'Bottled Water-Free Zone' Cake.

Saturday and I was on the road again - this time to Peterborough.  On tap for the day: a morning campaign workshop at St. Anne's with local D&P members, followed by a retreat on Caritas in Veritate.  I posted the drops from the Barrie workshop on the wall.  As you can see, the stream grew a bit more as participants added their own drops. It was a creative morning. 

This time round we chose a pregnant mother to handle the water gun.  Needless to say Amanda encountered less resistance than fair-trade Bob did in Barrie. 

To celebrate the start of the campaign, Karen Staunton baked a beautiful 'bottled water free-zone' cake.  What delicious artistry! Karen is an amazing D&P member who leads the group at St. Anne's and knows how to get things done.

Now I have done a lot of workshops but when it comes to retreats I'm a definite newbie.  Leading a retreat on Caritas in Veritate was new territory for me.  However, the group warmed up to me from the moment I began singing that Hal David classic, "What the World Needs Now is Love."  This essentially is the message of Pope Benedict's encyclical.  It is so simple as to be dismissed as cliche, however the implications are deep and far reaching.  Love must be the force behind our efforts as a global human family - neither the market nor government institutions are sufficient to bring about the development we need.  What is needed is a mobilization of the heart.  According to Catholic Social Teaching, to develop is not just to do more, know more and have more.  To develop is to be more. We believe in integral human development, the development of the whole person and every person (no short order).  But what is it to 'be more'? This is where the Truth comes in.  Rather than the truth being a set of doctrines or rules, truth is found when we open ourselves to listening to the other and finding the laws written by God on our human hearts.  Indeed it is here that we find the very splendour and glory of God.  For us as Catholics, Love in Truth is a powerful force that opens us to what it is to be more.  Throughout the afternoon we explored those depths as a group.

After the retreat we celebrated mass together.  How lovely it was to have Fr. Bill ask us to stand and be acknowledged by everyone gathered for mass that evening at St. Anne's.  It was as precious an applause as I have ever received. After dinner we ate cake -  'bottled water-free zone' cake.