(Anti)-Slavery Campaign and the Butterfly Metaphor

The metaphor of the butterfly for transformation is profound:

1. The caterpillar that is kind banal looking becomes the beautiful, radiant butterfly.

2. Before the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it prepares its cocoon as though it were dying. What the caterpillar thinks is the end of its life is really the beginning.

3. The caterpillar knows intuitively and in alignment with nature when it is time to start spinning its bed to sleep in.  You do not see other caterpillars walking over, tapping them on the shoulder saying, "it is time," "you are ready." It is intuitive. Change is intuitive. So many people are waiting for permission to go for their dreams.  Someone to validate them, tell them they could do it. However, the path is clearest when the knowing is intuitive and irrespective of what others are say.

4. The caterpillar sheds its old skin, which forms the chrysalis cocoon and goes inward for a few days (for some of us mammals this could be weeks, months or years).

5. The caterpillar does not go inside the cocoon and unzip its caterpillar suit for a butterfly suit. He becomes a big puddle of liquid that some affectionately refer to as a digestive soup. This liquid chooses parts of the caterpillar to hold onto and kills of the rest. It then creates new butterfly tissue.

6. The butterfly then has to fight, and fight hard, to get himself out of the chrysalis. Moreover, if someone tries to help the butterfly out, it dies. It is the process of working to get out that gives it the strength and development time that it needs to actually survive. What a powerful metaphor!

7. Then the butterfly is ready to learn to walk, and then fly.

Where are you in your life? Are you a butterfly, soaring, enjoying your elegant manifestation? Are you a caterpillar getting the message that it is time to transition–time to do something different?  Are you lying in a puddle of what once was you and what may be the future you? Are you sitting around and waiting for someone to give you permission or affirmation of your next step on your path? Are you looking at what would need to happen to take to get you out of your shell and coding it “hard work” which makes you disinclined to act on it? Alternatively, are you seeing the obstacles as learning experiences–pathways to your own inner strength and mastery?

Rachel Lavern

Illuminating the World of Modern-day Slavery

                     

Acclaimed humanitarian photographer Lisa Kristine specializes in images of remote indigenous peoples. Best known for her evocative and saturated use of color, Kristine has collaborated with international humanitarian organizations and is often asked to present her work to inspire discussions on human rights and social change. 

Recorded at TEDxMaui 2012, held on January 22, 2012 at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

Stepping into the fire of Self-Discovery

On Obedience and Disobedience

Tout se Tient!

La campagne anti-esclavagiste et les signes des temps
Vision - Stratégie - Méthodologie

Les membres des deux conseils généraux de la famille Lavigerie (SMNDA et M.AFR) ainsi que leurs coordonnateurs JPIC-RD ont participé à une session très éclairante et énergisante, donnée par Yago Abeledo M.Afr., pour explorer de nouvelles façons de regarder la réalité à partir d'un outil particulier appelé " Le modèle du papillon." Le modele du papillon developpe d'une façon integrale le cadre détaillé par John Paul Lederach pour bâtir la paix. Cet outil est une invitation à s'engager sur le chemin d'un éternel devenir. 

Durant cette session, nous avons exploré différents moyens de connecter/relier notre vie intérieure, notre vie communautaire et nos engagements missionnaires ; nous sommes invités à nous engager à ces trois niveaux car nous cherchons à œuvrer de manière systémique. L'esclavage commence en nous-même puisque nous portons chacun/chacune des traumatismes non reconnus et non traités de par notre histoire (guerres anciennes et présentes, oppressions de tout genre, injustices dans le monde, etc.). De ce fait, nous pouvons également rencontrer des énergies d'esclavage dans nos communautés. Nommer et traiter l'esclavage en nous et dans nos communautés contribueront grandement à notre engagement missionnaire. En fin de compte, tout tourne autour de la croissance et de la prise de conscience.

Arnold Mindell le résume très bien : "Le moi intérieur, les relations et le monde sont tous des aspects d'un même processus communautaire." TOUT SE TIENT!

À l'aide des pensées et de la sagesse du père Richard Rohr dans son livre en Anglais (The Naked Now) ainsi que d'autres qui soulignent l'importance de la pensée non-dualiste, Yago a ressorti les implications pour nous dans nos programmes de formation, notre ministère et le suivi du 125e anniversaire de la campagne anti-esclavagiste de notre Fondateur, le cardinal Lavigerie. "Je suis un homme et rien de ce qui est humain ne m'est étranger," contient le positif mais aussi le négatif influant sur le comportement de chaque être humain. Je porte aussi tous ces potentiels en moi.

Grâce à des exercices simples mais pratiques nous avons expérimenté comment cette méthode du papillon peut nous introduire dans un processus de découverte de notre histoire commune. Quelle prise de conscience importante réalisée en si peu de temps!

Ce processus nous concerne toi et moi, il touche au discernement, il conduit à un mieux vivre, et à la rencontre avec Dieu! Merci Yago de partager avec nous la perle précieuse que tu as découverte au cours de tes trois années d'études. Nous espérons la valoriser davantage et avec beaucoup d'autres confrères et consœurs dans un avenir très proche. 

Vicky Chiharhula, SMNDA

Workshop in Rome (6th-7th June, 2014)

ANTI-SLAVERY CAMPAIGN AND THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

VISION, STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY

The members of the general leadership teams of the two sides of the Lavigerie Family (Msola and M.Afr) together with their respective JPIC - ED coordinators participated in a very enlightening and energizing workshop with Yago Abeledo M.Afr., to explore new ways of looking at reality from a particular tool called "The Butterfly Model". This Model expands in an integral way Lederach's "Expanded Framework for Peacebuilding." "The Butterfly Model" is an invitation to engage on the journey of ever becoming.

During this workshop we explored different ways of interconnecting our inner lives, our community life and our missionary commitments; we are invited to engage at these three levels as we work in systemic ways. Enslavement starts within us because we each carry unprocessed and unacknowledged trauma (past and current wars, oppressions of all kind, injustices etc...). Sometimes we can also experience energies of enslavement in our communities. To name and process enslavement within ourselves and in our communities will contribute greatly in our pastoral commitment. In the end all is about growth in awareness. 

Arnold Mindell sums it up nicely: "The inner self, relationships and the world are all aspects of the same community process." EVERYTHING BELONGS!

With the help of insights also from Richard Rohr (The Naked Now) and others who stress the importance of non-dualistic thinking, Yago pointed out the implications for us in our formation programmes, our missionary commitments and for the follow-up of the 125th anniversary of Anti-Slavery Campaign of our Founder, Cardinal Lavigerie. "I am human and nothing of what is human is alien to me", includes the positive but also the negative impacting the behavior of any human beings. I have all those potentials within me.

Through some simple but practical exercises, we experienced how this method can gently put us into the process of exploring our common history. Such important awareness achieved in a very short time, with accessible tools! This process is about you and me, it guides discernment, it leads to fuller life and to the encounter with God! Thank you Yago for sharing with us the precious pearl you discovered during the 3 years of study. We hope to deepen it with our brothers and sisters in a very near future. 

Vicky Chiharhula, MSOLA

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What is Mindfulness?

                        

Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.



Jon Kabat-Zinn

Augusto Boal and the Theatre of the Oppressed (Trailer)

                     

The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and Workers' Party (PT) activist Augusto Boal, is a participatory theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants. Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language accessible to all. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in their daily lives.

In what Boal calls “Forum Theater,” for example, the actors begin with a dramatic situation from everyday life and try to find solutions—parents trying to help a child on drugs, a neighbor who is being evicted from his home, and individual confronting racial or gender discrimination, or simply a student in a new community who is shy and has difficulty making friends. Audience members are urged to intervene by stopping the action, coming on stage to replace actors, and enacting their own ideas. Bridging the separation between actor (the one who acts) and spectator (the one who observes but is not permitted to intervene in the theatrical situation), the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced by "spect-actors" who have the opportunity to both act and observe, and who engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that help foster critical thinking. The theatrical act is thus experienced as conscious intervention, as a rehearsal for social action rooted in a collective analysis of shared problems.

This particular type of interactive theater is rooted in the pedagogical and political principles specific to the popular education method developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: 1) to see the situation lived by the participants; 2) to analyze the root causes of the situation, including both internal and external sources of oppression; 3) explore group solutions to these problems, and 4) to act to change the situation following the precepts of social justice.

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Wisdom from Our Spiritual Ancestors (Non-duality and Science)

                       

Today's science assures us that perception is a less passive activity than we have sometimes been taught: In fact, much of what we perceive we create. Our teachers and elders, our parents and scientists, our cultures with its poets and film makers, politicians and pundits, writers and musicians, corporations and advertisers affect and even alter our perceptions. So too does letting go or meditation wherein we become "stripped to the literal substance of ourselves before God" (Howard Thurman) On the bright side, consider the images we learned to perceive from Mahatma Gandhi or Dr. King or Nelson Mandala. 

Is that what prophets do—get us to see the world differently? Is that what artists do also? What role does intuition play in our perception? How do we nurture intuition and bring values to bear on our decision-making and ethical choices and educating the young? We will explore some observations about perception from spiritual teachers including Meister Eckhart and Thich Naht Hahn, Jesus and the Buddha, M.C. Richards and MLK Junior, and more, to learn anew how their perceptions can and have rocked our worlds. Also some scientists such as Einstein, Darwin and Rupert Sheldrake. On the dark side, we will consider shadow perceptions in our midst put forth recently by the Supreme Court in two decisions that threaten to lay waste the liberating perceptions of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln. Meister Eckhart says: "God is present with all his bliss and all the angels inside of me but I do not perceive this." What holds us back from deeper and surer perceptions? How do we cleanse our perceptions (often aroused by projections) and remove foggy or prejudicial perceptions? What spiritual practices can assist in that cleansing process? 



Matthew Fox (b. 1940) is an internationally acclaimed theologian who was a member of the Dominican Order for 34 years. He holds a doctorate, summa cum laude, in the History and Theology of Spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris. Seeking to establish a new pedagogy for learning spirituality that was grounded in an effort to reawaken the West to its own mystical traditions in such figures as Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart and the mysticism of Thomas Aquinas, as well as interacting with contemporary scientists who are also mystics, Fox founded the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality.