Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: TICCS Welcome

Sunday, July 26, 2009

TICCS Welcome

The warm welcome at Tamale Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies (TICCS) made us look forward for yet another week of learning and experiencing new things about Ghana especially the Northern Region where we are based.

Around 4; 30 pm we left the Novitiate community and arrived earlier to acclimatize to the new environment. After a welcoming meal a very friendly and gentle man known as Fr. Marek, the Director of the Institute gave us the introduction about the weeks course and showed us around the place.
We had the opportunity to meet a lady called Lourey from USA who is studying to become a Methodist Pastor and she was the only female among us the course participants. The purpose of the course is to look a bit more deeply into the patterns of knowledge and behavior found among Ghana’s people.
(Jordaan)

No comments:

Post a Comment

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?”