Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Wednesday morning Assembly


After breakfast, we met for the Wednesday morning Assembly. It was wonderful. I was feeling very disconnected after last night's misadventure, but it all seems to be 'clicking' now.

Here are my brief notes of Carron's address. My remarks are in brackets:

Refusal of the Mystery in life turns our hearts to stone, to misery. The only alternative is to seek an openness without boundaries.

The Assembly is meant to be a help with this openness, but one of the dangers we face is losing the structure of these gatherings, of never really taking them in. If we don't really reflect on what we hear, no continuity or narrative emerges, and we get nowhere. [The same could be said about any School of Community or any other event in our lives]. Each gathering must penetrate us and increase our self-awareness. Otherwise, we simply return to our banal existence.

The gap between God as the origin of our being, and God as we talk about Him, must be closed. We do this through experiencing Christ in our lives. Anything that is not the fruit of this has nothing to do with reality. We cannot live off empty words, and if we try we end up abandoning the attempt in disappointment.

We live in a world where this gap is normal. This becomes apparent when we try to talk about the Mystery of our existence in public. In this place, let's close the gap. Let's ask questions, let's help each other - but only out of our lived experience, not out of some theory.

Some great comments that came out of the sharings (Interventions):

"Faith becomes experience through adversity. It is the recognition of a Presence in that adversity".

"The more we get into messes, into problems, the more He wants to help our weakness. We are bothered by this. He isn't".

"Faith is verified in the freedom it brings. It's about the joy we receive, not about being some kind of good guy".

"Reality isn't always beautiful, but I am glad because Christ is there".

"We sometime wants to be 'worthy' instead of happy or satisfied. But God sends a Person to bring us to a fullness we cannot achieve ourselves."

"How often in everyday life do you really experience Christ? This is the real measure of our faith".

"How can we be so certain? Because we talk about reality, not about some idea about God".

"We know we are being real when we see our need as a gift, not something that makes us losers".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All I can say is thanks for taking the time to put all the posts! I know how tired you get running to everything and talking with folks. I is a very great gift to be able to look on with you at the event.

Rick