Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: A crucial encounter at TICCS

Sunday, July 26, 2009

A crucial encounter at TICCS

The experience of TICCS did not just have an effect on us alone but also on the many people that we met and interacted with. For instance, meeting Lourey, a minister to be with the United Methodist Church from US, was such a wonderful experience that left an impact on both her life and ours. In our sharing with her, she was frank to tell us that she was uncomfortable at first when she heard that she would join 14 African men for the workshop. However, the time we spent and interacted with her challenged her way of thinking. The more we shared with her the more she discovered that she needed our presence and also understood who actually the brothers are. Her thoughts about the brothers were different from what she saw. She says that she was surprised by the way we engaged ourselves in different activities such as visiting the diviner’s home as well as twisting our bodies in what they called ‘Ghanaian traditional dance’. And on one occasion where we had a buffet, she says that she never expected any of the brothers to taste beer or the local stuff popularly known as ‘pito’ which she saw happening. At the end she asked herself a question, who are the brothers then? She said the more she stayed with us the more she discovered new things that she didn’t expect and the more she admired the zest we had in our short stay there.

Our last night with Lourey before we left was such a unique one for both of us. We spent some quality time with her sharing of the many good things we had encountered in the workshop until the time we retired to bed. She was sad to see that we are leaving.
What impressed me was that Lourey’s attitudes were changed within a short period of time we spend together. Lourey is now a good friend to us. How beautiful it is to enter a place and at the end find out that you come out different from what you were before!

(Chris)

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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?”