Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: That Lives in us

Monday, March 16, 2009

That Lives in us - Rumi

If you put your hands on this oar with me,

they will never harm another, and they will come to find

they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer

lift anything to your

mouth that might wound your precious land –

that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,

the power that made the universe will enter your sinew

from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm

that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.

When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;

love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?

The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities

will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.

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What do we want this novitiate to be?

There is a saying that goes something like this: “If we don’t do what we believe in, then we’ll end up believing in what we do”. Without a vision that is authentic and alive to guide our actions, then we can settle for rationalizing the status quo or what is convenient and comfortable.
One of the first things the new team in Tamale did was to spend time beginning to articulate its vision of a novitiate beyond the basics laid down in our Constitutions. Here are some elements of what we came up with:
Novitiate is a journey, a process that involves KNOWING, EXPERIENCING and CHOOSING.
It is an INITIATION into Christian Brother religious life, so a “rite of passage” into a new identity, a time of learning and testing.
Novitiate confronts the novices with the Brother’s vocation as a call to brotherly solidarity and community, not to privilege, status and security.
It involves exploration of the basic values of faith and vocation, and the challenge to embrace these out of personal conviction and free choice.
Novitiate means understanding that a religious vocation makes a claim on the whole of the person and his life, including his inner life, his relationships and his professional activity (ministry). Furthermore, it challenges the novice to see the dynamic inter-relationship of these areas and to learn what their integration means.
Novitiate is a time of DISCERNMENT. The novice learns more deeply who he is, and what this Christian Brother life is. There is a constant back-and-forth movement between these two poles as an answer is sought to the question, “Is this where I am meant to be? Is this the life that will enable me to find my true self in God?”