For years it’s baffled me, this short ribbon of road. Emerging from a green corridor of overhanging hazels, it threads a secluded dale, travelling from precisely nowhere to nowhere, my favourite destinations.
Although the dale’s too small for a name, the thoroughfare, that less than a mile of grassy Tarmac and flower-rich verges, is grandly entitled The River Road. Why? In a secretive landscape of steep hills, gills, becks and stells, the nearest river is miles away. The only thing like a river round here is the road itself, winding along the valley between bracken banks like a dried watercourse. Old maps deepen the mystery, rediscovering connecting paths called River Lane and River Head, as well as a field simply called River. Fortunately a bench stands on the wayside: a won
05 October 2013, The Tablet
Glimpses of Eden
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User Comments (3)
Given the resources that local churches worldwide invest in education generally and the Christian formation of young people in particular, it seems illogical not to offer continuing formation after secondary school. It would be wonderful if the possibility of spending between one and five years life as a religious, cloistered or ‘in the world’, became a routine option for young Catholics. Religious communities would benefit from the temporary gift as well as, perhaps, an increase in vocations. Young people would gain immeasurably from living some of their formative years grounded in community and prayer. The families and parishes of the returning anchorites would be the richer too.
Personally, I think there will only be an upturn in the numbers applying for the Priesthood and/or Religious Life when young people grow up in a family where they experience a mother and father committed to one another for life.
When that day comes is moot but our Church would be far better off promoting and supporting the Sacrament of Marriage than constantly seeking prayers for Vocations, unless they mean to the married state.
Let me cite my own 3-year experience with the De La Salle Brothers as a young teenager: it was genuinely life-changing (even though the only one of our 6-strong novice year to remain with the Brothers was Damian Lundy, who I remember with great fondness). That brief experience of religious community living has informed my Catholic view of the world, even though I am not uncritical of the attitudes that informed it in the late 50s. A systematic welcoming of short-term commitment has much to recommend it, as it would give those who chose it a new and broader view of Catholic life, history and worship. Religious life could so easily become a greater treasure if not seen as an all-or-nothing lifelong commitment.