ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN AND THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
VISION, STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY
The members of the general leadership teams of the two sides of the Lavigerie Family (Msola and M.Afr) together with their respective JPIC - ED coordinators participated in a very enlightening and energizing workshop with Yago Abeledo M.Afr., to explore new ways of looking at reality from a particular tool called "The Butterfly Model". This Model expands in an integral way Lederach's "Expanded Framework for Peacebuilding." "The Butterfly Model" is an invitation to engage on the journey of ever becoming.
During this workshop we explored different ways of interconnecting our inner lives, our community life and our missionary commitments; we are invited to engage at these three levels as we work in systemic ways. Enslavement starts within us because we each carry unprocessed and unacknowledged trauma (past and current wars, oppressions of all kind, injustices etc...). Sometimes we can also experience energies of enslavement in our communities. To name and process enslavement within ourselves and in our communities will contribute greatly in our pastoral commitment. In the end all is about growth in awareness.
Arnold Mindell sums it up nicely: "The inner self, relationships and the world are all aspects of the same community process." EVERYTHING BELONGS!
With the help of insights also from Richard Rohr (The Naked Now) and others who stress the importance of non-dualistic thinking, Yago pointed out the implications for us in our formation programmes, our missionary commitments and for the follow-up of the 125th anniversary of Anti-Slavery Campaign of our Founder, Cardinal Lavigerie. "I am human and nothing of what is human is alien to me", includes the positive but also the negative impacting the behavior of any human beings. I have all those potentials within me.
Through some simple but practical exercises, we experienced how this method can gently put us into the process of exploring our common history. Such important awareness achieved in a very short time, with accessible tools! This process is about you and me, it guides discernment, it leads to fuller life and to the encounter with God! Thank you Yago for sharing with us the precious pearl you discovered during the 3 years of study. We hope to deepen it with our brothers and sisters in a very near future.
