Spirit On The Margins

From left to right: Tamie Koehler, City House program manager; Deb Gorczycki, City House adminstrative manger; JoAnn Campbell, City House volunteer spiritual companion; Janet Hagberg, City House friend; and Pat Hendricks, Christos Center for Spiritual Formation, Executive Director

http://www.fslf.org/our_ministries/sabbath_house.html

A group of people passionate about the future of City House met Friday at the Sabbath House in south Minneapolis to plan and discern.  The question before us was whether to offer a new tuition based formation / enrichment program at City House called “Will You Drink From This Cup: Connecting with the Poor as a Spiritual Practice”.  As a result of participation in this 12 week program, each person would be able to:

1. Connect to and experience relatedness to persons on the margins of society
2. Understand and articulate for themselves: How God is shaping them in relationship with those who are poor; What “Poor in Spirit” means to them; How God has and is deepening their humanity; How God has and is meeting them in their suffering and pain; And if and how God is calling them to work with the poor.

The intended audience is:

1. Trained spiritual directors, especially City House volunteers.
2. Persons serious about their spirituality and their formation.
3. Persons with a heart for the poor.
4. Persons in the recovery community in the Twin Cities.

This pilot program will meet for 6 sessions over 12 weeks in February, March, and April, 2008.  Each session will run for 2 hours, with an hour of presentation and an hour of small group support and reflection time. 3 partial presentations will be made by City House participants (i.e. 3 persons from the margins of society). The program will also include a full day inner city pilgrimage, a 1/2 hour per day pray time reflecting on the great saints and writers that have worked with the poor, and 2 reflection assignments. Every registrant will be expected to be in at least one relationship with a person from the margins (as defined for themselves) during the 12 week program.

Christos Center for Siritual Formation would be a partner with City House in this venture. We are grateful to Pat Hendricks for her support and participation.

http://www.christoscenter.org/ 

Within 10 minutes of starting our conversation, the energy in the room was palpable. Everyone was jumping into implemenation before we had given any serious consideration to whether or not we ought to offer the program in the first place. Deb Gorczycki said, “I guess this means we think the program is a ‘go’.”  Everyone laughed in agreement.

The planning session ended with a lot of enthusiasm and hopes for what we might see happening in this new venture.  Watch for future announcements!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 21st, 2007 at 4:29 pm and is filed under "Will You Drink From This Cup?". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.