The morning prayer was centred on the fact that Earth, filled with God’s family (all people and all creation and the richness of our diversity) belongs to all. We are all connected to the earth and to one another, all wounded but participating in God’s healing creation, all connected to one another with respect, humility, patience, open mindedness, and the spirit of forgiveness we have received in Christ Jesus.
Each one is worthy of being respected and cared for.
We commit ourselves to work together, to build God’s kingdom here today: equality, sharing, compassion, reconciliation will be our way, so that this world may become a place where all people live in justice, freedom and peace.
Through what we have lived these days we are becoming aware that we are like a tapestry welcoming our differences and showing our similarities. . The daily morning “checking in”, as a key element of the Butterfly Framework that backs and supports transformative processes and helps to track energies is a moment of silence with myself, scanning my body and the lived experience to become aware of how I am with myself, of what wants to express itself, and of the metamorphosis taking place in me. This safe environment has helped us to express deep feelings in truth.
The Co-Facilitators consolidating the process to make meaning of all the learning that was happening, insisted that three levels of reality are happening in us at every moment: the spiritual level: God within us; the dream level: imagination, dreams, which are processed and unprocessed energies that are in our life; and consensus/reality level, which is our work on the procedures, the capitular acts, etc. At this moment of the chapter, whereby we are moving towards voting the texts that will be part of the Capitular Acts, we bring more of our attention to the Consensus Reality Level so as to be deeply democratic to all the levels of reality. At the same time we keep highlighting the relevance of the dreamland-level we have just witnessed in the sharing, and the spiritual level of the morning prayer, the word at the end of the day from Fr. Dave and the Eucharist. All of these are giving life to this process.
We revised the framework of the butterfly in 4 steps to understand what we are doing during this chapter when we process things and issues.
1st step. Creating a safe “container”, a safe space to speak in trust and in truth. This is essential for the process.
2nd step. Naming real unprocessed issues (the elephant in the room) e.g., patriarchy, racism, etc.
3rd step. Being centred in my own identity and in the “here and now”.
4th step. As we engage in step 3 above, we face the unprocessed energies in the 4 wings and therefore we need the capacity to navigate through (to encounter the “elephant in the room”). Thus the need to Develop a toolkit to melt the frozen / blocked unprocessed energy.
This is a simple way to understand what we are doing during the chapter when we process things and issues.
As said above, the three levels of reality are honoured so as to be deeply democratic. 1. the spiritual level (Christ and the Holy Spirit within). This is the deepest level; 2. the dreamland level (feelings, emotions, imagination, dreams); 3. the Consensus-reality level (agenda, running, Capitular Acts, Constitutions).
The tendency, the Co-facilitators stressed is to marginalise our emotions and feelings, our power of imaginations, our dreams and quickly spiritualize things. This, is what they defined as “spiritual bypassing” which involves using spiritual explanations to dismiss or avoid complicated emotions or psychological issues/wounds, unpleasant, controversial and/or unfinished developmental tasks. This happens when we use our spirituality to avoid facing unresolved issues either on a personal, interpersonal or systemic level.
In his reflection at the end of the day Fr. Dave reminded us how the early believers resolved the problem they had: What to do with those who wanted to join the community and who were not Jewish. This is how they dealt with the issue:
- They came together and they discussed the question. They listened to all the points of view. We have called this “deep democracy”.
- After having heard all the points of view, to move forward, the leaders had to discern what to do and to take a decision. After hearing all the opinions, Peter and James, the leaders of the Christian community, had to play their role and lead. This requires an inner strength! And the whole community, according to St. Luke, accepted the decision. In the letter to the communities, the leaders wrote: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us …”
- They then communicated the decision clearly to the communities concerned.
