We are accepting donations to help folks who are unable to afford our programs or retreats and to defray other costs. Your check made payable to SDII and mailed to Joan McCarthy, CSJ, 631 Cambridge Street, Box 28, Brighton, MA 02135 would be greatly appreciated. To send your donation with a credit card, click here. We are very grateful.
Please contact us and tell us about your creative gifts, ideas, ministries, discoveries, etc. “Empowering people through personal, professional and spiritual enrichment” is the quote under this website’s masthead. It really is a concise mission statement for SDI (Spiritual Direction Initiative) or SDII (Spiritual Direction Internship Initiative) and its related programs.
Some of you write poetry. Some write stories or create and maintain a blog. Others are great photographers or have found creative ways to utilize the tools of spiritual direction in ministries. Still others have great technological skills (e.g., Zoom), typing skills, editing and/or coordinating gifts. All of these will be welcome. The following are some expressions of such creative gifts.
When the Pandemic shutdown began in March, 2020, Gerrie Beebe began to write and email a daily thought. The following is one of her more than 100 reflections on life’s sacred moments . . .
UNFURL YOUR FLAG, Gerrie Beebe, SDII 19-20
“I wonder if others are like me and take Veterans for granted, except for on days like Memorial and Veterans Day. That also goes for police, firefighters and health care workers who do so much to keep our society healthy and safe. Thankfully, since Covid-19, many other essential workers such as truck drivers, teachers, sanitation workers and grocery clerks have also been recognized for their service to others. As I watched mass on TV recently, I noticed a circle of flags on the altar representing each branch of the Armed Forces as they stood in their flag stands. It was almost as if they were standing at attention around the altar of God. It dawned on me, that we cannot see what each flag truly looks like or what is written on it unless the flags are unfurled, by either a person or a gust of wind. It’s sort of like people. Each of us were made for a greater glory, but we can’t see it until we are unfolded by another person, a certain circumstance or maybe by a gust of wind, sometimes known as God. Only then can we truly be seen in our glory. Please Lord, help me to unfurl the goodness of others. Help me to discover the goodness that lies within each of them, waiting to be unfurled. And please send me someone to ravel me as well.”
PRAYER AND LIFE, Jackie (Jacqueline) Ro, SDII 10-11, a missionary in Taiwan with her husband and children
“Since COVID-19, many ministry meetings are held online. As I have been listening to many pastors share about their work in their context in Asia, I have been moved by what they have been learning. Church services and small group meetings continue over Zoom, but deep transformation is going on at home-and in the heart. Living in small quarters for extended periods of time can bring out the best, the worst, and certainly the real in all of us. With international trips and conferences being canceled, you are invited to deeper conversations with family. And with our Lord. When we can’t go out to the ministry, the ministry comes to us. Jesus wants to do something beautiful.”
PATIENT TRUST, Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin, excerpted from Hearts On Fire (THIS
IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES! Submitted by Jane Tyler, SDII 05-06)
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Enjoy this music! For a recent retreatant. An SDII alum, it was the most exquisite 4 minutes of her day . . . and the four minutes were oft repeated!