“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
I once again came across of document from the US Bishops almost exactly 30 years ago.
In this Vincentian Mindwalk, I invite you to make your own judgment about how much has changed and not changed since then.
The tribal wisdom of the American Indian says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
Organizations often seem to have trouble with this.
I never expected to be drawn as deeply into an Apostolic Letter on the 400th anniversary of the death of Francis de Sales. I was surprised by how much resonance I found with St. Vincent.
In our polarized world, everybody wants to change our way of thinking. Does God also want us to change? What change of thinking is God asking… and how would it change how we live?
Change is a fact of our life, whether we like it or not. So, there is a question we must ask about how we minister.
One of my favorite images of the synodal process is “a journey of dialogue in which we learn how to recognize the presence of Christ walking besides us.”
A thread stitches almost all these posts together. Change! They all focused on something that called for a change. We are all on a journey of change together.
No matter what era or even whether we went to a catholic school, I suspect the teachers we remember most favorably are the ones who taught us to think.
Changing our clocks.We can think about this annual ritual as a metaphor for our lives.
What if we could “replay” an hour that we lost in our lives. Of course, we don’t get to replay the hour we lost. Nor do we get to skip ahead and see our futures by changing.
Helping another to speak what is in their heart requires listening … and connecting. St. Vincent’s canvas and oils were his gifts of helping people to see what they had not seen. With his genius for organizing he involved them in the solution.
Israel’s prophets talked, but their audiences didn’t listen. Little has changed in 3,000 years. Given how little the Israelites listened to their prophets, what are we to think of the prophetic dimensions of Vincentian ministry today?
Pope Francis wrote… “(Youth) have asked us in a thousand ways to walk alongside them — not behind them or ahead of them, but at their side.”
Pentecost changed the mental maps. of the disciples. Our world has changed radically. What adjusments need to be made to our mental maps?