Introducing Our Latest
Venture The Institute goes high-tech in an effort to
communicate with our friends more easily and more
often!
The Parish: Incubator of
Vocations Are we in the middle of a vocation
crisis? Indeed we are, but Sherry Weddell suggests that our
crisis is that many are
being called but only a few are
discerning.
A Life on Paper: Patricia
Mees Armstrong and the Charism of Writing
A writer from
Eugene, Oregon, among other places, lives with cancer (and her
husband). Nevertheless, she's 'daring to dance, refusing to die'
while continuing to write poetry and short stories.
An Appeal for Called &
Gifted Teachers If you have wondered how you
could make a difference in the Church
and
travel the country, become a
teacher for the Institute!
Pact
A Poem by Patricia Mees
Armstrong
The Newman
Rambler A web site containing critical commentary
and analysis of current intellectual issues and debates of concern
to the laity in their spheres of activity - culture, politics, the
economy, and professions.
Sacred
Space A site maintained by
the Irish Jesuits that will guide you through a ten minute daily
meditation on scripture in the style of Lectio Divina.
Take Your Place
Take Your Place is a dynamic
blog that aims to explore the intersection of culture and the lay
apostolate to which all baptized Christians have been called. It is
maintained by Keith Strohm, a Called
& Gifted teacher.
January 28,
2006 Colorado
Springs, CO (Diocese of Colorado
Springs) (Workshop for persons involved in a
Formation program) St Patrick's Catholic
Church CONTACT: Kathy Campbell, (719) 636-2345
February 3-4,
2006 San
Francisco, CA (Archdiocese of San
Francisco) St. Dominic's
Church 2390 Bush
St. Pre-registration required CONTACT: Scott Moyer
415-674-0422 or email: Scott or visit this link:
St.
Dominic's C&G
February 11-12,
2006 Dodge City,
KS (Diocese of Dodge
City) Young Adult Called &
Gifted The Depot
Restaurant English CONTACT: Becky Hessman (620) 227-1500; or email:
Becky
February 17-18,
2006 Berkeley,
CA (Diocese of
Oakland) Dominican School of Philosophy &
Theology (DSPT) CONTACT: Ed Hopfner
(510)
849 - 2030, or email: Ed
Canberra,
Australia (Diocese of
Canberra and Goulburn) CONTACT: Fr John Armstrong
phone 02 6291
6688 e-mail: Fr. John
February 24-25,
2006 Napa, CA
(Diocese of Santa Rosa in
CA) St John the Baptist Catholic
Church English and Spanish language
tracks CONTACT: Colleen Beasley (707)
226-9379
Philadelphia, PA
(Archdiocese of
Philadelphia) Central Association of the Miraculous Medal
(CAMM) Shrine campus/ Germantown CONTACT: Liz Walz
(215)
438-2925
March 3-4,
2006 East Grand
Forks, MN (Diocese of Crookston)
Sacred Heart Catholic
Church CONTACT: Fr. Larry Delaney,
Pastor, or the Parish office at (218)
773-0877
East
Melbourne , VIC (Archdiocese of Melbourne,
Australia) Friday March 3:
6:30 - 9pm & Saturday March 4: 9am - 4pm 278 Victoria
Parade East Melbourne CONTACT: Clara Geoghegan: phone 03
9412 3343 or e-mail Clara
March 24-25,
2006 Incline
Village, NV (Diocese of
Reno) St Francis of Assisi Catholic
Church CONTACT: Debbie Larson, or
the Parish office at (775)
831-0490
March 31-April 2,
2005 Spokane, WA
(Diocese of
Spokane) A training workshop to prepare people to
present the Called &
Gifted workshop for the
Institute. St Francis Xavier Catholic
Church CONTACT: Mike Dillon at the Institute Office
1-719-219-0056 or e-mail Mike
The Institute would like to acknowledge the
tremendous help of Anna Elias-Cesnik of Tucson, AZ, who designed
this e-Scribe and provided very patient training in the use of the
Dreamweaver program to Fr. Mike, O.P.
Thanks also to Anna Elias-Cesnik and
Patricia Mees Armstrong for their help in editing this edition of
the e-Scribe. |
|
Introducing Our
Latest Venture! Sherry Weddell, co-Director,
Catherine of Siena Institute Welcome to
the first issue of the new e-mail version of the Catherine of Siena
Institute’s Siena Scribe. Since e-mail is much less labor
intensive and less expensive than the “dead tree” paper Scribe was,
we will be able to send you news and articles about lay formation
and mission much more easily. The e-Scribe will arrive in your
mailbox every other month and feature short articles by Institute
writers as well as links to news or events of interest to lay
apostles and a calendar of upcoming Institute workshops and other
events. Co-Director Fr. Michael Fones, OP is our fearless
editor. We welcome your input. If you have questions or
comments regarding our E-Scribe, drop us a line at comments. If someone
forwarded this e-mail to you and you wish to subscribe to the
e-Scribe click on this link: subscribe. If you wish to
be removed from our e-Scribe mailing list, reply to this message
with "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
The Parish: Incubator of
Vocations Sherry
Weddell The Holy Spirit is planting charisms
and vocations of amazing diversity in the hearts of all his
people. Just as the gifts of children are in-born and yet must
be fostered with great energy by parents if their children are to
reach their full potential, so vocations must be fostered by the
Church. Disciples and apostles don’t just “happen.”
Vocations don’t just “happen.” Weeds happen! Disciples, apostles, and
vocations are the result of an intentional plan and effort by the
Christian community.
In this area, we are not asking
for too much, we are settling for too little. God is not
asking us to call forth the vocations of a few people, he is asking
us to call forth the vocations
of millions. Formation is not just something
we give to a few who are already clear about God’s call.
Formation awakens Christians to and clarifies God’s call; formation
empowers men and women to hear and respond to the call that is
already present. As Pope John Paul II wrote: “The
fundamental objective of the formation of the lay faithful is an
ever-clearer discovery of one’s vocation and the ever-greater
willingness to live it so as to fulfill one’s mission.”
(Christifideles Laici,
58).
Our problem is not that there
is a shortage of vocations, but that we do not have the support
systems and leadership in place to foster the vast majority of the
vocations that God has given us.
Wherever lay men and women are personally challenged to follow
Christ and given sustained, personal formation, priestly, religious,
and lay vocations of all kinds flourish. The answer to our
present shortage of priests, religious and other leaders is to
systematically nurture the vocations of all.
Our current practice of
conducting the entire process of vocational discernment outside the
parish community is part of the problem. It reinforces beliefs
that many Catholics
have: 1) That
vocations are exceptional and are given only to a
few 2) That only those
called to ordination or religious life have
vocations 3) Therefore
lay Catholics have nothing to discern Our workshops have been
filled with young adults sorting out their career options or
discerning a possible call to the priesthood and religious life,
women returning to the workplace after their children are grown, men
and women whose lives have been disrupted by unemployment or
divorce, and older adults facing the uncertainty of
retirement.
Almost all are uncertain as to
how to discern God’s call. Few lay Catholics will ever find
the support they need unless it is available in their own
parish. If you are a pastor, parish staff member, leader or
parishioner who would like your parish to become a center of
formation and discernment for all the baptized, consider attending
Making Disciples,
Equipping Apostles: Growing Extraordinary Catholics in Your Own
Backyard in Colorado Springs, Colorado or Oakland, California
this summer. For more information, check out Making Disciples, Equipping
Apostles.
A Life on Paper: Patricia Mees
Armstrong and the Charism of Writing
Fr. Michael Fones, O. P.,
co-Director, Catherine of Siena Institute
Patricia and Rich
Armstrong have been married almost fifty-one years, and have lived
in homes in Vermont, Oregon, California, Arizona, Ireland, Hawaii,
Guam and Crete - moving on average almost once a year. While I
was working at the Newman Center at the University of Oregon they
abandoned their gypsy ways, and later agreed to reflect on the
spirituality of marriage at our marriage preparation workshops. One
evening, as they finished their presentation, I had an
inspiration. I remembered Pat’s poem,
Pact, and thought it would beautifully
demonstrate the bond of their marriage. When she had finished
reading it, even the men were in tears. Her friend, Bob Welch, who writes for the
Eugene Register-Guard, says she can make people laugh and cry in the
same sentence.
Much of Pat’s poetry springs from her observation of
the everyday world: rain, the birch trees outside their apartment,
the ebb and flow of life with her husband on Crete, a forgotten road
in Ireland, good causes and warm corners. When she was living
with breast cancer, her poetry expressed the raw, unspoken emotions
of many cancer survivors. Pat says she has always loved
words, and, as an only child, filled her time “with imagination and
imaginative things,” reading “everything I could get my hands
on.” Reading led to writing, and the writing she says,
“was for God early on.” This is remarkable because she grew up
in a fairly hostile environment for faith, with a self-disciplined
atheist mother who thought religion was for the weak, and a
non-practicing Northern Irish Protestant father. “In
retrospect,” Pat mused, “I was being ‘nudged’ by God all
along.” (She pronounces it noodged; the way, she says, her Jewish
mother-in-law would say it)
One of the signs of a charism is found in the positive
feedback we get, and Pat has been encouraged to write since a grade
school teacher assured her she had a gift. Her poetry and
fiction have won awards from the Oregon State Poetry Association;
The Writers' Workshop, Asheville, NC; Portraits Magazine; and
Willamette Writers of Portland, OR. She was a finalist in the
International Fish Publishing Competition of Durrus, Ireland, and
has received fellowships and residencies.
When asked what it’s like to write,
Pat responds, “I can’t not write! A line will come to me, or an emotion,
and then I’ll put it to paper. Then I’ll edit – counting
syllables, even. I craft it until the rhythm is right.
In creative writing you’re pulling your life into it, trying to
express something in a unique way. That means you can’t write
for the market, nor can you write by consensus or committee.” She
says, “You write for yourself, and you hope that something you say
touches another. You don’t fall in love with everything you
write, but sometimes you can say, ‘Hey, that’s just what I wanted to
say, and I don’t think I’ve heard it said that way
before.’ That’s a high.”
When she talks, the words spill out
of Pat, thoughts tumbling upon thoughts, but writing, she says,
takes energy physically and emotionally. Sitting at the
computer and summoning up an original idea is a tough, sometimes
lonely thing. But she does get energy from writing when she’s
pleased by it, and given how much she’s published, she must be
energized regularly!
What amazes me about people with creative charisms is
how often they seem to produce such beauty during brief gaps in an
otherwise full life. Pat taught in public schools for twenty
years, worked in public relations for a major airline in Los
Angeles, was a book reviewer for a weekly paper in California,
served as a teacher/education coordinator for Vermont's maximum
security prison, was a consulting educator while living in Greece,
Ireland, Hawaii and Mexico, and assisted Rich, her husband, in
business in California. Between all that, besides packing and
unpacking, she raised three successful sons.
Pat’s
cancer has returned. It has invaded her spine and femur and
other parts of her body. Her oncologist has told her, “Mrs.
Armstrong, I don’t know why you’re still alive.” He’s no
candidate for a bedside manner award. Still, Pat can’t not
write, and she refuses painkillers that tend to “fuzz her up.”
“I’m not trying to be brave,” she told me, “I’m trying to be
me. Those drugs take away the part of me that’s
creative. I can’t do that yet. I’m still being nudged.”
An Appeal for
Called &
Gifted
Teachers Sherry
Weddell Calling all
Called & Gifted
alumni: Do you have experience or a gift
for teaching adults? Would you like to travel and meet
enthusiastic Catholics in different parts of the US or even possibly
go abroad? Have you ever dreamed about teaching a Called &
Gifted workshop?
The demand for Called & Gifted workshops
is exceeding what our current teachers can handle. We have a
special need for strong female, young adult (20 and 30 something,
male and female) and bi-lingual Spanish/English teachers. You
will always teach as part of a male-female team, sometimes with a
priest or religious. Many of our teachers have non-ministry
jobs, families, and real lives and don’t have specialized
theological training (although we welcome those who do!). We
provide theological and practical training, including detailed
teaching notes, Powerpoint slides, and supervised teaching
experience. We cover all the expenses for promising, committed
trainees. Teachers who present half a Called & Gifted workshop
as part of a two person team receive an honorarium. Teachers
are given a flexible schedule, although presenting a workshop
usually requires Friday through Sunday travel. If you are
interested, e-mail Mike Dillon at miked@siena.org. Please
include a description of your exposure to the Called & Gifted process
and any relevant teaching experience.
Pact ©1997 Patricia Mees
Armstrong from Daring to Dance, Refusing to
Die, Small
Poetry Press
Sleeping and
waking we talk in the night he moves at
my stirring as if I am the spoon in his bowl of
pudding he
is hungry I pad to the kitchen
under his remote control from our bed he
wants 2 a.m. cocoa and graham crackers the sandy crumbs
outlast his hunger (we learn that in the
morning) as he slurps and chews, I touch
his chest and follow the pink surgical maps zig-zagging
directions We have defined our closeness for
forty years he says we should prepare for
what-the- survivor-will-do-when-one-of-us-is gone...he will be
the first to go, he says, and cites the mounting evidence in
fat medical records (hand-carried when we travel or move or
both those chest maps come in handy) SO,
he asks again, what will I do when he's
gone he expects me
to joke it's my way of handling pain at
first (it's all I really have in common with Reagan, I tell
him) to humor us both, I say, oh, I'll go
back to Crete and walk my numbed feet on the beach stones and
eat souflaki at Anna's and pretend not to be a tourist,
euxapisto, and wave at the goatboys who stole our
apples before they ripened.....I'll fend off Stavros' (the
landlord) passes when I pay my rent My
master listens with low-lidded eyes I say, dear, I have great
ailments myself remember, Milord, you play doctor with
me every day it's needles and swabs and the King with the axe
and a neat pair of dead feet takes it all
SO it's MY turn if I should die before you wake, what will YOU
do he smiles he
would desert the cold winter of his loss
fly to Oahu on wings and play golf until he dropped
dead aloha seriously, I ask
him really, what would you do if I go first He turns his head
on the propped pillows and says I don't
know I don't know we are
too close I move to taste the salt on his
face strange he's on a low-sodium
diet We hold each other and wait for someone to speak
first he does he could
swear we're near the ocean...there is sand in this bed and he
smells salt crumbs and tears make me think
hard I say, do you know what? I've
decided not to die for now yeah, me, too,
he says
A few of Patricia Mees
Armstrong's books can be found online at Amazon.com, local Eugene
bookstores, and through Pat herself at Patricia Mees
Armstrong |