On Pluralist Communities Part 1

If I maybe daring enough to say that the biggest threat to formation today is not provided by the external environment, it is set in the closedmindedness of some of the senior members of the congregation who will make up the formative community of todays' formands. Ergo, the biggest challenge to formators is not in so much in providing the right formative interventions (though that too is very important), but it is in convincing and training local communities to transform into formative environments.

An authentic formative environment nurtures the fragile religious identity shaped from postulance through novitiate, as well as sustain the learnings and insights from the various formation programs. It will not depend on the modeling of one virtuous member, it will hinge on the quality of the relationship between and among members.

I strongly disagree wtih some formators who warn/caution and prepare their novices about the sad realities of local communities and teach their candidates skills to survive the difficulties. Postmodern generation of formands are wired to survive, they dont need survival skills, they need consistency.

Thus it is important to see to it that local communities share the paradigms of the formation committees and the formators themselves. I would cite the examples done by the Religious of the Virgin Mary (RVM), the Carmelite Missionaries (CM) and the SFIC (Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception) among others who really invested time and energy by allowing their formators to explain to all communities and members the formation paradigms today.

(next week: tips in forming formative communities)

The Gift of Creating Sacred Spaces

(Every month this website features what I consider my ideal postmodern religious men and women. )


Sister Eppie Brasil, OP
The Gift of Creating Sacred Spaces

Gifts abound in the life of Sr. Eppie Brasil, founder of the Dominican Sisters of Regina Rosarii (OPRR) and the Regina Rosarii Contemplative Association (ROCA). Teacher, counselor, retreat-master, media evangelizer, friend, leader, artist, painter, composer and more.

But those gifts pale in comparison to the shining jewel in her treasure box of talents and skills: her desire and capacity to create sacred spaces. In fact, all her other gifts are mere reflections and manifestations of this singular virtue.

Sister Eppie makes the creation of sacred spaces her life calling.

In the urban and rural landscapes, she dreamed of and made possible the construction of monumental statues of Mary, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary perhaps to provide a pocket of peace and corner of contemplation in a busy world. Her latest project, a rotating statue of the Virgin Mother in the rooftop of their convent near Tomas Morator, is a gentle reminder of the presence of God in our busy lives.

As an artist, Sister Eppie organizes their convent inside and out as a place of prayer. Every nook, every corner, every available space speaks of the silence of God and the beauty of His creation.

Like a true postmodern apostle, Sister Eppie, with the Regina Rosarii sisters and their ROCA partners, maximizes all five senses to evangelize and promote the good news: that God is immanent, availablem and can be tasted right Here... right Now.

For our sense of sight, Sister Eppie has monumental statues and prayer sites to look up to and venerate. Also, she is founder of The SacredSpace magazine, a quarterly publication that makes reading a prayerful and contemplative experience. She has powercards, bookmarks, paintings and various forms of visual arts that softly and gently remind us of the powerful, healing presence of the Divine among us.

For our sense of hearing, she has composed several short sacred songs for easy listening, our portkey to the sacred space within us and our melodious guide to inner silence. Every Sunday, she and the sisters host a radio program Sacred Space on the Air over at Radio Veritas. Her teachings during sittings fill our ears with the words of God.

For our sense of smell, Sister Eppie has formulated and produced the Rosaline Healing Scents: candles and aromatic sprays which lighten our mood, refresh the air, and facilitate our entry into our interior spaces.

For our sense of taste, she collaborates with her blood sister, Sr. Matthew to come up with healing and delicious recipes that truly nourish the body and soul. Try their experimentations with various herbs and you will feel refreshed right after the first sip. But more than that, the sisters made it their mission to feed their K-friends (families living in karitons or carts), giving these poor families a taste of life and friendship.

Perhaps among these sensous ministries, Sr. Eppie is most generous with the sense of touch. Her healing handshake and her warm hug bring comfort and a sense of h0me to those who receive them - making people feel a sacredspace within her embrace.

I always said in my previous talks during assemblies and conferences that the call of a postmodern world is to minister through the five senses, making our ministry truly a sensuous presence, and Sister Eppie is at the forefront of this challenge.

I was given the distinctive gift to accompany Sister Eppie as she discerned and decided to pursue a life-changing direction that allowed her to be metamorphosed into a religious of the future. And I was also given the gift to be a recipient of her gifts as I went into my own crisis. A religious woman of lesser faith and charity would have hated me for what I have done, but with her, forgiveness was given even if I don't deserve it.

Trust me when I say this, that because of people like her and her gifts, I restored my faith in the church, and my trust in the institution of religious life.


The OP Regina has a website: http://www.reginarosarii.org/

Postmodern generation and easter

tuesdays with rei: tips on the postmodern generation of formands

A POSTMODERN EASTER

By John Soper

I have been preaching Easter sermons for three and a half decades, and most have been evangelistic in nature, or at least strongly slanted toward the C&E (Christmas and Easter) crowd. After all, if people come to church just once or twice a year, the message ought to make the issues crystal clear.

The tactic I used most often was apologetic in the theological sense of the word (that is, a reasoned defense of the faith). I gave the congregation all the facts supporting my belief that Jesus truly rose from the dead, marshaled all of the historic arguments a la Josh McDowell and compelled the listeners by the sheer force of reason to recognize the truth of the central claim of the Christian faith: that Jesus Christ was “crucified, dead and buried . . . and on the third day he rose from the dead . . .” My strategy was to use airtight logic (“Who Moved the Stone?”) and weighty arguments (“Ten Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection”—that was a long sermon!) to present the “evidence that demands a verdict.”

For most of those same decades, I have eschewed an approach that I perceived to be sentimental, subjective and entirely too “existential”—that of pressing the claims of the resurrected Christ on the basis of personal testimony. “You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart” are lyrics from one of my least favorite Easter hymns. I didn’t like that approach because I thought every Mormon, Muslim or Hindu could claim it with equal authority.

But times have changed. In my role as a vice president at the National Office, I probably won’t get to preach an Easter sermon this year. That is just as well because my neighbors probably wouldn’t have gone to church to hear it anyway. And if they did, the historical arguments based on empirical facts and objective truth would not sound very convincing to them. You see, most people no longer believe in objective, one-size-fits-all truth claims. “If it’s true for you,” my neighbors would say, “that’s great! But that doesn’t make it true for me.”

In the postmodern world into which I have been dragged kicking and screaming (to borrow an expression from C. S. Lewis), people no longer wish to know if what you believe is “true.” What they really want to know is “Will it work?,” or more precisely, “Will it work for me?” and that becomes the starting place for evangelism. In the modern era, all we needed to do was to prove that something was logically true. And then, of course, it followed that it would “work.” In the postmodern world, we first have to show that it will “work.” And then, by the grace of God, we will have the opportunity to show that it works only because it is “true.”

But wait! Maybe this is not all that new. After all, the first generation of converts in the Book of Acts believed not because of a logical argument (e.g., Jesus fulfi lled more than 300 Old Testament prophecies), but because He “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4)—and they themselves had witnessed the events surrounding that Resurrection. Next, they experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Then, and only then, did Peter’s argument from fulfilled prophecy make sense to them (Acts 2:14–41).

That was Paul’s story as well. Only after personally experiencing the presence and power of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus did the rational explanations of the disciples have an impact on him. His personal prayer was: “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection . . .” (Phil. 3:10). A good friend reminded me that the life of A. B. Simpson, the founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, fi ts this paradigm as well.

I won’t be preaching the morning sermon at my church this Easter. But I am fervently praying Paul’s prayer. More than that, I am praying that His Resurrection power will be so evident in my life that my neighbors will be encouraged to ask, “Will that work for me, too?”

What is Easter?

Lunes Lunacy ( a joke a week keeps the formator awake)

3 Days Later

It was following the resurrection and disciples were still somewhat scattered about Jerusalem and the surrounding villages. John finds Peter and runs up to him. Excitedly he says, "Peter, Peter! I've got some good news and some bad news."

Peter takes a hold of John and calms him down.

"Take it easy, John. What is it? What's the good news?"

John says, "The good news is Christ is risen."

Peter says, "That's great! But, what's the bad news?"

John, looking around, says, "He's really angry about your denials last Friday."

Happy Easter

Understanding Emotionally Abused Persons

This list is from the work of Janet Geringer Woititz. She did her original work on adult children of alcoholics, but I believe her findings can be generalized to people who were emotionally abused in general. Certainly all children of alcoholics were emotionally abused.

a. Can only guess at what healthy behavior is.

b. Have trouble completing things

c. Lie when they don't need to. Lying might have been a survival tactic in the home. (She explains that perhaps the child learned from parents who lied to cover up problems or avoid conflict. Or simply to avoid harsh punishment, or to get needed attention. But as an adult, that tactic is no longer appropriate.)

d. Judge themselves without mercy.

e. Have trouble accepting compliments.

f. Often take responsibility for problems, but not successes. Or they go to the other extreme and refuse to take any responsibility for mistakes while trying to take credit for the work of others.

g. Have trouble having fun since their childhoods were lost, stolen, repressed.

h. Take themselves very seriously or not seriously at all.

i. Have difficulty with intimate relationships.

j. Expect others to just "know what they want." (They can't express it because they were so often disappointed as children that they learned to stop asking for things.)

k. Over-react to things beyond their control.

l. Constantly seek approval & affirmation.

m. Feel different from others.

n. Are extremely loyal, even when facing overwhelming evidence that their loyalty is undeserved.

o. Are either super responsible or super irresponsible.

p. Tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. (This impulsiveness leads to confusion, self-loathing, and loss of control over their environment. The result is they spend much energy blaming others, feeling victimized and cleaning up messes.)


She also makes this observation:
Intelligent people, through their ability to analyze, often realize things which are disconcerting, which others would not see. They also are often capable of feeling more deeply, both pain and joy.

Lunes Lunacy

(coz its monday, even if its within the holy week, lets have some light moments(

THEOLOGICAL DEBATE Scholars have long debated the exact ethnicity and nationality of Jesus.
Recently, at a theological meeting in Rome, scholars had a heated debate
on this subject. One by one, they offered their evidence.............
THREE PROOFS THAT JESUS WAS MEXICAN:
1. His first name was Jesus
2. He was bilingual
3. He was always being harassed by the authorities
But then there were equally good arguments that.....
JESUS WAS BLACK
1. He called everybody "brother"
2. He liked Gospel
3. He couldn't get a fair trial
But then there were equally good arguments that.......
JESUS WAS JEWISH
1. He went into His Father's business
2. He lived at home until he was 33
3. He was sure his Mother was a virgin, and his Mother
was sure he was God
But then there were equally good arguments that.......
JESUS WAS ITALIAN
1. He talked with his hands
2. He had wine with every meal
3. He used olive oil
But then there were equally good arguments that.......
JESUS WAS A CALIFORNIAN
1. He never cut his hair
2. He walked around barefoot
3. He started a new religion
But then there were equally good arguments that.......
JESUS WAS IRISH
1. He never got married
2. He was always telling stories
3. He loved green pastures
But perhaps the most compelling evidence .........
THREE PROOFS THAT JESUS WAS A WOMAN .....
1. He had to feed a crowd at a moment's notice when
there was no food
2. He kept trying to get the message across to a bunch
of men who JUST DIDN'T GET IT
3. Even when He was dead, He had to get up because
there was more work for him to do.