THE
CALL OF RECONCILIATION
THE
CALL OF RECONCILIATION
We put in your hands the texts that our world chaplain F. Jean Debruynne prepares for the ICCG meeting in Africa in 1998. This invitation to look at ourselves and let us appeal for the Gospel, today, six years later, is as actual as yesterday.
How many events in the reality of our regions show confrontations, violence in each one of its expressions and deep pains. In the hearts of many families and peoples, the destruction due to wars, the attacks, migrations because of political or economic issues, discrimination and misery have left and still leave deep injuries everyday. The fear of the properties and lives loss, the anguish over being any of us the next victim, is in the hearts of adults and children.
However, in the minds of many people there is also a growth in the conscience urgency of love, the clamor for building a culture of peace is heard in every single language, and it takes place day by day in schools and communities, neighborhoods and movements, in churches and families.
God's dream, used to say Henri Nouwen, is making home among us. "Home, the space of the true belonging, its modeled by God to us."
This texts are an invitation to
every adult leader, to every leader community, to every reader. An invitation to
let us be inhabited by love from and through a
reconciliation path.
R
Educating
others and ourselves
to live together,
to live together; discovering
the beauty in every person around us like a gift that is given to us;
recognizing beauty in friendship built on mutual confidence.
R
Educating
others and ourselves
to opening,
hospitality, listening; "open the door and come into my home, my friend there is
a place" we sang this song many times along the World Meeting in Buenos Aires.
R
Educating
others and ourselves
to
the creation of simple and welcoming environments where everybody can feel
and know themselves dignified, loved and needed.
R
Educating
others and ourselves
to be wise relationships, links
and interchanges knitters; apart from differences, because in our
differences, from one consistent and multicolor cloth as well as complex and
varied is the human reality that is expressed in different cultures. A cloth in
which everybody whether a person, community or people could feel itself unique
and a part of us at the same time.
R
Educating
others and ourselves
let be educated, by God who lives
in us and asks us to make from Earth His Home for everybody.
Vibrating with the others' happiness
and achievements, making in our hearts place for the others' pain and
affliction. Not getting tired of making room for Hope, not getting tired of
working as builders of a peace culture, in coherence and fidelity.
In Maria de Guadalupe, walking along the world paths with each of us.
Silvia Staib de Chanes
World Coordinator
August 2004
I.C.C.G. Gathering Benin, 1998
The
ICCG - Africa Gathering on the theme
“Tragedy should become hope: Pardon - Reconciliation - Peace”
took place from october 7th to
october 12th 1998.
Each morning,
Jean Debruynne, taking the daily Gospel as a starting point, prepared the
participants for spiritual reflection on the theme of reconciliation.
Rather than offering a theoretical or abstract reflection, the aim was to incite
each participant into a change of heart and point of view, a conversion, that
can only be carried out individually.
Being reconciled with someone else implies being reconciled with oneself.
The theme proposed by the ICCG supposed that the leader team should also be placed at the heart of a conversion process.
It seemed important to us, sharing
these meditations that opened the gathering each morning from the 5th to the
12th of October, also with those who were not able to attend this meeting. Even
out of context, they are sufficiently meaningful and we believe they could be
useful in your associations for the spiritual education of your guides.
They can be used to introduce a period of sharing, a meeting that is expected to
be difficult or in a celebration on the theme of pardon or peace.
They are at your service, and you can use them as it seems
appropriate to you..
Have a good trip and thanks to Jean Debruynne for giving us the opportunity to
approach the core of our inner-selves once more time.
Renée N'Diaye
Françoise Parmentier
Regional Executive ICCG
ICCG World Coordinator
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