DARE TO BE DISCIPLE

THE REPORT OF THE CONGREGATION LEADERSHIP TEAM

FOREWORD

At each step of the descent, a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came, arising from I know not where, the current I dare to call my life.

With these words Teilhard de Chardin tries to describe the confusion and imbalance he felt when he began to pursue the call of the heart. To move into our deeper selves and away from more practical everyday pursuits is like sinking into an abyss. Every time we allow ourselves to become vulnerable to mystery, a profound unease envelops us, something like that which came upon Mary when she was “deeply disturbed” at the angel’s greeting. In our ‘fiat’ we are dismantling our house of meaning before we have a clear plan for its replacement. The edge of mystery is not a comfortable lodging.

This report to the Congregation and to the men and women who have journeyed with us over the past six years is an attempt to look at the spiritual adventure into which the Chapter in 2002 invited us.

As we on the Congregation Leadership Team present our report to you, we are also asking you to reflect on your own individual and communal journeys. Our story is your story. The images that we invoke might allow you to see your own lives against a larger backdrop and to see your efforts as part of a wider Divine and cosmic plan. Above all we are each engaged in descending deeper into ourselves, our very being, where God is truly found in the depths of our humanity. One of the most dangerous things we can do is to listen to our hearts.

But then beneath this very spectacle of the turmoil of life, there appeared before my new-opened eyes, the unknown that I wanted to escape. This time it was not hiding in the bottom of the abyss; it disguised its presence in the innumerable strands which form the web of chance, the very stuff of which the universe and my own small individuality are woven. Yet it was the same mystery without a doubt: I recognised it.

It is our hope that this report might enable this to happen.
The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin
Ibid