Communities - Local, Expnded, and of Choice

In our regional meetings, twice we were united with the entire Province by actually seeing each group on the screen. It is so amazing to see what we can do today with technology. Actually, the pictures were too small to see much of each gathering; the Western Region and the Canadian and Central South Region were meeting on the same week end so we were all working together on both the organization of each Region and looking at some of the issues of Health and Wellness. I found the presentations very good, but think we need to look more at the way we understand and help those who have disabilities.

We talked about organizing "Communities of Choice" beyond the local community and the "expanded community" which is the way we now refer to individuals and communities who live in proximity and who gather regularly to support each other in life and mission; these expanded communities often include Associates and even our colleagues in various ways. I wonder if my six spirituality groups might be called my "expanded communities"? I just thought of this as I am writing.

What I am really thinking about is how I could form the third type of community: Communities of Choice are RSCJ , either within the region or across regions who choose to connect on a regular basis to reflect and plan together for the sake of life and mission. I would not try to do this by phone or even video conferencing ( these are the suggested ways) but would hope we could do it by e-mail (either a listserv or just set up the group and always hit "reply to all" when sharing.) I would like to have a small community of choice around our spirituality. I guess I miss the sharing I had with my community in Coquimbo, Chile, where each week we came together to share what was going on inside of us. I am convinced that our interior life is more important than our exterior and just need four or five RSCJs who would like to try sharing together. Although I think it would be helpful in the beginning to do this weekly, I would see after two or three months we would only need to do this kind of sharing monthly. Perhaps in February I will have found some who would be willing and really want to do this kind of sharing on what is most important in our lives as RSCJ.