Who Am I?
1) a quote from the Pope about the last covid. It may help us prepare for action should another one come this winter ?
2) an exercise with questions that might provide other questions we could ask ?
1) “Our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, often forgotten, who don’t appear in newspapers but who without doubt are in these very days writing the decisive events of our time; doctors, nurses, supermarket employees, cleaners, care-givers and so very many others who have understood that no one reaches salvation by themselves.”
“A moment of crisis is an opportunity for conversion. To enter into crisis is to be sifted. Your categories and ways of thinking get shaken up.””
Pope Francis “Let us Dream.” (with Austin Ivereigh)
(During the covid crisis Pope Francis wrote Fratelli Tutti, his document about togetherness).
2)Just like the trainee teachers of Mater Dei Institute, you may like to spend some time jotting down some answers to complete the following sentence; 'I am ...' (e.g. I am a mother, l am creative...). Aim for a minimum of 30-40 responses (avoiding negatives e.g. I am not sporty). Then, with a keen awareness of God's presence, look carefully and reflectively at your responses...
• Which are unchanging givens (e.g. natural talents, genetics)?
• Which have I become because of decisions/choices I have made (or made for me)?
• Which are the deepest truths of who I am before God?
Look again, with God, at your list of
'I am's...
What has influenced their becoming what has made you 'You'?
How has your relationship with God shaped you?
What else has shaped you?
What might be missing?
What does your faith story have to say about how you have been formed over your lifetime?
Do you want to say something to God? Does God want to say to anything to you? How is it to simply sit with God and your sense of "I am"?
"Your very lives are a letter that anyone can read by looking at you. Christ himself wrote it - not with ink, but with God's living Spirit; not chiselled into stone, but carved into human lives..." (2 Cor 3:3)
Date of next meeting Tuesday 29th October, 6.30pm at Sheila’s house