We began our journey on a Saturday and had four or five days to actually arrive at our location in Northern Colorado. We spent Saturday evening with Vincente and Sharon Ambrossetti in Nashville Tennessee. They are wonderful supporters of our ministry and we spent hours and fellowship with them.
It was late, but we headed up to Clarksville Tennessee and camped in a rest stop and with the truckers and the tired. We arose early and made it to our alma mater, St. Louis University. This is where we met in 1971 at a coffeehouse Cricket was opening on the campus mass was celebrated by Jesuit father john Kavanaugh, one of the famous St. Louis Jesuit musicians responsible for so many of the hymns now sung all over the world. We got to visit with Father Kavanaugh and I attempted to remind him that he and I had both played in Cricket’s coffeehouse a few hundred years ago. He teaches philosophy in the college and grad school, and I later discovered has written a book on the topic of being Catholic in a consumerist culture, which was exactly the theme we were using for the Franciscan regional conference we were leading. After mass we wandered the campus which has grown so much since we were here and found the place where the coffeehouse had been.
It was late, but we headed up to Clarksville Tennessee and camped in a rest stop and with the truckers and the tired. We arose early and made it to our alma mater, St. Louis University. This is where we met in 1971 at a coffeehouse Cricket was opening on the campus mass was celebrated by Jesuit father john Kavanaugh, one of the famous St. Louis Jesuit musicians responsible for so many of the hymns now sung all over the world. We got to visit with Father Kavanaugh and I attempted to remind him that he and I had both played in Cricket’s coffeehouse a few hundred years ago. He teaches philosophy in the college and grad school, and I later discovered has written a book on the topic of being Catholic in a consumerist culture, which was exactly the theme we were using for the Franciscan regional conference we were leading. After mass we wandered the campus which has grown so much since we were here and found the place where the coffeehouse had been.
Later, we traced our roots to the Saint Louis Christian home, which was an orphanage/Foster Care center where we worked and lived so that Jerry could finish his undergraduate degree. Jerry worked days and went to school at night and even did the converse as well. For a time, after our son Jacob was born, we lived in a large storage closet in the residential center. This center still functions for the city of St. Louis as a refuge for victims of abuse.
Although Cricket grew up in north St Louis, our relatives were not in town that day so we headed for Leavenworth Kansas. Along the way we visited a beautiful state park and hiked along its rocky ridges
(blue springs, mo). We arrived that evening to spend a couple of days when our good friends the Anderson’s in Leavenworth. Paul took us to see a church that is in the Guinness book of world records, because it has one floor for Protestant services and another for Catholic services; I believe it is the only church holding simultaneous Catholic and Protestant services in the same building. They were wonderful hosts, and while Iran and did research and prepared music, Cricket did her final preparations for the retreat we were giving.
On Tuesday we headed across the great state of Kansas with the intention to stop at the beautiful “cathedral of the plains”, St, Fidelis church.
As it was a Franciscan feast day, and we wound up having to drive all the way to Denver to find a weekday mass we could attend. This was at Our lady of Loretto which is a beautiful and vibrant parish even in the middle of the week!
We so enjoyed the evening mass that we camped nearby in a state park (within the city limits of Denver) and attended mass the next morning.
That afternoon, after visiting the Colorado State university nature center, we spent the next two days with Cricket’s college roommate Mary and Dennis Sovik. I remember joking with Denny in college about how impractical people thought my theology degree would be, and even moreso his degree in geography. But Denny and Mary have lived a very full life and raised a family, traveled, volunteered, and served as a wonderful inspiration. Denny has always had a successful construction team business with solar and ecological emphasis.

Heading back across Kansas, we provided an evening of Franciscan reflection for a group of 3rd Order Carmelites in KC! They welcomed us wonderfully and we were blessed to pray into the late night with them!
We drove back across the plains and somehow got lost trying to get back to walking stick park. Cricket guided us to a road that I believe still had the wagon Ruts of the Pioneers’. But we had a wonderful late night and morning “Rough camping” (without hookups) and Cricket prepared the retreat she would give in Kansas City for a group of third order Carmelites. We knew this would be a small group, but as always, the right people were there and we went well into the night in prayer and celebration. Cricket stayed with her good friend Maria in Kansas City but Jerry headed down to Little Rock to give a workshop. There is something so renewing about driving on the smaller highways our grandparents had as Jerry headed through the southern half of Missouri to Arkansas. On Friday, we had a rendezvous and headed to see our daughter Talia in a major role in the Baton Rouge little theatre’s production of The King and I. (Talia can be heard, as can our other daughters, on our CDs.
We arrived home on Sunday evening and thanked God for our trip and all of you!
No comments:
Post a Comment