Provisionality is one of the more peculiar characteristics of the Community Animation Service for a Better World.  Without any doubt, this particular characteristic has greatly influenced our vocation and mission, our people and our work.  It should not surprise us, therefore, that changes can happen within the Promoting Group.

Continue reading Companions and witnesses →

Everyone, no matter their age, recognizes that exercise is good.  If we stay strictly withthe meaning of the word exercise, from Latin “exercitium”, it has to do with “the art of regular or repeated use of a faculty or bodily organ or bodily exertion for the sake of developing and maintaining physical fitness”.  These verbs refer to the practice of an activity, an art form, a job or a profession.  I recognize that I have been hard to convince of its more profound meaning, maybe because I am an active person, maybe due to the “activism” of Western society, or because of my own education.  I was taught about prayer, but I wasn’t taught the exercise of prayer.  I studied plenty theology, but no one helped me to digest it…  The truth is that in my own pastoral service, during quite a long time, I have studied a lot, and garnered a lot of information in order to transmit this knowledge in an active pedagogical manner. Recently I have gained consciousness regarding my conviction that I must first “exercise” that is, to take on whatever I learn and internalize it, in order to later transmit this knowledge to others. Continue reading Did you say “exercise”? →

To learn to LIVE, is the constant rain shower produced by the Itineraries to soak my whole life… It has been an unexpected gift, with which I am able to be aware of the presence of the Spirit of Jesus. Continue reading The Itineraries: an experience →

Usually, the idea of an ecclesial renewal begins with any number of pastoral activities.  Our service in Movement for a Better World, has contributed, in the past, to the renewal of the Church and has fostered projects for a more just and fraternal-sororal society. In the mid-eighties, last century, the Promoting Group, made an option to design projects to renew the pastoral in a global and integral manner, first of the parish, then religious life, and later youth and family.  Later, the dioceses as a whole were included among the renewal projects.

Continue reading Spirituality Prevails Over Pastoral →

It’s taken a long time to discover, little by little, that the events that have happened in my everyday life, become clearer, more organized and more significant insofar as I have stopped, reviewed them and then written them as a story or narrative.  Continue reading Telling stories enables encounters and fosters personal development →

What does “daily life” have to do with the Signs of the Times?  What does it have to do with God?  What does it have to do with who I am and what I do and want from life? What does it have to do with the reality that our country is experiencing at this moment in time?

If we just answer rapidly, we would say that “nothing”; that our “routine” or what we experience “day-by-day” is one thing, and that the rest of what we go through is something totally different. That was my first thought when I experienced the Itinerary of the “Signs of the Times – A shared listening of reality”. However, with each one of the itineraries (this one and others), I realize that “daily life” does have a lot to do with everything.

Continue reading Experiencing our own “daily life” →