Formation

You are currently browsing the archive for the Formation category.

St Martins-in-the-Field, London

St Martins-in-the-Field, London

In the previous post,  A Vocation Journey: meeting Br John-Francis I recalled how I had made contact with Br John-Francis, one of the members of the Society of St Francis’ vocations team. Br John-Francis had invited me to attend a Vocations Day held at St Martins-in-the-Field.

Despite  feelings of ambivalence there was stronger feeling of wanting to know more about Francis and these Franciscans I had begun to learn about. So, on the Saturday morning I headed off to St Martins to join with others who were inquiring about vocations to Franciscan religious life in the Anglican and Catholic Church – the day was jointly hosted by members of both Franciscan communities.

When I arrived I met John-Francis and the other members of the Anglican and Catholic vocations teams. We began, of course, with some time of prayer. Then the brothers and sisters shared with us stories about St Francis and their lives as Franciscans.

As I listened to them share their stories and watched a video about St Francis a particular image jogged my memory. I saw the image of a man with birds surrounding him and my mind immediately went back to my visit to the Chapel of the Holy Cross in Sedona, AZ that my friend Wendy had taken me to. Suddenly shivers went up and down my spine. It was a very eerie feeling. Not long ago I didn’t really know about St Francis or Franciscans and suddenly with a few months I had meet St Francis one two occassions; once in Sedona and now in London.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Last formation weekend we were exposed to method of running meetings called  Open Space Technology.

Open Space Technology enables groups of any size to address complex, important issues and achieve meaningful results quickly.

I have to say I’m not the one to quickly jump on the band wagon of the latest fad to be introduced. And I’m certainly one who is more interested in structured approaches to things. I prefer to know the who, what how, where and when of things; not the whoever comes, whatever happens approach we heard about and experienced on out last formation weekend.

But I’m also one to acknowledge insight from things, regardless of how ‘gimmicky’ it can sound at the time. We had an opportunity to experience this style of meeting leadership. Where you basically ‘go with the flow’ and essentially what happens happens. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

I tell you what. I’ll leave it up to you. If a few minutes before you have to get up, and you don’t feel like you can, just go like this (nodding his head in a very particular and revernt way in my direction) and I’ll get up and do it for you.

Recently Br Joseph asked me to preach at his profession in vows. I light heartedly said to those at his service when I was offering a reflection for his profession that Joseph asked me to get back at me for the number of times I’ve stirred him up because he knows preaching is the last thing I’d offer to do. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ,

It has been ages since I last posted here. Most people have probably given up checking here for any new updates. No matter.

I entered formation at the beginning of this year, along with commencing my B Theol degree. I am enjoying spending more time with people I have got to know through study and formation. Though I have to say the actual formation program and degree has been somewhat less …. enjoyable. I’m undertaking a full time program as well as the demands of formation and field placement. Read the rest of this entry »