At the Heart of It All

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Recently I spent a month as a special education assistant in a public school.  I supported a 3rd grade boy's transition to afternoons in his home school after a morning only program in a special school.  I not only had to build a relationship with him, but also with his teachers, and his 2nd and 3rd grade classmates.  It was a challenge on many levels. For one thing there were the daily 8 and 9 year old disagreements.  I could not fall back on "love one another" because of Jesus as I might in a Catholic setting.   What could help them relate peacefully to one another? To me?

Diarmuid O'Murchu, in In the Beginning is the Spirit, shows that The Spirit is the relationship of all things in the universe and that all people are called to participate in the Dance of the Spirit.  Meditating on the Spirit helped me model relationships with the children. At playground duty I would smile and tell them good things about themselves. I saw what I was doing was truly ministry.  I grew in my understanding of the statement in our Sinsinawa Dominican Constitution, "at the heart of ministry is relationship." I also see now that at the heart of relationship is ministry.

What do you have heart for? Do you see what you do as ministry?  How do you see the ministry of Sinsinawa Dominicans?  Is there a relationship?

Joan Duerst, OP
Monona, Wisconsin


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