Colourful Dreamer

I am continuing my reflection on the input last year at the IPTOC-JFOC gathering at High Leigh in England. The second slot of input was shared between Cathy Ross from CMS in UK and Jeff Golliher TSSF from USA. Together they helped us focus on "Listening to the Cry of the World." I want to focus on Cathy's input here. You can find the video of her sessions and the PowerPoint here . Who is she? Dr Cathy Ross is a is a New Zealand-born academic and scholar of missiology. She has worked for NZCMS in Rwanda, Congo and Uganda. She is currently   leads Pioneer Mission Leadership Training Oxford and is a lecturer in mission at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. I first met her at a conference 25 years ago where she presented a paper based on her doctoral work on the importance of missionary wives in Aotearoa. That was published as " Women with a Mission, Rediscovering Missionary Wives in Early New Zealand", (Auckland: Penguin, 2006). You can read more about her here . Her

The second part of the morning was back with Charlie. And he explored some of our different roots to OFS. In fact, we have a few different strands in our origin story as Anglican/Episcopalian Franciscans. The American version is more traditional, while the British version, at least for the brothers and the Third Order have their origins in an ashram in India, Christa Seva Sangha, founded by Fr Jack Winslow. The name, Christa Seva Sangha, can be interpreted as Community of the Servants of Christ or The Fellowship of the Servants of Christ and/or The Christian Fellowship of Service . And this is where our rule comes from, in significant part.  You can read more about these roots here or on Wikipedia. While we pray the words based on his rule "everyday" most of us know little about this amazing man and his gift to us. Charlie spent time exploring some of these roots and teasing out their significance for understanding some of who we are as Franciscans. Fr Jack is a really in

The second of the first full two days exploring our roots as Anglican Franciscans we again had Paula Pearce OFS and Charlie McCarron TSSF. They continued laying the groundwork for the rest of the IPTOC/JFOC and for my ongoing reflection. One of the things that is different for OFS and for us in the Society of Saint Francis is that they follow the rule of St Francis, and we follow something that was in part inspired by Francis. Paula spent the second day talking about the process by which the Third Order Regular Rule (the TOR Rule) was revised.  This Rule is the basis of the Rules of the Franciscan orders that live in community and are not OFM or Poor Clares. The TOR Rule uses mostly words from St Francis’ writings. She describes it as a spiritual document, not a set of rules and regulations - seen in her title for the presentation "TOR RULE - The Spirit of Prayer" . It is available online at https://franciscanstor.org/our-community/third-order-regular-rule .  After outlining

I had a strange conversation a few months ago. I was lying back in a chair, naked from the waste down, holding a nappy over my bits while I waited for the skin under my bits to go numb enough from liquid nitrogen or some such thing, so that they could inject the local anesthetic and then punch a couple of holes through to the prostate. All in all a fun experience. And while I waited the nurse made small talk and asked what I did. "I'm retired", I replied. "Oh, what are you planning to do now you are retired? any travel?" "Turns out not" I said, "It seems I'm just keeping my dairy open for dealing with health things." And I am still keeping my dairy open and still dealing with them. This journey began last year. I was already dealing with two other things, including a lump in my parotid gland which has been slowly growing there for about 3 years. When I got back from being overseas on sabbatical my doctor called me in to talk about that an

Charlie McCarron TSSF from the USA is now an Episcopalian Third Order member. He was Catholic and is deeply rooted in the Franciscan tradition from both the Catholic and Episcopalian viewpoint. He is a bit of an intellectual – he has done studying and lecturing on this stuff and is really good value. He was elected Minister Provincial for the Americas shortly after IPTOC. Good choice Americas. You can find other videos of his here . He continued looking at some important aspects of the church environment at the time of St Francis, exploring some of the context out of which Franciscanism grew, and which still informs our charism today. Francis was much less the maverick we sometimes make him out to be but was shaped by and shaped the tradition that was going on around him. Charlie focussed this session on: Action and contemplation in the early Franciscan source. He began by suggesting that the key concepts for early Franciscans were: solitude, fraternity (he said it was hard to find