Chapter 15: The Saga of Religious Education

Chapter 15: The Saga of Religious Education

Chapter 15: The Saga of Religious Education

My twenty-nine years in religious education stretdhed through the purgative,illuminative and unitive years of my life, but I especially associate them with the illuminative years. I remained at St. Agnes for three years. During that time, I also took my first two airplane trips, one to a Boston wowrkshop where I picked up a beautiful star fish whcih became an important dream symbol for me later in life. The other trip was to Florida to visit my aunt. This trip included an unforgettable trip to Disney Land. A remembrance that I have of the visit is a picture which my uncle took of me standing on my head in the yard, a feat which I had learned in my yoga classes.

The four member community at St. Agnes was housed in a snall four bedroom condo which proved to have little elbow room. After two years, I moved back to live at St. Joseph Academy. It was a large house and I stayed there for the next three years. Many of my friends from my previous stay were still there and we renewed old friendships. St. Agnes parish consolidated with another parish and I did not relish the idea of working in two parishes. I also wanted to experience the RCIA program for adults. Thus I interviewed and was hired as director of religious education at St. Elizabeth , a parish with no school and a large religous education program. There I experienced directing all the sacramental preparation programs as well as RCIA. The pastor there was very exceptional and he introduced me to many new parish activities. It was at St. Elizaabeth that I made my first Cursillo and eventually served on a team to present a Cursillo. It was also during my time at St. Elizabeth's that I studied scripture at the near by seminary. These classes gave me new insights into scripture and paved the way for me to facilitate scripture study groups in the parishes in which I would minister.

I made many friends in the parish, one of whom invited me to a workshop at a monastery in Arizona. It was at thistime that I began working with dreams. Three of those dreams greatly affected the next step in my life. My nmother had been having heart trouble and I had been visiting her expecially during her times of hospitalization. During my second year at St. Elizabeth, on one of my home visits she looked especially sad as she kissed me goodbye. I could not get the image of her face out of my mind, and I subsequently dreamed that she was calling me and that my deceased grandmother grasped my hand as if to strengthen me for sone coming ordeal.

I also dreamed that Mom, Dad and I were kneeling together at home. A van with a loudspeaker on top came into the driveway. Out of the window we could see the sun fall. We bowed to the floor as if to acknowledge the sadness of the situation. These dreams urged me to ask to return to northern Ohio to be nearer to Mom during her illness. I ended up taking a leave of absence to do so.

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