Born of the Spirit:
Generative Communities
Genitae Spiritu communitates generant
editors
Daniel P. McCarthy osb – †James G. Leachman osb
CONTENTS
Generative Communities: Project descriptor
James G. Leachman – Daniel P. McCarthy
In memoriam: Abbot Owen John Purcell, osb: 25 July 1931 – 8 November 2013
Daniel P. McCarthy
Conversatio nostra est in coelis!
Owen Purcell, ed. Daniel P. McCarthy
Founding Inspiration
Daniel P. McCarthy – James G. Leachman
- Progress Assessment of the Collective Project: Generative Communities
Daniel P. McCarthy – James G. Leachman
I The Project “Appreciating the Liturgy”
II The International, Ecumenical, Ongoing Conversation
III How the Project “Appreciating the Liturgy” evolved to produce the Atchison Conversations: Generative Communities
Generative Communities Colloquia: Atchison Conversations
- Born of the Spirit 2014
- Nurturing a vocational way of living 2015
- Roadmaps for critical junctures 2016
- Framing a monastery’s identity 2017
- Nurturing Leaders 2018
- Engendering Communication 2019
- Freeing Memories: How to remember 2020
- Invoking our Becoming: Maturing into a vision 2021
- The Filling Full: Becoming Christians 2025 (projected)
- Becoming Persons in Communion: Personal freedom for generative love 2026 (projected)
Liturgy
- Begotten not Made: Trinitarian model of generative community
Daniel P. McCarthy – James G. Leachman
- Practicing Liturgy and Generative Life in Common: Here and now, personal and active
Daniel P. McCarthy – James G. Leachman
- The Parish as a Generative Community, Both of new members and as a way of life
Paul Turner
- The Parish as a generative community
Benjamin Tremmel
Monastic studies
- Different models of Monastic Liturgy: and their Effect upon Worshippers
Originally published in: Questions Liturgiques / Studies in Liturgy
James G. Leachman
- From Faith to Trust, or On Doing the Impossible
Some thoughts on Conversatio morum
Martin Shipperlee
- Spiritual Maturation and the Challenges of Generativity Today Viewed through the eyes of a new formation director
Marcia Ziska
- Cave, Refectory, Road: Personal and communal
Daniel P. McCarthy in conversation with James G. Leachman
as inspired by Bernd Leygraf – Jaap Westerbos
Human Sciences
10 Jeannine Guindon (1919-2002): Integral human formation and vocational identity Benedictine charism and monastic life as a collective project
James G. Leachman – Daniel P. McCarthy
- The Self, Community and God
Bede J. Healey
Founding Inspiration
Daniel P. McCarthy – James G. Leachman
The founding inspiration for this new direction in our on-going conversation was given by Abbot Owen Purcell, osb, during a conversation with Daniel McCarthy over Christmas holiday in Atchison in 2012. A confrère was recounting how, for the cause of promoting vocations, he felt obligated to attend a conference of little interest to him and how his family rather than the abbey would pay his airfare. When the confrère left the room, Abbot Owen shook his clinched fists in the air and cried out,
See, that’s exactly what I mean!
You will never form a whole monk like that.
You will only form a chimera.
This seemed a moment of truth-telling that cut through flesh and bone to expose the marrow, which in short order led to the Generative Communities Colloquium.
In further discussion Abbot Owen went on to explain that monks should not be pressed upon to attend conferences of little interest to them, even for the cause of promoting vocations. While the monk felt obligated to attend the conference, his medical condition prohibited him from riding the bus as a vocational inspiration to college students for the twenty-three hour journey. So the junior monk’s family paid for him to fly to a conference of little interest to him, which he attended out of felt obligation. Abbot Owen’s insight was that such a programme of monastic formation would produce only a chimera, a composite animal that is by different accounts part human, part lion, part winged, part goat, part reptile. Such a mess could not produce an integral monk whose monastic identity is generated from within the community itself.
At about this time Abbot Martin Shipperlee, osb, had come to a similar insight and decided that Ealing Abbey, London, would have to find the resources within itself to respond to the demands of its then current situation, and he decided to employ an external consultant to facilitate the needed conversation among the confrères.
Inspired by the insights of their respective abbots, James Leachman and Daniel McCarthy considered developing two previous colloquia and a study day on how human maturation is reflected in the liturgy and how the good celebration of liturgy promotes human maturation at all stages of life. Those conversations centred on personal maturation. But what of communal maturation?
A community is generative when it incorporates new people into its membership thereby enhancing its world view, or when a community nurtures its members helping them to mature and develop throughout the stages of life. Appreciating a member of a community for one’s unique contribution is another aspect of shared generativity, as is a community’s creative influence on the larger society. They convene this colloquium to discuss the generative quality of life together in community, about which little has been said.
On a theological level there is a tradition that describes the nuptial union of the church as spouse of Christ. The church is also described as fruitful mother who gives re-birth to people who enter her baptismal waters and rise re-born from this her womb. Christ nurtures these newly born on his own body and blood as they in turn grow to maturity, union and generativity. These meditations concern theological types, but what of a specific community’s healthful and generative way of life?
On a practical level much is said about forming a community’s identity and developing its mission, but less attention has been given to the generative quality of life together in community. So, the specific focus here is by way of initial and necessarily concise proposal.
Upon reflection, James and Daniel produced a descriptor of the on-going colloquium they entitled Generative Communities. You can find its entire text on the first page of this volume.
James and Daniel decided to approach the Benedictine superiors in Atchison to propose a shared colloquium to discuss the generative quality of life together in community. Sr Anne Shepard, osb, Prioress of Mount St Scholastica, Atchison, encouraged the proposal and suggested that we also chat with Sr Mary Collins, osb. In the course of our discussion it became clear that Mary Collins intended the generative quality of a community as that which brings new life to its members at every stage of their lives. Thus the original focus on the initial formation of people joining a monastic community, gave way to a broader, collective project called Generative Communities. The newly elected Abbot James R. Albers, osb, of St Benedict’s Abbey, was also supportive and, after consultation with his council, agreed to sponsor the colloquium and to host its inaugural conversation on 7-8 January 2014 at the Abbey.
Generative Communities
Project descriptor
Human maturation is graced when it is a gift of the Spirit. One’s personal collaboration with the divine initiative is built upon an accurate self-awareness which permits a free human response, and this in turn leads to a new personal identity at each stage of life. Thus, to the degree that we know who we are, we are able to give ourselves in free response to the Divine One and to other people.
Individuals adjust to new ways of living in response to succeeding challenges and thereby come to see their life narrative in terms of their developing personal identity. In a similar way, a community may create a narrative of the changing complexion of its members and their common way of living as they respond to different demands throughout the course of their shared history. A community’s accurate representation of itself will allow its members to respond both freely and collectively to the divine invitation of the moment.
People come to religious community with different capacities and for many reasons. There they may discover this wisdom, that, as spousal love comes to generativity and finds its completion in child rearing, so also the members of a religious community are generative to the extent they nurture one another in a vocational way of living in which a person’s every action is in love and freedom open to God, self and others.
Communities may respond to their situation through structures of power or by appealing to an identity external to the community, rather than one generated from within the community’s shared life.
Alternatively, communities may strengthen affective bonds of collaboration and sharing, and thereby use the gifts of members which would otherwise be forgotten, overlooked or inadequately appreciated.
Through our analysis of liturgy, experience in religious life and understanding of human sciences, we want to support communities which would like to join in this conversation.
Liturgy: The process of becoming a Christian, according to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, calls the parish community to a generativity that renews the community even as it incorporates new members and their personal contributions to the life of the community.
Religious life: A community becomes generative when its members live, communicate and hand on their common way of life and shared values, to which enquirers and those in the process of joining may commit themselves and be respected for their own contribution.
Human sciences: The human sciences such as psychology, sociology and anthropology each offer their scientific methods, language, perspectives.
www.generativecommunities.org
www.liturgyhome.org/generative-communities
