Frog in the milk-pail: there's hope yet! YM
delegates thrashing the question around.
No acrimony but plenty of acrynomy
CHEUNG CHAU: 7th February 2006 -- Whatever else is
happening inside Cheung Chau island, one of HK's outlier islands,
the 'frog and the boiling water' story has caught readers'
imagination; one who, for example, writes that he has always liked frog
stories, and offers an excellent YM resource (though the author of the
resource might not know anything about YM,
SEPP, EPC, OPP and the rest) in Andrew
Matthews. Google it up and you'll see. Use 'Happiness in a
nutshell', or even 'Being a happy teen' as your google-point, sorry,
search term.
Instead, a perusal of the Cheung Chau
meeting Day Two's minutes suggests the frog in the
milk-pail. He had to thrash around a bit, but the thrashing did
the trick, and he climbed onto solid butter in the end, his survival
ensured.
As suggested in the last write-up, the meeting took
a serious turn, grappling with acronyms like SEPP (but in reality with
the way the acronym distills Salesian planning and presence), EPC and
planning. All this was skilfully guided by Fr Dominic Sequeira
from the RMG Team; a steady hand in the churned up pail. They
launched into SEPP for starters: too complicated, too difficult to
grasp for lay people, too taxing, way-out! Dominic: 'yes,
indeed, planning can easily hide lack of pastoral charity and
zeal. EPCs have to own the plan - they are the person, the
community behind the plan'.
A reminder that the RM had made something of
planning - or better, the Team Visit as a whole had made something of
planning - in Hua Hin, as one of the keys to our future. This evoked
some steady thinking: planning is a 'deeply felt need', it offers
possibilities for consistency and continuity. Put aside the thoughts of
complication and look at something practical. As China put it -
we need practical models.
The inevitable unanswered questions: 'our
environment is parish (Catholics), school (non-Catholics even
non-Christians), so how to reach a unified model in that mix?', 'in our
complex settings with say parish, technical school and aspirantate all
together, what's the integrating factor?' Dominic: SEPP.
A SEPP for each work, a community SEPP, indeed a Provincial SEPP.
Still more questions: 'Our EPC has never heard about planning
sessions!', 'our OPP got sent back -
didn't fit Rome's thinking!' Dominic: No, no, nothing to
do with Rome, maybe it wasn't helpful to you.
In the end - and the 'butter' is beginning to form,
one sees - the SEPP becomes an ideal way of planning if it is seen as
an ongoing process, involving a Provincial vision with guidelines for
sectors and a local vision holding complex works together.
The FIS delegate, Fr Brodie Segovia, has six or
seven years experience in the role, something of an anomaly in the
group as presently constituted, so he was able to show the process
gradually coming together, first no SEPP focus, then, in 2002 SEPP,
followed by a Provincial plan in 2004. He was able to demonstrate
the difference from before, without a planning mentality to after, with
one. 'There's no perfect model', Brodie says, 'but we stuck to
it'. 'And once it starts to work, it give you focus and helps
integrate all the other stuff coming in from Church or Congregation'.
Ah, butter at last! In the afternoon, some
rich exchange on the values of various SEPP approaches - top-down or
bottom-up? Bringing in the Strenna, and what's a good model for
the YM delegate? Interesting. Dominic points out
that in India, all YM delegates are not only on the Council - they are
Vice Provincials!
Tomorrow, the region's provincials enter the
fray. Look forward to the next report.
VOCABULARY
YM: youth ministry, what Italian calls pastorale
giovanile SEPP: Salesian educative and pastoral
plan, Italian progetto educativo-pastorale salesiano or PEPS
EPC: Educative and pastoral community,
Italian Comunità educativa pastorale CEP
OPP: Overall pastoral plan, what in
Italian gets called a progetto organico pastorale or POP
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