63/365 In Retrospect: Thursday

Conversion, Hildegard wrote back. There you go.

We'd been talking via email about what the topic for RCIA should be. I was missing the mark--I'm consistently missing the mark with RCIA. I don't understand what that's all about. Why can I come up with gentle and lovely presentations for Children's Liturgy but can't wrap my head around RCIA? Hildegard asked about topics drawn from the gospel and I finally got so frustrated I asked her why we didn't have set topics.

What I want is a textbook and a workbook and a manual and it all laid out on the table for me.

Right?

Not really. I never taught school that way. I resisted scripted lessons. But then, the Atrium is practically a scripted curriculum. You script it for yourself, but it has to fit into certain very specific guidelines. It makes it very easy and also keeps things in check--nobody can decide to, for instance, teach a whole Atrium lesson on St. Faustina instead of epiclesis. And trust me, there are Atrium folk who would if they could. But they have boundaries because they see the results. And because they're never alone. But I digress.

Conversion. I started thinking about this but failed to see what I should talk about because I had a baby with an ever-increasing fever and a house to clean. I would sit at the computer with the catechism next to me, the lectionary for this Sunday, with photocopies from Hildegard, and just be blank.

Which is so incredibly stupid because I'm a Benedictine. But maybe that just fits. Oblates do not take vows but do promise to live out the Benedictine vows in their regular lives as much as they can. And those vows are stability (easy once I said yes), obedience (harder but I can wrap my head around it and I take correction better than I used to), and a vow called conversatio morum. They don't even translate it because the quick translation is "conversion of heart" but it is more than that.

I sat there Thursday night and debated: is it too Benedictine? Could I bring it to the table and present it? Would I get it shot down or the subject changed before I even opened my mouth? And what would I say to someone not even yet Catholic about a topic that even most Catholics would not be familiar with?

And then I had to go make dinner and I put this, pun and all, on the back burner.