1 December 2010
Happy Holidays Everyone!
These last few weeks of the year can be so fun, full of simmering anticipation for the New Year.
But as Phileena and I reflect back on 2010 we are grateful for your friendship, your prayers and the gifts you’ve made to help us continue our involvement in Word Made Flesh.
This has been quite a year for us.
- In April Phileena officially become the Co-Director of Word Made Flesh, further affirming the crucial leadership role she’s played in our partnership over the past 15 years through service together. We continue to work out the specific delineation of roles and responsibilities in our Co-Directorship with a great sense of anticipation for how we will keep learning to serve and lead together in 2011.
- Of course both Phileena and I had books published this year, my second book, Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Reciprocity in Service and Mission dropped in March; Phileena’s first book, Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life, dropped in May; and then along with several other friends (including WMF’s very own David Chronic) we both had chapters published in, Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of New Friars, which was released in October.
- And together Phileena and I embarked on a new expression of our shared vocation as we co-presented at the Duke Summer Institute in Durham, North Carolina; the Catalyst conference in Atlanta, Georgia; and for a World Vision International retreat in Larnarca, Cyprus. Learning to speak together and co-facilitate conversations around spirituality was bit tougher than we would have thought, but something we found tremendously satisfying. We’ll keep at it in January as we head down to Father Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Thank you for helping make all this possible. Thank you for believing in us. Thank you for the ways you’ve encouraged and inspired us. Thank you for showing us the way to God’s heart.
We do pray God’s blessing on each of you as 2010 comes to a close and that together 2011 we can continue to strive for hope and peace in a world that desperately needs it.
With gratitude,
Chris and Phileena