Greetings from Denver

I’m sitting here in the hotel restaurant, waiting for Sherry Weddell to turn up so’s we can have breakfast, go to the capitol and see some dinosaurs. Not the dinosaurs who work in the capitol: the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum.

We’re also gonna go to Mass at the Cathedral!

The flight down was just the way I like it: boring. I met the delightful Frank Indiano, whose brainwave this trip was (backward rolled the sentences until reeled the mind!)

He being Italian, we went to a lovely Italian restaurant when I got in and had scrumptiousness for dinner. As I was leaving, this twenty something hipster waiter happened to walk past and noticed my “Manalive” shirt (I was dressed in grubbies for travelling). He asked what it was so I explained a bit about Chesterton and the movie, etc. His face brightened and he said, “Chesterton is my favorite writer!!!” We high-fived each other and I knew Denver was gonna be a great place.

Spoke to the breakfast club yesterday morning and was unexpectedly delighted to find that two of my favorite people had turned up for the talk. My old friend Molly came with her husband, as well as Kevin Knight, who is the whiz kid behind the New Advent web site (which you should know about, if you don’t). The man has a sense of humor drier than a bone in the Nevada desert. The talk was held in restaurant and I had brought my customary assortment of books and sundry media materials to sell in order to keep the roof over our heads and bread on the table, but it being a restaurant there wasn’t much room to put it anywhere–except one spot: we spread it all out along the bar!

Very Catholic somehow.

Anyhow, the talk went well and I got to hang with Molly, her husband John, and Kevin for a bit when it was over. I also got to meet James Cavanaugh, who works for the Archdiocese and is a former Episcopal priest (not to mention a fine fellow!) Frank and I popped over to the JPII Center for the New Evangelization, which is where the chancery is located.

The joint is jumpin’ and clearly reflected Abp. Chaput’s own zeal for catechesis, evangelization, catechesis, biblical study, catechesis, evangelization, and catechesis. It was cool touring the place and seeing all the amazing initiatives that are being undertaken here. The future’s bright for this archdiocese.

We dumped off my books in James’ office (since I’d be speaking there later) and then I headed back to the hotel to finish the three hours of sleep I hadn’t gotten the night before, bring my total up to seven hours and leaving me feeling not quite as exhausted as when I’d gotten up that morning after four hours sleep.

I puttered about on the computer, got a few odd jobs done, had dinner, and then popped outside just in time to meet James, who used his awesome knowledge of back streets and obscure routes to whisk us back to the JPII Center for that evening’s talk, which also went well (meaning, roughly, people laughed where they were supposed to, looked thoughtful where I hoped they would, and did not, at any point, hurl chairs or curse my family to the tenth generation). The question and answer session was great and made it clear that the audience has benefitted greatly from the abundance of educational resources this archdiocese has made available to them.

(Quick plug: If you live in the Denver area, you should sign yourself up to take some classes from the Augustine Institute, where two of the best biblical scholars in the country, Tim Gray and Ted Sri, teach.)

Anyway, we headed back to the hotel around 9:30, where I turned on the tube and heard about the tragedy at Fort Hood. God bless the victims and their families and loved ones in this hour.

Oops! Here’s Sherry! Time to eat and go play! See you Denverites at Theology on Tap this evening (scroll down a few entries for the details)!