A Brief Encounter and A New Publication

Last week my husband and I went to the Spiritual Life Center to attend one of the "Dinners with the Doctors" presentations--Erin Doom of the Eighth Day Institute on St. John of Damascus--and enjoyed the evening very much. Toward the end of the Q and A, a lady came in and sat at one of the tables; she looked familiar. At the conclusion of the presentation, she came over and asked, "Don't I know you?"

She was my college French instructor (15 hours of college credit)! Mark and I had also known her and her husband at the Newman Center at WSU and at our home parish at Blessed Sacrament. She lives in France, in the Moselle region, but visits the USA often. She was at the Spiritual Life Center for a retreat before going to visit some friends in Florida for Christmas. It's one of those coincidences: if we hadn't attended and if she hadn't come into the room (helping with some clean up as part of her retreat), we wouldn't have reconnected.

One of the things we mentioned to her was that we had been able to travel to Paris so many times since we had last seen her. Mark talked about how much her French lessons had helped me on those trips. We exchanged business cards and parted. On our way home, Mark and I reminisced about our college years at WSU. Who knows if we'll ever see her again! She commented that she hopes we'll visit France again soon.

There's my segue into mentioning that I've had an article accepted in a brand new publication, Faith & Culture. It's the Journal of The Augustine Institute, edited by Joseph Pearce. He had accepted an article on Paris for the St. Austin Review a few years ago and used it in his new publication instead. It's available here. More about the The Augustine Institute here.