Yesterday I gave a Women’s Retreat Day at St. Hubert parish in Chanhassen, Mn. The theme was celebrating our giftedness as women. Recognizing that nurtuing our relationships with God and others requires nurturing our relatoinhsip with ourselves, the day was about recognizing and celebrating the gifts women bring to the world. It also invited participants to get in touch with those things that sometimes inhibit our ability to celebrate that giftedness. The day included prayer, talks, time for individual reflection and small and large group sharing.
There were three segments to the day: Things that Inhibit our Ability to Recognize and Celebrate our Giftedness as Women, The “Genius” of Women (to borrow a phrase from Pope John Paul II, and Discerning our Individual Gifts. The first focused on some of the baggage we pick up during our lives that cause us to lose sight of who we really are. The second segment focused on the collective gift that women bring to the world, drawing on, among other things, some of the writings of John Paul II. The third segments turned to individual vocation and the unique giftedness of each of us.
I successfully recorded the talks I gave during the first and third segments. A minor mechanical problem prevented the second from recording. (I’ll rectify that by recording a version of that talk soon.) You can find links to both of those two podcasts here. (The first runs for 25:36 and the second for 15:01.) You can also find a copy of the handouts for prayer during the individual sessions here.
Creo en Dios! 