Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Operation Clean Up!!

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Operation Clean Up!!

With the rains upon us with some regularity now the vegetation around our house has burst into life! Though most of it is welcome and gives the property a wonderful many hued appearance, the fast growing grass if allowed to grow unchecked would make our

house look like it was in the middle of the 'bush'. This fast growing grass also is ideal breeding and resting grounds for the malaria carrying mosquitos and some unwanted snakes. We have those too in Tamale as was discovered while doing our regular clean up.

The community got down to some serious 'slashing' and pruning and a general clean up one saturday. And as the photographic evidence shows .. we did it with a smile, bending our backs, swinging our slashers and raking the cut grass. We are told this will happen with some regularity as the rainy season progresses!

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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?”