Last evening, here in Sarasota, I spoke at the twelfth stop on my tour. I was back in a protestant church, this time a really nice, modern church where communication was easy and relaxed.
Two interesting features about this stop:
Three former Redemptorist priests attended. It was good to have them there, and I had a great chat with them. They were of the American provinces, and were generally about my own age.
As I write this I am three weeks into my U.S. speaking tour, and at the Call to Action conference in Memphis, which is the eleventh stop in my eighteen city schedule. It has been a hectic, but extraordinarily interesting few weeks. I am getting the chance to see much of this enormous country, and to talk to Church reform people everywhere I go.
As the same time any impressions I have formed of the American Church will inevitably be tentative, because it will take time and rest before I can fully integrate all that I am experiencing.
I had a busy day today at the CTA conference. I gave a talk in the morning on the history of women in the Church, with particular emphasis on the spirituality of the women mystics. I drew a lot of what I was saying from Mary T. Malone’s wonderful new book, The Elephant in the Church. The crowd who came were so great that we had to be moved to a larger venue, and even there, in the best Redemptorist tradition, they had to go for more chairs.
