What is Emerging?

The truest thing that can be said about Loretto’s Emerging Forms Committee (EFC) is that, since its inception, our understanding of our work has been … well … emerging! And like all of us, we are operating in a global sociopolitical context that has been changing at a breathtaking pace in the past several years. Consider the past months! Essentially, we find ourselves thinking about emerging forms of committed life even while the forms of so many systems and institutions are either dying, lying fallow or coming into bud. So what is the Emerging Forms Committee (EFC) doing now? We’re casting a wider net and are convening a gathering of persons who are asking similar questions:

• What are we noticing about the evolution of committed life?

• What does humanity need to support the development of a more beautiful world?

• Is there a form of commitment that might help humanity to do that?

• What might be our role in helping to nourish such commitment?

• How might we network with others involved in such efforts?

What was imagined as an in-person gathering at the Motherhouse over Memorial Day weekend will now be a reflective on-line gathering of about 30 (including EFC members), including young and not-so-young; lay and religious; Christian, Jewish and Buddhist. All are persons who value the prophetic and communal life form as it has been expressed in religious life. Our time together will be facilitated by Debbie Asberry of Community Works; Debbie has worked before with Loretto and with other religious communities and faith-based groups.

No one knows, of course, what the conversations will elicit or where they will lead us. We are certain of one thing only: the Spirit of God is itself the unfolding of Life into deeper and greater expressions of itself; we open ourselves to be faithful participants in such emergence.