We Are All Volunteers
(This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023 TAU-USA Issue #108)
by Jane DeRose-Bamman and Diane Menditto
According to the Google Dictionary/Oxford Languages website: “Volunteer” means:
“a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task.”
Each Secular Franciscan is a volunteer of sorts… a volunteer for Jesus. We choose daily to say yes to our vocation, going from Gospel to life and life to the Gospel. Although elected to our positions, the members of the new National Executive Council volunteered to serve in those positions.
There are other volunteers in the Order who serve in appointed positions. The appointees are often behind the scenes. Without those willing to serve in appointed positions, those who were elected would be floundering immediately upon election.
On the national level, these appointments are in the areas of the Commissions (Formation; Justice Peace and Integrity of Creation; and Youth/Young Adult), the National Database, the TAU-USA newsletter, 1-800-Francis vocations line, the national website, archives, historian, public relations specialists and, more recently, those working with social media and accessibility concerns. There are also very task specific appointments, e.g., the Quinquennial Committee, which lasts for five years. Many members of the Database Committee (formerly the Computer Committee) and TAU-USA Committee have served for more than 10 years. Some committee chairs and members have served in various roles as committees have transitioned. We are not sure that people would have said yes to their original appointment if they had known it would last 5+ years. Here are a few of those who have been serving for many years:
Dan Mulholland, OFS, served as a JPIC Commission Co-Chair and transitioned to the Computer Committee, and as an offshoot has helped with the website, social media, TAU-USA, setting up and maintaining email listserv, and many other tasks. He always offers his expertise, as well as sharing his knowledge with others. He is active with his local and regional fraternities. His unending “yes” to volunteer and share his gifts is inspiring.
Bob Herbelin, OFS, has been managing the current database for 20 years. He has been helped by the Computer Committee members, but Bob is the main database manager. Cyl Maljan-Herbelin, OFS, for about eight years now, has been overseeing access to the database. Bob and Cyl create the National Directory based on the database information. Cyl also maintains the mailing list for the Tau-USA. Bob helps with the annual report functions of the database. They are working with the Database Committee to set up the new database (which we hope to roll out in 2023). Thanks to Bob and Cyl for their longtime efforts.
Randy Heinz, OFS, managed the mailing list for many years before Cyl. He was integral in initiating the new website, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Thanks to Randy for helping us evolve with our communication methods.
Jim and Cindy Wesley, OFS, work on key parts of our communication efforts with the Tau-USA newsletter. They have been working on compiling the articles as well as translating them for more than 10 years. Their efforts have produced 32 newsletters in English and Spanish. Their consistent labor of love is a gift for the OFS-USA. Combined with efforts from the website committee members, we have all versions of the newsletter since 1987 posted to the website. https:// www.secularfranciscansusa.org/tau-usa-newsletter/
Unfortunately, we aren’t able to list all the volunteers here by name. Thanks to all who have been and will be willing to accept appointments!
Because an appointment should not be considered a life-long commitment, the NEC is soliciting applications for our Commission Chairs―National Formation, National Justice Peace and Integrity of Creation, and National Youth/Young Adult, and the Tau-USA Editor in this newsletter. The NEC will solicit applications for other appointed positions in future Tau-USA editions.
https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2023/04/17/we-are-all-volunteers/
CNSA- Lent 2023: Interior Cultivation
(This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023 Issue of TAU-USA #108)
by Christopher Panagoplos, TOR
“Listen” – Gardens are attractive by virtue of their beauty and bounty. Gardens delight our senses and ground us in the earth. They are the object of fruitful reflection and hands-on prayer. Gardens can speak to us of promise and hope, of dying/ rising. These carefully tended plots of earth can be an expression of God’s lavish abundance, as well as a challenge of trust as unseen seeds take root and grow. Sometimes when we allow the mystery of a garden to enter into us, it yields forth its secrets.
Brothers and sisters, let us do some interior cultivation in the garden of our hearts. The “Lenten spring” is prime time for “interior cultivation.” With the help of the Holy Spirit, let us dig deeper into the place where our relationship with Jesus grows. St Francis helps us acquire needed garden implements: the yellow-green newness of springtime; the fragrant blossoms adorning our Sister Mother Earth; the restorative warmth of Brother Sun.
“Discern”―Our lives are a running towards something or a running away from something. We repel and avoid. We desire and yearn. As gardeners, we till the soil, we break through the hard surface layer: clumps of resentments, hard rocks of indifference, old roots of grievances. What blocks the way when I try to open my heart to Jesus? What stones am I stumbling on in my Franciscan journey? What old roots am I getting tangled up in as I try to nourish the seed of God’s Word in my heart?
One of those mysterious processes that contribute to the growth of gardens is composting. A compost pile—let’s do some interior cultivation with our own compost pile. My prayer and reflection during these Lenten days have brought me to the conscious recognition of the shadow-side of my personality. I had known for some time that I possess certain personality traits and character flaws that I’d rather not have. I had also been under the illusion that it would be a matter of time before I could eliminate these defects and move on. What I realized was that these pieces and parts of me were integral to who I am, and that I’d never be rid of them. In fact, they are essential to my becoming fully human.
This discovery was depressing, indeed. Also needed for interior cultivation to work in the soil of my heart was my compost pile. What turned things around for me was what I placed on the compost pile that is me: impatience, confusion, doubt with a touch of stubbornness, control, le\over anger, old thinking patterns that don’t work anymore, words spoken in haste without love, unspoken words that contribute to pain and disharmony.
What a compost pile! Humus—of earth, the ground, the soil. Human—an earthly one. I am of earth. My own humus, product of my life’s compost pile, fertilizing the transformation process that allows me to become human. Humus. Human. Humility. I need to remember that I am an earthly one. Yes, I aspire to things of the Spirit. Yes, God chooses to love me and use me—for love, for service, for justice. But God chooses. Like Francis, I am nothing. I am humus. I am human.
Each of us needs to experience the miracle of transformation, especially in these days of Lent, to embrace the pieces and parts that are in need of God’s healing touch. Interior cultivation allows for those personality traits we find most despicable to become integrated, the raw material for personal growth, so that they nourish our lives. When I think of the shadow elements that I want to reject, wisdom teaches that these are valuable—compostable—because they keep me coming back to God and His healing grace, the healing that yields a new kind of energy that revitalizes everyday living.
“Go Forth”
Prayer enriches the soul as compost does the soil. And so, I pray:
Come, Lord Jesus, let me feel Your presence, and hear Your voice.
Open the eyes of my heart,
illuminate within it places of eternal Lent where I have not permitted Your love entry.
Help me to open these places.
Root out that which needs to leave, and make room for the joy of Your resurrection.
Open the eyes of my heart to see You
in those with whom I live and work and share fraternity.
Come to those broken places in me,
in those relationships with others, in the world around me,
in need of reconciliation, with the healing of Your resurrection.
Open the eyes of my heart to see You in those whose walk is long and lonely
through their personal Gethsemane.
Allow me to accompany You in them.
Remain with me, remind me, and lift up into the light,
the dormant confidence of hope in the joy of Your resurrection.
“Changed in mind but not in body, Francis was eager to direct his will to God’s will. Thus, he retired for a short time from the tumult and business of the world and was anxious to keep Jesus Christ in his inmost self. Like an experienced merchant, he concealed the pearl he had found from the eyes of mockers and, selling all he had, he tried to buy it secretly…. He acted in such a way that no one would know what was happening within. Wisely taking the occasion of the good to conceal the better, Francis consulted God alone about his holy purpose. He prayed with all his heart that the eternal and true God guide his way and teach him to do God’s will. He endured great suffering in his soul, and was not able to rest until he accomplished in action what he had conceived in his heart.” (1Celano 6)
Let’s make this opportunity “intentional,” to cultivate the soil of the heart, and to keep Jesus in our inmost self. Let us not rest until Christ comes to birth in the heart. Beauty and bounty, then, will live in the garden of our heart.
https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2023/04/10/cnsa-lent-2023-interior-cultivation/