Study Topic for March
Have you ever thought of the value, the dynamic and the creative power of a Team Meeting?
The American Red Indians, the New Zealand Maoris and many other ethnic groups used a team environment to deal with all community development and learning. They regularly got together and sat in a circle, each speaking in turn while everyone listened. The ‘Ashram’ in India used similar community relationship to achieve their common goal.
In recent years large organisations have invested a lot of money trying to develop team based organisations to help communication, productivity and quality, and combine the diversity and difference of the individuals to achieve common purpose.
This is often termed as a learning environment and has certain core elements:
Ø A common purpose
Ø Understanding of key objectives
Ø Awareness of the interdependence needed
As a group develops in a spirit of openness, of sharing, of supportiveness, of humility, then in time cohesiveness, confidence, trust, truthfulness, creativity and potency develop.
Looking at our Team meeting in a similar way, we also find a learning environment, not only at the time of the meeting itself but as an environment which has each of us as an individual and as a couple preparing for our meeting, participating in the meeting and continuing our learning by practicing our learned skills during the month.
Our common purpose is to grow our spirituality as a couple. Through our regular participation in the monthly meeting, we have the opportunity to share together on this common purpose and help each other grow in our path to holiness and contribute to making God’s Kingdom come here on earth.
Through sharing our meal together, we participate in a social environment which is so much part of His life on earth as we read in Scripture:
“Now while he was with them at table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him;” Luke 24:30-31
As we share our meal, we are also able to share our lives and where we encounter Jesus in our day to day living, in our relationship as couple, in our families and in society.
By sharing on our Endeavours, we help each other to understand the Endeavours and their importance in helping each of us to grow in holiness and wholeness as individual and as couple.
Our time in prayer helps us to share on Scripture and explore together the full meaning of God’s Plan for Salvation and how it is being lived out as we share and pray together and discover how we are so much part of this plan.
When we agree as a Team on our study topic, we start a new journey together. Each one of us takes to the meeting the learning and dialogue which we will have already partaken in during the month. This study will help us grow in the specific topic which we are studying, whether that be on faith, relationships, solidarity etc.
During the month as we prepare for our meeting, we are able as an individual to study and reflect on all of these aspects and as a couple to dialogue together in a spirit of intimacy, of openness and honesty, which is nurtured through this environment created at the Team meeting.
We will practice and also share on our endeavours, in this way, supporting each other to understand the stepping stones that these create for our path to holiness. We also learn a language of spirituality together which will help us share more deeply and contribute more profoundly at our Team meeting.
As we prepare our pooling, sharing, study topic and Scripture for our Team meeting and while we prepare our part of the meal, we are fulfilling our most Christian dimension in preparing to share with the other Team members.
“The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common.” Acts 4:32
As we participate at our Team meeting, we learn the great human values which Jesus taught us to share together: as at ‘Cana’ with sensitivity… to listen with empathy as at ‘Lazarus’ house’…. to dialogue on the deepest reality – and to share our spiritual growth together. The testimony that follows is from Joe and Lois in USA. It describes their work as a couple in creating the ‘Friendship Ark’ as a home for their autistic son with the mutual aid of their Team.
“As we look at our life, we realise something wonderful has and is happening. Movements in the Catholic Church, such as Bible Study, Christian Family Movement, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter, Retourno and Teams of Our Lady have constantly guided our Pilgrimage. We continually experience the Holy Spirit in our marriage and our separate lives. All of Friendship Ark’s early vision and its step into reality grew from our prayer, our sit-down, our rule of life, plus the support we have received from couples celebrating marriage. Team meetings on a regular basis is a major factor in keeping Joe from being a 24 hour veterinarian and in keeping Lois from her many individual ministries. It assisted us to move into one ministry – living marriage spirituality with each other.”
Practice
During the month we take our nourishment from our meeting. Every day through the team experience and practicing our endeavours, we grow more oriented to God, to the path which Jesus has shown us and we become more aware of the Spirit guiding us.
We grow in awareness and practice of the values which this learning environment has brought to us. As we do, our attitude changes and gradually we start to behave in a new way to ourselves, to our spouse, to our family, to our Team, to Church and parish and to society.
Today, we live in a world that is materialistic, that demands ‘quick-fix’ to all matters, ‘fixes’ that may bring short-term gain but often results in long-term hurt, brokenness and isolation. To help alleviate this situation, there is a great need for stability, for depth, for intimacy, for hospitality. It is profitable that we reflect on the importance and huge contribution of this learning environment which our Team gives us and how necessary it is in today’s global society. We should also remember that this was the framework used by the early Church.
“They went as a body to the temple every day but met in their houses for the breaking of bread; they shared their food gladly and generously; they praised God and were looked up to by everyone. Day by day the Lord added to their community….” Acts 3: 46-47.
We have so much to thank those early couples and Fr. Caffarel and the Holy Spirit for, in bringing our first Team together and allowing this same model to flourish all over today’s world, and this fits well with the concept of the ‘Domestic Church’ of Vatican II.
It is worth reflecting on what Fr. Caffarel wrote when he stepped down as Spiritual Counsellor to the Movement in 1973. When asked for his opinion on what was the most important aspect of Team Life, he wrote:-
“There is there, in the midst of these couples gathered together in a room in an apartment, the intense presence of the Risen Lord, alive, attentive to all, loving all of them, with their mixture of good and bad, and anxious to help them to become the kind of people they want to be. He is there, as on the evening of the Resurrection, in the upper room in Jerusalem, when He appeared suddenly to those other team members, the apostles. He breathed on them, saying: ‘Receive – the Holy Spirit.’ And they became new men. Jesus Christ, in the midst of couples, does not fail to impart His Spirit to them; and those who open themselves to His Spirit – this is something that people learn gradually – become people of the Spirit. And the whole meeting is animated by the Spirit. To these men and women who, in the evening, after a hard day, often arrive exhausted and weighed down with worries, this Spirit communicates Christ’s twofold passion: His impatience for the glory of His Father, and His burning and gentle pity for the crowds ‘who are like sheep without a shepherd.’
What I have just described is not what it always is, but how it ought to be. For a meeting of a team which is not first and foremost a joint effort to meet Jesus is something completely different from a meeting of a Team of Our Lady.”