In 1952 Sister Marie Angeline, SP taught my fellow second grade classmates and me how to solve the problems in our lives. Yes, seven-year olds have problems. She taught us to take a look at our lives, see where we were doing wrong and then do something about it. She called it examining our consciences, confessing our sins and making a firm desire of amendment. Thirty-one years later at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, I realized that I had unlearned sister’s great teaching and instead I was blaming everybody else for all the problems in my life and the world. That’s called the blame game. That didn’t work then, and I doubt if it does today.
If you want a contemporary example of how Sister Marie Angeline’s wisdom works you might enjoy watching Manwar Ali’s TEDx April 2016 talk “Inside the mind of a former radical jihadist” where he shares not the story of some scary person we read about everyday in the news, but his own. He tells us how he was misguided as a youth and how he has taken steps to change his life. Thanks Manwar for your powerful example of how each of us can change the world for the better, and we don’t even have to run for a coveted elected position in our government.
Dan O’Donnell, a layman has covenanted with the Chicago Community. In addition to the standard covenant, Dan promises to work at connecting all partners known and unknown, to a conscious following the the way of Jesus, the way of the cross which Dan believes transforms all failure, democratizing the human journey
We are a community of laymen and laywomen who, with vowed Passionists, seek to share in the charism of St. Paul of the Cross through prayer, ongoing spiritual formation, and proclamation of the message of Christ Crucified.
Thank you for this post. How lovely it is to try to understand someone who is most likely very misunderstood. We should all try to do this with the people and situations we are unfamiliar with.