This familiar place?

I came across a way of reading the local context which I adapted for our Annual Meeting purposes.

It is both a visual on the streets around us, buildings, as well as simnply noting which sde of the street people mainly walk on and why? to use of parks and are the seats comfortable, etc, etc. and there's a challenege to name the people who work in the cafes and shops along Highgate. A small challenge really.

Actually what I would love to do, and may yet again, is to get people to walk Highgate with an eye and sense of people movements and much more. It moves us beyond just looking to sensing. I liked that. Then we would display findings and discuss it in considering how we are embedded in this context and what locally could be improved in our environment, etc.

This is the bear bones of a method derived from the RSVP Cycles (Halpern and Halpern) Sadly, I cannot get my hands on a copy of this and so gleaned from the beb, but if anyone, knows anyone I could borrow from then it would be great to read that book.



Interestingly, people using our facilitires and in the congregation have had curious interest too in the display in the main foyer area. Pre-school Music parents/grandparents and others. Mmmm!









I had loads of photos and comments and some fun bits for kids to find MArtin and/or me lying on benches hidden around the display. Also some fun photos from our youth along the way too. Also tried to note some changes to properties and in shop use etc. Lots of options to it really.

Moving through the silence

And so the blossom has started to burst in Dunedin! Took this today of the tree beside our house.

There is a great deal of change on Highgate just now and we're all in a spin as Martin is heading to Christchurch to a church there.

We have some big questions ahead in the next few months, but we need some thoughtful talk and dare I say it - silence - that helps us. I am reminded of this from Paul Fromont 'Benedict on Silence' which I have been pondering recently. (or from Anthony Hanson here)Given below.

"Silence is a cornerstone of Benedictine life and spiritual development, but the goal of monastic silence is not nontalking. The goal of monastic silence, and monastic speech, is respect for others, a sense of place, a spirit of peace. The rule does not call for absolute silence; it calls for thoughtful talk.... Silence for its own selfish, insulating sake, silence that is passive-aggressive, silence that is insensitive to the present needs of the other is not Benedictine silence.
Benedictine spirituality forms us to listen always for the voice of God. When my own noise is what drowns that word out, the spiritual life becomes a sham. Benedictine spirituality forms us to know our place in the world. When we refuse to give place to others, when we consume all the space of our worlds with our own sounds and our own truths and our own wisdom and our own ideas, there is no room for anyone else's ideas. When a person debates contentiously with anyone, let alone with the teachers and guides of their life, the ego becomes a majority of one and there is no one left from whom to learn. But Benedictine spirituality is a builder of human community. When talk is unrestrained, when gossip becomes the food of the soul, then destruction of others can't be far behind. When talk is loud and boisterous, when we make light of everything, when nothing is spared the raillery of a joke, the seriousness of all of life is at stake and our spirits wither from a lack of beauty and substance. Make no doubt about it, the ability to listen to another, to sit silently in the presence of God, to give sober heed, and to ponder is the nucleus of Benedictine spirituality. It may, in fact, be what is most missing in a century saturated with information but short on Gospel reflection. The Word we seek is speaking in the silence within us. Blocking it out with the static of nonsense day in and day out, relinquishing the spirit of silence, numbs the Benedictine heart in a noise-polluted world."

Joan Chittister, O.S.B., from her book (a translation/paraphrase of the Rule of St. Benedict, with her commentary) The Rule of Benedict: Insight for the Ages.