Copyright: © 1996 Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

Pneuma is a journal on spiritual direction and formation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

1. In "Group Spiritual Direction: Community for Discernment," Rose Mary Dougherty presents group spiritual direction as a unique form of spiritual community which assists people in ongoing individual discernment. Not explaining direction per se, she shows why directing in a group is valuable. Dougherty begins with a chapter on prayer and discernment. She offers a couple of premises necessary for the success of community formation: one that individuals are "willing to accept the responsibility of staying in the presence of God on behalf of others" to help them with discernment within the meeting and with prayer outside the meeting. She presents detailed suggestions for the direction of meetings and offers practical advice on how to establish groups. She hopes the book will be a catalyst for others' reflection on spiritual direction and an encouragement to experiment with a small community approach. (Paulist Press, 1995, $7.95)

2. Lately there has been lively debate on the ELCIC Internet newsgroup on the issue of what is the "ideal" confirmation. Clergy engaged in a week of sharing materials they have been finding helpful. The processes and intentions of the adult catechumenate contain important guideposts for "ideal" initiation; the process of Christian initiation of adults, teens, and children is the same. A number of articles are available on how to adapt the catechumenate to youth. I caught only a glimpse of this book but want to bring it to your attention as important for confirmation worship: M. Valerie Schneider's "Confirmed in the Spirit: Prayer Services for Confirmation Classes and Retreats." (1995. Twenty-Third Publications, Mystic, CT 06355)

3. Spiritual directors need insight into their own desert places as they do their own direction and direct others. James Hillman writes: "Each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkenings and despairings that the soul requires to deepen into life." Spiritual direction offers the occasion for what Hillman psychologically terms "growing down." Hillman again: "A person's involvement with the world gives evidence of the descent of the spirit. Virtue would consist in downwardness such as humility, charity, teaching, and not being 'stuck up.'" Some lively Muskoka reading for me has been James Hillman's "The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling" (Random House, 1996) and James Hollis's "Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places" (Inner City, 1996). The latter deals with such issues as grief, anxiety, doubt, obsessions, etc. Both writers are neojungians in orientation and neither book is intended to be theological. I would also include in this list Dorothy May's "Codependency: PowerLoss SoulLoss" (Paulist, 1994). She writes: "Concepts of codependency have touched a deep need for transcendence and a need for deeper, clearer, and more defined relationships and boundaries -- with God, with each other, and with ourselves." The presentation proceeds by questions-and-answers and has a journal and workbook format. In this issue of "Pneuma," Henri Nouwen writes: "We tend to present to God only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response. Thus our prayer becomes very selective and narrow." While spiritual direction is not psychotherapy, directors need to be psychologically aware of human "desert places" and "swamplands," of being present during those times, and of of when to refer directees to other caregivers.

4. Cooperation on the adult catechumenate among three Lutheran churches in North America is ongoing. In April 1997 there will be two joint ELCA/ELCIC/LC-MS training events. The ELCIC approach to these events will be to invite the MNO, SASK, and ABT synods to participate. Since there are parishes in the other two synods already implementing the catechumenate, it is hoped that we might begin to see the catechumenate take shape in small and/or rural parishes.

5. The ELCIC newsletter to pastors on the catechumenate, "A Vision of Discipleship," will be distributed jointly with the ELCA. The fall 1996 issue will contain an essay on the catechumenate by Rev. Jeff Silleck, an ELCA pastor in Ohio; a call to see parishioners as more than volunteers by Rev. Dick Bieber, an ELCIC pastor in Nova Scotia; and a design for a one-day sponsor training event. This newsletter is distributed in Canada through the Communique mailing. To receive copies, contact Rev. Cindy Halmarson (ELCIC) or Rev. Karen Ward (ELCA).

6. Many of you will have seen the video "This Is the Night," presenting the catechumenate in a parish in Texas. Don Neumann, who authored that video, writes recently of the catechumenate: "We have been conditioned by the 'programmatic' model that still seems to permeate much of parochial life. We have been limited by an overloaded preoccupation with 'instruction' and understanding of the faith. As a result we have neglected or underemphasized the 'living of the gospel imperatives' to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, shelter the homeless, etc." The catechumenate is much more than "an educational experience" and needs to become a "hot-bed of conversion. . . . If an inquirer accompanies his or her sponsor to the sick bed of a dying person who is in need of having their gown and bed linens changed because they can no longer control their bowels, there is a good chance the selfless offering of Christ will imprint into their consciousness far more indelibly than if they studied about it in a safe parlour meeting. . . . In Christian initiation we are about imprinting upon inquirers (and ourselves, again) a new hologram of how to be: by acting in such a way that we might change the way we have been thinking. . . . [Acting] is the fertile soil upon which all profound conversion is based -- in real life, in flesh and blood, in paradox and surprise." Neumann challenges us, in these early years of restoring the catechumenate, with a vision of this ministry which is far from a program, which sees the inquirer as immersed in the life of a Christian sponsor in a parish, and which calls parishes from its parlours and sanctuaries to action in the world. His essay appears in the October/November 1996 issue of "Christian Initiation" (1-800-333-7373).

7. That newsletter has a regular column for catechists and for sponsors. The issue has an essay which is a helpful parallel to David Ratke's essay in this issue of "Pneuma." Kathy Brown's essay, "Evangelization: 'It's in the Story'" deals with storytelling by inquirers, telling stories from the scriptures, stories of our heritage, and living personal stories. Both of these essays came to mind last week when an Anglican classmate, preparing for the priesthood, posed the question: how do we get the members of a parish to realize that they are part of a church much larger than their own local parish? Ratke and Brown provide important theologizing on narrative work in all facets of parish life.

8. We need continually to set the catechumenate in the wider context of a parish's life that includes not just worship and catechesis, but also evangelism and social ministry. Peter Conroy writes on conversion and the catechumenate: "The catechumenate, because it happens within the midst of the community, fosters the ongoing conversion of all. Coming into membership of the church is not about arrival but coming to a new point of departure. The catechumenate doesn't simply prepare people for sacraments but for living the life of discipleship, and the sacraments are doorways into that life. Where the sacraments are seen as the goal and the conclusion to the initiation process, it is not surprising to find the conversion of the newly initiated may come to a stop unless there are structures that foster ongoing conversion and continued nurturing in faith."