Words of gratitude are due to the members of the Continuing Formation Commission of the EBC for their planning and implementation of the symposium held at Buckfast Abbey on 15-19 July. Fifty abbots, abbesses and other monks and sisters participated in programming that reflected the week’s theme: “Is this the road that leads to life? Thinking differently about change.” It often takes an outside observer to enter into a community of any kind, to listen, and to see things more clearly. If this were not true, facilitators everywhere would be out of work.
We had two such gifted listeners in our midst. Fr. Martin Daly, S.M., of Ireland, served as our facilitator, while Fr. Michael Casey, O.C.S.O., of Tarrawarra Abbey in Australia, not only listened but presented two excellent talks. Attendees may have heard a positive refrain echoing in their thoughts: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” as the French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849.) While founded on the unchanging Rule of Our Holy Father, Benedict, we are however, as the title of one of Fr. Casey’s talks made clear, “Living in a Changing World.”
