Weaving our Gifts

I’ll try to collect tthe blur of my thoughts for the past six days here on my blog.

I’ve just gotten back from a conference for folks involved in children’s spiritual formation through Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. The biannual conference in Connecticut is titled Weaving our Gifts invites peers to present workshops for one another to enhance the work with children and adults.

How could I ever make such trips without the help of dear friends like Helen and Clay, Scott and Leesa who kept my children while Buck worked demanding weekend shifts? Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

In one of my workshops, I launched Shepherd’s Stew, the prayer project I’ve been developing for over a year. Shepherd’s Stew is a collection of prayer centers for adults based on different themes. In the Season to Grow theme, which is the set I chose for the workshop, participants explored ten unique growing centers with scriptures, meditation questions, and accompanied by art projects. I am constantly amazed at the words, feelings and creative projects which are shared at the end of the center work time. My friend Liz shared a painted a clay pot with precious pictures of the stages of her own development in Christ. Another spoke on her enjoyment of simply coloring stained glass in response to light scripture. Others talked about their experience as they listened to worship songs. Joanna accurately dubbed my workshop “a mini retreat“.

My publisher and friend, Catherine Maresca, congratulated me on how well received the materials and workshop were over the weekend. I take a deep breath of gratitude just now for her huge investment of time in the project. She and her staff at The Center for Children and Theology and Children edited, explored packaging and printing options with me, and flung emails and phone calls back and forth for months on details.

Two amazing women who live nearby in Connecticut pulled together a laundry list of art materials for me: markers, pens, paints, brushes, paper, frames, CD players, fresh flowers, mats, trays, candles, snuffers, matches, paper plates, newspaper, baskets and more. At the retreat house, a Rubbermaid box, a cardboard box and a bucket of fresh flowers stood prepared just for me, so I didn’t have to somehow cart those things from Tennessee. However, when I set the centers up the night before, I realized I’d forgotten to bring or ask for tiny boxes to take home wheat seeds from one of art activities. Then I realized a friend I’d met at training in Santa Barbara last year named Silas was attending the conference, and he had made tiny boxes from paper for us there. I zipped down to his room, cardstock and scissors in hand, and he asked me to join his group from Minnesota watching (or ignoring) the World Series in the TV room another floor. Those people were an absolute hoot! They made me laugh like I haven’t in a long time, and everyone in the group eventually joined in the box making craft.

I attended lectures with keynote speaker Aline D. Wolf and other workshops. Jo and I met for business concerning The Shepherd’s Call. God bless the women from the National Association of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd who have committed and began working with us in that gigantic effort. We have a long journey of work ahead, but it’s full of hope and promise.

Jo and I prepared a workshop titled Adapting with Integrity which invited others to collaborate in a brainstorming process to look over Good Shepherd materials and adapt them for children in alternative settings. This group came up with an excellent start, flow charting the process of adaptation.

I met with friends from across the United States I’ve met at trainings and retreats over the course of the last nine years. We shared heartaches and joys. I met new people I hope to work with collaboratively in the future.

I strong armed Joanna into a dance of prayer with me for the “sharing night”. A few weeks before the conference, a song came up on my ipod at the gym which gave me that “This is the one to dance to at the conference” feeling. The song was In You by Mercy Me. A two person choreography developed when I prepared the movements at home. I asked Jo to bring black sweat pants and a black shirt and be open to partnering with me which she did. The only child I met at the conference took the time to bless me with his words, “That song you danced to? It’s my very favorite song. I have all Mercy Me’s CD’s and you picked my favorite one.”

I’ll conclude with a quote from Sofia Cavalletti in her most recent letter to members like myself of the National Association of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

“Who is it that comes in the midst of such noise? 'The Spirit rests on him.' The world is saved by things that are small and quiet, things whose presence is barely noticeable. And when we do notice them, their presence bears all the perfume of a GIFT. It is just such things that the Spirit seeks out.

In returning to this passage once again (Isaiah 10:32-34-11:1), I have asked myself- and would like to ask you to ask yourselves together with me: Could it be that the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is on of these little things? The light of joy which we have been given to see the eyes of the children and also many adults, where does it come from if not from the Spirit? Is it not a marvelous gift? Could it not perhaps be the light of the Christian message that we have sought to transmit in the most objective manner possible, without allowing ourselves to get in the way, trying to make ourselves always smaller so that the Word resounds with all it’s mysterious power? “