Breaking the Silence: Recognizing God’s Grace
On September 14, from 9 am until noon in my parish hall, I will lead a workshop supported by our pastor, entitled “Stories of Faith.”
What do we hope to accomplish with this?
We’d like to uncover some of the wonderful stories from Saint Columba parishioners about the presence of God in their lives—specific times when a parishioner felt most led, or protected, or comforted by their faith in God. On the other hand, there may have been situations in which some parishioners felt the lack of God. So this will also be a very personal opportunity to understand and consider reasons why they felt alone.
I don’t know who will be at the workshop, and I can only imagine what some of the stories might be. But I will help the participants to write down their experiences. This will mean exposing something within themselves that either admits to recognizing the presence or God in their lives, or not. It will mean breaking a specific silence.
Perhaps the silence is within them. Maybe they remember a significant lifetime event, but haven’t thought about God’s part in it at all. Maybe it will be a joyous event that they’ll write about, or maybe it will be a devastating one. But those who attend will have thought beforehand about the presence of God in their life, or they won’t be there. So that’s a starting point.
The writing of this very individual and intimate piece of work will begin with a short discussion based on the premise of Faith and Trust, or as I said, the lack of it. Because sometimes when we acknowledge the absence of something, a bell goes off in our minds, reminding us of what we could be enjoying.
And that’s what the presence of God in our lives is–an enjoyment, a blessing, a pleasure. A gift of grace that calls for recognition.
Translating a World on the Edge 