too morbid a topic? Orthodox life in the midst of a culture of death or something like that?
Sounds good! I've been trying to convince Phil I have to fly back from Ottawa ever since I discovered who was speaking!
I'm not a woman of God but, who's speaking? And why is Biss in Ottawa?
Biss,
Of course you will have to come back.
I was thinking Mary or Martha? How do we respond to Jesus' call to follow him; pick up your cross and follow me as women?
That didn't come out quite right. What I meant to say was that do we have a unique calling as women? Or how do we as women living in north american culture discern what God is calling us to do or to be.
I'll bet I could guess who it is... do the initials FMG mean anything? Just a guess...
I do believe I heard those initials yesterday. :)
YES! it is her!
I'm so so so so excited.
fun... if i was rich maybe biss and i could both [if my ottawa-based dream comes true] go from ottawa to BC... a good dream, regardless...
Elizabeth,
Perhaps you and Biss should do just thought, and collect women across the country in a caravan procession down the TransCanada to BC for the retreat!
....stopping off at all the Huskys for cinnamon buns and fries and gravy... i love that caravan idea. we've talked about it more than once. i wonder who will be the first to actually DO it?
re: topic...
i'm with matdonna on prayer...and tying into the Orthodox response to the one inevitable in life. frlawrence gave a really good talk on death, it was one of my first catechumenal lessons and it brought alot of peace. thinking about our life in falling asleep in the Lord as best we can, puts SO many other worldly cares into perspective. or vocation. however...many have already found their vocation and are living it beautifully in our midst already...so yeah...i say "prayer" and "keeping the end in mind"
thanks for your forethought Julianna, Vic! You're giving us a nice gift in planning this.
it IS open to the guys too, yeah?
Hmmm...no driving cross-Canada in winter for me, thanks. And I'm not much for throngs of people in small places either.
But Phil and I are scheming....
Phil? Scheming?
Did I spell that right? It looks funny.
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