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Taking to the hills

toubkal_01.jpgMartina Madden and Anne-Marie Connolly (Peter McVerry Trust fundraisers, pictured here) are taking on a charity challenge this October to raise money for homeless services in Dublin. They are going to trek across Morocco for five days, with the summit of Mount Toubkal as their goal. Mount Toubkal is the highest mountain in North Africa – more than 4,000 metres high! And the good news is that they are currently looking for other brave souls to join them. Fellow-trekkers are promised a fascinating journey – meeting the local Berber people, eating traditional Moroccan cuisine, and visiting the exotic markets of Marrakech – and spectacular views of the Sahara from the mountain top. Registration for the event closes on 5th May, and the trek itself takes place 1st-5th October. For more information, visit www.pmvtrust.ie or telephone Peter McVerry Trust Fundraising Office 01-8230776.

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: Social Justice ::

Keeping tabs on democracy

democracy_02.jpgThe Council of the recently established Conversation on Democracy in Ireland held its second meeting on Tuesday 28 April. Its first project, on local democracy, is being conducted in collaboration with four county councils – Cork City, Dublin City, Galway County and Louth. Four discussion groups – called ‘Juries’ – have been set up to look at what can be learnt from success in this area and how that learning can best be applied. The project will finish at the end of the year and a report of its finding will be published early in 2010. Plans are afoot to set up a website – www.conversationondemocracy.ie – which will make the work of the Conversation more accessible. Read more »

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::

Yoga for refugees

jrs_yoga_01.jpgThe JRS Ireland Capacity Building Programme has just finished a five-week yoga course at Hatch Hall direct provision centre. The classes were given by Peter Duffy, yoga instructor, on Wednesday mornings and were attended by between four and ten adults. A creche was also provided for parents with young children who wanted to attend the course. As Elizabeth O’Rourke, Integration Officer with JRS Ireland, puts it: “There is a very strong institutional dimension to life in a direct provision centre. Yoga helps rebuild the confidence of asylum seekers and helps them to keep fit and active.” The yoga classes are one of a number of personal development courses which JRS runs to help alleviate the boredom and the feeling of isolation experienced in hostels.

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::

Learn to discern

discern_01.jpgThe School on Ignatian Spirituality held in the Milltown Institute in 2008 was highly successful, so little wonder that the Institute will run a follow-up course this year from 15 to 19 June. It is called ‘Ignatian discernment today’, and it will explore how the dynamics of Ignatian discernment can be applied to any meeting today. “Just as the Spiritual Exercises are being creatively adapted to the needs of our times,” the Institute says, “the same creative adaptation can be made of the discernment experience of the first Jesuits.” Important to note is that attendance this year does not require that one attended last year’s course. The leaders of the course will be Brian Grogan SJ, Brendan Comerford SJ, and Brian O’Leary SJ. For more details, contact Bronia Kornas – Tel: 01-2776 322; email bkornas@milltown-institute.ie.

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::

Hands across the divide

button_02.jpgGerry O’Hanlon, from the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, joined a diverse panel on 22 April to debate the topic ‘Faith in a Crisis: Religion and Spirituality in an Economic Downturn’. It took place in the Button Factory, the refurbished Temple Bar Music Centre. The evening got off to a somewhat giddy start, with inputs from two comedians, but by the time the debate got going, the mood in the audience (largely college students and 30-somethings) was relaxed. Straight away there seemed to be a chasm between those, in the panel and audience, who see the world in terms of religion and those who do not. However, as the panel and audience interacted and as the two ‘divides’ learnt each other’s language, it became clear that Christians can have doubts and humanists can be spiritual.

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::

Meeting the internet challenge

malta_01.jpgWebmasters from a number of European Jesuit Provinces are meeting this week (30 April to 3 May) in Malta to pool their ideas with regard to the best ways to use the internet to convey the Jesuit message. Last year the meeting was held in Barcelona, with Piaras Jackson SJ leading the way. Piaras is at this year’s meeting too, as is Pat Coyle, manager of the Jesuit Communication Centre. The attendants expect to take a good look at recent web developments in the various Provinces and to discuss current online trends and the role that spirituality can play in internet life – all in the light of what General Congregation 35 had to say about the importance of communications. They will take time out, however, to visit the ancient city of Mdina (pictured here) and some of the famous neolithic temples on the island.

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::

JESUITICA: Taking a stand

campion_01.jpgSt Edmund Campion’s Brag to Elizabethan priest-hunters: “Be it known unto you that we have made a league – all the Jesuits of the world – whose succession and multitude must over-reach all the practices of England – cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us and never to despair of your recovery while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, to be racked with your torments or to be consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted, so it must be restored.”

Added Tuesday 28 April 2009 :: Category: General ::