More from Day Four

Never be discouraged: we are building a basilica out of a barn…

That was indeed a great quote, adapted freely from Fiona. Most of the rest of day four was concerned with discussing how to live and work with Chevalier’ vision, using Cuskelly as a departure point (and I still have to read Man with a Mission. The team started with synonyms like journey and way, all very much in line with where I am at in my own life.

Again, here are the particular sharing and insights in some sort of list.

• Self-knowledge is the basis of our spiritual journey, because God loves us in our humanity.
• Conversion is at the core of Heart Spirituality, and it must be ongoing, hence the need for prayer, reflection, counseling and confession, journaling, listening.
• an argument can be made for the analogy with health: we can have good and bad spirituality, we can need to work on our spirituality, we may need help.
• do we consider the sacred in our learning environments? Does out teaching encourage the innate spirituality of the student?
• hence, an argument for the use of guided meditations and other forms of reflection on learning, and doing it outside the RE classroom as well. The kids need to connect their learning with their heart world, and learning to read and know below the surface of knowledge.
• this is learning to see God: Cuskelly says “God’s infinite love overflows into Creation, into a human heart.”
• need to challenge the ‘spiritualities in exile’ that seek to have vague spiritual practices without a grounding in tfaith (the self-help movement, meditation outside of a tradition, New Age, certain forms of ecologist).
• the person of Jesus must be in the centre of our schools.
• Cuskelly: “In itself, devotion to the sacred heart is a whole world of theology, … this devotion is essentially social”. The Spirit drives us to speak out against injustice in this world.
• Again, Cuskelly: “we will of be disheartened, or discouraged in the face of difficulties. W follow Christ, who ‘loved with a human heart’.”
• For God, difficulties become possibilities.

to be on earth the Heart of God