Br Paul Noonan Formation Centre, Tamale: The Chicks are here!!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Chicks are here!!

After months of waiting on promise after promise from one of the local inhabitants of Tamale, the 15th of September was like a dream come to reality. It was the time for us to kick off our long awaited poultry broilers project. This suggestion was brought up by Brian Chipango one of the novices from Mater Dei and supported by myself and Chris.
Everyone was waiting for this moment and it was good to see how enthusiastic the novices are about this project. It is very good these chickens have arrived now as the price of chicken is going up at an alarming rate. We hope all the fifty two chicks will survive and that we’ll have a chicken feast in a couple of weeks to come. (Jordaan)

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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?”