Interesting Night in Toledo Catholic Bookstore



Amy and I plus our entourage arrived home early this morning after a quick trip to Toledo for a "catholic authors" night sponsored by Drouillard's in Maumee (a suburb of Toledo). On hand were Pat Madrid who gave a talk on "search and rescue" of fallen away Catholics, Marcus Grodi, Dave Armstrong, Steve Ray, Amy and myself and a few others. There was good crowd on hand, the owner set the figure at 999 but there were actually around 97 (I stood in the back during Pat's talk and counted).



I liked Pat's talk and the discussion afterwards. These kind of productions are a good way to touch base not only with other authors but also to hear what readers of Catholic books are thinking about. War, abuses at retreat centers, renovations of historic churches made the top of the list.



Speaking of war, I had the opportunity to answer a question about what we should do and I thought that I answered it rather well saying that what we should do is pray for peace. I think most of us focus way to much on what the president or our military should do and not enough on what moi can do. In fact one of the attendees turned the "What Would Jesus Do?"-WWJD around and said it really should be WWID-"What Will I Do?" One of the other presenters took off on my comments and said he was sick of hearing all the "peace talk" and he fully supported the war. I would have liked to have told him to go down to the local military recruiting office and sign up then--but in fairness he claimed that he was on his way to Iraq to film a biblical video--so I guess he'll have the opportunity to "put his money where his mouth is" soon enough. Personally I don't plan on going to Iraq any time soon, nor do I plan on being activated back into military service (I proudly served in the US Army from 1977-1980 spending one year of that time at a small base in Turkey where five of the 100 people I was stationed with were killed by terrorists in two separate incidents), so I'll do what I can do from here in northern Indiana--pray.



Overall not a lot of books seemed to be sold by anyone but it was an enjoyable outing even if it has left all of us a little wiped out today.