Friday, April 24
Hello Everyone,
     Today began as a bright sunny day here in Guelph. So grateful for the sun warming up the earth... and our spirits.  A wonderful healthy breakfast was provided for us.  (the General Council with our Process Guide and Facilitator and others of the Organizing committee met for 20 minutes before breakfast to review the day ahead. John Sumarah, our Process Guide, gave us some reflections on the last evening and wanted to speak at the end of the morning to all)..... Our morning prayer was led by the Atlantic Region. They used the prayer based on the Aborginal prayer to the four directions..... (Michelle got a little confused on her directions but other than that it was a restful moment of beginning the day.)
     A good part of the morning was given over to hearing the "story" of each Region since last National Assembly, and showing us their symbol, supposedly for 3 minutes each..  It was wonderful to hear all the good things that have been happening in the Regions, and the developing sense of apostolic communities.  After this each delegate shared, supposedly for 1 minute, some of the graced history of their group, with a photo.
As interestings as this was, and so diverse, we didn't stick to the 1 minutes time limit and so were an hour behind in our scheduling.
    After a break, we had the President's report, which included a short summary of the work of the Revision Team on the new Manual Phase 1 and a handing over a copy of final draft to our President. This was followed by an affirmation of the office of National Ecclesial Assistant until 2010, to be further negotiated with the Jesuit Provincial.
   We then moved into the process of the Constitution Amendments before lunch.  It was clear that two elements prevented us moving effectively through this process:  there was some confusion about how some understood how to express the consensus of the assembled delegates, and the use of voting method. The second element was the fact that not all the delegates had the correct version of the amended \Constitution with the highlighted amendments.  We adjourned for lunch.
     When we returned at 1:30, the delegates were asked if we could delay the Amendment process until we had more time to look at how we were going to proceed. All agreed.
     Mary Balfe shared her story of `Stephen`s pocket` and her experience of a CLC family in Barcelona and how they lived our financially their committment to CLC way of life, we went into groups on the topic:
Membership/Committment/Financial Responsibility.
       Meanwhile the General Exco with our Process guide and Facilitator met to try to understand how we might proceed with the Constitution process.  We came to an agreement that because we would need to do a fair amount of work on getting a document of the Constitution with amendments ready for the Assembly on Saturday, we recommended that we should do more work on this over the next 5 years and bring it to the next National Assembly..... We brought it to the Assembly who after some dialogue on the topic agree that we should have a steering committee to continue the work on the amendments until the next National Assembly.
This was an important grace of the day.
      We had a concise report from each group on the connections of our membership, our committment and our financial response in CLC.  This was very hopeful and eyeopening for some on the connection of these three areas in CLC.
      Some free time before the Opening Eucharist was welcomed.  The Eucharist began with the `smudge` ceremony led by Mary Balfe. Fr JP Horrigan presided and Fr. Charles concelebrated.  After the homily, we had a simply ritual of reconciliationéof mercy by the washing of each other`s hands.  It was appreciated by all. It was a prayerful and celebrative Eucharist.
      In the evening, we had a short input by Lois Campbell (Secretary at the World ExCo) on what the World ExCo does.  Many of the group knew her from the LFE course she and Gilles Michaud gave last year.... then we heard Fr. Nicolas`talk (with pictures that Ruth Chipman had put
togeether) from the World Assembly in Fatima...... Very powerful message on being a lay prophetic community guided by the Holy Spirit....
     The evening ended by a communal examen prayer, led by the Prairies and Rockies.
    A full day but rich in God`s graces.  People seem to be still energetic. Tomorrow is another full day....
    Union of prayer,
   Charles.