Hopefully, I will have better luck with formatting for this post.  I
write my posts offline, and they don't always convert well when copied
and pasted.  This time I set very wide margins at the outset in
Notepad, so perhaps this will work.

Now, on to the meat of the next post.

Technically, spirituality and in particular Christianity are not among
my claimed "niche" writing areas.

However, I regard them as subcategories of my niche areas.  I do, after
all, try to write some Christian fiction.  And when I put together a
set of samples in a particular copywriting area about a year ago, I
chose Christian-themed material for two of my listed niches:  books,
and games and toys for children.

So, I want to put up an entry on that at this juncture.

This past Friday, we had our first of this session of faith sharing
groups.

This is a relatively new concept within the practice of the Catholic
version of Christianity.  Or perhaps it is better said that it is an
ancient practice that existed in the earliest "house churches" and then
died out for many centuries, and only began to be reinstated in the
most recent several years.

This began perhaps six years or so ago.  And I do not know that all
dioceses and archdioceses have involved themselves in this initiative.

But at that time, the Archdiocese of Boston declared that all its
parishes would involve themselves in a faith sharing program that would
meet in small groups in homes of people willing to host the programs;
and a few groups who could not find such a hosting home met somewhere
on the parish grounds.

"Arise" involved a series of six week long faith sharing programs, with
an overall program of five such six-week programs over the course of
two and a half years.  The programs generally were set up for one
program in the Spring and one in the Autumn.

In these programs, small groups used a guidebook put out by the Renew
International organization.

The original "Arise" program was mandated by the Archdiocese.  But
since then, the Archdiocese has not stepped in.  But some individual
parishes have continued the general spirit of this activity.

Our particular parish at this time has chosen to organize another such
program called "Why Catholic?" which our pastor has often emphasised
can also be viewed, in terms of content, as "Why Christian?"

Due to work commitments, I was unable to attend the first session last
Spring [the Spring sessions are often timed in some way to tie in with
Lenten observances].

We had our first Autumn session last Friay, and it was a joy.  It
happens that, unlike my Arise sessions, all our participants were
women.  We sat around the hostess's dining room table, followed our
guidebook, and did some very meaningful sharing about our prayer
experiences during the course of our life times.

It was an inspiring and heartening time.

To understand the enormity of this trend in modern Catholicism, you
would need to understand the nature of the Catholic church
approximately since the New Testament became codified into written
form.  It has been the nature of the clerical class within the Catholic
church to keep control of what went on within the perspectives of the
laity.  That unsupervised laity should meet together to discuss
Scripture and-or doctrine would have been unthinkable even the year or
two before these programs began.

For faith-filled people, this suggests very much so the work of the
Holy Spirit's guidance.  I also cannot envision that so many would,
even a few years before, have been willing to host the programs.
Yet, we had many groups meeting in homes throughout
these faith sharing initiatives.

Does this tie into writing?

Indeed it does.  Some of my own expressions of how my individual prayer
life worked involved that while I often don't see it that way, indeed,
some of the spiritually related writing I do effectively constitutes a
kind of "prayer time."

In those times, I listen for guidance and follow where that leads.

And that is a very profound, surrendering, and fulfilling experience.




Krista

www.kristawriter.com