What has changed in 28 years?

Notes from way back

I don’t even remember the year I took these notes, or the topic of the workshop, but before I discard the legal paper, I’m typing them here.

On reading them, I believe this workshop took place before I moved to Emmitsburg in 1999.  Sometime in the early 90’s, I  bet.

 

Level 1   Myth   Where vision occurs. A non-rational process

Ritual

Stories ( who formed you? Who called you into religious life?)

Assumptions

Feelings  ( Have they tyrannized us? Have they disabled the mission? Dealing with conflict)

Traditions

Visions

Hopes

Fears ( that what I have committed my life to will cease to exist)

 

Level 2:  Belief

The Rational: why are we here? If the Daughters were in charge…

Our challenge: to deal with the mythic level

 

Identity – purpose before structure

Four ways of looking at change:

1.       Fine tuning; incremental improvements

2.       Adaptation: small changes that occur reactively ( not proactive)

3.       Re-orientation: orient yourself to your founding purpose and make changes and redirections

4.       Re-creation: strategic changes necessitated by life-changing events… radical departure  e.g. emergence of DCNHS

 

Attend to re-orienting phase. Leadership must raise questions . There must be an incentive to change.  Young people are not interested in the status quo.

Leadership’s function is not therapy.

Enabling and mobilizing the group to fulfill its purpose.

If there is no sacrifice to this life, we will not draw people because they can achieve this elsewhere.

Motivation among caring people. ( Dr. David McClellan)

A motive of one-ness, affiliation…achievement….intimacy

 

Components of Religious Life

Unfolding of new arms of charity

Special sense by which the qualities of the life of the Daughters of Charity can be seen.

 

What will the community be like in 2010?

The future of the DC ‘s: elements central to the future of the DC’s

Asked us to draw something.

I drew:  flower gardens in the city.

Distinct: part of their earth, flowering from within them.

God’s grace will transform.

There will be dramatic change.

Mobility

Authority structure will enable quick response to human need.

Not to be controlled by institutions. Mission effectiveness: are the conduits of the mission and ministry of St. Vincent de Paul?

Avoid the trap of de-institutionalizing…. When they de-institutionalized, they lost the base.

Live the tensions between institutions and mobility.

Some strategy, purpose, and direction…

Does the structure continue to fulfill the ministry?

Leadership: mobilizing people to do adaptive work.

N.B. “I’m for you before you say anything.” That was fostered in our seminary.

 

Befriend the need – the need to shout!

Vincent had a need to shout!

Realistic assessment of what the needs are and how do they fit in this life.

The Danger of Rationalization.

Come to a greater knowledge of my needs… my vulnerability to authority or anger.

Attitude of fear of the future..

God pledges to meet me all the way along the way.

Reservoir vs. desert spirituality: fill up in the beginning ( reservoir) Desert- I can depend on sustenance all along the way.

The shape of my needs is going to change.

We are vowing in a world and in a self that is changing.

“Dealing with it” – the cards I have are the only game I have. I can’t sit there and say “I don’t like these cards.” The trick is to keep being creative. That’s what dealing with it means. I spend my energy in trying to adjust to what’s in front of me – to keep moving and building some quality in the hand. Is  God  the one who will give me something helpful to work with. Something that will give me life?

God is the one who gives me the power to adjust – the creativity and insight to move things around so that in some way they will start to help me.

I deal with what is given me.

God will be out there in the future with new, life-giving moves.

I am the living stone in the building. Living stone grows in predictable messy life.

Present: dealing with things the way they are. Jesus found God in the midst of things – through reality.

Incarnation:

·         Make sense

·         Enmeshed in world

·         I want fullness

·         Life is good

Eschatology

·         Not total sense

·         Not totally world

·         Delayed gratification

·         More

Consider the vows as a form of praying…

Entering into Jesus’ passion for God.

Any prayer extends itself beyond the prayer time.

Openness to the passion of God toward me.

All of life has to grow to…..

 

To what?  That is the end of my notes. Did I  stop taking notes, or have I lost the rest in all my moves?

 

Still trying to figure out when I took these notes.  At one point the notes refer to the starting of the DCNHS ( Daughters of Charity National Health System).  When did that start? I think in the early 1990’s.  I know the DCNHS became Ascension Health in 1999 when it merged with the Sisters of St. Joseph system… DCNHS started around 1986.  That would be right.  In 1986, I moved from Charleston SC to  Baltimore. From some other things, then, I deduce that this meeting took place in 1990, and was some kind of visioning for the future.  Oh, little did any of us know how the world would  change, how healthcare would change, and what impact the shrinking number of available Daughters of Charity would affect ministry choices.

 

So... from 1990 to 2018...  I was 42 years old then, hale and hearty and not looking ahead at all, either at myself or at my religious community. I can't begin to list all the changes.