My dad didn't know how not to be a husband and father. He weathered the trials of life, even the experience of war, in his efforts to hold on to his vision of what love meant.
He was the first person to show me what it meant to love beyond the boundaries of the self. This wasn't anything special, it just was who he was.
My dad was a quintessential husband – loving, gentle, strong, providing, protecting, and caring. He was also a quintessential father – present, teaching, guiding, watchful, my net when I jumped. This isn't to say that he was perfect. Nor is it to say that he somehow came from the perfect place, in the perfect family, with the perfect circumstances to have become such a person.
It is to say that the combination of what my dad believed, what he experienced, and how he expressed himself formed him into the person he was.
Everyone gets a spiritual formation, and it is this formation that is the ongoing activity that we all are immersed in. All the time, all the parts of who we are are being formed.
We each have a choice with regards to our part in this process. It can be passive, letting our formation just happen. Or it can be active, engaging with and doing what we can for our part of the process.
Becoming an active partner in our own formation invites us into interactive relationship with the deepest parts of ourselves, and with deep mysteries of life. Here, the Institute considers two complimentary ideas: the realities and processes that are true regardless of specific world view or tradition and the uniqueness of specific world views and propositions of life.
The realities and processes that are common to spiritual formation regardless of specific proposition or tradition include things like the parts of the person, the act of following and apprenticeship, and the experience of immersion. When specific propositions are required the Institute follows the propositions of life as presented in the person of Jesus Christ as the way.
Central here is the idea that the process of spiritual formation is ultimately a creative act. One in which what we believe to be possible, what we can envision, and our choices of action, all contribute to the final outcome: the person we become.
Dedicated in loving memory to Joseph Nemr.
Engaging creative communities around transformational experiences.
