Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: Chickens and Sustainable Living!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Chickens and Sustainable Living!

The ecstasy of receiving the little chickens in our community and celebrating the dream, dreamt in the first community meeting in March through Brian, gives me time to look at the Brothers commitment to a new way of living pledged in the Sustainable Development Workshop.
Thanks to all the brothers involved in the realization of this vision. ‘Nothing is beyond our reach if we reach out together, if we reach out with all the confidence we have, if we are willing to persevere even in difficult times and if we rejoice with every step forward’.

After the foresaid workshop, we confessed our part in hurting mother earth, expressed thanks for creation and promised to take the responsibility to care for it, and to commit ourselves to a new way of living.
We looked at the following hard questions that can lead to this kind of change – How do we show care to the earth? What can we do to stop those actions that perpetuate the vicious cycles of exploitation, degradation and destruction?

I believe the poultry project is one of the signs, including the other little ways in which we remain committed, like disposing of garbage, recycling, attempting to make the novitiate a plastic free area and many more simple ways, not forgetting the animals we share the compound with.

Impossible to tell apart, is the generosity the brothers showed when we had an adventure and a familiarity expedition to Paga (Upper East of Ghana), on 19th August when we managed to catch sight of Crocodiles as well as crossing into Burkina Faso.
It was praiseworthy to see Eco-tourism being promoted and in unison the money generated from visitors being used for the support the local dwellers of the village. I felt the charge was too much but after the man in-charge shed light on how they operate,

I feel the initiative of helping students and giving the inhabitants loans absolutely well thought-out.
Let’s continue to care for the earth, the mother of all that is natural and human.
(Sydney)

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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?”