Let the 7’ guided meditation below help you get in touch with grace during and since your Caritas.
When we are among friends, we tell stories. We tell stories of joy that fill us with meaning, stories of silliness that have us crying with laughter. We tell stories of sadness, surprise, and mourning where we lean in and draw close to one another. Regardless of the subject, what lingers is our coming together to bring the past to life once again.
As we celebrate this important milestone for Christus Ministries and the Caritas retreat, we now have an opportunity to share our Caritas stories as a community. Even though, as participants of Caritas, we live around the country, and even the world, we can imagine that we’re sitting in a floor chair in a dimly lit room among friends, telling of how Caritas has illuminated our individual lives. We can imagine the impact of that kind of storytelling.
So, if you were to answer the question, “In a world broken and beautiful, how does Caritas illuminate your story?”, what would you say? How would you share your particular story among friends?
You have an opportunity to share this story here and now. We will collect these written accounts and publish them in a book to share with the Caritas community - a physical book that will hold the collective story of the first 20 years of Caritas.
You may be saying things like, “but I’m not a writer!” or “I don’t have one big Caritas moment to talk about!” or finding other excuses to talk yourself out of this opportunity. Let us encourage you to do it anyway. Find a few minutes to pray and write from that reflection. Write from your heart, from your particular experience, not the experience of others. We, the entire Caritas community, want to share in your story. We want to preserve it for years to come.
A few guidelines:
Entries should be between 250-1000 words.
Use specific examples. What makes this your story? For example, instead of saying, “Caritas changed my life and deepened my relationship with God!” try something more specific. “Caritas shifted something in me. I spent much of my adult life thinking God was out to punish me for anything I did wrong. But during a guided meditation on the retreat, I sensed an invitation to let go. It might sound silly, but it’s as though God was asking me to sit in a rocking chair next to him and just be. I have carried this image with me for years…” You can’t say everything in an essay, but even a couple of particular details will illuminate your story for others.
We will accept .txt, .doc, .docx. No PDF or image (.png, .jpg) files.
Entries are due before APRIL 10.
**Christus Ministries reserves the right to edit stories for publishing. Any major changes will be discussed with the author, but minor edits will not be consulted.
If you would like to read through a couple of examples, click here, but don’t let them get in the way of your unique story. There is no one format for responding. The most important thing is that it is in your voice answering the question.
We truly look forward to hearing from you.
If you have any questions, need any clarity, or even a little pep talk to write your essay, please email Teresa Nygard: tnygard@christusministries.org.